Good day, everyone. And welcome back to the Dante Workshop. Today we have a very, very special guest dialing in from Connecticut, our beloved Sterling Professor of English, David Bromwich, live with us today.
Besides being the Sterling Professor of English, he has been a very well-read literary and cultural critic. He was a Yale College grad and a PhD alum of ours. Some of his many books include Hazlitt: The Mind of a Critic, Disowned by Memory: Wordsworth's Poetry, The Intellectual Career of Edmund Burke, and most recently American Breakdown: The Trump Years. He has also been a committee member for the Committee on Trust in Higher Education, which just published its report about a month ago. He still teaches English 125 at Yale Directed Studies, a course on Moby Dick.
And we're just so delighted to have you contribute to this enlightened conversation with your student Jiang Xueqin. And without further ado, I'm going to turn the podium over to you. I should also say we're so grateful that actually, thanks to Jiang's introduction, we've had David Bromwich, Professor Bromwich, join Yale Center Beijing programs and workshops on Shakespeare and poetry during COVID, which was comfort during difficult times. Comfort and enlightenment equally. So, I'll turn the mic over to Professor Bromwich and Joe.
Do you want me to just start or Yeah, just feel free to start.
Let me set this up in a slightly classroom way and point out that Shakespeare is an irregular, an unwieldy sort of author in many ways. And this is shown especially in the way he was received by neoclassical French critics who held against him that he wrote plays that didn't obey the unities, the supposed Aristotelian unities of action, time, and place. The ideal play would have an action that took place in the amount of time it took you to watch the play.
You can see how rare this is as a successful strategy. But Shakespeare went astray of it far more than most successful playwrights. And I chose Macbeth in part because this is a relatively rare instance among his works where you do have strong unity of action. And it's welded together with character, a portrait of character that is really brought out by the nature of the action, and the moral judgment I think we're asked to make about the play, about Macbeth's ambition, goes with a sequence of actions that have that sort of interconnection that we look for.
It is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude. I'll try to expand that a little or get your thinking started on it by just reminding you of the aphorism which we have from Heraclitus, character is fate. The Greek of it is ethos is the daimon. Both of those keywords still with us in English in different ways. And then a much later writer, but interesting in the same way of bringing our attention to this unity of character and sequence of events.
Henry James in his essay on the art of fiction asks, "What is character but the determination of incident? Incident coming to a sharp emphasis in the form of character. And what is incident but the illustration of character?" I'm going to concentrate on the idea of action, of the idea of a deed, and Shakespeare's sense in dealing with Macbeth most of all, but also Lady Macbeth, who is in some sense the instigator of his violent action, the murder of Duncan.
Calling attention to the strange focus Shakespeare pretty much demands that we give to doing, the very idea of doing. Lady Macbeth says soon after they've committed their "What's What's is done." But she'll say much later on, on the brink of or some way into her what's done cannot be undone.
You can hear the difference between those two. And of course those are often used idiomatically by ordinary speakers in English today. But they logically mean exactly the same thing. What's done is done and what's done cannot be undone. No contradiction there. But they're said in a very different tenor. The person who says what's done is done, or to use the more modern formulation which is even more seemingly bland, it is what it is. When somebody says that to you, they mean there's no point thinking further about it. That's just in the past now.
No more reason to contemplate, to have regrets. But that second statement, what's done cannot be undone, points to something fatal about the nature of a deed, that it is a bearer of fate and it is a bearer of the fate of the person who has performed the deed that does a great deal to illustrate the character of the agent seems to be nursing the nature of the deed he will perform almost as soon as the witches plant the idea that he might become Thane and then become King in his mind.
He speaks it in a way that's a little elaborate and at the same time rushed as if his mind is overcome by the merging of the idea of usurpation, killing, and this prophecy which places him already as king. He says, and these are the lines from the first act, "My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical, shakes so my single state of man that function is smothered in surmise, and nothing is but what is not." One thing clear, even though that's an incoherent statement, and think of what it means to say my thought whose murder yet is but fantastical, it's as if murder surrounds his very thought.
That's a kind of conceit, I think, that Jiang will probably want to have something to say about in relation to Dante. The idea one of those, condemned speaking from a flame in the just is what the deed bounds him as having been. And but that's living that already in his speech, even though he hasn't yet, to his conscious mind, decided to do what the witches' prophecy might be possible. They don't say you're going to murder Duncan, they say you're going to be king. But this concern, this verbal and freight of the idea of a deed as defining the character and fate of a is strongest when he's just on the verge of committing the murder at the very end of Act One.
It's a great speech, and I'll speak all of it and apologize in advance for the inadequacy. Very hard to act this part. It almost exists to be read more than acted. Partly because he is imaginative, because he is full of fantasy in a way that A mere warrior wouldn't normally be relied on to show.
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He has both aspects in him. But the fact that he is haunted, the fact that he has a certain depth does not change the fact that he's bent on the deed that the witches have told him, all but told him, could make his ascent to kingship. So, here's the speech at the end of the "If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly. If the assassination could trammel up the consequence and catch with his surcease success, that but this blow might be the be-all and the end-all here, but here upon this bank and shoal of time, we jump the life to come."
"In these cases, we still have judgment that we but teach bloody instructions, which being taught return to plague the inventor. This even-handed justice commends the ingredients of our poisoned chalice to our own lips. He's here in double trust." That's Duncan. "First, as I'm his kinsman and his subject, strong both against the deed. Then, as his host, who should against his murderer shut the door, not bear the knife myself. Besides, this Duncan hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been so clear in his great office that his virtues will plead like angels trumpet-tongued against the deep damnation of his taking off, and pity, like a naked newborn babe striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim horsed upon the sightless couriers of the air, shall blow the horrid deed in every eye that tears shall drown the wind."
"I have no spur to prick the sides of my intent, but only vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself and falls on the" It's quite a remarkable speech, and I'll stop at a couple points of it, but only say now that Lady Macbeth comes in, tries to work him up to the crime again, but Macbeth, in a very different vein from what we've just heard, says to her flatly, "We will proceed no further in this business." There he speaks like a giving a command that is in keeping with his or normal duties.
