Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 8, 2025
Dante, passing from the darkness of the Inferno, is filled with a sharp and joyful sense of light, which makes him deal with it, in the opening of the Purgatorio, in a wonderfully touching and penetrative way. So it had been in the ages of the Renaissance. This repression, removed at last, gave force and glow to Winckelmann's native affinity to the Hellenic spirit.
Voltaire called the "Inferno" revolting, the "Purgatorio" dull, and the "Paradiso" unreadable. The reason is because they are not rightly attuned for the acceptance of the great truths which the poem teaches, and because they look at it from a wholly mistaken standpoint.
"Null' altra pianta che facesse fronda O che 'n durasse, vi puote aver vita."* * "Purgatorio," i. 108, 109.
I will, however, instance the third canto of the Inferno, and the sixth of the Purgatorio, as passages incomparable in their kind. The merit of the latter is, perhaps, rather oratorical than poetical; nor can I recollect anything in the great Athenian speeches which equals it in force of invective and bitterness of sarcasm.
The point is that Dante in the Purgatorio represents Sordello as showing to Virgil the souls of those who, while singing Salve Regina, ask to be pardoned for their neglect of duty and among them appear the rulers whom Sordello had satirised in his sirventes. Hence it seems that it was this composition which attracted Dante's attention to Sordello.
The curious mediaeval tradition of his conversion to Christianity, which is so finely used by Dante in the Purgatorio, cannot be traced to its origin, and does not appear to have any historical foundation. Twelve years were spent by Statius over his epic poem on the War of Thebes, which was published about the year 92, with a florid dedication to Domitian.
Dante seems to have expressed these conditions perfectly in that passage of the Purgatorio where, after a triple vision which has made him forget his surroundings, he says "Quando l'anima mia tornò di fuori Alle cose che son fuor di lei vere, Io riconobbi i miei non falsi errori."
Although I shall palm off great part of the care on my doctor, who is to put me completely on my legs again next spring, I am too well aware that an enormous labour less watercure than purgatory lies before me. Yes, I will shut myself up in that Purgatorio, and hope, dearest Franz, that I shall do so well that I may greet you with a MAGNIFICAT soon.
What did you do last night, when Peppino and I were in our purgatorio?" Georgie was almost equally glad to get off the subject of Italian. The less said in or of Italian the better. "I was dining with Mrs Quantock," he said. "She had a very interesting Russian woman staying with her, Princess Popoffski." Lucia laughed again. "Dear Daisy!" she said. "Tell me about the Russian princess.
I will refer to three instances, which are, perhaps, the most striking: the description of the transformations of the serpents and the robbers, in the twenty-fifth canto of the Inferno, the passage concerning Nimrod, in the thirty-first canto of the same part, and the magnificent procession in the twenty-ninth canto of the Purgatorio.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking