The Divine Calmony is the greatest literary masterpiece in
human history. When Dante wrote it in about
1300, he called it La Camadia. OK.
And the reason why is that at this time in history, epic
poetry was considered high, OK, or tragic, and it was written
usually in Latin. But for Dante, what he really
believed is that epic poetry should be democratic.
It should be accessible to the people.
That's why he called it like Hamadia Low, OK, which met
comedy. And so he wrote it in Tuscan,
which is the language of Florence, where he lived.
Latin was the language of the elite in Europe.
He wanted to write it in Tuscan so that ordinary people around
him could access it. And as a result, Dante is a
great believer in democracy. So Homer, Dante and Shakespeare
were, in their own respective languages, the greatest poets
because first and foremost they believed that poetry should be
accessed by the people. They believed in a democratic
spirit to poetry, and that made them distinct from the people of
their time. La Comadia is response then to
the Iniad by Virgil. At this time in history, for the
past 1000 years, the Iniad was a dominant, dominant literature in
Europe and it was the foundation for the Catholic Church.
OK, So remember when we read the iniad, the end, It is
fundamentally about duty, piety, and it just folks, and it
contrasted love, OK. And this became a dominant idea
in the Catholic Church, where you are not allowed to access
God, you're not allowed to believe in love, you must obey
the church because only the church can guarantee you
redemption and salvation. And this, of course, led to
massive corruption in the Catholic Church, but it also led
to wars throughout Europe because so much power was
concentrated in the Catholic Church.
And as a result, many kings fought over for power in the
Catholic Church, and this led to many wars.
It LED also to a splintering of the Catholic Church.
And Dante found himself embroiled into a lot of these
conflicts. OK, so he rolled La Kamadia in
order to have people access God. OK for the for the comedy, you
can access God and bypass Catholic Church.
In fact, if you read Lacamadia, you'll find there are a lot of
direct criticisms of the Catholic Church.
Also, Lacamadia was really in response to the iniad, and like
Homer, what Dante wants to do is position love first and
foremost, OK? In La Camadia, love is God
itself. All right, so these are the
basic themes that we'll be looking at throughout this book.
So let me talk about the structure of La Camadia, right?
There are three distinct parts versus infernal.
Second is Purgatory and the last is Paradise.
And what makes the La Camadia so powerful is Dante uses two major
literary literary devices to construct his universe.
The 1st is what we call structure, and 2nd is paradox.
All right, so imagine La Camadia as not just epic poetry, but as
a very complex mathematical puzzle that you must unravel
full time. OK, so Infernal, the structure
is an inverted triangle. And so what's going to happen is
that Dodd and Virtual are going to travel for Infernal for Hell,
but it's almost like they're travelling underground.
OK, it's an inverted triangle. And then Purgatory becomes a
pyramid or a mountain where Dante and Virgil are going to
travel up a mountain so that they can meet Beatrice at the
very top. And why they will meet Beatrice
at the very top is that Beatrice will take Dante to heaven where
he will meet God. And that is the very ending of
the Divine Comedy. OK, like on Idea and in Paradise
it is structured as a solar system.
And here is something called the Imperium, where God is.
And then Dante will travel opiatrist into the Imperium and
it's structured like a solar system.
OK, so that's a very structure of the Divine Comedy.
And as you can see, it's very mathematical.
It's rigorous. If it's mathematical, there's a
symmetry to the, the, the common idea, it doesn't really exist
anywhere else in poetry. But what makes Divine Comedy so
distinct and so powerful is the idea of paradox or maybe
dissonance, calling it dissonance.
And so all poetry is designed to be memorized.
It's all designed to be read aloud.
And there are subtlety and nuance in all poetry.
And the reason why is think of poetry as almost like a virus.
And what it what it's trying to do is it's trying to infiltrate
you, It's trying to subvert you and it's trying to remake you,
OK. And that's what the Divine
Company does where you read it. And it all sounds very simple
and nice, but the more you memorize it, the more you
interact with it, the more it enters you and it creates
cognitive dizziness, meaning that it is disrupting the normal
way you see the world. It creates paradox.
And what's going to happen is that your mind is going to, by
itself, subconsciously, try to unravel these paradoxes over
time. OK?