But you can see the amount of fantasy and the sense of ambition, just in the way the metaphors work in this speech. He says he'd leap the life to come. In fact, in the first part of that speech, if you could trammel up the consequence and catch with his surcease success. It's almost as if the echo of those two words, surcease is a fancy word. It's a euphemism for murder. But success and surcease, the way they almost rhyme, is just the way I could take him out, how convenient it would be that but this blow might be the be-all and the end-all here, right now, in this place, no consequences.
But then he comes to the idea of judgment in these cases. And cases is already a legal term. Our idea of casuistry, which is metaphysical and theological, too, comes from thinking about cases. In these cases, we still have judgment here on Earth, right?
That we but teach bloody instructions which being taught return to plague the inventor. And this even-handed justice commends the ingredients of our poisoned chalice to our own lips. So, Macbeth in those words enacts justice upon himself. There could be no more direct or complete judgment of the wrong of what he's doing. His sense of the wrong is expressed only in terms of duty, but the duty is strong and binding. And he practically breaks down himself in that strong metaphor about the newborn babe pity striding the wind and confesses that he has only vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself and falls on the other.
So, the fantasy is in this bank and shoal of time, like crossing a river, but when you leap, you just fall. You don't get to the point you would like to arrive at. So, that's Macbeth trying to make the depth of the crime just a local event. It stops now. But here, but by this blow, might be the be-all and the end-all. And I think that might be the first use of that interesting phrase in English. It can just be over with. It's just over with. And that's what people going to commit some terrible thing, I believe, often say to themselves as a sort of consolation, it's true to life in that regard.
Lady Macbeth, of course, all this while has been setting herself up as the person willing to face violation of nature, violation of duty, because of the great gift that it will bring them, the gift of power, the gift of being king and queen. And she has said, just when Macbeth is about to arrive, following the message that she has read already from him that he got this strange hint from the witches, she has said, "I'm no longer part of Come you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, and fill me from the crown to the toe top full of direst cruelty.
Make thick my blood, stop up the access and passage to remorse, that no compunctious visitings of nature shake my fell purpose." And that is a beautiful phrase, the compunctious visitings of nature, as if nature can't be undone. But when she says unsex me here, and in other places where she says, you know, "I would beat out the brains of an infant rather than quit this deed before it's done." There's a very strange suggestion that, you know, Lady Macbeth sees herself as witch-like, sees herself as in some way supernatural, outside nature.
She can't live up to that aspiration, but it's she who, as it were, starts the engine of Macbeth's ambition to turn it into something efficient, which he is hanging back from quite committing himself to. What's interesting about their relationship is the progression of it, the kind of exchange it undergoes as the play advances. Because already in Act 3, that's the dinner scene, where Macbeth is quite haunted and is acting so much so that guests wonder what's up. They begin to be suspicious about something strange going on in this but already in [clears throat] that scene, Macbeth is comforting Lady Macbeth, no longer having to be roused by her as he eventually is to commit the murder.
And when she tells him to put on a good face, gentle your looks, he says to her, "Full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife." But he's not going to tell her exactly what's up. "Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck, till thou applaud the deed." One of the I can only call it Shakespearean touches all through this play is what a good team they are, how well suited as husband and wife. I won't say loving, that almost seems a, you know, a larceny against the word love, but they're very compatible.
Let's just say they like each other a lot and they're suited to each other and they care about each other in a way that they're not capable of caring about anyone else.
Macbeth continues the self-deception that a deed committed right here, right now can stop right here, right now. He knows that this is a deception. He says as much when he speaks the line "To know my deed, 'twere best not know" As if you could separate your personal agency from the things you do. That's the fantasy nursed by Macbeth, and I want to suggest it's also a fantasy common to all ambition.
Ambition in that sense, in that hard sense, is something as if outside you that takes you over, that makes the person no longer able to care about right and wrong. No longer part of nature, to use the word that Lady Macbeth has used. That idea of being here, where there is the be-all and the end-all, the fantasy of jumping the life to come, persists throughout the play. And I want to point out that in one of the speeches of Shakespeare that people most like to memorize, every bit as much as Hamlet's "to be or not to be," we're not getting a piece of, you know, more than ordinary human wisdom, but a typical evasion by Macbeth when he speaks the speech I'll now remind you of cuz you all know it.
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"She should have died hereafter. There would have been a time for such a word." Notice his words here and there, trying to locate the deed in one place rather than have it stretch out to cover the whole meaning of your life. And that's when he goes on, "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time. And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle. Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more."
"It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and signifying nothing." And again, I'll just say, because it's bewildering and more so the more you know the play, this has been taken as an indication of profound wisdom about life, as if Shakespeare is speaking everything he knows about good and evil, love and death, through Macbeth. But it is no such thing. This is locating Lady Macbeth's death in a hereafter where she should have died, and then his revelation that to himself now life has become a tedium. It's just one thing and another and another and another.
We're all just actors on stage, and that word shadow is an Elizabethan synonym for actor, among other things. But let's call this speech nihilistic, but the nihilism belongs to Macbeth and it's an exposure of the cost of ambition. It is not Shakespeare's information about the nature of life.
I think I'll stop there. I had other things to say and a couple of other wonderful speeches that I would have recited, but let me just pose two possible topics for us to come back to in discussion. One topic is the witches. What do you make of them? Because, you know, they seem to know everything in advance. So, is a human agent even responsible in that case? And the second is children. Lady Macbeth says that she's given suck, so she's had a child. But the Macbeths don't have and there is a curious moment in a scene of Act 4 where the bad news of Macduff's whole family being slaughtered comes to him.
And he's told by Malcolm, the heir to the throne, you know, don't cover your face, just take it like a man in effect. And Macduff's answer is a very interesting answer. He has no children.
So, what is this about the idea of children as something deeply related to what's not present in Macbeth and Lady And then the dynamic, to call it that, between nature, the nature that Lady Macbeth hopes to separate herself from, and the supernatural, the supernatural element in this Scottish play. So, I'll stop there.
