Walking With Dante11 Jun 2025

Gluttons For Poetry: PURGATORIO, Canto XXIII, Lines 28 - 48

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.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we look into the mirror of an increasingly complex meta reality in COMEDY as Dante the pilgrim meets his friend and rival Forese Donati on the sixth terrace of Mount Purgatory.

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

[01:22] My English translation of the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XXIII, lines 28 - 48. If you'd like to read along or continue the conversation with me in the comment section at the bottom of the page, please find the entry for this episode on my website, markscarbrough.com.

[03:23] Internal thoughts--less revelatory than just rehearsed--about the siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE.

[09:27] The potential blasphemy of the pelican in her piety.

[12:50] Three references to other texts in increasing opacity: from Dante's VITA NUOVA, from Ovid's METAMORPHOSES, and from Josephus' history (sort of).

[15:30] Starved enough to see God's writing in the human face: a felix culpa?

[21:31] A misplaced tercet in COMEDY?

[22:52] Forese Donati and Dante v. Statius and Virgil.

[31:18] Rereading the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XXIII, lines 28 - 48.

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