So the more you read the Divine Comedy over decades, the more it
will reveal itself to you. It is a universe that comes into
you, and then it remakes you, OK.
And that is the power and beauty of the Divine Comedy.
So the trick is to unravel the paradoxes which will implant
themselves throughout the Divine Comedy.
OK, So what? So another thing about the
structure is that in order to reach Paradise, Dante must first
enter Infernal. OK, and there are different ways
you can interpret the meaning of this.
The simplest way to interpret this is that in order to really,
truly discover God, you must experience hell yourself.
OK, so good and evil are are intertwined together.
You can never have good unless you first experience evil.
Good is not the absence of evil. Good is a confrontation, and
they're the feat of evil. OK, that's one possible way to
interpret it. But another way to interpret,
interpret it is that Infernal represents Virgil, which
represents the in the AD. And so for Dante to begin the
process of entering into heaven, he must first recognize the
impact of Virgil and the Iniad on his psyche, on his culture,
and then by recognizing this, defeat the Iniad in order to
fully embrace the power of God and of love.
OK. And that's the interpretation
that I want, I want, I want to present to you as we go along.
All right, OK, so having gone that, let's go over some basic
biography. This is Dante, and Dante is
considered the greatest poet in the Italian, in Italian
language. At this time in history, Italy
was divided into city states. So Dante was in Florence, but
there are also some major city states like Venice and Genoa,
OK. And they're all competing
against each other. They're also competing against
Rome, the Catholic Church, which want to exert authority over
these city states. At the same time, you had the
different empires of Europe, for example, France and basically
the Holy Roman Empire, which we would today call Germany.
And they're also trying to exert authority over the city states.
At the same time, there are different factions within these
state city states, different families that fight against each
other. So during Donnies time and this,
this again is about the year 1300, he is experiencing
constant conflict, constant violence, constant hatred.
And for him, the major question is how can we as a people, as
humans, escape this constant cycle of vengeance and hatred
and war. And that's why he rolled the
Divine Comedy. Two major bio biographic details
that you need to understand about him is that he is off
noble birth and therefore he's our participant in this
conflict. So the northern Italian city
states, which include Florence, Milan, Genoa and Venice, they
have two major political factors.
OK, this is Wikipedia, by the way.
All right. The Guelphs, which support the
papacy, and the Gibbelins, which support the Holy Roman Empire.
OK, so Donnie's family belongs to the Guelphs.
So he was just born into this political rivalry.
And over time, what will happen is that the Guelphs will win,
but then the Guelphs will divide into the black and white
factions, so different families fighting for power again.
OK, So with Dante, all his life, he's experienced nothing but
political rivalry and hatred. That's the first major thing you
need to know about him. Ultimately, what will happen is
that he'll get sick of this constant fighting, and he will
exile himself to focus on his poetry.
The other thing to know about him is he falls in love with
Beatrice at a very early age. OK he he meets her when she is 9
and she is 8. The problem is that Beatrice
family is a more noble yostocratic birth than Dante.
Now this time in history all marriages are arranged and so
Dante marries someone of his class, Beatrice marries someone
of of his class but they never really abandoned each other.
OK, they they still remain friends and Dante in his heart
still has his longing for Beatrice.
Beatrice will die pretty young. Maybe when she's in her mid 20s,
she'll die giving birth. But Dante never forgets about
her. And he spends his entire life
still remembering his love for Dante, for Beatrice.
And this becomes the basis of Divine Comedy.
OK, la cama dia. So these are the two major
biograph biographical details you need to know about Dante.
OK, so again, this is from Wikipedia.
And when Dante is exiled from Florence, OK, he never returns
to Florence. He spends all his life in exile.
He becomes patronized by some very powerful aristocrats
throughout Italy, and he will spend a lot of his time
reflecting on his experience in this political faction in the
Divine Comedy. There'll be a lot of references
to this conflict between the Ghiblings and the Guelphs and
his exile from Florence and his hatred of the Catholic Church.
There will also be a lot of references to his love for
Beatrice, which will redeem him from this earthly conflict.
