Walking With Dante

We've reached the end of our time on the great mountain of Purgatory . . . and in the great second canticle of COMEDY. Here are some final thoughts, an attempt to bring our time with this part of the poem to a close. Dante has worked hard to make PURGATORIO the hinge of his entire poem. Let's explore some ways it reflects back on INFERNO and looks ahead to PARADISO. Here are the segments for this...

Dante, the poet, steps out of the story seven times in PURGATORIO to address his reader directly--sometimes to spur the reader on to action, sometimes to put a bridle on the reader's intentions or thoughts. If we trace these seven addresses, can we find a developmental pattern? Or uncover Dante's changing attitude toward his work? Or toward his reader? Can we see a growing frustration or even fear...

As one of three sum-up episode to conclude our time on Mount Purgatory, this one’s about Dante’s conception of what he’s doing when he’s writing, outlined in nine selected passages from INFERNO and PURGATORIO. We’ve moved far enough into the poem that we can see the ways the poet has changed, hedged, and developed his theories of how and why he’s writing COMEDY. Given that one of my theses is that...

We come to the end of the second canticle, of PURGATORIO . . . and it includes all the ambiguity and humanness we've come to expect, plus hopeful notes for the journey ahead into Paradise. Dante complicates his ending of PURGATORIO with notes about his own dark mind and the incomplete work of this second part of his masterpiece COMEDY. At the same time, we're ready for the stars. Join me, Mark Sca...

The procession continues away from Lethe and farther into the Garden of Eden until they come to a dark, frigid spot that stops them . . . a curious moment in this innocent landscape. And it gets more curious as we discover rivers named and then renamed before we come to the most difficult naming of them all: Matelda, the fair lady who has been with us since PURGATORIO, Canto XXVIII. We'll talk cos...

After her final discourse in PURGATORIO, Beatrice and Dante enter into a brief conversation in which he admits he already has images stamped into his brain but he doesn't know what many of them mean, particularly those from her. She, on the other hand, launches into her final condemnation: the school he followed was too debased to capture the truths she has in hand. But she doesn't end there. She...

Beatrice concludes her monologue at the end of PURGATORIO with some dazzling metaphoric pyrotechnics, a slam on Dante's intellect, and a redefinition of this journey across the known universe. It's not just any old pilgrimage. It's a crusade. Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we look at the final images of her speech and discover its larger, structural details . . . which point us directly ahead to PAR...

Beatrice continues her discourse at the end of PURGATORIO by offering Dante classical examples of her own obscurity, Christian resonances for the very hope of writing, and a challenge for him to become her scribe, to take notes on her lectures. This passage falls in the middle of her long monologue in the last canto of PURGATORIO and it forms the fulcrum that turns us from the apocalyptic vision t...

As Beatrice and Dante continue to walk through Eden, she begins the final discourse that will end PURGATORIO: a cryptic, apocalyptic vision of the world (or maybe just the church?) set right. But by whom? Or when? And is the church destroyed? Or is it going to be rehabilitated? Beatrice's vision is the capstone of PURGATORIO and prepares us for the elliptical and stylized poetry to come in PARADIS...

From tragedy to comedy, the apocalyptic vision in Canto XXXII has come to an end and Beatrice accepts Dante as her walking companion in Eden. A relatively easy passage begins the final canto of PURGATORIO, perhaps a breather before the much more difficult material that will make up the bulk of the last canto of PURGATORIO. Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we walk with Beatrice, Dante, the seven ladies...

In the last episode, we talked through some of the "superficial" factors in the grand apocalyptic vision in Eden: its structure, some diction cues, even a few rifts or cracks in its flow. In this episode, let's turn to the much thornier issue of what it all means. A consensus has developed over the seven hundred years of commentary. That reading (or interpretation) now dominates the Anglo-American...

Dante is now ready for the final apocalyptic vision of PURGATORIO . . . and in the last place we might expect it: in that bastion of innocence and purity, the Garden of Eden. In seven vignettes, Dante witnesses some chaotic and catastrophic collapse of the chariot and even one of the original trees of Eden. But all is not lost. Beatrice is on the scene. And Dante himself participates in this visio...

