In PURGATORIO, Dante begins to incorporate more and more experimental and experiential truth into his poem, taking his cues from Aquinas and Aristotle. But if God is the author of all truth, how does any truth come from experiential sources, much less a pagan philosopher, particularly one whose writings have been reinvigorated by both Islamic and Jewish scholars?
Read MoreThe illuminator Oderisi continues his monologue on the first terrace of Purgatory proper. He points out a third penitent: the warlord and tyrant from Siena, Provenzan Salvani, who plotted Florence’s demise and perhaps foreshadows Dante’s exile. How are the pains of Purgatory not “contrapasso” as in INFERNO? What part does art play in history? And how does Dante imagine his own art changing its reader?
Read MoreDante the pilgrim sees the prideful penitents under the boulders and likens their burdens to the weight of dreams (the key landscape of the imagination in medieval thinking). What? Then Dante the poet steps out to teach us the lesson from the passage, asking us to pray for the penitents he himself has imagined. Finally, Virgil speaks without ever being given a dialogue cue, so we’re not sure who’s speaking until the end of nine lines. What’s going on?
Read MoreDante hears the first penitents of Purgatory proper. They’re the prideful, reciting the foundational prayer of Christian tradition. Except they’re not. Dante has rewritten this prayer, changing it from the liturgy and even from Jesus’s words as recorded in the Gospel of Matthew. How and why does Dante feel he has the freedom to rewrite the very foundations of his faith?
Read MoreDante the pilgrim has been alerted to figures coming around the bend of the first terrace of Purgatory proper. But neither he nor Virgil, his guide, is able to discern what’s what until Dante the poet interrupts the story and then the pilgrim uses art to understand what didn’t resemble people at all.
Read MoreDante the pilgrim is still gawking at the art in the marble of the first terrace of Purgatory when the first of the penitents round the bend. Virgil spots them . . . and then murmurs to the pilgrim. Murmurs? Like the Israelites in the wilderness? Or like an older poet when confronted with the exuberance of a younger poet?
Read MoreDante moves on to the third intaglio (or carving) in the marble of the first terrace of Purgatory proper. This time, he finds a scene (allegedly) from the life of the Roman emperor Trajan, a scene so real that the marble apparently comes to life and offers a dramatic dialogue between Trajan and a bereaved mother, as (carved) eagles soar overhead and knights tramp the ground.
Read MoreDante moves beyond his guide Virgil (or is prodded to move beyond him for curious reasons) to see the second intaglio or carving in the marble on the terrace of pride in PURGATORIO. Here, Dante continues his dangerous game, enhancing the realism of the art on the wall of Mount Purgatory with imagined details that offer the best “realism” in the scene.
Read MoreDante the pilgrim and (shockingly) Virgil arrive on the first deserted terrace of Purgatory proper to discover marvelous carvings in the white marble (although still no souls in sight). These first images of artistic production allow the poet to begin to develop his theory of art, one of the major achievements of his time on the terraces of Mount Purgatory.
Read MoreDante the pilgrim and Virgil, his guide, make it through the dramatic gate of Purgatory proper only to be met with silence: a hard climb to a deserted open spot that edges out toward the void. This passage from PURGATORIO, Canto X is an amazing bit of emotional drama: a Purgatorial letdown after we’ve finally gotten inside the world of the redeemed penitents.
Read MoreA read-through of PURGATORIO, Cantos X - XII, using my rough English translation. Dante the pilgrim and Virgil have come through the wildly dramatic gate of Purgatory and climbed to the first terrace of Purgatory proper, where those who are guilty of the sin of pride must unburden themselves in a most ironic fashion. Sit back and enjoy the plot of this first locale in Purgatory itself.
Read MoreDante and Virgil finally enter Purgatory proper in a passage that’s a strange amalgam of Lucan and Virgil, Roman history and Christian resolution, screeching and singing, warnings and blessings, the Bible and Ovid—and complete mash-up of all that makes our walk across the known universe with Dante so intriguing.
Read MoreDante arrives at the gate of Purgatory—but not without Virgil’s effort. Hauled up the steps, Dante then sees the angel more clearly, particularly the angel’s ashy robes. That angel has two jobs: to open the door with his two keys and to carve seven letters into Dante’s forehead. Like so much of COMEDY, this passage is remarkably murky and yet psychologically astute.
Read MoreDante and Virgil see the three steps to the entrance of Purgatory proper with an angel sitting on up at the very threshold to the next realm. But these steps have caused 700 years of interpretive fury. They’re allegorical, to be sure. But maybe there’s a way to scrape the critical apparatus off the steps and see these steps in a new way.
Read MoreDante had seemed so full of confidence when he found out his dream of fire and rape was not true but instead a representation of his being carried by Lucy up the mountain as he slept. But when Dante the pilgrim gets in front of the guardian of Purgatory’s gate, the angel proves so forbidding that the pilgrim falls silence. Fortunately, Virgil is ever ready to speak up.
Read MoreDante the pilgrim changes fundamentally from fear to confidence—in COMEDY’s poetic discourse! His internal states are offered in a simile, the very technique poetry employs to create its texture. Then Dante goes on to ask his reader for a similar change. Charge fearlessly into the harder material ahead.
Read MoreLucy arrives to carry the sleeping Dante up to the gate of Purgatory itself. And perhaps most shocking of all, she keeps Virgil in tow to this very Christian part of the mountain. In fact, classical imagery may well be the texture that underlies Dante’s Christian truth: the rough threads that make the tapestry more beautiful.
Read MoreDante dreams his way to the gate of Purgatory using three classical images about “unnatural” or “unrefined” love, while burning up with sexual ecstasy in the talons of the great eagle from Zeus and becomes Ganymede, the cupbearer to the gods. A wild (and troubling) ride for a Christian poet, to say the least.
Read MoreDante opens the incredibly important canto of the gate of Purgatory—that is, PURGATORIO, Canto IX—with a complete mess of classical imagery. This tangle has befuddled scholars and readers for centuries. There are proposed solutions, none of them quite adequate. Perhaps the difference here is that Dante is now free to play with classical imagery, rather than to be controlled by it.
Read MoreWe’ve finally reached the gate of Purgatory itself with Dante and Virgil. PURGATORIO, Canto IX, is a dense, tough canto, full of interpretive questions and allegorical cloudiness. Let’s read through it before we begin to take it apart and study it in the way Dante intended.
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