Ecstatic While Longing For Home: PURGATORIO, Canto VIII, Lines 1 - 18

Help me keep WALKING WITH DANTE sponsor-free. You can donate to support the podcast at this PayPal link here.We move closer to the negligent rulers on the slope of Mount Purgatory, seated or standing about in a dale on the slope before the main gate.Among them, we encounter longing, yearning, dreaming, sadness, all at the moment of the end of the day, its death, even as someone is already anticipating sunrise (and resurrection?).Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we explore one of the most beautiful passages in Dante's COMEDY: human, intimate, and cosmic, all the crisscrossing we expect of this great poet.Here are the segments for this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE:[02:19] My English translation of the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto VIII, lines 1 - 18. If you'd like to read along or continue the conversation with me, please go to my website: markscarbrough.com.[04:47] The opening pseudo-simile about sailors and pilgrims.[08:27] Out of canonical time and into common time, with a yearning for what was.[11:32] The irony of sight in a darkening landscape.[12:43] An unknown soul and the importance of the east.[15:58] The hymn "Te Lucis Ante" . . .[19:02] Which is the third hymn of PURGATORIO.[20:58] The divided self and the ecstatic experience.[24:53] A glimpse of the journey ahead.[26:29] Rereading the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto VIII, lines 1 - 18.

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Ever wanted to read Dante's Divine Comedy? Come along with us! We're not lost in the scholarly weeds. (Mostly.) We're strolling through the greatest work (to date) of Western literature. Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as I take on this masterpiece passage by passage. I'll give you my rough English translation, show you some of the interpretive knots in the lines, let you in on the 700 years of commentary, and connect Dante's work to our modern world. The pilgrim comes awake in a dark wood, then walks across the known universe. New episodes every Sunday and Wednesday.