Walking With Dante

Our pilgrim stands on the brink of the flames. Virgil has to use every rhetorical trick in his bag to get Dante to move . . . and the only thing that works in Beatrice. In so doing, our poet Dante attempts his first run at defining this desire that is driving him up into the heavens. But he does so in a most curious way: by bringing up Geryon, the monster of fraud. Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we...

Our pilgrim has come to an impasse: the flames of lust. There's no way forward except to step into them. He must finally feel the sufferings that he has witnessed over the course of COMEDY to this point. This suffering comes after a discussion of the craft of poetry, after a unifying vision of the world, and after Dante's own memories of both seeing people be burned alive as capital punishment and...

As we pass Arnaut Daniel, the last penitent soul of Mount Purgatory, let's look back over the discussions of poetry and lust in the seventh (and even sixth) terrace of the mountain. Dante has laid out a fairly straightforward theory of poetry through his encounters with three poets. Are these in a logical progression? Are they causally linked, not just sequentially? Join me, Mark Scarbrough, for s...

Guido Guinizzelli has pointed to another figure in the purifying flames of Purgatory's seventh terrace. And now he steps forward, one of the greatest troubadour poets, a model of high-brow poetry and a writer of the sort of lusty verses that led to Francesca's downfall. Arnaut Daniel breaks COMEDY in some ways. He speaks in (a version of) medieval Provençal. But he also gives the final triplicate...

Dante has found his poetic father, Guido Guinizzelli, burning in the fires of lust on the final terrace of Mount Purgatory. Our pilgrim-poet has praised his poetic father for the sweet art that will last. Then Guinizzelli takes the discussion further, morphing that sweetness into truth, offering a metaphysical meaning to a physical sensation. He then proceeds to speak exactly in this sort of poetr...

Guido Guinizzelli has named himself and our pilgrim, Dante, is aghast. He gets lost in a classical simile that almost loses its sense, only to finally find his love for this poetic father and express himself in the straightfoward, new style from which his own poetry was born. Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we work through another complicated but ultimately satisfying passage on the seventh terrace o...

We finally come to know who has been our spokesperson for the lustful penitents: Guido Guinizzelli, perhaps the most important Italian poet working before Dante. Guinizzelli explains who the penitents are by using two classical allusions and even making up words to describe their sin, in the ways that poets always manipulate and even invent language. This passage is a shocking example of Dante's c...

We've seen the two crowds of the lustful on the seventh terrace of Mount Purgatory and we clearly identified them in the last passage (and on the last episode of this podcast). But Dante the pilgrim didn't know who they were. He's stuck, confused. He then seeks to break out his manuscript and rule his paper to find his way into the shocking revelation that love in the body can exist in more than o...

Our pilgrim, Dante, may have opened his mouth to answer how he got to where he is in his corporeal body, but he's interrupted by something completely unexpected: a group of people, moving the opposite direction of everyone else on Mount Purgatory. He's witnessing the moment when love moves the fence. These are the homosexuals on the doorstep of heaven. Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as I work through t...

The pilgrim, Dante, Virgil, and Statius walk on the narrow ledge between the flames of lust and the drop into the abyss. The penitents in the flames notice that the pilgrim's body makes the flames of lust more colorful . . . the work of any medieval poet in the troubadour tradition when it comes to love! Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we encounter the first penitents in the flames of lust. To suppor...

Dante, Statius, and Virgil arrive on the seventh terrace of Mount Purgatory filled with the flames of lust. The pilgrim must make his precarious way between those burning fires and the abyss just to his right, a narrow path that may give us a clue to the poet's own fears of lust. This passage is a grab-bag of ideas, hymns, references, and emotions. Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we explore it more f...

Statius concludes his discourse on embryology by finally answering the pilgrim Dante's question about how souls can take on material attributes in the afterlife . . . and by gently correcting both Virgil's incomplete answer to the question in this canto and Virgil's larger explanation of the soul's journey after death in THE AENEID. This passage is justifiably complicated. Dante's imaginative and...

Statius goes on to the second part of his discussion of human embryology by following the fetus through its developmental phases until it finally has a brain. At this point, the prime mover knows it's capable of reason and so breathes a new spirit into it . . . to make it capable of self-reflection. This passage is astounding discourse on developmental embryology as understood by medievals via Ari...