Before we continue with Beatrice (and even the young woman who tends the Garden of Eden), let's stop and talk all too briefly about the roles and available places for women in Dante's day, the high middle ages. Although we can't hope to cover this subject in depth, we might be able to see some of its reflections in COMEDY so far, as well as in the complex and even contradictory characterization of...

Dante wakes back up from his unexpected sleep to find that the grand parade is heading off into the forest (or maybe the skies). He's in a panic that Beatrice has left, too, although the young woman of Eden comforts him and shows her now humble place under the renewed tree. Meanwhile, we readers are equally panicked . . . or at least de-centered, as we try to make sense of complicated similes and...

The griffin pulls the chariot or cart up to the denuded tree--the "widowed" tree--and the tree regenerates into a color reminiscent of other moments in PURGATORIO. But which one exactly? We're descending into the murk of mystery with new songs that can't be defined, with allegories that are becoming increasingly opaque, and even with classical references that seem somehow out of place in the overa...

The griffin rolls his chariot up to the foot of a denuded tree as Beatrice descends out of her ride. The symbolism (the allegories, in fact) become increasingly murky, difficult to parse, especially when the griffin says his one and only line in COMEDY. Dante's Garden of Eden is a place where the games of interpretation kick into high gear. Nothing is what it seems . . . yet what it is is a matter...

Face to face with Beatrice, the pilgrim Dante is ready for more revelation. Problem is, even after Lethe he's still doing things wrong and must be corrected by the women around the griffin's chariot. But what is he doing wrong? And why does the entire parade of revelation go into retreat? What indeed does that griffin symbolize? And how did we get from the intensely personal experience of Dante's...

As we've done across the second canticle of Dante's masterpiece, COMEDY, we're taking some time to read through the final two cantos of PURGATORIO, XXXII and XXXIII. I'll read my rough English translation of the cantos. I'll finesse these more when we take the cantos apart passage by passage. For now, just sit back and listen to the narrative sweep of the final two cantos of PURGATORIO, truly the...

We finally come to the face-to-face meeting of Beatrice and Dante. We've waited for this moment since INFERNO, Canto II, when Beatrice first stepped into COMEDY. Neither Dante nor Beatrice speak at their close meeting. Instead, the women around the chariot beg Beatrice to reveal her second, hidden beauty: her mouth. Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we explore the complex symbolism in this passage. We'...

Dante has now crossed Lethe and is ready to face Beatrice head on. She has moved to get ready for this eye-to-eye conversation. She's positioned nearer the griffin, a complicated symbol that may have more than one interpretation. Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we explore both Beatrice (particularly her emerald eyes) and this dual-natured beast that seems to become more difficult to interpret with it...

Dante wakes up in the arms of the young woman who first welcomed him to the Garden of Eden. She's dragging him through Lethe before she forcefully pushes him underwater. This scene is deeply symbolic and allegorical . . . although it raises many more questions than it answers. In fact, it seems to want to leave many things open-ended, a cue that Dante wants us in the poem, working on solutions to...

Beatrice has finished her case against the pilgim Dante. All that's left is for him to find his way beyond confession and into confession . . . which he does with a major crack-up that leads him to faint for the third time in COMEDY. Before he collapses, the poem begins a series of inversions or reversals that both increase the ironic valences of the passage and give its reader an almost vertigo-i...

Beatrice continues to lead Dante toward contrition, pointing out both the purposes of her body (or corpse) and the ways he has failed to followed her lofty beauty. She finishes her second salvo at the pilgrim with a rhetorical flourish, showing the reader (and Dante) that she is a master of rhetoric, someone who commands a high, elevated style of poetry--that is, a fusion of the literal and the me...

Ever since INFERNO, Canto I, we've never fully understood why Dante woke up lost in that dark wood. Now, in the Garden of Eden, Beatrice brings him to the point where he can voice what he did wrong. He can finally offer his confession. It was all about her all along. And maybe about what he wrote. And maybe about another woman who caught his eye. Or maybe all of it at once. Join me, Mark Scarbroug...

Wailing, Dante comes in for Beatrice's impatience. He hasn't responded yet to her charges, so she turns the spear point of her words on him. He cracks . . . and in doing so, loses language, words, the very things that are the heart of his craft. Canto XXXI opens with an intensely emotional scene, meant to bring the pilgrim right to the brink of his ability to handle things . . . about like what ha...