Reading Notes: Dante's Inferno, Part A

· So is the narrator dead, or is there some other weird thing going on? It’s really interesting how he’s mixing Christian themes with Greek mythology. I like how Virgil described the paradise, “the origin and cause of all joy.” It’s compelling, isn’t it? Also, I wonder what or whom the she-wolf is meant to be.

· So he’s “a living spirit.” I wonder how he got there.

· I just realized how depressing this is going to be. It’s interesting that those in the in-between are said to have lived without blame (in addition to being without praise), but they are clearly guilty and treated as such.

· The language is intense: “the weeping earth gave vent”

· This misunderstanding of guilt, innocence, and justice makes me sad.

· It seems to me that an eternity of hopelessness and nothing would be hell enough, even if there was no explicit torment.

· That’s so backwards. They have heaven’s grace because they were famous in life? Uhh, no.

· I wonder which famous people of our age would have been chosen for this favored section of Hell? Perhaps it would surprise us. It seems to me that history picks different heroes than those we exalt in the moment, and that sometimes great evil is overlooked when it is far removed from the present.

· Why are some sins considered worse than others? How would it be if it was flipped, and I was to write of a Hell where cold indifference to God was the worst crime of all?

· Wow, it’s strange how polite all of the people in Hell are. I wouldn’t be gracious for very long in there.

· The place with angry men sounds horrible.

· I could write about the conversation between Virgil and the fallen angels, when he tries to get them to let Dante enter deeper into hell.

· Wow, that would be scary. “If you see her, you’re stuck in this deep pit of Hell.”

(Illustration by William Blake)

Bibliography:  Dante's Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri, translated by Tony Kline.