All The Light Ends With The Stars: PURGATORIO, Canto XVII, Lines 40 - 72

Walking With Dante

Dante the poet is having great fun with light. He's playing with its various meanings: illumination, revelation, sunrise, sunset, concealment, power--all this as we approach the middle of PURGATORIO and even find ourselves in the middle of COMEDY as a whole.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we explore these last moments on Purgatory's terrace of the wrathful before we find ourselves again among the stars.

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

[01:41] My English translation of the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XVII, lines 40 - 72. If you'd like to read along or continue the conversation with me, please find the entry for this episode on my website, markscarbrough.com.

[04:16] A dizzying interplay about light: physical/metaphysical, imaginary/revelatory, sunrise/sunset, illuminating/concealing.

[06:46] Desire and the necessary (physical) fulfillment: a lead-in to what's ahead on the journey.

[08:37] Virgil's reply, a pastiche of Biblical and classical sources.

[12:37] The beatitude that ends this terrace, plus a non-Biblical addition to it that then complicates our notion of anger.

[16:51] Stars and the center of COMEDY.

[17:39] Rereading the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XVII, lines 40 - 72.