Remember: You are to have read the background on Dante and Cantos I - V by Wednesday / Thursday. Also, remember to bring your vocabulary books on Wednesday / Thursday.
Canto III
Know who resides here and how they are punished and why they are punished in this way. This pertains to all the cantos.
Know the meaning of symbolic retribution--very important.
Which pope resides here? Why?
What is the name of the ferryman?
Note how Dante swoons at the end.
Look at the sign at the entrance to this place:
I AM THE WAY INTO THE CITY OF WOE. --Pain, but also the absence of God's love
I AM THE WAY TO A FORSAKEN PEOPLE. --Keep in mind they chose their fates. It was
not God's choice, but theirs--free will
I AM THE WAY INTO ETERNAL SORROW.
SACRED JUSTICE MOVED MY ARCHITECT.
I WAS RAISED HERE BY DIVINE OMNIPOTENCE, --I made myself important; I knew it all.
PRIMORDIAL LOVE AND ULTIMATE INTELLECT. --I succumbed to my passions and be-
lieved that my intellect could get me
out of anything.
ONLY THOSE ELEMENTS TIME CANNOT WEAR --Read footnote
WERE MADE BEFORE ME, AND BEYOND TIME I STAND --Read footnote
ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE. --Read footnote
Note Virgil's response in lines 14-18:
"'Here must you put by all division of spirit / and gather your soul against all cowardice. / This is the place I told you to expect. / Here you shall pass among the fallen people, / souls who have lost the good of intellect.'"
Remember that intellect is part of our divine nature. But we can use it, as these people have, to consider ourselves divine. When we do this, when we deem ourselves gods, then we can justify a lot of bad behavior.
Now note this characterization between Virgil and a frightened Dante:
"So saying, he put forth his hand to me, / and with a gentle and encouraging smile / he led me through the gates of mystery."
Now note how Dante paints a picture of this place. Note the nouns, verbs, allusions (Tower of Babel, for one), and the simile. Try to imagine this--the sights and sounds:
"Here sighs and cries and wails coiled and recoiled / on the starless air, spilling my soul to tears. / A confusion of tongues and monstrous accents toiled / in pain and anger. Voices hoarse and shrill / and sounds of blows, all intermingled, raised / tumult and pandemonium that still / whirls on the air forever dirty with it / as if a whirlwind sucked at sand."
Who also lives in this place of the "'nearly soulless"? What does Virgil mean by the "nearly soulless"?
Note Virgil's response to their fates: "'They have no hope of death,' he answered me, / 'and in their blind and unattaining state / their miserable lives have sunk so low / that they must envy every other fate.'"
In other words, even Hell doesn't want them.
Now, this next line is very important because it is going to resonate throughout Dante's journey. Many of the sinners that we meet suffer because they fear that no one will ever remember them, that their name will die not long after their bodies have died. Remember what I said about Hamlet's father being not in Purgatory, but in Hell, because of this:
Virgil: "'No word of them survives their living season. / Mercy and Justice deny them even a name. / Let us not speak of them: look, and pass on.'"
Even Virgil dismisses them!
Next, Dante notices the people running with the banners. "circling and circling, it seemed to scorn all pause." --Remind you a little of one of the lines from "The Second Coming"?
The next line was actually used by the other great poet of his time, T. S. Eliot, in his masterwork, "The Wasteland":
"I had not thought death had undone so many / as passed before me in that mournful train."
What is Dante saying here? Why is he saying it? What is his message to the world?
Know the story behind the Great Denial (line 57--read the footnotes)
Name and describe the ferryman. Know the name of the river they are about to cross.
Pay attention to that wonderful description between lines 94-97.
Pay special attention to the footnote that describes the souls in hell: "Divine Justice transforms and spurs them so / their dread turns wish: they yearn for what they fear."
CANTO IV, CIRCLE ONE: LIMBO--THE VIRTUOUS PAGANS
Who are the Virtuous Pagans? What is this place like? It doesn't seem so bad, but Dante and his peers would have considered it bad, mainly because these people cannot be one with God.
You should know the various people they meet here and how these people pay special tribute to our narrator. These people are illuminated by what?
What is the Dolorous Abyss? What does Dante see?
How does Virgil physically react to this?
Note Dante's fear: "'How can I go this way when you / who are my strength in doubt turn pale with terror?'"
Note Virgil's somewhat defensive response: "'The pain of these below us here, / drains the color from my face for pity, / and leaves this pallor you mistake for fear.'"
Do you think that Virgil means this or do you think he says that to assuage Dante's fears?
How is Limbo different from Hell?
What does Virgil say about the Old Testament patriarchs and matriarchs? How have these men and women escaped Virgil's fate?
Note footnote 2 on line 53.
Who else, besides the poets, resides here? What three main groups reside here?
CANTO V--THE CARNAL
These are guilty of sins of incontinence, which is why they reside in one of the upper levels of Hell. The primary sinners here--the ones interviewed by Dante and Virgil--are Paolo and Francesca. Read their story in the accompanying footnotes. Note too, that they, like many subsequent sinners we will meet, blame their sin on something or someone else. In this case, it was a "dirty" book--the story of the illicit and adulterous love between Queen Guinevere and Sir Launcelot.
Who is Minos? What is his job?
Note this wonderful description: "That is to say, when the ill-fated soul / appears before him it confesses all, / and that grim sorter of the dark and foul/ decides which place n Hell shall be its end, / then wraps his twitching tail about himself / one coil for each degree it must descend."
Again, note the wonderful similes, nouns and verbs. Note too (the whirling) and how that compares to Yeats's poem, "The Second Coming":
"Now the choir of anguish, like a wound, / strikes through the tortured air....I came to a place stripped bare of every light / and roaring on the naked dark like seas / wracked by a war of winds. Their hellish flight / of storm and counterstorm through time foregone, / sweeps the souls of the damned before its charge. / Whirling and battering it drives them on, /and when they pass the ruined gap of Hell / through which we had come, their shrieks begin anew."
These next lines remind me of Hamlet--the fact that he succumbs to his passions or appetites, rather than listening to his God-given reason:
"And this, I learned, was the never ending flight / of those who sinned in the flesh, the carnal and lusty / who betrayed reason to their appetite."
Now for some more Yeats-like lines and some wonderful metaphors and diction:
"As the wings of wintering starlings bear them on / in their great wheeling flights, just so the blast / wherries these evil souls through time foregone....As cranes go over sounding their harsh cry, leaving the long streak of their flight in air, so come these spirits, wailing as they fly."
Read the footnotes and know the names of some of the sinners condemned to this place.
How does Dante react (emotionally) to these sinners? Why?
Finally he meets Paolo and Francesca. Note Francesca's answer: "'The double grief of a lost bliss / is to recall its happy hour in pain.'" What does she mean by this?
Read her history in the footnotes. Note too, how she blames her transgression on a forbidden book. She even calls the book "'a pander.'" What is a pander and how does it apply?
