Ecstatic While Longing For Home: PURGATORIO, Canto VIII, Lines 1 - 18
Walking With Dante1 Marras 2023

Ecstatic While Longing For Home: PURGATORIO, Canto VIII, Lines 1 - 18

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We move closer to the negligent rulers on the slope of Mount Purgatory, seated or standing about in a dale on the slope before the main gate.

Among them, we encounter longing, yearning, dreaming, sadness, all at the moment of the end of the day, its death, even as someone is already anticipating sunrise (and resurrection?).

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we explore one of the most beautiful passages in Dante's COMEDY: human, intimate, and cosmic, all the crisscrossing we expect of this great poet.

Here are the segments for this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE:

[02:19] My English translation of the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto VIII, lines 1 - 18. If you'd like to read along or continue the conversation with me, please go to my website: markscarbrough.com.

[04:47] The opening pseudo-simile about sailors and pilgrims.

[08:27] Out of canonical time and into common time, with a yearning for what was.

[11:32] The irony of sight in a darkening landscape.

[12:43] An unknown soul and the importance of the east.

[15:58] The hymn "Te Lucis Ante" . . .

[19:02] Which is the third hymn of PURGATORIO.

[20:58] The divided self and the ecstatic experience.

[24:53] A glimpse of the journey ahead.

[26:29] Rereading the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto VIII, lines 1 - 18.

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