Thank you, David. Professor Bromwich, that was wonderful. So, in this class, we tend to be imaginative. So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to paint a scene where Dante is at the premiere of Macbeth and Shakespeare comes out at the end and everyone gives him a standing ovation. And then afterwards, Shakespeare and Dante have dinner alone together. And of course, Dante only has effusive praise for Shakespeare, the language, the poetry. But during the dinner, he raises three concerns that he'll have about the play Macbeth.
The first question he'll ask Shakespeare is, "Are you fundamentally pessimistic?" Because Dante, as we learned in this class, is a fundamentally optimistic person who believes in free will, who believes in salvation, who believes that we are ultimately the masters of our own destiny. And as you point out, Shakespeare does come from the Greek and the example, of course, is the Oedipus Rex tragedy, where Oedipus, regardless of his character, regardless of what he does, he's bound by So, that's Dante's first concern. Is Shakespeare fundamentally a pessimistic person?
Do humans have absolutely no agency and free will in this world? That's the first question. Second question is, does Shakespeare believe in God? Is he a Christian, in other words? Because as you point out, Macbeth, there's a conception of nature, but it's, as you point out, pretty nihilistic. And it seems the witches have all the power. Now, in this class, what we did discuss is Dante has particular hatred towards fortune tellers, okay? He has a place in hell for them, and he thinks that they are the cause of all misery in the world.
And it's because they reduce people's capacity to make choices. Because if you think about it, if Tiresias, if the fortune tellers didn't provide these fortunes, then Oedipus would not have had the tragedy that he had. He was forced to act in the way that he did because of these fortunes. So, is it just the gods manipulating us? Okay, that's the second question. The third question you would ask is this. How does Shakespeare feel about women in society? Because the Greeks, there are a lot of extremely evil women in their tragedies that drive a lot of action.
But if we read The Divine Comedy, and we did with The Divine Comedy, Dante is very In fact, in heaven it is Mary who's queen of heaven. It is Mary who redeems humanity, not Jesus. Okay? So, these are the three concerns that Dante would have about this play, right? First, to summarize, is Shakespeare pessimistic about human nature? Second question is, does Shakespeare believe in God? The third question is, how does Shakespeare feel about women?
Well, Lady Macbeth is a villain and yet she is quite humanized by the end. She not only says what's done cannot be undone, but she says, you know, not what are the lines? "Not all the perfume in Arabia will sweeten this my this little hand." I mean, the imagining of the harm to nature that their deed has done is actually common to Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, but she thinks she can elude it at the time she is urging him to commit the deed. And when Macbeth is hesitant, later he's more determined and the last decisive action before he goes into his duel against Macduff is to put on his armor.
I mean, that's to forget even the grief that he expresses over his death. She is showing her consciousness of being part of her deed when she tries to wash the In her sleepwalking, she's trying to wash her hands of the blood. So, they both share that awareness and they share the repression of that awareness. The not wanting to acknowledge the thought that Shakespeare lets us see nevertheless is in them. Macbeth's version of, you know, not all the perfumes of Arabia will sweeten this little hand is even more famous.
You know, "Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather the multitudinous seas incarnadine, making the green one red." I mean, this is an extraordinary speech. I mean, they're both rhetorically powerful to each other, especially she for her influence on him. But they do have of what they've done and it doesn't ever rise to the point of conscience that would stop them from doing it. So, I see Lady Macbeth as a bad person who's becoming something worse than that, but she begins only as a rather conventional person who hasn't yet had her chance.
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She's no great indication of Shakespeare's attitude towards women in general. You can look at the character of Cordelia in King Lear, of Desdemona in Othello, and a good many women in the comedies if you want an idea of just how naturalistic a feminist Shakespeare was capable of being. I'm going backwards in your three questions, but about fortune and that brings us to the role of the I think Shakespeare there, too, is being naturalistic by his lights. That is to say, observing what people in society are like, and this is a Scottish society.
There is a prevalent belief that witches exist and operate in the world in Scotland even at the time Shakespeare wrote. The witch burnings are into the 17th century. So, you know, the belief that witches operate is real. What credit does Shakespeare give to it? I think he treats it as something people and Macbeth most of all. But not all people believe it in the same way. He is listening to the predictions that they in company with Banquo, and Banquo says something like "look how our partner's rapt."
Macbeth is so struck by what they're saying, and you can use the other meaning of the word, sorry, the other spelling. It's a different word. He's wrapped up in he can't tear himself away from what they have brought to mind. This murderous thought that smothers functions and surmises. So, Macbeth is a believer. He was, you know, apt prey for the witches. But, you know, treat the witches in that regard as something like a statistical prediction of, you know, what the likelihood is of living another 10 years.
I get this from statistics. The doctors, you know, from reputable medical journals tell me that my genes are such that it doesn't much matter what I do. I have a very good chance to live 10 years on. So, I go on a rampage of all sorts of dangerous things because I think, you know, the doctors have predicted that that's the way it's going to be for me. I think that kind of I'm going to call it superstition, but it's just obedience to ideas about the future has been common in human nature forever and Shakespeare's using it.
I also, just from having visited Wales and certain parts of Scotland where the mists are on, at twilight time it becomes easier to believe in things that are a little beyond nature. About his pessimism, again, I'd only go back to what I said in response, or rather in interpreting that "tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow." Shakespeare is acquainted with nihilism and with the Machiavellian version of nihilism in the character of Edmund, for example, in King Lear. But I think he sees it just as one of the human occurrences.
These people exist, therefore he is going to portray Unlike Dante, as far as I know Dante and my knowledge of it is nowhere near as good as what this class probably has by now. Shakespeare is not going to comment on the things he sees in human nature, in human nature and He shows you good and he shows you evil. He usually makes it possible for you to see how good could triumph over evil. But the judgments come from the characters, not from the author. And maybe that difference is also partly owing to the difference between dramatic form and the kind of epic poem that Dante's writing.
