Walking With Dante24 Aug 2025

The Episode In Which My Voice Breaks: PURGATORIO, Canto XXVI, Lines 25 - 48

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 the passage that was the inception of this entire podcast and is the best illustration of my thesis that love remakes the world.

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

[01:38] My English translation of PURGATORIO, Canto XXVI, lines 25 - 48. If you'd like to read along or drop a comment to continue the conversation with me, please find the entry for this episode on my website, markscarbrough.com.

[03:32] The passage is an interruption of people (à la Cavalcante with Farinata) and of tenses: It moves consistently into the narrative present tense.

[05:22] The passage begins with an emphasis on identification and novelty.

[06:34] Moving to the left, rather than the right, the new penitents reenact a moment of Christian fellowship and of Francesca's downfall.

[09:48] The first revolutionary simile: ants who nuzzle each other.

[12:25] The penitents cry out to explain who they are.

[15:34] The second revolutionary simile: cranes who migrate in opposite directions.

[18:08] Dante may rewrite Jeremiah's prophecy.

[20:04] Dante definitely reclassifies homosexuality--which may offer even more explosive implications than he intends.

[25:28] Rereading the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XXVI, lines 25 - 48.

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