I want to read the Longfellow to stay in the mood for The Dante Club with it's author participation (yea!) but admit that I may sneek peeks at Pinsky's. I've heard only rave reviews about Pinsky's translation.

I paid for a round-trip ticket, and that's what the counter person said he gave me but I didn't like his chortle, and I can't read it through all the smoke.

ITALIAN ICED TEA

8 oz (1 cup) brewed tea, chilled
2 oz (4 Tbsp.) Italian syrup

Combine tea and syrup in tall glass filled with ice and stir well. Serve garnished with fresh mint. Some syrup choices: peach, raspberry, passion fruit, lime

ITALIAN BERRY-BERRY LEMONADE

1 oz (2 Tbsp) Italian syrup
8 oz (1 cup) lemonade
Ice

Fill 16 oz glass about 3/4 full with ice. Add lemonade and syrup. Stir. Optional: Garnish with fresh berries.

Use syrup of choice. (For a Peach Melba use 1/2 oz peach syrup and 1/2 oz raspberry syrup.)

ITALIAN ICED LEMONADE TEA

4 oz (1/2 cp) brewed black tea, chilled
4 oz (1/2 cup) lemonade
1 oz (2 Tbsp.) Italian syrup

Fill a 16 oz glass about 3/4 full with ice. Add tea, lemonade and syrup. Stir. Some syrup choices: Passion fruit, peach, strawberry, blackberry, or watermelon

I also am moved by the narrative and the fluid poetry of the Inferno. In a group discussion so much more is revealed than with a solitary reading. I hope to understand the Poem a little bit better than when I started. I've had the joy of reading on my own and now would like to read this work with others and to learn from you.

Dante composed Divina Commedia in three parts: Inferno, Puratorio, Paradiso He loved the numbers 3 and 9 as we are going to see, but for now, know that each of the three parts are made up of 33 Canticles. (The first one we are looking at this week doesn't count as one of the 33. It is the introduction to the whole poem, the Divine Comedy. We are standing outside the gates, jaws(?) of Hell with Dante and Virgil at the moment.) Dante begins the journey to Paradiso in Hell, descending down through the worsening levels, until he reaches Purgatorio, and then finally to Heaven. Why "down" to get "up" to the top of that Mountain of Bliss, we have yet to learn. Why does he begin with Hell, that's another good question. How does he get out of Hell, if no one who goes in has hope of getting out...yet another question. Why did he name the whole work, The Divine Comedy? What is his motivation for writing the poem is something else that would be good to know.

I hope that answers your question at least. So happy to have you with us today!

I think it is the living Dante's soul (aka Shade) that travelled to the Inferno and higher.

Dante called his three-part poem The Commedia as Justin points out because it referred to a work with a happy ending and the nature of the language itself. According to www.uwm.edu, "[Dante's] work flourished in the 15th Century along with the printing press and he became known as the divine poet. In 1555, a fine edition of this Commedia was published in Vienna with the adjective divine applied to the poem's title for the first time, resulting in the title still in use today...."

I'd been raised with the understanding that another writer (Boccaccio perhaps?) had called it the Divine Comedy because of its subject matter and the beauty of the work itself. These are conflicting stories about the origin of the title known today but it's true that Dante called it simply the Commedia.

Then there's the Badia Fiorentina whose bell, Dante said, regulated his life as a child. Sadly the bell no longer rings due to structural problems. Here's a close view of the Badia's belltower . The Badia was the church of the Portinari family and also the site of the first public reading of the Commedia by Giovanni Boccaccio in 1373.

I'm wondering, macruth, are either of these churches the one you entered, where Dante first saw Beatrice?

First comes the leopard "A panther light and swift exceedingly, / Which with a spotted skin was covered o'er! / And never moved she from my face,/ Nay, rather did impede so much my way / That many times I to return had turned." The leopard gives Dante pause yet the "variegated skin" reminds him of the time of day with light beginning to emerge from the dark and very symbolic of Dante's transition in his journey.

Next comes the lion: "He seemed as if against me he were coming / With head uplifted, and with ravenous hunger, / So that it seemed the air was afraid of him...."

Dante is more fearful of the lion but it is the she-wolf that terrifies him most and stops his travel until the appearance of Virgil: "And a she-wolf, that with all hungerings / Seemed to be laden in her meagerness, / And many folk has caused to live forlorn! / She brought upon me so much heaviness, / With the affright that from her aspect came, / That I the hope relinquished of the height."

I believe that the 3 beasts represent the 3 major levels of the Inferno. Based on Dante's description of their behavior -- the leopard is fraud; the lion is violence; the she-wolf is incontinence. It's the she-wolf that Dante can't get past until Virgil appears and helps him.

IMO the 3 beasts aren't met in the order of the seriousness of sin but in the degree of the pilgrim Dante's weakness, for himself as well as representing humanity. Incontinence isn't the most serious of sins but I think its the more dominant sin of the pilgrim. That's why the greatest danger and impediment to ascension to the mountaintop lay with the appearance of the she-wolf. This is opinion only and I'll review this as Virgil guides Dante (and us) into the Inferno. I'd like to see if incontinence is revealed as the pilgrim's dominant sin or if it isn't.

a present reminder of a person in the past

a disembodied spirit, a ghost

A leopard light and very swift of pace
And covered with a gaily spotted hide.

Una lonza in the dictionary means 'a loin of pork'? which won't do for Dante's Inferno. I think its vernacular for 'a lean creature/beast'. (A loin cut being the meat from the ribs and hipbone area.) Perhaps someone can find a good definition. I've seen words for leopard like gattopardo, pantera (panther) and leopardo.

Chi di = whose

Pel = coat or fur

Macolato = spotted

Era converta = was changing, changeable

So the line "Chi di pel macolato era converta" is roughly 'whose spotted coat was ever changing' -- which is why I thought of deception and fraud for this animal.

Leggera = light; nimble; agile

Presta = quick

Molto = very

So the line "una lonza leggera e presta molto" is roughly 'an agile, swift (or very quick) creature'

1 Also called: panther a large feline mammal, Panthera pardus, of forests of Africa and Asia, usually having a tawny yellow coat with black rosette-like spots

For future reference, Maryal found a link to the Cary translation/Longfellow translations...AND you can read Dante's Italian too. Do you see the link in the heading with a few other links? Not quite as elegant as Jonathan's 1880 edition, but very useful.

Marvelle made a noteworthy observation we don't want to overlook - the ever-changing spotty coat (of this panther/leopard) may very well indicate fraud and deceit.

