Walking With Dante

Forese Donati has finished his diatribe about Florentine women and is now ready to hear Dante the pilgrim's story. Who did the pilgrim get here in the flesh? The pilgrim retells the journey, renegotiating its opening and reconfiguring its theology, even this high up on the mountain, as we near the apocalyptic climax of PURGATORIO. Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we walk slowly through this last passa...

Having praised his wife, Nella, Forese Donati launches into the prophetic voice, the new "high style" that Dante has developed, a screed with a lyrical undertow. This complicated poetic act can only be accomplished with the vernacular, with medieval Florentine (in Dante's case). And although it fuses with misogyny and xenophobia, it nonetheless demonstrates the Dante's new style beyond love sonnet...

Dante the pilgrim and his rival/friend/fellow poet Forese Donati continue to talk about their concerns: suffering, placement on the mountain, and the role of the living in the service of the dead. Along the way, they seem to be coming closer and closer to the Christian idea of redemptive suffering, a complex stance in the face of the nihilism that almost overwhelms the suffering in INFERNO behind...

Having met his poetic rival, Forese Donati, Dante the pilgrim must make sense of the clear and present pain he sees in friend's face. This passage is a curious example of felix culpa, the fortunate fall, in which suffering must be reinterpreted for the greater good. Except the pain doesn't stop being the pain. Suffering remains the central metaphysical question of the human condition, the experien...

Dante now walks with the skeletal gluttons who have God's writing on their faces. Along the way, there are increasingly complex and almost gaming literary references that litter the text until Dante the pilgrim suddenly is recognized by a fellow, contemporary, vernacular poet who is not known for any high style but is instead a champion of a low, vulgar poetry in this hip, new form of the sonnet....

Our pilgrim must move beyond the mystical tree on the sixth terrace of Mount Purgatory. So he sets off behind Virgil and Statius, only to overtaken by a group of cadaverous, skeletal penitents, whose hollow eyes watch the pilgrim's slower journey. This passage is an interesting set of problems: low stylists which end up with Ovidian references, all tied up in the very real medieval problem of star...

Did Dante think that the characters in Virgil's and Statius's poems were real? Did he believe that the characters who changed shape, being, and even substance in Ovid's METAMORPHOSES were actual and historical? This complicated questioning has no final answer . . . which means it can drive most of us modern, post-scientific-revolution people nuts? But it all goes back to Dante's relationship with...

Virgil and Statius begin to trek around the sixth terrace of Mount Purgatory but are stopped by an upside-down tree . . . that causes more questions than it provides answers. A voice in the tree warns them off and offers examples of temperance, of moderate appetites, all of which are strange interpretations of Biblical stories that don't necessarily have to do with gluttony. Join me, Mark Scarbrou...

Our pilgrim, Virgil, and Statius arrive on the otherwise empty sixth terrace of Mount Purgatory. Virgil seems more hesitant. And our pilgrim, Dante, more passive, as he listens to the two older, wiser poets discuss the craft of poetry. This passage represents the paradox of circularity and linearity, of stasis and advancement, that is the major structural (and thematic!) tension in COMEDY. Join me...

At the end of their first conversation, Virgil and Statius reconstruct limbo. They transform it into a neighborhood where all the lost, classical writers live. They also transfer limbo's sighs from the damned to the poet Dante and potentially to his reader. Where have these great authors gone? And if their texts are one way to God, how many ways to redemption have then been lost with them? Join me...

Statius finally tells Virgil what we all want to know: the story of his conversion. How did this Latin poet who dedicated his great epic to a Roman emperor become a Christian. Through a long process and by subterfuge. Statius was a closeted or hidden (or to use the medieval Florentine term, "closed") Christian. Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we look through this passage in which Dante the poet attem...

Given that Statius claims a passage from The Aeneid made him see the error of his ways, Virgil wants to know how this poet of the Thebes could have ever become a Christian, particularly since his poetry shows little evidence of the faith. Statius replies with some of the most shocking lines in COMEDY: He became a Christian AND a poet because of the damned, pagan Virgil. Virgil's own poetry led Sta...

Since we’ve come to a moment of (perhaps!) profound irony as Statius misquotes and even misinterprets Virgil’s AENEID to find his way to salvation, we should perhaps pause and talk a bit about irony, both as an artistic concept and specifically as tool our poet, Dante, uses to make meaning in his text. In this interpolated (or interstitial?) episode of WALKING WITH Dante, we’ll talk about the two...