OK, All right, So some passages that we've looked at before, but
which I want us to emphasize, OK, to to understand Divine
Comedy. All right, so let's look at
certain passages. OK, so Aubrey, could you read
for me please? In half of our life's way I
found myself within the shadowed forest, for I had lost a path
that does not stray. It is hard to speak of what it
was, that savage forest, dense and difficult, which even in
recall renews my fear, so bitter death is hardly more severe.
But to retell the good discovered there, I'll also tell
the other things I saw. OK, so he's saying, right, this
is very beginning of the Divine Comedy.
This is the Allen Mellenbaum translation.
OK, And I choose Allen Mellenbaum.
There are lots of other translations because he's just
the easiest to read. All right, so I'm not interested
in the language, I'm interested in the ideas.
So that's why I pick him. OK, so this is very simple.
He is in a middle age and he's in the shadow forest.
OK, so he's completely confused as to why the world is what it
is. This hatred for the world is
causing him to hate himself as well.
And so because of this hatred, because of this confusion about
why there's so much hatred in the world, he has lost his
connection with God and he doesn't know how to proceed.
It's a long period of savage forest that's a difficult that
makes him question everything. OK.
He's in a deep depression, basically.
And, and at this point, he has lost in this forest and he feels
hopeless. And then a man emerges named
Virgil. And Virgil is the poet that
Dante respects the most because at this point in history, Virgil
is the most influential poet. And Virgil promises to guide
Dante out of this shallow Horace and into the light.
And Dante puts his faith in Virgil.
And at this point, Dante sees Virgil not just as a savior, but
as a father and as a teacher. OK, this is important because
for Dante to treat defeat Virgil, which is the point of La
Comadia, he wants to destroy the influence and power of the in
the ad, he first must put Virgil onto a pedestal pedestal in
order for us to recognize the limitations of Virgil so we
ourselves can defeat Virgil in our hearts.
OK, And that's the idea here. All right, Can you continue?
I agree. All right.
Yeah, keep on going. In heaven there's a gentle lady,
one who weeps forward the distress towards which I send
you to, so that stern judgement of above is shattered.
And it was she who called upon Lucia requesting of her.
Now your faithful one is need of you, and I commend him to you.
Lucia, enemy of every cruelty, arose and made her way to where
I was sitting beside the venerable Rachel.
She said you, Beatrice true praise of God.
Why have you not helped him when who loves you so that for your
sake he slept a vulgar crowd. Do you not hear the anguish and
his cry? Do you not see the death?
He wars against the pond that river ruthless has to see.
No one within this world has ever been so quick to seek as
good or flee as harm as I. When she had finished speaking
thus to come below down from my blessed station, I trusted in
your honest utterance, which honors you and those who've
listened to you. When she had finished with her
words to me, she turned aside her gleaming, tearful eyes,
which only made me hurry all the more.
OK, so a lot of Laca Madea Divine Comedy is dialogue.
OK, There's a speaker and there's a listener.
And this is an important formulation because what Dante
wants us is to recognize is that when a speaker speaks, he or she
is speaking from a certain worldview, a certain prejudice.
And so we must always be on guard.
We almost always ask ourselves why this person is saying what
he or she is saying. OK, so something that we've
discussed a lot is the idea of God.
And God is the perfect manifestation of love, of
generosity, of forgiveness. And one thing that God does not
do is reciprocity. OK, so the Catholic Church
teaches you that if you obey God, then God will allow you
access to heaven. And what Tony wants us to
understand is that cannot be true.
If God is perfection, if God is love, if God is beauty, God
would never require anything off you.
God will always give you free will.
And free will and reciprocity are a contradiction.
OK? If I make you do something in
order to access heaven, that means I don't give you free
will, but God will give you free will.
All right. But here we can see a
contradiction, a paradox in that what?
So what's happening is that Dante is talking to Virgil, and
Dante's asking Virgil, how did you get here?
Why are you here? Why are you taking me to heaven?
And Virgil's response is well, I was having a very nice time
sitting in. Home in limbo in hell.
But then an Angel Beatrice came to me and said she and my help
in order to help a friend. And then Donna is like, OK, but
why would Beatrice want to help me?
And then Virgil was like, well, because she saw your painting in
heaven and she recognizes how much you love her.
And so Lucia said to her, you Beatrice, why don't you help him
who loves you so much? OK, so it's almost like a
reciprocity where the astronomy loves speeches so much.
