Canto 17, Purgatorio

With Dante's 100 Cantos, I can't believe I'm already half way though! That's how one a day works it's magic. I could probably read the Mahabaratha this way. Fo you know any extremely long classics with stepwise chapters?

Plus I discovered cool Digital Dante

Teodolinda Barolini Barolini is the Editor in Chief of the Columbia University website Digital Dante (http://digitaldante.columbia.edu), which was relaunched in December 2014. She is the author of the Commento Baroliniano, more than 600 pages of “idiosyncratic and personal” commentary to each canto of the Commedia, particularly committed to an Aristotelian and non-dualist reading of Dante’s poem. See http://digitaldante.columbia.edu/criticism-context/commento-baroliniano/ In Canto 17 this section seems like describing meditation: O fantasy, you that at times would snatch us so from outward things—we notice nothing although a thousand trumpets sound around us— who moves you when the senses do not spur you? A light that finds its form in Heaven moves you— directly or led downward by God’s will. Within my fantasy I saw impressed the savagery of one who then, transformed, became the bird that most delights in song; at this, my mind withdrew to the within, to what imagining might bring; no thing that came from the without could enter in. 

Interesting the chapter covers lack of zeal or sloth. 

"a slackening of the oar" Insufficient zeal The sin is sloth "Too tepidly pursued "Lax" Lack of zeal 

Buon zelo

Cool Italian words:

Bonus amor 

And

Malus amor