A Lone Old Man Who Disrupts COMEDY And Changes The Rules Of The Afterlife: PURGATORIO, Canto I, Lines 28 - 48

As Dante the pilgrim gazes at the gorgeous sky, he finds an old man standing next to him, a figure who will startle us (if not the pilgrim) and who will eventually cue us that all is not what it seems in the second third of Dante's COMEDY.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we turn with the pilgrim to PURGATORIO's first great surprise. Let's talk about this old man without identifying him yet--because that's exactly what our text does.

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

[01:18] My English translation of this passage: PURGATORIO, Canto I, Lines 28 - 48. If you'd like to read along, print it off, or drop a comment, please go to my website, markscarbrough.com.

[03:02] Our first task: The Big Dipper. It's a minor translation problem in the passage.

[04:35] The on-going movement from Dante the pilgrim: turning, not walking.

[06:52] The effects of wonder in this passage have already been noted in INFERNO, Canto XXVIII.

[08:00] Our first vision of the lone, old man, emerging at us from the text.

[08:58] The old man is not immediately identified--and that may be crucial to our seeing the poem correctly.

[12:18] The old man has a paternal quality. Does that make him a potential rival for Virgil?

[13:37] The old man has a long, forked beads, reminiscent of the representation of Moses in the Florentine Baptistry mosaics.

[14:58] The old man is first seen by Dante the pilgrim after he turns to the north.

[15:54] The old man is directly linked to the four stars over the South Pole.

[16:51] There is another old man ("veglio") in the poem: the old man of Crete.

[18:18] The old man's appearance is reminiscent of Jesus's appearance to Mary Magdalene at the garden tomb.

[19:35] The old man seems very keen on the legal niceties.

[21:37] The old man is a blocking figure, like many others we've met in INFERNO.

[22:30] But there's a significant difference: This old man may be open to change.

[23:57] Rereading PURGATORIO, Canto 1, Lines 28 - 48