ellauri072.html on line 204: The problems of Dante's treatment of the punishment of homosexuals in Hell and of his more surprising salvation of still other (unnamed) homosexuals in Purgatory have had two recent responses that restore a central fact: cantos 15 and 16 of Inferno and canto 26 of Purgatorio are in fact concerned with this issue. Boswell's pages insisting on the identity of the sexual sin punished in Inf. 15-16 and the lust repented on the seventh terrace {"Dante and the Sodomites," 65-67} are convincing. "Soddoma" is used clearly to identify homosexual activity in Purg. 26 (vv. 40 and 79) and thus makes clear its meaning in Inf. 11.50 and therefore the nature of the sin encountered in Inf. 15 and 16.
ellauri072.html on line 206: What has gone mainly unnoticed in the various discussions of the problem is something that has puzzled me for some time. Why does Dante treat the homosexual Florentines in Inf. 16 with greater respect than any other infernal figures except those in Limbo? I do not have an answer to that question, but would like to bring it forward. Let me begin with Purg. 26. We have probably not been surprised enough at Dante's insistence that roughly half of those who sinned in lust, repented, and were saved (and are now on their way to that salvation) were homosexual. It would have been easy for him to have left the homosexuals out of Purgatory, and it is hard to imagine an early (or a later) commentator who would have objected to the omission, especially since, in Hell, homosexuality is treated, not as a sin of the flesh, but as one of violence against nature. However, for a unique instance of a commentator who is aware of Dante's unusual gesture see Trifon Gabriele on Inf. 15.46: "Non e' dubbio che 'l Poeta vuol applaudere a questo vitio quanto egli puo'. Puopa hyvinkin. Ecco, gli fa parlare di belle cose e gli fa tutti grand'uomini nelle lettere e nell'arme e nella religione, e finalmente non e' peccato ne l'Inferno o Purgatorio che egli men danni con le parole sue che questo; anzi lo polisce quanto puo' con suoi versi".
ellauri198.html on line 693: In 1838, he visited Italy looking for background for Sordello, a long poem in heroic couplets, presented as the imaginary biography of the Mantuan bard spoken of by Dante in the Divine Comedy, canto 6 of Purgatory, set against a background of hate and conflict during the Guelph-Ghibelline wars. This was published in 1840 and met with widespread derision, gaining him the reputation of wanton carelessness and obscurity. Tennyson commented that he only understood the first and last lines and Carlyle wrote that his wife had read the poem through and could not tell whether Sordello was a man, a city or a book. Ai tän mä taisinkin jo kertoa albumissa 54.
ellauri198.html on line 851: As Yeats aged, he saw Ireland change in ways that angered him. The Anglo-Irish Protestant minority no longer controlled Irish society and culture. According to Yeats’s unblushingly antidemocratic view, the greatness of Anglo-Irishmen such as Jonathan Swift, philosopher George Berkeley, and statesman Edmund Burke, contrasted sharply with the undistinguished commonness of contemporary Irish society, which seemed preoccupied with the interests of merchants and bloody peasants. He laid out his unpopular opinions in late plays such as Purgatory (1938) and the essays of On the Boiler (1939).
xxx/ellauri165.html on line 712: Purgatory
5