When Art Envisions What Is: PURGATORIO, Canto X, Lines 112 - 139

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Virgil has prompted the pilgrim Dante to look at the penitents coming around the bend on the first terrace of Purgatory proper. But Dante can't make them out . . . until the poet intervenes with an invective and the envisions these penitents as works of art.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we explore the hall of mirrors that Dante's theory of art is becoming even on the first terrace of PURGATORIO.

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

[01:31] My English translation of the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto X, lines 112 - 139. If you'd like to read along or drop a comment to continue the conversation, please go to my website, markscarbrough.com.

[04:00] The prophetic denunciation in the center of the passage hopes for a collective redemption out of individual sin.

[10:08] Dante's and Virgil's eyesights are first compromised so that they can't comprehend what they see.

[12:30] Art's power to interpret the realities of what is seen leads to Dante's hall of mirrors in which art is interpreting the real while being based on the real.

[18:01] Rereading the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto X, lines 112 - 139.