Real
Mount Parnassus
Parnassus is a mountain in Boeotia sacred to Apollo and the Muses, whose summit – also called Cirra – is invoked by Dante as a source of poetic inspiration and as a peak inhabited by the god.
Description
In the poem Parnassus is invoked as a mountain sacred to poetic inspiration. Dante recalls that the mountain had two peaks: one inhabited by the Muses, the other by Apollo himself, with Cirra understood as the name of the god's peak. Its grottoes housed the Castalian spring, from which poets drank. Virgil, addressing Statius, defines him as the one who first set him on the path of poetry, recalling the link between Parnassus and the Muses. In another passage, the poets of Limbo are said to discourse among themselves about the mountain that hosts the Muses, their nurturers. The poet who more than any other drank the milk of the Muses is identified as Homer.
In the text
Linked verses
5 verses| Cantica | Canto | Verso | Testo | Open verse |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Purgatory | Canto XXII | 65 | verso Parnaso a ber ne le sue grotte, | Open verse |
| Purgatory | Canto XXVIII | 141 | forse in Parnaso esto loco sognaro. | Open verse |
| Purgatory | Canto XXXI | 141 | sì di Parnaso, o bevve in sua cisterna, | Open verse |
| Paradise | Canto I | 16 | Infino a qui l’un giogo di Parnaso | Open verse |
| Paradise | Canto I | 36 | si pregherà perché Cirra risponda. | Open verse |