Dante the pilgrim and Virgil have made it down the rock slide—and our pilgrim has gone noticeably quiet. Virgil thinks he knows why. He thinks Dante has questions about the landscape. Does he? Whatever the answer, Virgil then launches into more of his backstory, his life in the afterlife outside of COMEDY. It’s a curious passage that turns stranger by the line.
Read MoreDante and Virgil walk back out to the edge of the abyss and confront two roadblocks to the seventh circle of INFERNO, the first part of lower hell: the ruins of an avalanche and the Minotaur, the “infamy of Crete.” Both blocks are actually fraught for the COMEDY’s poetics and thematics. Our pilgrim needs to get down the slope. But first we need to know what it all means.
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