Walking With Dante12 Mar 2023

An Introduction To PURGATORIO

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Welcome back! We've been on hiatus for a bit, after we finished INFERNO. (If, that is, you're listening to this podcast IRT.) And now we're ready to start our climb up the next third of the poem: the mountain of purgation, the (perhaps) most human section of Dante's divine masterpiece.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as I offer a little introduction to PURGATORIO--not so much to the poem but to our methods in this podcast. I want to tell you how the episodes for PURGATORIO are going to work (different from those for INFERNO). And I want to let you know--in advance!--the five basic ways I interpret (or "read," to use the literary term) this second canticle of COMEDY.

Here are the segments for this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE, our first on PURGATORIO.

[03:07] The methodology of how we'll walk through (up?) PURGATORIO: chunk, then smaller pieces (rather than the constant smaller pieces we undertook in INFERNO).

[06:15] Take heart: no funny voices in PURGATORIO! But that also means there's a translation issue.

[08:24] My initial five rubrics for interpreting PURGATORIO. First, PURGATORIO is about the perfection of the will and the correction of the intellect.

[11:20] Second, PURGATORIO is moving away from the classical (pagan?) world and more firmly into the Christian world. But that's not an easy move for our poet who so loves his classical learning.

[13:35] Third, PURGATORIO is the most heterodox portion of COMEDY.

[17:12] Fourth, PURGATORIO is a meta-commentary on the writing of INFERNO.

[18:35] Fifth, PURGATORIO is structured by the architecture of the New Testament.

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Episoder(512)

Plato and Beatrice, Together At Last: PARADISO, Canto IV, Lines 49 - 63

Beatrice continues her rectification of Dante's doubts by using a passage from Plato's TIMAEUS to turn her argument from accommodation to free will.This passage contains perhaps the heart of Beatrice'...

11 Okt 26min

Seeing Is (Almost) Believing: PARADISO, Canto IV, Lines 28 - 48

Beatrice begins to take apart the two questions (or doubts) that she has intuited the pilgrim Dante is holding in silence.She first takes on the one with more "poison" in this passage, in which she re...

4 Okt 28min

Paralyzed by Free Will: PARADISO, Canto IV, Lines 1 - 27

Piccarda may have vanished but questions remain. The pilgrim Dante is caught between them, unable to voice them.Beatrice to the rescue! She voices what he cannot say . . . or perhaps what he is afraid...

30 Sep 28min

The Expanding Community of Women in the Moon: PARADISO, Canto III, Lines 109 - 130

Piccarda Donati doesn’t stop her monologue with the cryptic line about her life after the convent. She turns to another figure in the lunar landscape: Constance I of Sicily, the Holy Roman Empress and...

23 Sep 23min

The Violent yet Elliptical End to Piccarda Donati's Story: PARADISO, Canto III, Lines 88 - 108

Piccarda Donati finally answers the question about who she is. She's given her name but not much else about her. In twelve lines (or four tercets) she brings her personal story to its violent yet elli...

20 Sep 27min

Piccarda Donati's Apotheosis of the Will: PARADISO, Canto III, Lines 58 - 87

Piccarda has confessed to her more humble place in the heavens. Our pilgrim Dante then wants to know if she wants more.Her answer leads her to an apotheosis of the will. Everything in the universe is ...

16 Sep 30min

The First Soul in Paradise, Piccarda Donati: PARADISO, Canto III, Lines 34 - 57

At long last, the first soul--or "shade"--steps forward in Paradise. She's Piccarda Donati, a figure we've already encountered once (maybe even twice) in COMEDY.Dante flatters her to speak and she beg...

13 Sep 29min

Catching Feelings in the Sensual Sphere of the Moon: PARADISO, Canto III, Lines 1 - 33

Dante is about to meet the first souls in Paradise, emerging from the liquid light of the moon.The poetry is lush and sensuous. The metaphors are complex and compounded. And Beatrice is a bit chilly, ...

9 Sep 28min