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Dante and Virgil finally walk through the gate into Purgatory . . . in one of the most complex endings of any canto in all of COMEDY. There's tragedy and comedy, classical leaning and Christian resolution, emotional distress and safety, screeching and singing, tyranny and polyphony, all tied up together in a passage that has tripped scholars for seven hundred years.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we look at the ins and outs of this most complex ending to Canto IX of PURGATORIO. This canto is worth the admission into the poem . . . and into the realms of the redeemed souls, too.

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

[01:35] My English translation of the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto IX, lines 130 - 145. If you'd like to read along or drop a comment to continue the conversation, you can do so on my website, markscarbrough.com.

[03:40] The angel's warning: Lot's wife vs. Orpheus and Eurydice.

[08:44] Virgil's increasingly tenuous spot in PURGATORIO.

[10:53] The tough parts of this passage: an amalgam of Roman history, Lucan's PHARSALIA, and Virgil's AENEID.

[14:50] An interpretation of the negative tonalities in the imagery and Dante's role as Julius, the looter.

[18:59] The hymn sung and the entrance into a monastic space.

[21:54] Polyphony, a new poetic language, and the difficulties ahead.

[26:56] Rereading all of PURGATORIO, Canto IX.