Beatrice has to come help him now.
But this goes against the very idea of God.
OK, so what's happening here is 2 possibilities.
The first possibility is that Virgil is just lying.
OK, But you're not really lying. He's just, he's just
misinterpreting what's going on. God will always come to you if
you truly want God to come, OK? Because God is all generous.
And so Dante is. His heart is calling out for
God. And God sends Beatrice without
any conditions. And God sends Beatrice, because
God understands that Beatrice is a person who can most help
Dante. OK, there's no reciprocity here.
But when Beatrice tells Virgil this, Virgil misinterprets this
idea to mean that there's reciprocity going on.
OK, so it's not, it's not really lying, but it shows you the
limitations of Virgil's worldview, where in the INIAC,
it's all about reciprocity, OK? It's all about contract.
It's all about duty. OK, so that's the first
possibility. But another possibility is that
Beatrice understands the limitations of Virgil and so
just tells Virgil what he wants to hear or structures this in a
way that Virgil can understand. OK.
Because if Beatrice says to Virgil, I came to help Dante
because Dante needs help, Virgil will be like, well, OK, he needs
help, but why help him? And so Beatrice doesn't want to
spend time explaining to him that the universe is all
forgiven. So she so she just says, OK,
well, it's because he helped me in the past.
It's because of his love for me that I'm able to go to heaven.
OK. All right, so already in the
beginning we have to question the authority of Virgil, OK?
Virtual is an unreliable guide. And for us to truly enter
paradise, for us to truly discover God, we need to
recognize he is unreliable ourselves.
God will never tell us, but he'll give us clues to suggest
that he is unreliable and we must reject him if we are to
fully embrace God. OK, all right, let's continue.
All right, All right. So Virgil is taking Dante into
hell, and Virgil emphasizes Dante.
This is a path that we must take if we are to go into paradise.
You must first confront evil. You must first understand sin
for you to truly understand goodness.
OK All right. And so when they get there,
there's a river that blocks their path into hell.
And there is a ferryman named Sharon from Greek mythology who
will take them across the river. But the problem is that Dante's
still living. And Sharon sees that, and he
says to Dante, But there's a problem here.
I can't take you across because you're a living soul and you're
not dead, so I can't give you access to hell.
OK All right. Can you eat ivory?
And here, advancing towards us in a boat, an aged man, his
hair, his hair was white with ears, was shouting Woe to you
corrupted souls, Forget your hope of ever seeing heaven.
I come to lead you to the other shore, to the eternal dark, to
fire and frost, and you approaching there, you living
soul, keep all away from these. They are the dead.
But when he saw and made no move to go, he said another way.
In other harbours. Not here will bring you passage
to your shore. A lighter craft will have to
carry you. My guide.
Then, Sharon, don't torment yourself.
Our passage has been willed above, where one can do what he
has willed and asked no more. Now silence fell upon the woolly
cheeks of Sharon, Pilot of Delivered Marsh, whose eyes were
ringed about with wheels of flame.
Sharon doesn't want to take Dante across because Dante is
still living. But when Virgil says to him,
hey, let us pass, Sharon obeys. OK, and this is a paradox, so
let's explain the paradox to you again.
The thing about Dante is that he's so subtle and it's written
in a perfect manner. So the more you try to
understand what's going on, the more truth will be revealed to
you. So the paradox is this.
They are in hell, and they are in hell because they've rejected
God. OK, and how we know that we
rejected God is this sentence. Woe to you crooked souls.
Forget your hope of ever seeing heaven.
OK? So, so you can interpret this as
saying that Sharon is saying to you, is saying to people, this
is all hopeless, OK? But another way of interpreting
this is Sharon is saying to all the souls, you are here because
you believe God has abandoned you.
You believe there is no God. You believe there is no heaven.
You believe you deserve to be here.
That's why you're here. OK, so that, but then he sees
Dante and he he knows that Dante doesn't believe this.
He is actually going to heaven. And so Dante is a corruption.
And so Sharon doesn't want to take Dante across.
But then Virgil says, hey, God has ordered Dante to be crossed.
And then Sharon obeys. The problem, the paradox is
this. Sharon himself doesn't believe
in God. That's why he's in hell.