Faith, do not despair...as Jonathan says...we need to stick together. As Jonathan put it, we are "a band of well-placed friends, shady or otherwise"...(love that!) Longfellow sat with a group of friends...knocking off one canto a day (translating from Italian into English poetry), How long can it take us to figure out one canto at a time...considering our numbers and the "wisdom" of our years. We'll be just fine! If you go ahead into uncharted territory, without a guide, you run the risk of defeat - and despair. Safety in numbers!

Here's my addition: the 7 Deadly Sins, in order of seriousness, are Pride, Envy, Anger, Avarice/Greed, Sloth, Gluttony, Lust. The list of the 7 Deadly Sins goes back to Pope St. Gregory the Great (d 640) and the Bible proscribes against them all.

The Catholic Church made a division between venial and capital (deadly) sins. Venial sins cans be forgiven without the need for the sacrament of Confession. Capital or Deadly sins were so-called because they could have a fatal effect on an individual's spiritual health.

Dante follows the list of 7 Deadly Sins more closely in the Purgatario rather than in the Inferno.

"Why does he think he will not be able to survive the ardors of the journey? How does Virgil reassure him otherwise? Would you be persuaded with such promises?

"You wrote about young Sylvius's father,
who went beyond, with flesh corruptible,
With all his senses, to the immortal realm."

the Chosen Vessel, Paul

In his Second Epistle to the Corinthians (XII, 2-4) the Apostle Paul alludes to his mystical elevation to the third heaven and to the arcane messages pronounced there.

The medieval Vision Sancti Pauli relates his journey through the realms of the dead.

Paul's' vision served to strengthen the Christian faith, that same faith which is basic to the Pilgrim's (and by extension, Everyman's) salvation ("the first sep of salvation's road,"—which the Pilgrim took when he turned away from the "dark wood," in Canto I).

"Midway along the journey of our life
I woke to find myself in some dark woods..."

"It seems plausible that the Greyhound represents Can Grande della Scala, the ruler of Verona from 1308-1329...whose 'wisdom, love and virtue' were known to Dante."

"The subject of this work must first be considered according to the letter, then be considered allegorically. The subject of the whole work, then, taken in the literal sense alone, is simply "the State of souls after death," for the movement of the whole work hinges on this. If the work be taken allegorically, the subject is "Man- as, according to his merits or demerits in the exercise of his free will, he is subject to reward or punishment by Justice..."

The title of the work is "Here begins the Comedy of Dante Alighieri, Florentine by birth, not by character."

"Sprung from the blood of gods, Trojan Anchise's son will find the road down easy and the door of Dis open but his steps back difficult. This is the task. Some few, favored of Jupiter, sons of the gods attained it."

"The next time he saw her she ignored him because of scandalous rumours; he was completely crushed by that small gesture.">

I consider the Inferno as an allegory and as a vehicle for considering my own actions.

Was it Christ who placed the inscription over Hell's Gate? Christ descended to Hell immediately upon his death and burst through the gates and broke the iron bars. He ordered the angels of light to bind Satan and cast him further down into the abyss until the Second Coming. Christ held in one hand a banner warning the demons of hell and he set at liberty all the righteous -- if they were willing to accept Him -- who'd been held fast in Hell through the original sin of Adam and Eve. It was only with Christ's death, a sacrifice for the salvation of Man, that original sin was forgiven. These righteous then ascended to Heaven.

I understood that Christ left the banner/inscription on the gate from the Trinity (Father-Son-Holy Ghost) rather like condemming a house by a health inspector and leaving a warning to passers-by. I could be wrong. Was it demons as someone mentioned? Does anyone know?

Satan himself undergoes the greatest punishment of all. He was Lucifer, the angel of light in Heaven, but his pride drove him to rebel against God. Lucifer wanted to be above God and other angels rebelled with him. Michael the Archangel and his Army of Angels fought Lucifer who, along with his band, was defeated and fell down, down, down to earth and into the center of earth (Hell). God disappeared from their sight forever. Now Lucifer (Satan) and his followers are prisoners in Hell.

My memory may be uncertain and someone else's stories closer to the traditional view of Hell and the inscription. I'm interested in hearing about them.

And it says that the gate of hell was created by this triune of God (the Trinity) out of Justice. So according to Musa's translation, the creator of the gate, including the inscription, is the Trinity?

Matthew Pearl - 05:38am Apr 25, 2003 PDT (#201 of 204) Cambridge, MA 1300

Just a quick note before running off this morning... 1300 is the year in which Dante SETS the Comedy. Dante is lost in the dark woods, supposedly, the night of Good Friday 1300. He rises to Purgatory on the morning of Sunday Easter (ressurection anyone?). You're right, Jo, that Dante isn't exiled until 1302 and probably didn't start the poem until around 1306, but that's his trick. By setting the poem in the year 1300, he can have the characters in the afterlife correctly "predict" or prophecy the future!

Dante does recognize a face in the crowd..."the shade of the one who had made the great refusal." Since the trip takes place between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, can you guess who I think that one may be? One who avoided making a decision when he knew what was the right thing to do...

Andy asked about Saladin and here's what I found in Musa's translation and notes.

"speaking of feet, those of you reading Inferno might note Canto I, line 30, where Dante implies that as he wakes from the dark wood he is limping. Feet in medieval times were considered symbolic of one's moral state, and the limp here a reflection of Dante's moral imbalance at the start of the journey."

From Canto V, the Musa translation:

How do other translations treat this section?

From Canto V, Musa translation:

I began, "Poet, I would like, with all my heart,"
to speak to those two there who move together
and seem to be so light upon the winds."

And he: "You'll see for yourself when they are closer;
If you entreat them by that love of theirs
that carries the along, they will come to you."

When the winds bent their course in our direction
I raised my voice to them, "Oh, wearied souls,
come speak with us if it be not forbidden."

As doves, called by desire to return
to their sweet nest, with wings outstretched and poise,
float downward through the air, guided by their will,

so these two left the flock where Dido is
and came toward us through the malignant air,
such was the tender power of my call.

-- lines 73-87

You may want to compare translations of only the above or else some of the following lines such as the punishment in 100-107. The above section is one of my favorites with Francesca and Paolo different from the other spirits for they are "so light upon the wind" still together and how Virgil says the way to call them is to "entreat them by that love of theirs that carries them along" and that call had a "tender power" -- even at its tenderest moment, the poetry of Dante never forgets that this is a punishment for that love of theirs.

