Our pilgrim has lain down on a step of the final staircase of Mount Purgatory, positioned between Statius below and Virgil above him.

As he watches the large and bright stars, he suddenly falls asleep to dream of Leah (and her sister Rachel) in an Edenic garden, the hope for self-reflection bound up in the promise of the contemplative life.

This dream may well begin to sum up Dante's notion of how a human finds the divine.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we walk through the final dream of PURGATORIO.

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

[01:29] My English translation of PURGATORIO, Canto XXVII, lines 91 - 108. If you'd like to read along or continue the conversation with me, please find the entry for this episode on my website, markscarbrough.com.

[03:05] The players around and in the dream: Cytherea, Leah, and Rachel.

[10:40] Three interpretations of the dream. One, a pre-fall Even and a post-redemption Eve in the Garden of Eden.

[12:50] Two, a Biblical dream after two classical dreams, but all deeply sexual in nature.

[17:26] Three, two modes for revelation: the active life and the contemplative life.

[19:03] Dantean psychology: finding the divine in the beloved leads to finding the divine in the self.

[23:22] Rereading the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XXVII, lines 91 - 108.