The Flames Don't Burn Up Irony: PURGATORIO, Canto XXVII, Lines 49 - 90

Our pilgrim has entered the flames of lust. For the first time, he is not a voyeur of the torments. He experiences them on the last terrace of lust.

He then hears a call to enter Paradise . . . before he falls asleep on the mountain's rocky staircase.

Problem is, those flames don't burn up irony. It's thick in this passage. A goat even gets into Paradise!

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we work through this final climb on Mount Purgatory before we enter the Garden of Eden.

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

[01:22] My English translation of PURGATORIO, Canto XXVII, lines 49 - 90. If you'd like to read along or continue the conversation with me about this passage, please find its entry on my website, markscarbrough.com.

[04:09] Dante's guilt (or creative apex) and Virgil's white lie (or painful memory).

[10:02] The angel in Latin and in vernacular Florentine--and perhaps Dante's homesickness.

[15:02] The scope of the journey: a half revolution around Mount Purgatory.

[18:14] The pastoral, idyllic, Edenic simile to (try to) summarize the moments after the flames.

[21:09] The irony in the simile, full of inaccurate reference points.

[25:28] Dante, the goat let loose into Paradise.

[29:29] Our poet, a world-builder.

[30:55] Rereading the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XXVII, lines 49 - 90.