F & P are doves in contrast to the spirits as starlings and a flock of cranes.

________________________________________

HERE THE TELLING OF THE PUNISHMENT BEGINS.Francesca's spirit answers Dante the pilgrim's question with part of the punishment:

"Whatever pleases you to hear or speak
we will hear and we will speak about with you
as long as the wind, here where we are, is silent.

-- lines 94-96

"Love that kindles quick in the gentle heart,
seized this one for the beauty of my body,
torn from me. (How it happened still offends me!)

Love that excuses no one loved from loving,
seized me so strongly with delight in him
that, as you see, he never leaves my side.

Love led us straight to sudden death together,
Caina awaits the one who quenched our lives."

-- lines 100-107

_______________________________

The punishment is that they are never parted in hell (but never will find physical pleasure with each other). They forever are tossed by the winds, can never rest, and never speak above the roaring wind. They are always together, yet always apart.

_____________________________________

Dante asks Francesca how they found lust ("dubious desires"):

And she to me: "There is no greater pain,
to remember, in our present grief,
past happiness, (as well your teacher knows!)"

-- lines 121-123

Francesca says they were reading the romance of Lancelot and how he fell in love:

"It was when we read about those longed-for lips
now being kissed by such a famous lover,
that this one (who shall never leave my side)

then kissed my mouth, and trembled as he did.

-- lines 133-136

And the rest, as they say, is history. The punishment of never leaving each other's side/never parting is repeated in Francesca's telling. And she says the book made them fall into desire!

"...more than a thousand
He pointed out to me, and named them all
Those shades whom love cut off from life on earth."

_____________________________________

Francesca to Dante the pilgrim (Musa, lines 100-109):

"Love, that kindles quick in the gentle heart,
seized this one for the beauty of my body,
torn from me. (How it happened still offends me!)

Love, that excuses no one loved from loving,
seized me so strongly with delight in him
that, as you see, he never leaves my side.

Love led us straight to sudden death together
Caina awaits the one who quenched our lives."
Those were the words that came from them to us.

From the Musa translation:

Dante says "etterna, maladetta, fredda, e greve" and you don't need to know Italian to speak the lines; and from the sound and beat (like the beat of rain and hail) to feel the general meaning --

___________________________________

We sense the immediacy of the scene because the pilgrim arrives among the gluttons in the Present Tense "I am in the Third Circle" and he describes the filthy rain and stinking earth (urine and excrement) that the sinners must endure. The sinners have no escape from what was their earthly desire. On one side they are pelted by dirty rain/urine and on the other they lie in the stinking earth/excrement.

Suddenly my gluttony of food doesn't sound appealing! When Ciacco talks of the envy in Florence that image merges with Dante's dirty rain/urine and stinking earth/excrement:

Envy also sounds quite unappealing.

Brumie, you have four translations? What enthusiasm!

In the third circle am I of the rain
Eternal, maledict and cold, and heavy;
Its law and quality are never new
Huge hail, and water sombre-hued, and snow,
Athwart the tenebrous air pour down amain
Noisome the earh is, that receiveth this.

I think for many people it's more comfortable to view the sins of others as an outsider and not admit one's own weaknesses. Do you have to be a murderer or rapist to reside in Hell eternally? No, says Dante. Punishable sins can be garden variety, like lust, excessive ingestion (alchoholism, overeating, nicotine, drugs) collecting, hoarding, spending.... those are sins if done to excess and they are the sins of many of us.

It's less painful to pretend we don't belong among Dante's sinners but we also end up losing. To acknowledge one's sins/weaknesses gives us the strength to correct them, now, while we're living. By looking at ourselves as we read the Inferno we can also see the potential in us for other sins as Dante's pilgrim sees in himself. Now that thought makes me put the brakes on some of my current feelings and actions! It's terrifying but illuminating to realize this potential for sin I have and all of us have. [Gandhi even, or especially, did this sort of soul-searching continually and if The Great Soul himself did that, shouldn't we?]

___________________________________________

I think even if one doesn't believe in a place called Hell perhaps there is an eternal place for sinners in the memory of the world.

In other words, if I haven't done either great good or great evil in my life, I will be a Neutral and no one will remember me in The Living World after I've died. My existence would have been erased.

If I die a glutton, The Living World will remember me pelted with rain/urine and lying on earth/excrement. (Not a comfortable thought since I am a glutton. Do I want to be remembered that way especially by those who love me and who I love?) That would be Hell.

Oh dear, there are other sins of excess too, deeper in the Inferno, and then the terrible deeds further on of fraud and violence. Well, having traveled this far I won't turn back. Dante made it through and I will too, having learned something about myself and be the stronger and better for it.

Gluttony is excessive eating and/or drinking; excessive ingestion which also incudes nicotine, drugs. I collect books and that pays a heavier penalty in the Inferno if excessive.

The generic word for the various sins of excess is Incontinent. Incontinent means unrestrained. Under the umbrella word Incontinent in the Inferno are the following:

I would be locked in a mile-long room lined with 30 foot tall bookshelves and filled with all the books ever printed. I open Joyce's Ulysses and worms are smothering the pages, the words eaten through. I pick up Homer's Iliad and it becomes dust in my hands. The Odyssey is soaking wet and covered in a blue mold; the letters indecipherable. I climb the stacks but the books of Dickinson, Aeschylus, Chekhov, Yeats, Dostoevsky, Poe, Melville, Frost burst into flames at my glance and become cinders. I find Bach's Jonathan Livingstone Seagull and have it to read for eternity.

Circle 4 are the Hoarders/Spendthrifts, (aka Miserly/Prodigal) always rolling their enormous weights, straining their chests, clashing against their opposites in guilt and screaming one against the other:

Dante's pilgrim and Virgil proceed to Circle 5, Wrathful/Sloth, another pairing of opposites. The Wrathful are 3 degrees according to Aristotle and St. Thomas -- the outwardly wrathful, the inwardly sulllen, and the vindictive.

Webster's Dictioary defines Wrathful as 'irate; furious; resentful; incensed; enraged.' Sullen is defined as 'showing irritation or ill humor by a gloomy silence or reserve; persistently and silently ill humored; morose.' Vindictive is defined as 'unforgiving nature; spiteful, of a mean and malicious desire for petty revenge; having a revengeful spirit; revenge is the carrying out of a bitter desire to injure another for a perceived wrong done to oneself'

Sloth is defined as 'habitual disinclination to exertion; indolence; laziness; idle; torpid; lethargic; apathetic as in absence of emotion, interest or concern and insensibility to suffering.'