Statius and Virgil continue their conversation as they climb to the sixth terrace with the pilgrim Dante. Statius explains that he discovered his error when he read two lines from Virgil's AENEID. The problem is that Statius misquotes these lines and misinterprets them, making them fit his personal situation while pushing them through Aristotle's ethics. Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we look at thi...

Blinded by the angel, Dante the pilgrim begins his climb to the sixth terrace of Mount Purgatory. But his plight is overshadowed by Virgil’s desire to know more about Statius . . . in this strange passage of misquotings and misreadings. The angel cuts short a beatitude from the gospels. Virgil seems to misquote Francesca from INFERNO, Canto V. And Virgil himself seems to toss out Aristotle’s Golde...

We have been a long time on the terrace of the avaricious (without knowing there's another sin punished there as well). We're ready to climb on up to the sixth terrace of Mount Purgatory with Virgil and Statius as the pilgrim Dante's guide. On this episode, sit back for a read-through of these three cantos. Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as I read a rough translation of PURGATORIO, Cantos XXII, XXIII,...

Statius has sung his (first!) hymn of praise to Virgil without knowing that the old poet is right in front of him. Dante the pilgrim is caught between them in this most human episode with his master, Virgil, demanding silence and his new friend, Statius, wanting to know why the pilgrim is smiling. Which means Dante is also caught on his emotions which seem to be overriding his will . . . in a cant...

We finally get to know our unknown shade on the fifth terrace of Purgatory: Statius, the epic Roman poet. His salvation is one of the most audacious moves in all of COMEDY. Dante has to work every fiction-making muscle he has to assert that this pagan poet has spend so long in Purgatory on his way to heaven . . . and finds himself face to face with Virgil, his poetic inspiration and apparently the...

The still-unknown shade on the fifth terrace of Mount Purgatory rounds out his answer to Virgil's questions with some shocking revelations: The souls in Purgatory seem to declare the moment they're cleansed. The will is the only proof that their penance is complete. They stand up. They choose to move on. Or do they? Is it that simple? Or theologically explosive? This passage is easy to overstate,...

Virgil has asked two questions: Why'd the mountain shake and why'd the shades all cry out with one voice? The unknown shade on the fifth terrace of Mount Purgatory begins his answer by referring to Aristotle's notions of change . . . and offers the surprising conclusion that some change is impossible about the three steps to the gate of Purgatory proper. And then he does something wilder: He begin...

The unknown shade has been gobsmacked by the fact that escapees from hell may be climbing Mount Purgatory. Virgil explains that the pilgrim is still very much alive. To do so, Virgil uses classical, not Christian, imagery. And Virgil presses for an answer as to "why" the mountain just shook and "why" all the souls sang out with one voice. Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we explore Virgil's curious an...

Dante is left wondering why the mountain has shaken when an even deeper mystery occurs: a shade appears seemingly out of nowhere and behind our pilgrim and Virgil. This shade offers a Christian greeting, Virgil returns it in a darker way, and then this shade assume he's looking at two damned shades, escaped from hell. Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we look at this most curious passage that begins on...

Dante the pilgrim and Virgil have seemingly moved off even as Hugh Capet was still speaking. They're picking their way among the avaricious when they're stopped by an earthquake that rattles Mount Purgatory. Dante is afraid. Virgil may even be afraid. But he tells the pilgrim to "fear not," much as those angels tell the shepherds at the birth of Jesus. Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we work our way...

Hugh Capet has spent a long time answering the pilgrim Dante's first question: who were you? He now turns to the pilgrim's second question: why did I only hear your voice on this terrace? In doing so, Hugh begins to sing antiphonally . . . or at least, he begins to list off those who have been done in by avarice, the quickest and tightest list of figures in PURGATORIO. Why is this list so full of...

As Hugh Capet winds up to the heights of his monologue, he comes to a most shocking climax: that moment when the French monarchy is so bad that it makes even the corrupt papacy look good. We've come to the very center of Dante's beef with the French crown, voiced by this legendary monarch about his own descendants, particularly Philip IV (or Philip the Fair). It's a tale so dire that even papal co...