Blogmas – Day #8 (late entry)

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Yesterday wasn’t so busy that I couldn’t crank out a post. I let my self get a little too wound up in the reading and comparison of different translations of Canto 6 of Purgatorio and it slightly left me unmoored.

Canto 6 is best described as “a polemic against rotten government,” the exact words of Dr. Anthony Osborne, the narrator of the three-times-a week video provided by the #100DaysofDante program out of Baylor. Osborne traces the classical source to Aristophanes (which I am still seeking) and gives a historic example in the famous 1861 speech by the abolitionist, Wendell Phillips. Most elegant analysis. But don’t take my words for it. Check it out here: https://youtu.be/LzPyHXx4cN4

Brian Denton gives Canto 6 a slightly different reading, still related to politics. Denton, my favorite for most canto discussions, focuses a laser beam on the description of a dice game in the opening, where Dante the pilgrim is the winner and Virgil is the loser, then switches gears to the the identities of six penitents mentioned and six of what he calls “the poet’s apostrophes. He compares Virgil’s Anneid, which he refers to as the Earthly city, Rome, with St. Augustine’s City of God. Wow! Denton’s explanations are descriptive, persuasive, and even compelling. I love this guy! And Dante! Check it out here: https://youtu.be/Z4hxXE8Jirc

I heard a story over the holidays about my godfather that I had never heard. My father and my godfather were best friends and grew up together in Brown Summit, NC, a small farming community north of my hometown, Greensboro, NC. Anyway, the person telling the story said that Uncle Turn (my godfather) used to say in his sermons that reading the Bible over and over again (he was a preacher – my father used to say, a jackleg preacher) had driven him crazy. But I remember Uncle Turn meeting with Daddy to get bible references for his sermons, so I always thought Daddy was the bible scholar of the two.

Anyway, this is just to say I hope reading Dante won’t drive me crazy!