Whew! These sins seemed less deadly until I started looking at what they meant!

As Dante's pilgrim passes the Hoarders/Spendthrift he notices the Wrathful in Circle 5

The pilgrim and Virgil walk away "our eyes still on those who gobbled mud" (Musa 129).

Loved the punishment Maryal's daughter created for herself! It does sound like Hell.

The Wrathful are 3 types -- outwardly angry, sullen and vindictive and these 3 types of Wrath suffer the same punishment, battling on the swamp. The Slothful bubble away beneath them.

Dante's pilgrim has entered Hell and isn't viewing sins/punishments from the outside; he, and we readers, are experiencing it. The reason he feels pity for Francesca's story of adultery and why he feels wrath for Filippo Argento is that he's swayed by the power of their sins. As well as emotionally responding to the sins, the pilgrim and readers also see, and for a moment experience, the eternal punishments.

The Inferno guides us and helps us to recognize our weaknesses. We can change what we feel should be changed in ourselves; and if we change there is no Hell for us. (I'm still going to buy books but not to excess I hope!)

______________________________________

Canto VIII could be titled "the pilgrim gets cold feet in Hell." This is the place of transition at the gate of Dis "... we entered those deep moats / that circled all of this unhappy city / whose walls, it seemed to me, were made of iron" (Musa 76-78), and above the gates the fallen angels threaten the pilgrim that since he thought he could "walk so boldly through this realm ..let him retrace his foolish way alone, just let him try." (Musa 90-92)

The pilgrim voices his fears which readers may be feeling at this point.

Pilgrim's thoughts

Virgil returns but says their entry into the city of Dis is delayed further yet the "insolence" of the fallen angels is nothing new and will not prevail. He relates how Jesus broke down the gates with his harrowing of Hell and says that a heavenly messenger will get them through. One can see this as a religious story and/or an allegory of how Good is more powerful than Evil if one has the courage to persevere.

My favorite lines in the above are 106-108 for both the poetry and the comfort it provides me.

Argenti was known for his ferocious temper, (but apparently not violence or he'd be deeper down. The contrapasso, punishment for his rage on earth is to forever be the victim of the rage of others - to feel anger's savage bite. When Dante spots the wailing, weeping Argenti, he does not feel the pity for him that he felt for the other sinners in higher circles. He recognizes an enemy (Argenti a Black Guelph), yes, but he is also participating in the anger's contrapasso punishment...by reacting with anger, biting into the one who inflicted the bites while living. Virgil approves, not so much that Dante is getting revenge, or acting vindictive, but because Dante is responding to the sin, recognizing sin...as some of you have noted yesterday. Is Dante right to respond with outrage? Does he need to work at controlling his anger? He has time. He's still living. That's the whole point. He's taking time out for introspection, just as we are.

My leader calmly stepped into the skiff
and when he was inside, he had me enter,
and only then it seemed to carry weight.

"the ancient prow began to plough the water
more deeply, now, than anytime before."

Dante well knew at this juncture of the journey that any pilgrim would feel battered by the incontinent sins -- excesses which are fairly common among humans -- already experienced in the Inferno. This is why the fear of going further and Virgil's need for help to get past of the gate of Dis (Fear).

The Furies were spirits who torment evil-doers. Hats, I guess you could say that the Furies were kinder to Theseus because his part in a wrong-doing was secondary to the guilt of his friend. Theseus was snatched from his Furies' torment (remorse) by Herakles.

The story of Theseus in the Underworld briefly: A friend of Theseus by the name of Peiritheus wanted to capture Hades' wife, Queen Persephone for himself and asked Theseus to help him. Together they traveled to the Underworld. Hades, under the guise of good will, tricked the two men to sitting on a bench to which they became eternally stuck. Hades unleashed on them the Furies, Medusa, the teeth of the hellhound Cerberus and the infamous waters of the Tartarus that recedes as parched lips draw near. Herakles traveled to the Underworld and freed Theseus with a yank, leaving only a small part of his hindparts on the bench. (OUCH!) Herakles couldn't or wouldn't free Peiritheus, the originator of the abduction plan who remains stuck to the bench for eternity. Herakles and Theseus returned to the upper world.

The Medusa was one of three sisters known as the Gorgons. She was the only mortal among the three and she was a beautiful woman with many suitors. The most beautiful thing about her was her hair. However, Medusa was ravished at the Temple of Athena by Poseidon and to punish the sacrilege Athena changed the beautiful locks of Medusa into hideous snakes and made Medusa so ugly that any mortal who looked on her was turned to stone.

Medus was later killed by Perseus. He used a mirror to gaze indirectly at Medusa, to avoid turning into stone, and in this way he managed to cut off her head. Two children were born from the dead Medusa's blood. (I personally don't see any wrong-doing by Medusa that required her punishment. Poseidon did the ravishing, not her. I think because of the gender values of Ancient Greece and Rome, the woman was blamed for the act. Today there's still a residue of those wrong-headed values.)

"O all of you whose intellects are sound,
look now and see the meaning that is hidden
Beneath the veil that covers my strange verses..."

In Greek and Roman mythology before there was anything there was Chaos. From Chaos came three things, Gaea, Mother Earth; Eros, Love; and Tartarus, the Underworld. From Gaea sprang Uranus (aka Sky) who out of love poured rain over the Earth and from the Earth sprang many children including Cronus. The Furies, aka Erinyes, were born from the drops of blood that fell on Mother Earth (Gaea) of Uranus (Sky) when he was mutilated by his jealous son, Cronus. Other versions of their birth claim that the Furies were the daughters of Mother Earth and Darkness (Night). The Furies home was the entrance to the Tartarus as befits their nature. There they'd screen out the doomed who had yet to repent their sins, and torment them.

As their influence in religion spread they became the personification of the concepts of vindictiveness and retribution and represented the psychological torments associated with a guilty conscience.

AN EXAMPLE OF THE SYMBOLISM OF THE FURIES: In the Ancient Greek trilogy of Aeschylus, The Oresteia, Orestes is tormented by the Furies for killing his mother in revenge for his father's death. (Greek tragedy typically invites spectators to give things and actions meanings at more than one level.)

