Playing Around With The Sun: PURGATORIO, Canto XV, Lines 1 - 24

Walking With Dante

Dante and Virgil pass on beyond the envious along the second terrace of Purgatory proper. As we enter the first of the middle three canti of all of COMEDY, Dante is blinded by the sun, about as we're blinded by his increasingly complex poetics.

These passages begin the brilliant fun of the second half of the poem. Dante begins to play with meaning, poetics, and metaphor as never before, challenging us and pushing us into a spot of disorientation, all the while bringing us to a spot of revelation.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we see the sun as never before in the opening lines of PURGATORIO, Canto XV. Here are the segments for this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE:

[01:19] My English translation of this passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XV, lines 1 - 24. If you'd like to read along or to continue the conversation with me, please find this episode on my website, markscarbrough.com.

[03:37] PURGATORIO Canto XV is a liminal canto, existing between disorientation and revelation.

[13:58] Two unique words in COMEDY in this opening passage (that is, two hapax legomena).

[17:19] Telling time by the sun and playing around with it, as it plays around in the sky.

[22:18] The sun and blindness at the opening and closing of our time on the terrace of the envious.

[24:56] Medieval science that can reformulate the plot into poetic language.

[28:30] Rereading the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XV, lines 1 - 24.