Just a last point, it's just a point of information. Shakespeare didn't know the Greek tragedians and he probably didn't know Aristotle, though he would have had rumors about Aristotle. So.
So, again, Dante and Shakespeare are having and now that Shakespeare has responded Dante hears all this and he only feels a sense of horror at these ideas that are being articulated. And he has to ask this question. Shakespeare, do you believe in God? And if so, what is God?
Well, this play has been called by many commentators, you know, orthodox Christian of its time in the beliefs that it reflects. That is to say, when you rend nature, when you do something that tears the fabric of nature and pulls yourself away from it, that is an offense against God, and nature may be from the Dante point of view too weak a word for what you're I, you know, again, I'm going to come back maybe very inadequately or unsatisfactorily with my secular view of Shakespeare, which is that he takes seriously the things that people take seriously and belief in God is inevitable.
What the theology is behind it exactly, you know, depends on the occasion of the play he's going to write at a given moment. If you look at King Lear, I think there the pressure is on any belief in something beyond the human realm that could save human life. In Macbeth, I think the idea of a restoration of an order of things which God supervenes in it is stronger by the end. It's strong because of the nature that Macduff feels is in him and what Macduff's family must be to him.
I mean, we're made to feel the absence of children in Macbeth and Lady Macbeth only by the planting of Macduff as a counter character in that strange moment when he is told of the death of his whole family. So, it's a terrible play. It's a frightening play. It does not give you any image, clear image of the good, but I think it makes you able to think about why it is that someone like Macbeth doesn't survive.
Okay. So, I'm going to ask one more question and then we'll open it to the students. But in Divine Comedy, there are lots of prayers. Either Dante is making a prayer, an invocation by himself, or maybe someone else in Divine Comedy is making a prayer. And for Dante, that's very important because when you make a prayer to God, you are also speaking widely to the In Shakespeare and all his 37, 39 plays, does anyone make a prayer? That's the first question. And the second question is, if not, if the soliloquy is just you're just talking to yourself, what exactly is the point of that?
Well, there is a prayer I can think of right off and I'll just use it as another situation and that is the uncle of Hamlet, who has murdered Hamlet's father, is overheard by the audience, not by praying but confessing his sin. That's the only moment in the play where we know for sure that the ghost was right in what he said about the matter of his death. He prays for forgiveness, I suppose, and he confesses, too, that his prayers aren't going up to heaven, but sinking down to earth and then sinking himself into hell.
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So, there is a prayer. It's just used in the play. It's a prayer for forgiveness by a bad man, which is not granted. It's the kind of little moment you do get in the Inferno, I think, but it's made a passing moment in the play.
It bears on ambition, too. Ambition knows what it is, even though it's something that blocks And a curious fact about that speech, when Abraham Lincoln, who knew Shakespeare pretty well, wrote a letter to the author of a book on Shakespeare and said some interesting things about several of the plays, Macbeth was his favorite, by the way, and Lincoln knew that he, Lincoln, was ambitious, confessed it in an interesting notebook entry to himself and in other places less openly. I thought ambition was dangerous, but that his ambition is probably what allowed him to become president and to lead the campaign against slavery.
It had to be somebody who had a great idea of his own
So sorry When he says this is his favorite speech, the word he would have for this is not ambition, but hope.
All I was going to say is Lincoln says that's his favorite speech in Shakespeare. That speech by Claudius and it's just a passing thing, but it's a confession of just how damned he feels by what his ambition led him to do. So make of that what you will, but there's a prayer in Okay, thank you.
Okay, so we're going to open the floor to questions. Are there any questions for Professor Bromwich?
Is there a specific moment in Shakespeare's life that you think unlocked his imagination and could have shaped his view of the world?
No, but I tend to be skeptical of such singular moments. I know that Dante is an exception to that and that other artists are too and some of them say so. But Shakespeare gradually became the greatest playwright in English. I don't think from his very first plays you could say that he pulled away from the very, you know, impressive crowd of competitors that he was surrounded by, including Marlowe, including Ford at a later stage and so on. No, I think it was his knowledge of people, his knowledge of the court at a tangent, his knowledge of some aristocrats, his knowledge of people who had fought in battles, his knowledge of people in the theater who themselves are a diverse lot.
They're not isolated and not living in what we now call a bubble. So, he was worldly, but especially with regard to London and the work he did, you know, as somebody who helped to run a theater Sorry, so to expand the question, in this class we speculate on weird things, right?
So, we discuss is it possible that Dante had access to psychedelics? Is it possible he had visions? Was he an avid dreamer? Did he have a near-death experience? And is there any scholarship on Shakespeare and how he was able to achieve his visions?
Well, there's lots and there's this new movie called what is it? Hamnet? I mean about the, you know, the unhappy pregnancy of his wife and how much that mattered to him and how much that mattered to her. There are lots of stories like this. I think Shakespeare is an unusually hard case for making much of his life. That's actually one of the things that I think bewilder people about him. He doesn't seem exceptional. And there's that same quality about Mozart, but at least Mozart has one exceptional thing.
He seems able to have composed great pieces at the age of six or seven. That you can't say about Shakespeare. But, you know, there's not a story of the germinal incident or the terrible near-death experience or trauma that I think lies behind, you know, all the interesting productions that we have the highest respect for. I was saying earlier, before we started this officially, that I'm teaching a course on Melville next term. And I think you can say about Herman Melville that his years at sea were the thing that mattered to him much more than his much longer period on land.
That's clear. But, you know, can you trace to one point what made him write Moby Dick? I'm not able to do that.
Okay. Great. Question back there?
If Dante was directing Macbeth in the scene where Macbeth does the speech, "Is this a dagger that I see before me?" do you think Dante would instruct the stage production to have a dagger appear on the stage or continue to leave it in the imagination of the audience as is common?
Dante might let you have, I mean, Dante is a serious Catholic. Catholics are not against idolatry from objects. I think he might well have put the knife right there. And I think it's common but not universal to have the knife be only imagined by Macbeth. That's another interesting moment of acting as if he is led on by forces outside himself as ambition does for you. Because he says to the dagger, "Thou marshal'st me the way that I was going." Which confesses that he was going to do it anyway, but the hallucination helps him.