Orestes is tormented by his actions and tells the crowd (aka the crowd):

Here are some ancient yet 'gentler' images of the Medusa than the one I previously posted:

Marble relief from Greek temple in Syracuse

Terracotta antefix at temple sanctury at Veil/Etruscan

I think Dante uses heretic to mean someone who denies the soul's immortality. Heretic according to my dictionary is "a professed believer who maintains religious opinions contrary to those of the church; anyone who does not conform with an established attitude, doctrine or principle of the church." For baptised Roman Catholics a heretic is someone who consistently and willfully rejects any article of the faith.

I would say that a heretic is rather like someone who signs a (religious) contract, then knowingly breaks the terms of the agreement.

Marvelle

Cavalcante is the shade who asks about his son Guido, a poet and friend of Dante's.

In ancient Greek mythology the Titans tossed out the gods and ruled in their stead until Jove threw a thunderbolt knocking them all to the underworld. These big fellows are the arch heretics. So too are the twin sons of Aloeus who challenged Jove and the gods in their heaven. Aeneas meets them and other heretics just beyond the gate of Dis.

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I agree with Fai that Dante is drawing a lot of his ideas from Aristotle; but the veil is the technique by which Dante presents us with those ideas. I learned a few years ago of the technique called "the veil of allegory" which is the technique I see in the Inferno.

All of us are of sound intellect. (Well, not me always. I have many days where Dumb sneaks up and takes over.)

An allegory -- literally 'saying something else' -- is a story in which characters, objects and actions serve as extended metaphors so that there are deeper meanings that lie beneath the surface in addition to (or in place of) the literal meaning of the words/plot. Allegory conveys abstract ideas -- like truth or goodness -- in order to get a point across or to teach a moral. Fai has already looked beneath the surface for the meanings and she found Aristotle's ideas.

_________________________________________

There are times that Dante names something as a sin for which I disagree -- limbo and the heretics being two of them; there'll be more further into the story. However, since the Inferno was written 700 years ago I try to give Dante some slack and forgive. Sometimes it's hard to do so.

In trying to figure out the heretics, I think Dante is telling us they were concerned in getting their pleasures of the moment in life, ignoring the afterlife, to the extremes of self-centeredness. Here's Farinata excusing/boasting of himself in his part of the Florence conflict:

Lots of self-centerdness, lots of I 's. There's less poetry in this section of the Inferno than in the ones we've previously visited IMO, as if the message of the story overwhelmed the telling of it. Perhaps other translations have more poetry to them. Does anyone have lines to share from this canto?

You know the sideways peaked roof? It's < and if you want to make a command in your post you put the command inside two of them < >. For this purpose I'll use parentheses so you can see the otherwise hidden commands. To end one paragraph and begin another, instead of pressing the return button, you give the command (P) except the parentheses would be the two sideways peaked roofs.

I'll do some canto lines, using parentheses. You wont see my actual hidden commands, but you will see the pretend commands. BR is for single space page break, DD is for indent. To discontinue a command, such as for indent, it's (/DD) or to end italics, the command is (/i) -- but using the roofs instead of parentheses:

Hope this helps.(P)

"I think Dante is telling us they were concerned in getting their pleasures of the moment in life, ignoring the afterlife, to the extremes of self-centeredness."

"Dante shows us true psychological torture in his picture of Farinata and Cavalcanti. This torture depends on the Christian concept of man as essentially indestructible being with an immortal soul that mirrors the personality Dante's conclusion...one cannot be different(in hell) from how one was on earth. Hell is precisely so terrible because you can see your mistake but are doomed to repeat it endlessly and cannot get back in God's favor."

~Incontinence
~Malice
~Bestiality

~ Upper Hell - Incontinence
~ Lower Hell - Malice (Malice through Violence and Fraud)

This unwise decision annoyed Poseidon, who avenged the insult by causing queen Pasiphaë to fall madly in love with the white bull. She was under a spell! I see a big law suit in the making!

One reaps what one sows, according to Dante. In Round I of the Seventh Circle lie the war mongers, the tyrants, murderers and destroyers who shall forever wallow in boiling blood, much as they wallowed in the blood of others while on earth. Here we shall meet one of the greatest military geniuses ever-- Alex the Great (up to his lashes in blood, Ciardi says.) who also was tutored by Aristotle. His claim to fame was also that he was cruel and ruthless where politics was concerned . It is said that he killed his best friend during a drunken fury. Is this true? That would certainly entitle him to a position here with Dionysius and Attilla, the Scourge of God, who killed his own brother to gain control of an empire.

Phlegmatic sounds like it should have something to do with bodily fluids, and it does. According to the ancient Greeks, human personalities were controlled by four bodily fluids or semifluids called "humors": blood, black bile, yellow bile, and phlegm. Each humor was associated with one of the four basic elements: air, earth, fire, and water. Phlegm was paired with water, the cold, moist element, and it was believed to impart the cool, calm, unemotional personality we now call the "phlegmatic type." That's a bit ironic, given that the term derives from the Greek phlegma, which literally means "flame." Perhaps the ancients turned a term meaning "flame" into a name for a humor associated with water because too much phlegm was thought to cause illness, and the colds and flus that generate phlegm can also bring both inflammation and clamminess. Carolyn's Spelling Bee

According to Homer, harpies were soul-snatchers who tormented and carried off people. (Although they started out in mythology as beautiful women, then degenerated in the stories into foul beasts.) Besides tormenting people, harpies (Latin names Aello, Ocypete and Celaeno) were probably the cause of storms. Aello means storm; Ocypete means swift-flier and Celaeno means black cloud.

Faith and Maryal, thanks for the comments on Dante's poetry. Yes, reading it aloud really helps even when you don't know the actual words. I checked the Musa translation and he continues the negatives throughout the first 3 tercets. Any other translations for these first tercets or for any of the lines I posted earlier (92-108)?

The imagery is quite effective and moving. Minos sends down the new suicides. As soon as one of the souls reached the seventh circle he "slipped into a bush and wrapped himself in thorns" (122-3) thus compelled to eternally perpetuate his sin of self-destruction.

But when he saw Aeneas, both eager palms he stretched,
And his cheeks ran with tears, and from his lips
This utterance fell: "And art thou come at last,
And has the love long looked for by thy sire
Conquered the toilsome road?

