We finally come to know who has been our spokesperson for the lustful penitents: Guido Guinizzelli, perhaps the most important Italian poet working before Dante.

Guinizzelli explains who the penitents are by using two classical allusions and even making up words to describe their sin, in the ways that poets always manipulate and even invent language.

This passage is a shocking example of Dante's changing notion of homosexuality. Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we work through its rather high, ornate rhetoric to discover that in fact there's more fusion that just marriage, than two become one. In fact, our poet is fusing his poetry with Guinizzelli's.

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

[01:52] My English translation of PURGATORIO, Canto XXVI, lines 67 - 93. If you'd like to read along or continue the conversation with me, please find the comment section for this episode on my website, markscarbrough.com.

[04:10] Why are the mountaineer penitents gawking? What makes them feel rough and rugged?

[07:28] The pilgrim Dante receives a beatitude from another poet in the borderland that is Purgatory itself.

[09:14] Julius Caesar is slurred as "Queen."

[13:20] Heterosexuality is the fusion of male and female: "And the two shall become one."

[17:04] Guido Guinizzelli identifies himself, although he's been in the words of this passage all along.

[21:26] Rereading the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XXVI, lines 67 - 93.