And, you know, he embarks on the deed right after that with the words, "I go and it is done." So, you know, it's a stage prop. And it's a favorite performance piece isolated from everything else in the 19th century. But yeah, thank you for bringing that up. I mean, that's one more instance of the consistency of this portrayal that Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are always putting off onto something slightly external the impulses that drives the ambition that is in Okay, thank you for that.
Yes.
Yeah, so I'm interested in your perception of the witches. Witches, we could say they're humans, but you know, we have demons in the Divine Comedy. Are the witches possessed by demons or how do we define the witches? Why are they doing what they are doing?
So, I'll first point out the naturalistic, that is to say almost dismissal of the witches that we get from Banquo in lines that run something like "The earth hath bubbles as the water has. These are of them." So, there are, you know, almost as if he's a professor of physics, there is Banquo, the ordinary, you know, not overambitious warrior alongside Macbeth, just saying, "This is all very strange, but maybe it doesn't mean much of anything." And that's a fascinating proposition, isn't it?
William James, great American philosopher, who was interested in psychic phenomena and was the head of the society in Britain that studied that at one point. After years and years of studying it, said he came to believe that there were ghosts, that there was another world, that it existed. But the disappointment from his many years of conversing with the things on the other side was they didn't have very interesting things to say. They were like gossiping about the housekeeper in the basement and ordinary dreary stuff like that.
So, similar to William James in this case, there is Banquo saying, "The earth hath bubbles as the water has. Perhaps these are of them." Macbeth brings something of himself into the way that he is haunted. And it's a portrait of him that the nature of that haunting gives us more than anything sure about the witches. But as I say, my own I think true doctrine on the witches is people believed in them. And believed in them and it was right to put them there because if you believe in something strongly enough, you will probably experience it.
You will even experience your own self-righteousness if you believe in it strongly enough.
Great question. Okay, any more? Yes.
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I wonder if Shakespeare is naturalistic in his nature or is he just adopting a naturalism view when he's writing his plays? For example, do the sonnets reflect more about what he really believed than his plays do?
The sonnets are written a good deal before, they're written around the same, a little bit about the same time as Romeo and Juliet, a little after, towards [clears throat] the time he's writing Hamlet. Macbeth comes a few years later. And in a way is much plainer in style than the sonnets, as sonnets are of course an ornate form compared to what Shakespeare does with drama.
The sonnets tell you some things about, and this takes us back to my dodging the biographical premise, but I'll say this much. He was interested in the lives, the posture, the different quality of experience that he found among And the aristocrat Southampton that he is dealing with in some of the sonnets made a deep impression on him. And at the same time he was wary of how much these people had at stake about the deception and self-deception that it could put them on to.
And to a great degree about their ability to manipulate others just through the status and sometimes stature that they held. So, I mean, the sonnets tell you something about his attitude toward aristocrats, which is careful and admiring and wary. It also tells you something about Shakespeare's, what to say, erotic intensity. He was capable of very strong feelings towards a woman including deep physical and other kinds of attachment, and also including suspicion, jealousy. So, you know, the sonnets are a personal statement to some extent and yet they're written from within, you know, a genre post-Petrarch that is already setting the terms of much of what Shakespeare says.
Any more questions? Yes. Would you view Dante's creation of a universal kind of an articulation of capital T truth or would you view it more as a longing for moral certainty?
How would you compare You're asking?
You're asking how I see Dante?
Yeah, Dante the author, Dante the poet. And then how would you compare Shakespeare in that?
Dante had, I've just been reading the chapter on the structure of the Divine Comedy to prepare for questions I thought I might get from Jiang. You know, Erich Auerbach's book Dante: Poet of the Secular World. And I think Dante gives form to the world and form to moral and, you know, what to say, any thought about nature you might have being shaped by larger surrounding, circumscribing understandings that are religious, that are essentially religious. And what he's doing in the Divine Comedy seems completely different from the sort of thing Shakespeare's doing in his plays.
I don't see any unity that you can add up from the three dozen odd plays that Shakespeare wrote, but in the case of the Divine Comedy, the unity is obviously there and a single-minded vision is there. So, they're just up to different things. T.S. Eliot said, you know, Dante and Shakespeare divide the world between them, there is no third.
We had a question, back Yeah, so can you expand a bit on Shakespeare's perception of fate?
So, did you catch the question?
Yeah, I did. Expand a little on Shakespeare's conception of fate. I may be confusing his views with mine, so please allow for that. I feel that I've learned a lot from Shakespeare and can't be sure where some thoughts come from, but I think he believed that there is a moral order in the world. This comes out in King Lear, which is the most despairing of his plays in some ways, and yet, what you see in it is that evil is not one undifferentiated thing.
There are people who are made worse by the other people around them or by incidents that happen in their lives. And the, what to say, assurance or clarity that Shakespeare seems to have from outside this all is that I'm going to use a very kind of slang expression for it. What goes around comes around. That there is order in that sense. That the people who do wrong in some sense know exactly what they are doing. And that others know. And that the fact that this can be known and shown gives order to the world in itself.
So, let me put it a simpler way. He believes in the Sorry, that's too strong. He believes in the strengthening power of truth. And that truth comes out because to all human actions there are human witnesses. And people want to know. They want to know truly. And people are interested in the good, and prone to despair when they find nothing but the absence of the good.
Over here.
It's kind of combining Professor Jones' question about Shakespeare's view on women, which is something that's also very perplexing to me about Shakespeare. That half of his female characters are either bad, like witches or Lady Macbeth. And then on the other side you find Portia in The Merchant of Venice, the, you know, very wise lawyer, and then also Ophelia, who drowned herself in despair, who's loving and all that. And then there's Taming of the Shrew where with Katrina, I think, Kat. And I can't reconcile. Yeah, how are we supposed to look at Taming of the Shrew?
It's like the biggest issue in my life. I was like, I can't accept. But Really?
Oh, no.
Yeah.