Here is the Musa translation of lines 40-42:

"Thrice, as he stood, his arms he sought to cast About his neck; and thrice the baffled hands Closed upon nothing,"

"others were crouching, tightly haunched" -(squatting usurers, condemned to eternally eye the money pouches around the necks of others in this circle, frustrated because they can't get at them! Perfect!)
"some wandered, never stopping, round and round." ( very rythmic passages describing their frenzied dance...these the Sodomites, the perverts whose punishment sounds very much like the Lustful, though the added element of raining fire makes it so much worse)

I disagree with Dante, Joan, about certain sins and punishment. I don't feel being gay is a sin, it just plain isn't a sin. I also am ambivalent about suicide as a sin although I was raised a Catholic which severely prohibits suicide. A Catholic suicide was refused burial on consecreted grounds and the burial had to be outside a Catholic cemetary. Yet I find these two cantos hauntingly beautiful and each of us will feel the pull of Dante's poetry at different times and in different ways.

"to stare, as men at evening ...stare at one another when they pass by on a dark road, pointing their eyebrows toward us as an old tailor squints at his needle's eye."

I, in that lament, pondering with head bowed,
lost the main road,
and passed the wrong way
to a different forest....

"On the Government of Cities ", in which the author deals with the political life of his own times. The "Tesoretto", written before the "Trésor", is an allegorical didactic poem in Italian, which undoubtedly influenced Dante. Brunetto finds him- self astray in a wood, speaks with Nature in her secret places, reaches the realm of the Virtues, wanders into the flowery meadow of Love, from which he is deliv-ered by Ovid.. He confesses his sins to a friar and resolves to amend his life, after which he ascends Olym-pus and begins to hold converse with Ptolemy. It has recently been shown that the "Tesoretto" was probably dedicated to Guido Guerra, the Florentine sol- dier and politician who shares Brunetto's terrible fate in Dante's Inferno. Brunetto also wrote the "Fa-volello", a pleasant letter in Italian verse to Rustico di Filippo on friends and friendshipBrunetto Latini

Don't we know and love certain people despite their sins? Don't we hope they love us despite ours? Judgment, Dante is saying, must be left to god.

They cannot stop moving and circle about Dante and speak as the fire rains on them while Dante stays within his margin-path of safety.

"In a preeminent way this canto refutes the charge that Dante put only his enemies in Hell. But there is a curious irony here. Since Dante is so surprised to meet Brunetto, the latter's sins must not have been generally known. So Dante here permanently glorifies and shames his hero at the same time...

After all these years, deliverance may have come to Brunetto and the other spirits of this circle from Richard Kay. In his Dante's Swift and Strong, he has proposed a novel and ingenuous theory that the sins against nature punished in this circle include sodomy, but might well include sins against natural truth, and against the natural authority of the emperor.

Phoilosophers of various kinds can commit the one kind of sin, especially when they are chiefly interested in fame. Politicians can do so with respect to sins against emperors.

Seven of the eight persons Dante meets in this canto and the next (XVI) had no reputation for sodomy. (Brunetto had actually condemned homosexuality in his writing.) But even now in the afterlife, they show a keen interest in the personal glory and fame that may have guiltily motivated them on Earth - at the expense of humble service to the truth and humble subordination to imperial authority."

"But here I cannot be still: Reader, I swear
by the lines of my Comedy - so may it live-
that I saw swimming up through that foul air

a shape to astonish the next doughty soul,
a shape like one returning through the sea
from working loose an anchor run afoul
of something on the bottom...."(Ciardi)

Love the juxtaposition of benediction and serpentine. Imagine the Pilgrim's reluctance to climb aboard such a beast who:

Protective Virgil sat closest to Geryon's stinger and had the Pilgrim sit in front, farthest from that venomed fork!

I notice there is a repetition (which I found also in the Italian in the Pinsky book) of certain words and the dreamlike, nightmare quality of that flight where Geryon swims rather than flies to the torments below.

I hope we're all clutching our return tickets still? But let's take an alternate transport back home; I don't trust Geryon for a return swim.

Does anyone have lines to share from Canto 17 -- perhaps on the swim I just quoted or the falcon imagery?

Liked your thoughts on Geryon's face. How weird is it that Geryon swims and floats through the air rather than seeming to fly?

How undignified! was my first thought. Anonymous dogs scratching and biting at fleas! Virgil sends the Pilgrim to speak to one of the shades but the conversation is short and the Pilgrim quickly returns to Virgil's side. Here the Pilgrim doesn't exhibit an excessive (incontinence?) interest in others' sins (we'll see that further down the Inferno); instead he'd have appeared indifferent except for his attempt to converse with one of the money-lenders. Since money had been their own excessive preoccupation in life, now in the Inferno the shades are only identified by their money-pouches rather than as individuals.

"In all of the poem, Dante employs the respectful you (Voi) only for Beatrice, Farinata and the senior Cavalcanti (Inferno 10), Brunetto Latini (Inferno 15) and Pope Hadrian V (Purgatorio 29) He uses the intimate tu even to Virgil. More people get the honor in Hell than elsewhere!" To Hell and Back Gallagher

The Eighth circle is reserved for sinners of "Simple Fraud" Simple Fraud is distinguished from the sinners in the 9th Circle, guilty of Fraud with "Malicious Treachery" Sinners are grouped in descending tiers, ledges, as in an amphitheatre, overlooking the pit at the bottom. Sinners are sunk into ditches, pouches, depending on the seriousness of their sins.

Though the sinners here are are not as evil (malicious, treacherous) as those below, in Dante's world, they are more culpable than those who committed sins of Violence found in Circle VII. I gather that the sins of the Violent are sins of passion as opposed to the Fraudulent whose motivation is strictly profit for the sins of others. It stands to reason then, that they should be suffering more than the Violent, who are tormented with burning sand below and a rain of fire from above. How is the punishment for the more serious sin in Circle VIII more severe?)

The leopard represents Fraud. We've already established that. Dante was wearing the cord around his waist because "I once thought I could catch the gaudy leopard" with it...but now? He no longer believes that? Maybe he doesn't need it? The cord itself is of interest to me. Such a cord is tied around the waist in three knots to represent the vows of the Franciscan...poverty, chastity and obedience. Dante had strong ties to the Francisan Church of Santa Croce in Florence, built in the early 13th century ..."my lovely San Giovanni" which he refers to in Canto XIX was the name of the baptistry font in Santa Croce - it used to have the four tube-like vats for baptism...they don't exist today. It is known for the huge painting of the Judgment Day, a particularly graphic rendering of Hell, showing Lucifer eating sinners. Dante would have seen this. He could have studied here...the cathedral contains a statue of Dante on its grounds. The Catholic Church today lists Dante as one of the early members of the Secular Order of Saint Francis. He would have worn the cord and made these vows as part of the third order...as a lay person, not a Franciscan monk. (One of the strongest reasons for believing that Dante spent time here...Beatrice is buried here! I would imagine that if Dante's remains were returned to Florence, they'd be here too. Is his tomb in Ravena? Or?

