The beautiful opening of Purgatory:
For better waters, now, the little bark
of my poetic powers hoists its sails,
and leaves behind chat cruelest of the seas.
And I shall sing about that second realm
where man’s soul goes to purify itself
and become worthy to ascend to Heaven.
We’ve just finished the Creation Myth of Tolkien and will make a podcast episode shortly! It ties wonderfully in with several aspects of Paradiso in the Divine Comedy, the opening of the Biblical Stories, Greek Mythology, Aristotelian metaphysics, and some aspects of the “battle of the brain hemsipheres” too. But more than that, it’s a brilliant and beautiful story, with breath-taking depth and scope. And it adds an even larger context of wisdom and cosmology to the Lord of the Rings stories.
Reading up on the creation stories and mythology of J.R.R. Tolkien – and aiming for a few more episodes with Adam Bishop of the Unlimited Opinions!
Happy New Year – and time for some more dives into the World of Dante and the Renaissance 😊☕️
We’ve started a new concept today – reflections on the Divine Comedy, with one tercet from anywhere in the whole Journey. Today, from the opening of Purgatory 10:
https://dantescomedy.com/morning-dante-reflection
And we’ve made a new page for resources for the Divine Comedy! Books, videos, podcasts, websites, galleries, etc.:
https://dantescomedy.com/resources
😊
Two things were standing out reading Purgatory 9 this time – one is how the beginning of the change happens through the dream of the Eagle and of being unified with the Divine. In some ways meaning that it is first when the Goal is discovered, or envisioned, or revealed, that the process really has begun. Before that, we have more of a slow preparation, or the Ante-Purgatory in Dante’s words. What ignites the real change, and the real Purgatory, is the Gate – but this is found through, or right after the vision, of the final end point and the Divine Light.
The second thing that stood out this time was the one verse line about looking back once inside of the Purgatory, means to go back out again. In some ways this could be seen as the idea that the learning in purgatory carves out a new track, a new being, a new life, and if one falls back to one’s old tracks, one has to find back into the new again – once more. Staying on the new habits, is the good path to moving forward.
These four short lines fully re-sets the Pilgrim’s Mind (ie: us, the story, the process) and spans out the book’s scope:
my mind, confined till then to what took place,
broke free, and now was eager to explore:
I raised my eyes to marvel at the mount
that grew out of the sea toward Heaven’s height.
And this is exactly where the Book of Purgatory will lead us 😊