It's not such a great play. It's not full of wisdom. It's done to a theme, you know, details of it show Shakespeare's greatness, but I don't think the plot or the characters make you think in the way that his truly greatest plays do. But you're mentioning all these women. What about Rosalind in As You Like It?
Yeah.
She's completely commanding. What about Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra? She's the most interesting character in the play and I think you could say not only does Antony die in worship of her, but Shakespeare kind of worships her, too.
So, I mean, there's great variety in his portrayals of women. And you're right, you know, there are those bad ones, but they're part of the Okay, so we're running out of time, okay?
So, it's 10:00 and it's very late where Professor Bromwich is. So, Professor Bromwich, before we conclude, do you have any questions for us as a group? Maybe a question for the students I would like to know, and I say this as someone just, let's say, barely conversant with Dante, and having been reading it more than I have done lately in the last few days just to prepare for this encounter with you.
So, let me ask you, what kind of satisfaction do you have from reading Dante that seems quite special and absent, for example, in a less overtly religious writer like Shakespeare?
Well, okay. So, guys, that's a question for you guys. What is unique about Dante? Okay, back there?
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Oh, yeah. I think Dante's works is really making me feel impressive because before Dante, I just feel confused about money, about power, about AI, about technology, and all of these things I think come from the human mind. But after Dante, I know that all of these things maybe just the thing, this kind of original thing. And even though you can say that AI is kind of technology, but it doesn't mean that it really doesn't let people to be controlled, right? So, even money, which we think is quite needed, but we have to admit that money surely can let people to be like slaves, you know, to be enslaved people's mind.
So, maybe Dante is really making people recall what we've been through about history. What is history and keep telling us about truth.
Okay, thank you. Yes?
I just find it quite reassuring. I don't think Shakespeare would ever let any of his kings or queens end up in purgatory languishing in the sweet-scented valley. And it's a nice thought that Dante allows even people who have great power a little bit of leeway as long as they have a good heart, but I've never read it in Shakespeare.
Okay. Yes?
I think I'm sorry. I think maybe it provides a moral framework to work off of, especially if you're religious in the first case, and also, whether you agree with, for example, how he puts some people in hell and some people in purgatory and some people in paradise that maybe you don't agree with, it's still I think a good, very reassuring moral framework and you can really start working off of that to get your own moral framework and it's just really reassuring to, you know, feel also I guess you said that Shakespeare also has a similar thought of faith is that bad people that do bad things have a bad ending and good people that do good things have a good ending and I think that's a reassuring moral framework to have even if you're not Thank you.
I feel like the difference is that Dante is more certain in his judgments, like his works are very certain and he gives people, Cal was saying this, reassuring moral certainty, but as you said I feel like Shakespeare more or less just observes people and then tries to show them for how humans act and so in that way he is giving his readers less certainty.
So I have There's less certainty for sure.
Yeah, I have read Shakespeare for AP Language and AP Literature and memorized most of the quotes that you mentioned as, you know, a high schooler and I loved it. But after reading Dante I feel like he's the ultimate synthesis of a lot of theology that I have encountered because I also went to Bible school and every day we have to, you know, reconcile paradoxes and stuff and I feel like Dante is one of those that kind of answers a lot of my questions that Shakespeare may not. I feel like Shakespeare is like, this is the world, let me present it on a stage for you to see what life is.
But Dante is like, well, this is Earth but there's more beyond Earth. There's heaven and hell and, you know, all these things that you need to be aware of and why there should be retribution for the wrongs. So, I feel like, yeah, Shakespeare's more like a matter of fact of what it is and Dante's more like this is the interpretation or the, you know, outside of the cave vision. Yeah.
Okay. Any more? Any more? Yes.
I actually think you need both because in reading, of course, to me, yeah, what everybody has been saying is true. But I'm not a Shakespeare scholar. I haven't studied Shakespeare in detail before, but I think that observational approach that Shakespeare has actually might complement whatever we've been learning so far in the Dantean framework because if you're able to put yourself in the shoes of another person and evaluate this moral framework, you might be able to find answers that are more pertinent to modernity, what we're facing now.
Thank you. How about you, Carol?
Well, I would just say that this conversation across time and space and generations and eras has been enormously enlightening. In this workshop, we've been talking about the channeling of the author's mind and world and architecture implanting it into ourselves as we become a reader and a deep reader. And, you know, at our age, it's not something that we do that often usually in the mundane vicissitudes of life. So, I think, and you also see that in the audience, we have people of different walks of life, different places and all of that.
And it's just been enormously enriching. You know, not dissimilar from what it would be like on the Yale campus in a seminar or class with you. And so, I mean, actually, I want to follow up with an invitation for you to come over in person, perhaps, next And bring us through some deep readings, as well. I think we would really welcome that.
I would love to and I hope it's possible. If I can only make This will be my one comment on Shakespeare and Dante. That if you think about ambition as a Not ambition as an unnecessary desire to perform but ambition as a vice, as a vice that takes someone over.
Shakespeare gives you a story. A whole story. And the story is deepened by the way characters rub up against each other, the friction of characters. That's the difference between drama and an epic poem, that Dante can give you ambition and there'll be background incidents, very shorthand, about why these characters are guilty of it and what their punishment is in hell. But they're just very different ways of coming at it and the rewards are accordingly, I think, different and both very great.
And we definitely hope to see you in And maybe we can have a seminar on Shakespeare and Dante together. And we can have a conversation between the poles of the two of the whole world, That sounds like a greatly tempting Thank you for the whole class and the engagement that I just saw and, you know, I was glad to stay up late for this.
Thank you so very much.
Okay. Well, that was Professor Bromwich again, he was my mentor at Yale. I took three seminars with him. And as you can see, we are very very But a lot of it is because when I was at Yale, I tried very hard to emulate him. I learned a lot about teaching from him. He was basically my No, no, no, no, no. He was not my virtual No, no, no, no. That's a trap. That's a trap question. No, but it shows you what the learning process is. You first want to emulate and then once you emulate, you can then become your own person.