Dante the pilgrim has asked the pressing question of how immaterial souls can take on material attributes like leanness. To answer that, Virgil has offered a couple of unsatisfying answers, then turned the lecture over to the redeemed Statius . . . who begins by discussing human digestion. As understood via Aristotle, Aquinas, and more, food is purified into blood which then coagulates into a fetu...

Our pilgrim, Dante, has asked a very pressing question: How can shades grow thin? How does the immaterial act like the material in the afterlife? Virgil has given the pilgrim the confidence to ask this question. So Virgil takes the first crack at an answer. Problem is, he offers a whole unsatisfying answer and then turns the discussion over to Statius. This passage is a curious introduction to Sta...

Dante the pilgrim, Virgil, and Statius begin the ever-quickening ascent to the final terrace of Mount Purgatory. As he climbs, the pilgrim has a question about the gluttons on the previous terrace . . . but it's really a question that's been brewing since almost the opening of COMEDY itself. Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we look at the opening lines of PURGATORIO, Canto XXV, a canto that was often...

Virgil, Statius, and our pilgrim, Dante, head up to the seventh and final terrace of Mount Purgatory. During the climb, Statius engages in a complicated and fascinating discourse on embryology (at least as understood in Dante's medieval learning). Then we find ourselves standing before a wall of flames with the lustful penitents walking, singing, and shouting as they burn. We discover there are tw...

Virgil, Statius, and our pilgrim, Dante, walk along in contemplation, together but also alone with their thoughts. They're interrupted by the angel at the stairs who shows them the way up to the final terrace of Mount Purgatory. Our pilgrim loses his sight but gains precision in his other sense. And our poet gains the daring to rewrite one of Jesus's beatitudes. If you'd like to help underwrite th...

Forese Donati has passed on ahead of our pilgrim Dante and his two guides, Virgil and Statius. They now need to walk on along the sixth terrace of Mount Purgatory to find the stairs up to the last level. They soon come across the second tree on the terrace (or perhaps just the second tree that they’ve seen!). This tree proclaims itself a seedling from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in...

We've finished the giant conversation between the pilgrim Dante and Forese Donati, complete with its interruption by the shade of the poet Bonagiunta of Lucca. Let's look back over the entire scope of the conversation to discover its construction, its architecture, and the way meaning is made and moves through the words. We'll start by reading the entire thing in my English language translation. T...

We've come to the end of the long conversation between Forese Donati and Dante (as well as others) on the sixth terrace of Mount Purgatory among the penance of the gluttons. Dante the pilgrim hedges the question of when he will die, then Forese leaps into an apocalyptic vision of the ruin of someone closely connected to Florence--that is, his own brother, Corso Donati. Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as...

Dante the pilgrim has claimed that indeed he is the one who is inspired by love, who writes what love breathes into him and then makes meaning from that. Bongiunta is not finished with that discussion. Instead, he goes on to name this inspiration the "sweet new style" (or the "dolce stil novo"), thereby igniting over seven hundred years of commentary and controversy. And Bonagiunta himself seems t...

After Forese Donati has pointed out five of the gluttons on the sixth terrace of Mount Purgatory, one of them, the first mentioned and a poet of the previous generation, keeps muttering something almost unintelligible under his breath. Our pilgrim asks him for more information. He then offers the pilgrim an oblique prophecy that has troubled Dante scholars for hundreds of years. He also asks if th...

Forese Donati continues to answer Dante the pilgrim's questions by naming five penitent gluttons surrounding them on the sixth terrace of Mount Purgatory. As he points them out, Forese (and Dante the poet behind him) use culinary and gastronomical imagery to reinforce the themes of the terrace and perhaps to further fuel that long-standing feud between French and Italian cuisine. Join me, Mark Sca...

PURGATORIO, Canto XXIV, is set as a direct continuation from Canto XXIII. The poet Dante cues us to the continuation but there nevertheless are a couple of subtle disruptions. For one thing, Virgil has been silence for most of Canto XXIII and will indeed remain silent throughout Canto XXIV, his longest silence yet in COMEDY. We won’t hear anything from him until well into Canto XXV. And in this on...