The architectural formation of the eighth circle. Such good information...Faith, thank you so much for delving into the architectural structure and language of this circle I'm afraid there are some questions on the formation of this circle for which we will never have definitive answers. Dante's creation, his owm way of organizing the ten pouches of the Eighth Circle? Your sources (Sanguineti and Caretti) say that the "binary presentation of the first two bolge establishes the the moral rigor of God's punishment and the architectural and geographical layout for subsequent episodes in the Malborge."

the punishment Dante has devised for the Panderers and Flatterers - how appropriate? Is it severe punishment?

The question Dante puts to Venedico Caccienemico - "How did you get yourself in such a pickle?" In Musa, this occurs in Canto XVIII, line 53. I'd be interested how this line reads in your translation? Did you notice that Dante seems more..."casual" in his speech. More coarse and more familiar? Did you notice that Venedico is hiding himself...unlike the shades in previous circles who were anxious for news of the living, anxious to be remembered?

"he deliberately coarsens his language when he wants to describe certain kinds of coarseness."

"Dante is said to have constructed the total Commedia as a Cathedral">

Medieval Florence was a walled city with the newcomers and workers on the outer rims of the overcrowded city. There were four bridges to the city across the moat and the town was a mass of towered buildings. The towers and walls once helped protect the city.

For a general map of medieval Florence see below. At the bottom of the link are two interesting clickables on Photos and History.

In this last link, scroll through the paintings and you'll be going back in time to medieval Florence with a colorized map (easier to read than the Della Caten map) and pictures of the inner city and towers that remind me of the Gate of Dis.

The Dante Club discussion had a horrendous Dantean murder of a simoniac. It's so much worse, more terrible if we 'know' the individual being punished, which we did (fictionally) in the DC discussion. Imagine what Dante's initial readers must have felt to see their contemporaries punished thus! Here the Pilgrim sees the punishing holes in the third bolgia

I understand a simoniac as one who sells OR buys religious favors. A note from Musa on this contrapasso: "Just as the Simonists' perversion of the Church is symbolized by their 'perverted' immersion in holes resembling baptismal fonts, so their 'baptism' is perverted: instead of the head being moistened with water, the feet are 'baptized' with oil and fire."

Anyone have a different translation to share?

I saw along the walls and on the ground
long rows of holes cut in livid stone;
all were cut to a size, and all were round

They seemed to be exactly the same size
as those in the font of my beautiful San Giovanni,
build to protect the priests who came to baptize.

From every mouth a sinner's legs stuck out
as far as the calf. The soles were all ablaze
and the joints of the legs quivered and writhed about.

Withes and tethers would have snapped in their throes,
As oiled things blaze upon the surface only,
so did they burn from the heels to the points of their toes.

"Once Dante has placed diviners in their proper pit and assigned an appropriate punishment...the Poet is free to pass on in the discussion to all those matters of theology, history, politics and science, which fascinated him. But there is nothing irrelevant about these multiple interests.

Dante's journey is "to experience all". He is constructing a Universe. Each of Dante's side discussions considers essential data.

The history of Mantua (Virgil's birthplace) relates to the history of Troy, to the history of Virgil, to the history of Rome, to the history of Florence - the background of civilization as Dante knew it..."

"Dante has been called the "Master of the Disgusting"...the occasional coarseness of details has offended certain delicate readers. It is worth pointing out that the mention of bodily function is likely to be more shocking in a Protestant than in a Catholic culture. It has often seemed to me that the offensive language of Protestantism is obscenity; the offensive language of Catholicism is profanity or blasphemy: one offends on a scale of unmentionable words for bodily function, the other on a scale of disrespect for the sacred. Dante places the Blasphemous in Hell as the worst of the Violent against God and His Works, but he has no category for punishing those who use four-letter words.

The difference is not, I think national, but religious. Chaucer as a man of Catholic England, took exactly Dante's view in the matter of what was and what was not shocking language. In The Pardoner's Tale, Chaucer sermonized against the rioters for their profanity and blasphemy but he is quite free himself with obscenity."

I'm here in Hell, Joan. Just needed a couple days break after the exhaustive high of the Dante Club. I really really want this discussion to continue and then we can all take you with us when we climb up and out of the Inferno.

I read these two cantos and it's like a demonish Keystone Kops. Funny yet horrifying.

Alf, here's how Musa translates: The Pilgrim describes the bank as:

The demon the Pilgrim sees has a sinner clutched in his claws and he throws him into the pitch. The demons clutch grappling hooks and threaten the sinner who tries to swim on the surface: "You've got to do your squirming under cover, try learning how to cheat beneath the surface." (52-54)

These demon kops even threaten to throw Virgil into the boiling tar!

Etymology
"Gargoyle", the dictionary definition: a spout usually in the form of a grotesquely carved face or figure, projecting from a roof gutter. From the Old French "gargouille" and the Late Latin "gurgulio", both meaning throat. (from Chambers Concise dictionary)

Etymology
"Gargoyle", the dictionary definition: a spout usually in the form of a grotesquely carved face or figure, projecting from a roof gutter. From the Old French "gargouille" and the Late Latin "gurgulio", both meaning throat. (from Chambers Concise dictionary)

"Gargoyles (in the strict sense) are carvings on the outside of buildings designed to direct water from the roof away from the base of the walls... ...Some gargoyles are undecorated but many are zoomorphic or anthropomorphic - often very imaginative and/or grotesque. This has led to the term 'gargoyle' being applied more widely to any grotesque carving in medieval buildings." (from Bob Trubshaw, posting in BritArch archives, 23Feb1999)

Religious History
During the 1200's when gargoyles first appeared (and at many other times), the Roman Catholic Church was actively involved in converting people of other faiths to the Catholic, often very keenly indeed (as the Christian but non-Catholic Cathars could testify). The argument for decorated gargoyles runs as follows. Since literacy was generally not an option for most people, images were very important. Since the religious images (if any) that non-Christians were accustomed to were of animals or mixtures of animals and humans (e.g. the horned god, the Green Man), then putting similar images on churches and cathedrals would encourage non-Catholics to join the religion and go to church, or at least make them feel more comfortable about it, or at least ease the transition. Gargoyles

Re the Keystone Kops and the farcical episodes of Cantos 21-23. I'll concentrate here on Canto 21 which is our introduction to this change of tone. First, Dante doesn't exhibit sympathy as he had in earlier cantos, and the language and actions are cruder. Dante knows that most readers would not be as personally invested in such sins of the bolgia (most of our sins are of the minor excesses) and that we'd also be less sympathetic. So Dante can get away with comic parody here. It's funny and horrifying.

