PURGATORIO CANTO 27 discussion with DAN CHRISTIAN
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 12 ต.ค. 2021
- Dan Christian is the winner of the 2017 Durling Prize of the Dante Society of America, which recognizes exceptional accomplishments by North American secondary school teachers who offer courses or units on Dante's life and works.
Dan's website is here: danteiseverywhere.com/
Book links suggested by Dan that might be useful if you want to deepen your studies of Dante:
www.amazon.com/Passionate-Int...
www.amazon.com/Introductory-P...
www.amazon.com/Further-Papers...
www.amazon.com/Dorothy-L-Saye...
www.amazon.com/Dante-Poet-Thi...
Thank you all as always for your interest and support!
Thank you so much!!! I love how you all developed this even more deeply. What a beautiful word, re-cord-? With heart in the center!!! Bring this back into your ❤ heart!!! Thank you for bringing the word of God in, too. Serenity, as well as dreams and how they show us our way, our troubles, our flaws, our freedom and lack of it. I love his crowning!!! Dante seems to have been poured upon and within from the Lord to write all this!
Thanks Lori. I am also of the opinion that he was in fact inspired by God while writing this masterpiece. Even judging by how many lives (including mine) Dante has been able to impact throughout the centuries.
This was a wonderfully stimulating discussion. Now that Action and Reflection have made an appearance with the sisters, I still wonder where the Pilgrim's mirror might be hiding. I was so happy Dan mention Scrooge, because the same comparison occurred to me after reading Canto 26, but Dickens has Scrooge SEE his own sins, and we never get that with the Pilgrim. Both of your observations about the Pilgrim's silence in this Canto sways me into almost believing that the silence is the Pilgrim's form of reflection. Thanks again for the discussion.
I was dreading saying goodbye to Virgil and this Canto has made me cry because of that ....but the message of freedom and what this means was so powerful that I just want to continue on the journey with Dante ...I also thought of Martha and Mary btw ... Excellent discussion
Thank you Hester! Always a pleasure to have Dan Christian on with his experience and passion.
I really enjoyed this discussion and all these new insights! As a lifelong pyrophobic, I totally relate to Dante's terror of passing through the wall of fire. That kind of personal, visceral fear can't be overcome easily, even if the logic used to try to help the person makes sense. While my pyrophobia is as under control as it'll ever be, and no longer as severe and crippling as it was for years, I'd need a lot of convincing too if I had to walk through fire.
I like the idea of Virgil hiding behind a tree and watching Dante after he officially disappears. It's really surprising that in the past 700 years, no one has ever thought to write a book about Virgil's journey back to Limbo after he parts from Dante. That would be an incredible story too.
You really do have a writer’s imagination, Ursula. That has the potential to be a truly spectacular book, if the right author worked on it …. I never thought of it and to be honest I don’t think that’s a thought that’s occurred to many. Great call! Who knows, maybe one day you could be that author!
Dear Ursula,
A former student DID write a new canto in terza rima imagining Virgil’s return to Limbo. It was beautifully and powerfully written, but he didn’t exhaust the idea by any means. I would echo Tom’s reply and suggest that someday you take a shot at telling that story. Here’s my one specific suggestion; fortunately for all, I have ONLY one. When Virgil makes it back to the terrace of the Prideful, I can imagine him seeing that a scaffold has been erected, and angelic sculptors are hard at work. Virgil notes how beautiful this 4th carved story is, “visibile parlare” X10 and asks what the story is. The angels say, “This is humility at its best. We are creating a tribute to the poet Virgil who selflessly guided our wounded and desperate brother, Dante, to the top of Mt. Purgatory. He embodied to a special degree the idea that ‘greater love hath no man than he who lays down his life for his friend. We need to return to work.’ Good luck.” Virgil keeps going along down the mountain, thinking hard, with the same look on his face that the older Moonlight Graham has in “Field of Dreams,” when Shoeless Joe Jackson shouted across the outfield, “Hey, Rookie. You were good!”
Having Virgil’s story with Dante as part of the healing curriculum of Mt. Purgatory University seems appropriate to me if we are serious about a school’s role to try to build character. Thanks for your comments.
Good luck with your story effort. Dan
This was such a wonderful discussion. So many beautiful aha moments. Thank you to both of you! 🙏
If I might add a definition of freedom that I heard Bishop Robert Barron give once. I loved it so much that I committed it to memory but I don’t remember who he was quoting. I think it defines well the type of freedom that Dante is referring to here. It was that freedom is not self determination but rather freedom is a disciplining of the desires to make the achievement of Good first possible and then effortless. ❤️
That’s a spectacular one, thanks for sharing 🙏🏻 Love Bishop Barron and all the work of Word on Fire.
Brilliant
what a treat joining the conversation of two lovers of dante. i do want to say that as a first time reader it was clear virgil was saying farewell....and i was thrown...i thought he'd be with us to the gates of paradise..did not expect him to leave early.
Love Dan’s energy!!
What a lovely conversation! Thank you.
Thank you Jo! Dan will be discussing with me the last canto of Paradiso as well.
This one is rather a beauty. The moment when Dante looks at the fire and thinks of bodies he has seen burn brought me up short though.
