Dante the pilgrim and Virgil walk on among the gluttons discussing the only thing possible: the last judgment and the resurrection of the body.
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Dante the pilgrim and Virgil have made it to the 3rd circle of INFERNO, the gluttons, where they encounter a surprising future-teller in the rancid muck.
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Dante, our pilgrim, comes upon Ciacco, the emblematic glutton, who gives us readers more questions than answers in this passage from The Divine Comedy.
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Dante, our pilgrim, wakes up already in the third circle of hell. How did he get there? No clues! But it’s a place with incredibly bad weather and rancid, fetid pools of muck . . . as well as Cerberus, a figure out of THE AENEID, now changed by Dante’s art and maybe even with Virgil’s help.
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Long seen as one of the oiliest sinners, Francesca may be much more: a character who escapes not only the pilgrim, but Dante himself, her creator. Her speech is so great that she escapes the prison of the words the poet has crafted for her, words that ultimately express his unfulfilled desires with Beatrice.
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In INFERNO, Canto V, we meet our first great sinner: Francesca (and her lover Paolo). Let’s I’build a case against Francesca, showing her to be the gravest threat yet to our pilgrim as he walks across the known universe. She is an oily, flattering seducer who will do anything to duck the blame she deserves.
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Our pilgrim, Dante, has asked Virgil who is out on the wind. Virgil answers with a surprising list of the "greats,” moving the timeline from ancient history to contemporary (medieval) romance. Along the way, Virgil does something much subtler: he redefines lust as love. And he may even goad our pilgrim on to do the same.
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Having left the judge Minos behind, our pilgrim, Dante, and his guide step up to the winds of lust: a relentless storm that provokes a gorgeous simile as the pilgrim stares into this abyss. The poetry is lush and enticing. And it hides clues for what’s ahead, both in this canto and on down the road in INFERNO.
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In this interpolated episode of the podcast WALKING WITH DANTE, I’ll offer a historical overview of the seven deadly sins. Why these sins? And why are there seven? Who decided which sins “count”? And does Dante concur? (No, not in INFERNO!)
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Our pilgrim, Dante, comes to the second circle of hell and encounters Minos, the sure judge of sin, an epicure of vice. Minos offers a judgment on all the souls before him (but not on those back in Limbo!) and seems to try to shove a wedge between our pilgrim and Virgil, his guide. But Virgil’s got an answer: a tried-and-true spell. Rhetoric works. Sometimes.
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A look back over the the first four cantos of INFERNO: their parallels, their divisions, their structure, their movement. Plus, four reasons Dante’s COMEDY has lasted 700 years and continues to inspire so much fascination. As well as the question of love: It always moves the fence—with Beatrice, with Limbo, probably in your own life.
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The pilgrim, his guide, and the four great poets head upstairs to see the crowd inside Limbo's castle: a great list of warriors, philosophers, writers, poets, mathematicians, astronomers, physicians, and (yes) Islamic thinkers. Then everyone gets left behind and the epic tone turns to the elegy of loss as Virgil and the pilgrim walk on into the dark.
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Our pilgrim, Dante, meets the great poets of Limbo . . . and even gets put into their company. Problem is, they're in hell. Also, Dante hasn’t really written enough to be a great poet. And then they walk on into a gorgeous spot with a beautiful stream and green grass. But we’re still in hell, right? What happens when a poet’s ambiguity almost overwhelms his work?
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Virgil answers Dante's question: Does anyone get out of Inferno? Yes! But maybe not the one soul who matters. Not Virgil, Dante's poetic father.
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Limbo is Dante's first donnybrook, his first true beef with Christian theology. While the doctrine of Limbo is being codified even in Dante’s day, he boldly plays with and even changes that orthodoxy, remaking Limbo into something that better suits his poem (and maybe his poetics).
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