He rejects the authority of God, yet he obeys God.
So that makes absolutely no sense.
This is a paradox unless you remember that what matters is
the speaker. Okay, so Virgil is the one who
is speaking. OK, so in other words, Sharon is
not obeying the authority of God, he's obeying the authority
of the speaker who is Virgil. And this suggests to us that
Virgil is the master of hell. And then the question then is,
well, why is he master of hell? And the answer is because he
created hell through the INIAC, right?
Iniad is a poetry that emphasizes piety, obedience.
It emphasizes how love is a disease.
It emphasizes the the importance of hatred as a power to destroy
your enemies. It emphasizes empire.
So in other words, Virgil through the iniad created
emotions in human in human beings that allow for the
creation of hell itself. You can also argue that with the
iniad virtual create the conditions for the Catholic
Church. The Catholic Church is not based
on the Bible, it's based on the iniad.
OK, so again, this is not a purit in the poetry, but what
you understand is that Dante is conveying his truthful paradox,
and you try to unravel this paradox, and the truth slowly
reveals itself to you. OK All right, let's continue.
All right. Can you read library?
Oops, sorry. To demon Sharon, with his eyes
like embers by signalling to them, has all embarked.
His aura strikes at anyone who stretches out as in the autumn
leaves his hatch themselves, first one and then the other,
till the bow sees all his fallen garments on the ground.
Similarly, the evil seed of Adam descended from the shoreline 1
by 1 when signalled. As the Falcon called will come,
so do they move across the darkened waters.
Even before they reach the farther shore.
New rings already gather on this bank.
My son, the gracious master said to me, those who have died
beneath the wrath of God. All these assemble here from
every country, and they are eager for the river crossing
because celestial justice spurs them on so that their fears turn
into desire. No good soul ever takes his
passage here. Therefore, if Sharon has
complained of you by now, you can be sure what his words mean,
OK? So 2 words that you will see a
lot. And Dante are will and desire.
OK Will and desire, because will desire together create your
soul, OK? So in the right company you will
see these two words. Will and desire repeat it a lot.
You are what you want and what you move towards, OK?
That's ultimately your soul. And what this is telling us is
that people are evil because people obey, OK, Duty.
OK, So this image is where the people line up obediently and do
as they're told. They don't question why this is
happening. They don't resist why this is
happening, OK. Their will and desire is to move
towards hell. They are not in hell because
they did bad things. Everyone does bad things.
They're in hell. They're in hell because they
desire to be in Hell, OK? And it's something that Virgil
says. Their fear is churn into desire.
They're entering hell because they want to do so.
And this is a really important idea if you are trying to spend
daunting. Free will is a fundamental truth
of the universe. You do what you do because you
choose to do it. You're in hell not because you
did bad things. You are in hell because you
think that hell is the best place for you.
You're happy in hell. OK, all right, so now they are
in hell and the 1st place that they enter is something called
Limbo. And Limbo is a place where
people go. They're good people before.
The problem is they don't believe in Jesus.
They don't believe in Christ. They never converted
Christianity. So these are people like Virgil,
like Homer, like Plato, OK, very virtuous people, but
unfortunately they don't believe in God and so therefore they are
doomed in hell, or that's what Virgil tells Ponte.
And and Donnie asked Virgil, was there ever a time when people in
hell could ascend to heaven? And Virgil says there was only
one time and that was when Jesus died and he came to hell to save
and redeem those most worthy people like King David, people
like Noah, people like Abraham, people like Rachel who are in
the Bible who are born before the time of Christ, but who are
worried of going to heaven. And that's why Jesus came to
hell. Unfortunately, I, Virgil, came
after Jesus and so I was not saved by by him.
OK, And as you go on, you, how would you remember this?
Because what we'll discover as we go on is this is not true.
It is entirely possible for people who are not Christians,
who were born before the time of Jesus, to ascend to heaven
because they choose to. It's about will and desire.
OK, so and then they go into the first layer of hell, and the
first layer of hell are people who lust, OK?
These are people whose passion overrided their reason, and so
they sin, OK All right, OK. And so these are spirits that
are passing through. And Donna asks Virgil who are
these people? And Virgil starts to name them
one by one. OK, OK.