Virgil's words at the end are lovely but distinctly valedictory. It should have obvious to Dante this was the handover point.
Valedictory - what a perfect choice of word! Especially in this case, where Virgil would tell (“dictum”) Dante goodbye (“vale!”) in latin. I agree, it should be obvious but maybe Dante will be in a sort of denial state for the next 3 cantos for what concerns Virgil.
Fantastic discussion. I really enjoyed the section on freedom of action. I also liked the image of Virgil hiding behind a tree to watch Dante's continued progress.
Thank you 🙏🏻
29:10 very true.
Great chat! My little "hunch" on the temporal before eternal fire is that it could be something about the "presence" in the moment. It's very emotional and fixated with the eyes, so "zooming out" fully for the "overview" of the beginning first, might pull you out of the moment a little. Refererring to what just happened first, then touching on that which is further out, then being back in the moment, could in some ways keep the intensity of the experience more. Just an idea!
Thanks Richard - I love this interpretation. It would also be a great strategy if this was a movie, as a director / cinematographer approach. As I mentioned here, I guess that by the time he was writing Pur. 27, he probably prayed about it intensely before putting pen to paper, and then many of these touches came out naturally, without him having to think too much about it. At least that would make sense to me.
@@tomlabooks3263 Yes, I'm thinking exactly the same - often it was probably just how things "had to be", according to his intuition and natural expression as it flowed out from his pen. There might be something there about the end rhymes of superno - etterno - discerno, but I doubt that was the main reason.
Dear Richard,
That’s more than a little “hunch.” It’s a clear and helpful flash of light. Virgil does that often with his “son” to keep him focused on the task at hand NOW. When he returns to Limbo after this “surrogate father stint” requested of him by Beatrice, my hunch and hope is that he and his fellow Limbo colleagues will have a lot to talk about. Maybe even they’ll have a chance to pause in their sighing and plan a walkout! Now that Virgil has shown himself to be such a fine parental presence when called upon, maybe he can apply what he’s learned from Mt. Purgatory and lead the Limbo picket line. “What do we want?” Justice! “When do we want it? NOW. All the Limbo folks can also “go seeking liberty.” Thanks for your helpful thoughts. Dan
A Zen Buddhist alarm clock sounds pretty great haha The part on freedom and what it means to Dante in this Canto was really great--I will have to watch that again. Really great discussion, as always! 😊
It’s such a pleasure to chat with Dan about Dante … You can tell that he’s spent a lot of his time on the Divine Comedy, with a great number of students.
How do Leah and Rachel show these two things? They both seem to be fighting in similar ways over Jacob. Both jealous.
Good question! The biblical story of Leah and Rachel is so complex and yes, they seem to have a similar behavior. However, during Dante’s times and in previous centuries too, they were understood by Christian interpreters to represent, respectively, the active life and the contemplative life (and thus Rachel's staring into the mirror is not to be taken as narcissistic self-admiration but contemplation in a positive sense). It is clear that Dante is making use of that tradition here.
He is also making use of biblical typology in his treatment of Leah, who is related to Eve in her as yet unfallen condition in that she is doing what Adam and Eve were told to do, “to dress [the garden] and keep it”, Genesis 2:15. Dante's verb in the last line of Leah's speech, which concludes the dream, remembers the biblical verb in his ovrare, the working in this garden that points back to the tasks of that one before the Fall.
It is probably also fair to say that the text presents Dante as a new Jacob: 'As Jacob toiled for seven years in order to gain the hand of Rachel, only to be given that of Leah, so Dante has toiled up seven terraces of purgation with the promise of Beatrice, only to find Matelda'.
I hope this makes a little sense…!
@@tomlabooks3263 oh my word, yes!!!! Thank you so much for responding! I so long for teachers to open up these beautiful understandings to me! I'm doing the 100 days with Dante and trying to grasp all I can. I don't have a commentary though, and like the Ethiopian eunuch, desire a Philip.😊 Your name came up under the last canto I heard. I will look up your other discussions, for this was so lovely. In the Old and New Testament, that word 'remember' is used so often by God to draw us, his people, back to love him, and you adding the "cord" /heart, to it, nearly made my own burst with joy! I do see what you're saying about Leah and Rachel and in the Canto, it seems Leah did things to make Jacob love her where Rachel just pondered that he did love her so much? I've always pitied Leah so, but perhaps this new Mary/ Martha parallel of them will work, like a foreshadowing of our relationship with Christ? I'll also look for Eve again here.This is my first time through the Divine Comedy and I was drawn to it because C.S. Lewis loved it so very much. Do you teach this anywhere or can I just listen to your discussions? Dovyou recommend any commentary to help me? I so love all your pointings to the scriptures! Isn't Virgil so precious? But that is true love, to release the one you've loved to become more fully themself. How I wish he could come with us too!
@@lorimorrison6539 Thanks Lori. I am working on a Italian government website where we’ll soon be offering Italian literature online classes, but for Dante this series is the only one I am publishing for now. A good commentary is the one by Robert Hollander. And yes, Virgil is the best ⭐️
@@tomlabooks3263 thank you so much! I'm delighted to hear these!