Dante and Virgil make great haste along the empty second terrace of PURGATORIO but are soon accosted by three disembodied voices, whipping them on to love but also offering a node of the alienation that will pervade this terrace . . . and that is crucial as a separating space between Dante the poet and his master, Virgil.
Read MoreDante and Virgil arrive at the second terrace of Purgatory proper in a passage that seems at first glance to be fairly straightforward, naturalistic detail . . . until we notice the neologism (new word) Dante has coined, until we notice the line that barely makes sense because it has so many possible meanings, and until we realize that Virgil is offering a pagan prayer in the land of the redeemed penitents.
Read MoreIn 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 MoreDante the pilgrim and his guide, Virgil, take on the last bit of the climb out of the first terrace of Purgatory proper, the terrace of pride. PURGATORIO continues to compellingly difficult and enjoyable because they exit the terrace with two interesting and unexpected moments: Virgil smiles and God’s writing is erased.
Read MoreDante and Virgil climb to the second terrace of Purgatory through one of the more difficult similes in all of COMEDY: a contorted and rage-filled bit of poetry about Florence and its corruption, all in the emotional landscape of redemption, which ends at one of Jesus’s beatitudes and also the screams of hell itself.
Read MoreDante and Virgil begin to leave the terrace of pride and all its art, but not before Virgil returns to form, becoming the guide to the afterlife with a penchant for quoting himself and not before an angel must guide them to the stairs, an angel who carries in his face an implicit reference to Lucifer (that is, Satan).
Read MoreDante the poet steps out from behind Dante the pilgrim to double down on his claims for art (that it’s realer than real), to push further his own (fake) ekphrastic poetry, and to remind us that the moral allegory that is COMEDY is at its heart a story, the only lie humans have to tell the moral truths of our existence.
Read MoreAn overview of the reliefs carved into the road bed of the terrace of pride on Mount Purgatory. They (and the poet Dante) leave us with more questions than answers . . . which is curious in a passage that is supposed to be a rather simple, monochromatic lesson about morality (or the dangers of pride).
Read MoreDante the pilgrim walks over the final figures carved into the paving stones of the terrace of pride on Mount Purgatory: Alcmeon (and his mother, Eriphyle), Sennacherib, Tomyris (and Cyrus), and Holofernes (and Judith). This passage is full of presented and occluded figures and ends with a very odd comment about Holofernes’ “relics from his martyrdom.”
Read MoreDante the pilgrim continues to look at the carved reliefs in the road bed of the terrace of pride on Mount Purgatory. He sees four more exemplars: Niobe, Saul, Arachne, and Reheboam. Two from the classical world and two from the Bible world. But one a statue and one an allegory of art. What is the relationship of pride and artistic creation?
Read MoreVirgil has directed Dante the pilgrim to look at the road bed of the terrace of pride. In it are carvings, much like tombs in the floor of a church. They’re reliefs of pride . . . or its exemplars. Or some of its exemplars. And then there’s Apollo, the pagan god of poetry and a bit of a muddle for Dante’s theology.
Read MoreVirgil directs Dante the pilgrim to look down at the art that will lie under his feet, carved into the first terrace of Mount Purgatory. But then the poet steps forward with an audacious claim: this art is “realer” than its historical basis, than its original moment, because it’s God’s art. But it’s not. It’s Dante’s.
Read MoreDante is hunched over with the prideful, going along as if he has a rock on his back. He certainly wants us to think the grand swelling of pride has been lanced on this terrace of Purgatory . . . until Virgil tells him to be more like the damned Ulysses, and our pilgrim straightens up, and sets off at a much quicker pace. A most curious passage about Dante’s relationship with pride.
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 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 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.
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