Eyes Stitched Shut: PURGATORIO, Canto XIII, Lines 46 - 72

Walking With Dante

The second terrace of PURGATORIO proves a wild ride into interiority, into the complicated sin of envy, and back into INFERNO.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we explore the first moments in which Dante sees the penitents ahead . . . and delays until the last moment revealing their fate: eyelids stitched shut with wires.

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

[00:55] My English translation of the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XIII, lines 46 - 72. If you'd like to read along or continue the discussion with me, please go to my website: markscarbrough.com.

[03:28] Dante the pilgrim, the livid shades of the envious, and fragmentary prayers in the vernacular.

[05:52] Compassion: apparently a virtue of enforced scarcity.

[07:51] Envy, interiority, and externality.

[09:42] The tried-and-true answers to envy: love, yes; but also uniformity.

[13:25] The long wind-up to the revelation of the penitents' pain.

[17:30] Dante's (false) etymology of envy and a folkloric explanation of the sin.

[21:51] Two callbacks: 1) Provenzan Salvani and 2) the allegorical and/or naturalistic sun.

[23:51] The biggest callback of all: to Pier della Vigna and Frederick II in INFERNO XIII.

[25:21] Rereading the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XIII, lines 46 - 72.