Dante, awakening, and erotic love
Dante's Divine Comedy
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The Final Purgation of Love
The lovers on the seventh terrace are unifying what they now know about the truth of love with how they actually experienced that in their lives. Dante quite explicitly meets individuals who in life had chosen people of the same sex as their love objects and so it doesn't matter if you're a homosexual heterosexual or gay straight, your lover will awaken them too. The fire is like the fire that blends the metals and that purifies the gold and it's bringing their being in line with what they saw in their poetry. It's the final stage that Dante too must undergo because he was this great poet of love understood that he'd seen an angel but hadn't managed to bring that together with himself fully
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