Can you read Ivory the. Kindly Master said, do not ask
who are these spirits whom you see before you?
I'd have, you know, before you go ahead.
They did not sin, and yet, though they have merits, that's
not enough, because they lacked baptism, the portal of faith
that you embrace. And if they lived before
Christianity, they did not worship God in fitting ways.
And of such spirits I myself am one for these defects and for no
other evil. We now are lost and punished
just with this. We have no hope, and yet we live
in longing. Great sorrow sees my heart on
hearing him, for I had seen some inestimable men among the souls
suspended in that limbo. So I want to remember this.
Passage because Virgil was saying there's nothing wrong
with me. Unfortunately, I was just
unlucky. Okay, this is this is incorrect.
What you will see as we move on is that Virgil chooses to be
here. There are many paths for
salvation reduction for him he but he wants to stay in hell.
OK. And why and why that is the
case? We'll we'll, we'll talk about
later. All right, let's keep on going.
So I descended. From the first enclosure down to
2nd circle, that which girdles less space but grief more great
that goes to weeping. There dreadful Mino stands
gnashing his teeth, examining the sins of those who enter.
He judges and assigns all as his as his tale of twins.
I mean that when the spirit born to evil appears before him, it
confesses all, and he, the connoisseur of sin, can tell the
death and hell appropriate to it as many times as Minos wraps his
tail around himself. That marks the sinners level.
Always there is a crowd that stands before him.
Each soul in turns advances towards the judgement.
They speak in here, then they're cast below.
Arresting his extraordinary task.
Minos, as soon as he had seen me, said, Oh, you who reached
this house is suffering. Be careful how you enter whom
you trust. The gate is wide, but do not be
deceived. To which my guide replied But
why protest? Do not attempt to block his feed
a path. Our passage has been willed
above where one can do what he has willed and asked no more.
OK, so this is a very. Interesting passage that again
makes us question things. OK, so Minos, who's basically
deciding which level of hell you go to based on your sin, he
basically says to Dante, don't trust anyone here, OK?
Don't trust anyone here. Be careful how you enter whom
you trust. The gate is what?
But do not be deceived, OK? This is a very strange idea,
right? Because Minos sees that Dante is
with Virgil and his response is, Dante, you're a good person.
I'm telling you right now, don't trust anyone, right?
So what he's really saying is Dante don't trust Virgil right?
If you think about it logically, makes no sense for him to say
that unless he means don't trust Virgil.
Because if Virgil can be trusted then all Donnie has to do is
just follow Virgil into hell and that's it.
OK but Minnows makes a point of saying don't trust anyone here,
which is to say don't trust the person closest to you.
Be careful how you enter and whom you trust.
OK? And what confirms this is to
which my guy replied But why protest?
OK so Virgil stopping when and said hey shut up man OK do not
attempt to block his fitted path.
Our path has been wheeled above where one can do what he has
willed and asked no more. We are I represent a higher
power than you. He knows.
All right, So again, this is questioning the reliability of
narrator. What's happening is that Dante
is planting seeds, giving us clues that in hell, nothing is
what it seems. The person that we most trust,
Virgil. It's the person we should
probably least trust. OK, All right, So everything
that Virgil says, we have to question.
All right, so again, Virgil and Dante are in the first layer of
hell, and this is lust. And Virgil is pointing out to
Dante who they are. OK, can you read Ivory?
The first of those about whose. History you want to know?
My master then told me. Once ruled as Empress over many
nations, her vice of lust became so customary that she made
license licit in her laws to free her from the scandal she
had caused. She is Semiramis, of whom we
read that she was named as his wife and his successor.
She held the. Land the Sultan now.
Commands that other spirit killed herself for love, and she
and she betrayed the ashes of Sakius the wanton.
Cleopatra follows next. See Helen, whose sake so many
year, for whose sake so many years of evil had to pass.
See great Achilles, who finally met love in his last battle.
See Paris, Tristan. And he pointed out a name to me.
More than 1000 shades departed from our life because of love.
No sooner had I heard my teacher name the ancient ladies in the
Knights than pity seized me and I was like a man astray.
OK, so this again is a paradox. OK, And again, it's almost
impossible to see this paradox by yourself, but the paradox is
this. What Virgil will do is basically
point out 1000 shades, OK? And he'll provide all the names
of these people, OK? And the example is Cimerus.