Okay? So that's what I'm trying to do in this class. So it seems as though I'm trying to force ideas down your throat, but it's really just to help you provide a framework for you to understand Dante so that you can develop your own interpretation. Okay? But as you can see, even though he was my mentor at Yale and we're still very good friends, he and I see the world very differently. And I think that's a very positive thing. So any questions or comments or concerns from last class that you want to address before we continue Purgatory?
Yeah, so yesterday we concluded hell, right? Or was it the day before? No, I think the day before, but I thought, because we discussed, you know, I would say that this is Virgil's conception of hell and not really Dante's. Then what would Dante's conception look like? And how far would he then agree with Virgil's conception?
Yeah, that's a really great question. And it's something that I thought a lot about yesterday as well. Because we went a bit extreme yesterday. And maybe we said a lot of things that were actually not appropriate. For example, we speculated as to if Virgil was in fact Lucifer. If in fact he was master of hell and why that's the case. We also said, well, maybe what happened was that Virgil was the one who was being tortured by Lucifer and then he made a deal with and then he got out of it, okay?
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That's a bit extreme. And it's great to imagine, but it's also important to reflect and see how true our imaginings are. And in that instance where Beatrice cuts a deal with Virgil, that would never happen in Dante's conception of the universe. Why Do you guys know why not? And it's really important. Yes?
Cuz then it doesn't really make sense cuz your punishment would change and so it breaks the whole thing about Inferno where you're supposed to be punished for a certain act. Yes. And so why would you move That's right.
That's right. Yes?
And it's almost like Beatrice has the right to kind of do pacts, almost like she's got Yeah.
But that is important, okay? In Dante's world, God is not transactional. Maybe in our world, maybe in the Catholic Church, but God himself is not transactional. He would never make a deal. That's what the devil does, okay? All right, so you are judged for what you do and what you believe, not because you have a deal, an offer you can make to God, okay? So it's really important we clarify this. Beatrice would not have the power to make a deal with Virgil, and quite honestly, it wouldn't have happened, okay?
So this then leads to the question, what then is going And I think what Dante wants to say is that everything in the universe is a co-creation process, okay? It's very important because I think in Shakespeare what would happen is that God creates the universe. He's like the master, and then we just live in it. Whereas for Dante, no, we all participate in the co-creation process. So hell, there are some aspects of God in it, but there are also aspects of our imagination in it. And poets, because they have the most vibrant imagination, they can have the most impact in the co-creation process, okay?
So it's not as simple as saying, who created hell? Was it Virgil? Was it God? I would say that first of all, it's a co-creation process, but what's much more challenging to understand is that it's an evolving process. Right? So hell itself evolves, where Jesus can come and take out people from limbo, and then there'll be a sundering of hell, so it changes the physical landscape. Right? And then Virgil can walk around it and interact with people and change the dynamic of All right?
So, that's something that's really important for us to appreciate about Dante. Maybe for Shakespeare things are much more static, but for Dante things are much more dynamic. Okay, it's a co-creation process that's constantly evolving. So, with each reading of Inferno, Inferno itself changes, if that makes sense. Okay? When you read Inferno, the way you perceive Inferno changes, and your perception of Inferno changes Inferno. Yes?
I remember yesterday when we read about when someone does a really bad sin, their soul is immediately taken down. That's right. I just want to work out a bit of a problem I have where in Macbeth, the fact that towards the end of the play, Lady Macbeth and Macbeth go kind of crazy, and there's a flicker of conscience in them. How do I reconcile that? Because their soul would have already been taken in Dante's conception. So, is that Shakespeare saying that even if your soul is taken, your body could emulate conscience in a way, even though you're irredeemable?
Okay. That's a really interesting question. And this is how I would reconcile this, okay? I would say that what's really important to understand is that your soul exists in infinite dimensions. So, your soul exists in hell, purgatory, and heaven at the same time. And depending on your action, your soul emphasizes different parts differently.
It's not as clear as, "Okay, you do one bad thing and in an instant your soul is transported to hell and a demon comes in and you're just a demon." I think it's much more complicated. I think now there's a theme aspect to you.
Okay, does that make sense? Yeah, yes?
Yeah, just like the guy who died next to Jesus because he deserved to be crucified to show that he's probably really bad. But right before, seconds before he died, he said to Jesus, I repent and then Jesus was like, "Okay, heaven welcomes you." So then there is this aspect of redemption at the end of a very evil person's life. Otherwise, all these last-ending repentance, right? Asking the priest to come to your house and forgive you. Ask what has happened to Oscar Wilde. Actually, right? He has to live with the life of Dorian Gray till the last end, right?
Literally the day before he died he converted to Catholicism all of a sudden, which he was the most antichrist person, right, in his age. But, you know, so then we can safely assume that Oscar Wilde is somewhere in purgatory. If we pray for him, maybe he will speed up to heaven, right? So there is this Yeah, so it's really interesting because what Dante is referring to is the unity of the universe, of the cosmos, right?
So not only do you exist amongst different dimensions, but you're also connected to everyone else. Okay? If that makes sense. Right? Does that answer your question?
So I mean, but it was still Virgil who kind of started off hell when he wrote the Aeneid or was hell, because in the Roman or Greek religious views there isn't really a conception of hell. So before Virgil there wasn't hell basically or Okay, so first of all, there was a conception. It was called the underworld. All right? Right? So if you read the Aeneid, Aeneas journeys to the underworld and he meets the shades, right? Dido is there. They're all shades. So, Virgil So, Dante's drawing from that, that in the underworld you're all just shades.
That's point one. Point two is that if the fundamental law of the universe is free will, that means these places are constantly changing over time. So, maybe before Christianity this was a pagan hell, pagan underworld. With the rise of Christianity, then we added Christian elements to it for a collective imagination. So, the nature of hell changes over time as the consciousness of humanity changes over time. Okay, does that make sense?
Because I thought of this question probably as well because you said in an interview, I think, once that you yourself don't believe in hell. Really?
