INFERNO, Episode 187. The End Of Fraud And The Self In The Self Wishing The Self Were In The Self: INFERNO, Canto XXX, Line 130, through Canto XXXI, Line 6

At the bottom of fraud, Virgil rebukes the pilgrim Dante, then the poet Dante steps out to offer one of the most striking and modern similes in all of INFERNO, before Virgil forgives the pilgrim, but not the poet, although Virgil’s forgiveness is predicated on the poet’s explanation. A complicated passage that verges onto a modern notion of the self.

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INFERNO, Episode 185. The Bottom Of Hell, The Beginnings Of Western Civilization: INFERNO, Canto XXX, Lines 91 - 103

Dante the pilgrim has come to the last of the evil pouches (the “malebolge”) of fraud to find two figures who lie (and tell lies) at the start of the stories of two chosen people as well as the very beginnings of Western civilization itself: Potiphar’s wife and Sinon, the Greek who convinces the Trojans to open the gates for the wooden horse.

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INFERNO, Episode 176. Bertran de Born, The Rationale For Inferno, & The Dangers Of Poetry: Inferno, Canto XXVIII, Lines 112 - 142

Canto XXVIII and the evil pouch (or “malebolge”) of the schismatic fraudsters ends with a poet: Bertran de Born, who wrote the very troubadour poetry that was a forerunner of Dante’s early work. And the canto ends with a rationale for the punishments: “contrapasso.” But what punishments? Bertran’s? The schismatics” All of the damned? Or even more?

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INFERNO, Episode 174. Of The Roman Civil War, Idealism, And Its Child, Ambivalence: Inferno, Canto XXVIII, Lines 91 - 102

In the ninth of the evil pouches (the “malebolge”) of fraud, among all the other schismatics and scandalmongers, we meet Curio, who goaded Julius to cross the Rubicon and start the civil war that destroyed the Republic and founded the Empire. And we also see a node of Dante the poet’s inevitably ambivalence, a product of his idealism.

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