And then you have Gopatra, you have Hellen, you have Achilles,
you have Parrot, you have Tristan.
OK, so he's leaving everyone, but there's one shade he does
not name. And the other spirit who killed
herself for love and she betrayed the ashes of sick
sickest. We know who this person is
because this person is Diddle. And who is Diddle?
Diddle is the creation of Virgil.
So the grand paradox, the irony is there's 1000 people and the
person that Virgil refuses to acknowledge by name is the one
that he understands the best, who he is most intimate with.
OK, and this creates the question, why is this the case?
Why does he refuse to name Ditto?
So if you go back to the iniad, the one thing that stands out
about the iniad is that Ditto is the most realistic character.
It's really the character that most people when they read the
iniad, they simplifies with because Ditto feels real.
But at the same time, Ditto didn't really deserve her fate.
OK, so it is Virgil who cast Ditto into hell, right?
And this contrast with Dante who will elevate Beatrice, his love
to heaven. All right, so already we are
seeing a contrast, a paradox. OK, Virgil condemned Ditto to
how Dante elevated Beatrice to heaven, and Dante is long for
Beatrice. And then Virgil forgets that
Ditto even existed. He even refuses to name her.
And the question is why? So because Ditto is a realistic
character, we can assume that Ditto is based on a person that
Virgil knows. But knowing that, we can also
make the assumption that Virgil pursued Ditto, fell in love with
Ditto, and Ditto rejected him, probably because he was an ugly
asshole. OK.
And so Virgil got really angry and decided that I will condemn
Ditto to hell. But in his heart, Virgil knows
that this was unfair, that this was pure hatred, and so he feels
a bit guilty about it. He feels embarrassed about it.
And that's why he refuses to acknowledge Diddle.
He refuses to face Diddle for what he did.
OK. But then something interesting
happens. All right.
OK. Can you read my first words?
Poet, I should really speak with those two who go together there,
and seem so lightly carried by the wind, and he to me.
You'll see when they draw closer to us, and then you may appeal
to them by that love which impels them they will come.
No sooner had the wind bent them towards us than I urged on my
voice. O battered souls, if one does
not forbid it, speak with us even as doves, when summoned by
desire, borne forward by their will, Move through the air with
wings up, uplifted still to their sweet nest.
Those spirits left the ranks where Ditto suffers, Approaching
us through the militant air. So powerful had been my loving
cry. OK, So what he's saying here is.
That like Virgil is naming all all the shades and Donna is like
let me go and talk to them. And Virgil says sure, go talk to
them. OK, but what would you notice is
this? Those spirits left the ranks
where Ditto suffers, approaching us through the magnant air.
OK, so the contrast is this. Virgil refuses to name Ditto, so
Dante names Ditto himself. All right.
And what this, what this really is, is an act of rebellion.
Because Donnie acknowledges Virgil as his father, as his
guide, as his teacher, and therefore he should just follow
Virgil. If Virgil doesn't want to name
Ditto, doesn't want to acknowledge Ditto, then Donnie
should be respectful and ignore Ditto, right?
But he's saying, Nope, I'm going to name Ditto because I want us
to understand that it was wrong to not acknowledge Diddle.
It was wrong, first of all, for Virgil to condemn Diddle to
hell, and it's wrong to just ignore her.
OK, so I know who Diddle is. I know what Virgil did, and I
want to name her in order to resurrect her in our memory.
All right, So again, this is creating kind of dissonance.
It's leaving an idea in my head is that none of what we're
seeing in Inferno is what it seems.
That's why it's hell. It's all an illusion.
It's all deception. And we have to use our minds.
We have to use our hearts to truly understand what's going
on. OK, All right, so this begins
our journey into the Divine Comedy.
But as you can see, it is extremely complex.
You have to see with your heart. You have to see with your
imagination. It's impossible to just read
this and know what's going on. You have to believe in your
instincts. You have to believe in your
intuition. You have to believe that you
have a connection with God, and it is God that will reveal to
you the truth for your intuition and your imagination.
OK, so the Divine colony is a journey really into your own
heart and your faith. All right, any questions?
OK. All right.
So we will continue this next time, OK.