I just now looked at the essays in the Musa translation which explains Cantos 21-23 and my image of Keystone Kops was correct although not as elegant a description of the term "parodic inversion".

From the essay "Iconographic Parody in Inferno XXI" by Christopher Kleinhenz:

"There are... in simultaneous operation, two levels in which the events of these cantos should be understood: 1) grotesque humor and 2) profound seriousness, the latter underlying and consistently undermining the former. Several factors contribute to the successful representation of this duality. One is the basic and ironic dichotomy between apearance and reality."

[As examples, Kleinhenz notes the appearance of openness, energy and productivity in the opening simile of the Venetian shipyard, undermine by the reality of the unproductive and secret undertakings of the grafters; the appearance of boiling tar with nothing in it and the reality of the grafters hidden within the tar.]

From Canto 21:46-49 which says of the sinner tossed into the tar by the demon

My note: 'floated up' is a translation of 'convolto' and I prefer Ciardi's more literal translation of 'rump up'

PARODY OF HOLY FACE/SANTO VOLTO

Of this canto Kleinhenz writes: ".. Dante expects his readers to have a certain familiarity with the object in question (the Santo Volto, a crucifix reputedly carved by Nicodemus), so that they will be able to understand the full import of the reference. Because of its dark wood and particular veneration in Lucca, the "Holy Face" is especially pertinent to the events at hand, as Singleton's gloss of the verse makes abundantly clear."

Kleinhenz: "... just as medieval art establishes a frame of reference for the interpretation of Canto XIX, here in Canto XXI, through the allusion to one work of art (the Santo Volto), Dante gives us an indication, a clue, as to how we should read and interpret the entire episode..... [Dante thus] encourages us to consider the possibility of other artistic parallels" [such as the demon gliding over the rocks with the sinner's thighs grasped in his claws and who throws the sinner into the pitch.]

THE GOOD SHEPHERD & DEMON PARODY

Kleinhenz: "... the figure of the devil who carries the sinner would appear to be a direct imitation and parody of the artistic representation of Christ the Good Shepherd, who bears the lost sheep on his shoulders.... the devil who hauls the sinner so crudely on his shoulders would be the antithesis of Christ who gently bears the lost sheep (= repentant soul) back to the fold.... [The] devil acts as the psychopomp, bringing the barrator to eternal perdition. Conversely, Christ as Good Shepherd and psychopomp carries the lamb to eternal salvation. The devil's shoulder described both physically and metaphorically as [high-hunched and pointed shoulders] contrasts with the gentle pose and humble manner of Christ in this office. Other attributes which accompany the Good Shepherd, such as the pastoral crook, find their infernal counterparts here in the instruments of tomrent" [such as grappling hook, forks, prongs, pitchfork]

Kleinhenz notes the parallel of Christ often depicted as standing watch over his flock with that of Malacoda standing over the sinners; and Christ and his flock of the Twelve Apostles are paralleled by Malacoda and his demons.

PARALLEL AS PARODY

Kleinhenz: "Each time [the] unnamed devil returns ... with a sinner, he would be 'reenacting,' in parody of course, the Harrowing of Hell: not to save souls, but rather to damn them: not to remove meritorious individuals from Hell to Paradise, but rather to bring sinners to the infernal regions; not to demonstrate his power over death and Hell, but rather to indicate his submission to these forces. Such an interpretation would help to establish the context in which Malacoda's reference to Christ's Harrowing of Hell (which shattered the bridges over the sixth boldia) maybe better understood and have greater relevancy. Moreover, it would add yet another dimension to this divinely willed, divinely limited and divinely judged farce."

"Dante doesn't exhibit sympathy as he had in earlier cantos, and the language and actions are cruder. Dante knows that most readers would not be as personally invested in such sins of the bolgia (most of our sins are of the minor excesses) and that we'd also be less sympathetic. So Dante can get away with comic parody here. It's funny and horrifying."

Alf, I do think that Dante being charged with graft would definitely influence his tone. He's satiric, ridicules the grafters, yet is afraid of the demons. Yet he must be truly innocent because he makes a successful getaway.

I'm so glad you liked the research I put into the grafters, Faith. I can get carried away by my enthusiasm. First I read the essay and thought 'oh, I want to see the Volto Santo' and ... well, one thing lead to another. I found it interesting that the Volto Santo was first at the San Frediano of the baptismal font (good shepherd) and was carried over to San Michele, being constructed in 1278 or was it 1287??? Anyway, wonder if graft had anything to do with that shift?

For whatever reason, at this point in the Inferno I'm feeling my Catholic roots tugging at me when I thought I'd gone well past any return. The Volto Santo, luminara and procession (like those here in New Mexico), the churches all are calling to me. And I've fallen in love with Lucca, the city rival of Florence and Dante!

Joan had some wonderful information on gorgoyles, added to by the up-close-and-personal experiences of Ginny. One of Joan's links talked about a few of the purposes of gargoyles on buildings

Lots more on gargoyles (so like these demons in Canto 21-3) in Joan's earlier post.

[His writing] …expresses a monotheistic conception of the divine governance of the world…His treatment of the subject of the afterlife of the spirits of the dead in the Aeneid is especially interesting. In it he blends folklore beliefs about the fate of souls and the punishment of the wicked, with Orphic and Stoic ideas about the purification of souls, and Pythagorean ideas of their transmigration.

But the religious character of the poet lies, in a wider sense, in the recognition of the spiritual side of life, in his deep sympathy with suffering humanity… and in his sense of the spiritual value of suffering.

"Oh master, I don't like the looks of this,"
I said, "let's go, just you and me, no escort,
you know the way, I want no part of them!

If you're observant, as you usually are,
why is it that you don't see them grind their teeth
and wink to one another? - we're in danger!"

And he to me, "I will not have you fightened
let them do all the grinding that they want,
they do it for the boiling souls, not us."

"But the religious character of the poet lies, in a wider sense, in the recognition of the spiritual side of life, in his deep sympathy with suffering humanity… and in his sense of the spiritual value of suffering."

If you have made your mind up to proceed
you must continue on along this ridge;
not far, you'll find a bridge that crosses it.

Five hours more and it will be one thousand,
two hundred sixty-six years and a day
since the bridge-way here fell crumbling to the ground.