Yeah. What I believe is that we exist in infinite dimensions. You can describe some of these dimensions as hellish, right? They're just low dimensions, where your lowest emotions are based or are stored. Right? So, what I mean by that is when people refer to hell, they mean eternal damnation. Right? When you go to hell, you're there forever. You can't escape hell. And I think what Dante is saying is, "No, there's no such thing as eternal damnation. You can choose eternal damnation, but it's your choice.
So, if you make the effort, you can leave hell." And there's something that we will learn in purgatory, okay? Because what Virgil is saying is that you can never leave hell. "You are not a Christian, and so you must be in limbo, okay?" So, there's an absolute sense to Virgil, whereas for Dante, there's nothing absolute in the Right? Everything is evolving, everything is changing, it's dynamic depending on how you feel, yes?
Everything's organic.
Yes, right? So, the difference between heaven and hell is hell is mechanical, whereas heaven is organic. Okay? Does that make sense to you or?
Maybe, well, one thing also that springs to my mind is people who only read, for example, the Aeneid only know that you don't have a choice to get out of hell, so if you die without ever reading the Divine Comedy, then it's kind of difficult to get out of hell for you.
That's right, and that's why Dante had to write Divine Comedy to give hope to the world. And this system we'll discuss actually as we go on in Purgatory, because again, Virgil is absolute here, right? Yes?
I think it's also where you would put yourself. It's not like God created hell and then he just chooses, it's like we said also yesterday that the difference between Inferno and Purgatory was the attitude, growth mindset, and so it would change, if your attitude would change, then your place would change and you would transcend in these dimensions.
That's right. That's right. And that's why for Dante, the hope of the world is poetry, right? Because okay, you bring in a new emperor and he conquers the world and he establishes peace for 20 years. Well, you're back to the same situation after he dies, right? So, what you need to do is expand the human consciousness through poetry. And that's why, you know, he feels he needs to respond to Virgil. Okay? He's not trying to cancel Virgil, he's trying to respond to Virgil and add to Virgil to give people hope.
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Okay? Does that make sense? All right, so any more questions? Yes?
Yeah, maybe to build off that. I'm reading Bart Ehrman's Journeys Through Heaven and Hell.
And essentially what they do is they talk about every single story that's ever written that's like Dante's. Like, "Hey, I went down to hell and I walked around and stuff," and it's almost like how I read the Inferno back in high school where it's like, "Ooh, there's lots of punishments and stuff like this." And all these stories were created because they're looking for a way to control people in real life. The elites are like, enjoy your poverty because you're going to have eternal blessings.
If you get out of line, if you do any revolts, then these are the bad things that are going to happen to you. Dante is revolutionary because he was able to take Aquinas and Augustine and actually make a philosophy behind all of this and tie it up with a theology so that we can have these amazing conversations that we're having.
Exactly. That's exactly right. Yes. So, as we move from Inferno to Purgatory and Heaven, it seems as this linear path to, you know, things get better, there's more hope. But what confuses me a bit is that Purgatory still seems fairly arduous. But before we spoke about Limbo, which is technically still in hell, and it seems right. So, this is a paradox, right? Limbo is a very pleasant retirement community.
Purgatory is arduous. Well, the difference is in emotions of people, right? In Limbo, they're sighing all the time because they've given up hope. They feel hopeless. Whereas in Purgatory, even though it's arduous, they are singing. They're excited. They're curious. Okay? Does that make sense? So, it's not about the actual place, it's about how you feel while you're there. Okay? Yes?
With my husband. I just want to lie down, lay flat and enjoy my life. And he's like, "No, you work." It's kind of the same as a retirement community versus working arduously to climb a mountain because my husband is totally into hiking. He's like, "The purpose of man is to, you know, achieve something to an end." Where I just want to live in retirement. And he's like, "Then you are less of a human if you live in a retirement community." I'm like, "Well, thank you very much." You know, to say I have no pursuit in life.
But I think it's the same idea. Yeah, that's what men ought to be.
Yes?
I don't know if this is too literal a way of looking at it, but so you've got this journey, right? Through purgatory. And if you can clean yourself of the sins, you'll finally get to heaven. Do we have any idea? I don't know if we'll see it later. Of how successful people are in actually making it all the way up.
Everyone is successful. Once you enter purgatory, you will succeed.
Right? Because you've made the choice to Okay? Yes?
So before you mentioned there's some people who've done bad deeds that, too bad, they're in annihilation. They're not even in hell. Does that mean these people don't have a chance to redeem themselves?
No, no, no. They choose not to redeem themselves. So happy in hell.
No, you mentioned they're in annihilation. Annihilation.
Well, I mean, yes, they're in annihilation because they chose not to live.
So after Oh, so after their choice, they are forever Yeah, because they just chose to do nothing in life.
They just chose to sleep through life, right? How's that different from animals or plants? So does that choice is instant? Like Yeah, they don't want to exist.
It's their choice not to exist. You have that Okay.
Okay. Yes. I was trying to maybe foolishly correlate ethics to the Inferno.
And I was thinking we don't hear it explicit- Maybe we do and maybe I missed it, but we don't explicitly hear anybody say this is a punishment for rapists. That probably lost somewhere. But modern ethics would say what's the three worst things you can do is rape, murder, but then slavery. And there were a lot of people today that would say slavery's worse than murder because slavery's like The slaves would happily kill themselves and stuff like this.
And it makes So, I did some research on this and Augustine would say that it's a by-product of the fall. Is that when sin entered the world then people learned to be less kind to each other and there were hierarchies involved and then slaves were involved cuz even in Dante's time slavery's less and we're moving into feudalism, but it's not gone and it's just an economic reality.
Yeah, you make a good point about slaves. In The Divine Comedy, there are no slaves. Okay? And there's a very good reason why. Because in this world you choose to be a slave because you'd rather forfeit your life, sorry, you'd rather forfeit your freedom than your life. You give up your free will in order to protect your life. And if you think about it logically, for Dante, you can't do that because free will is God's gift to you. And you're just giving up for nothing, really. Okay? So slaves don't matter.
If you choose to be a slave, it's like I choose not to live anymore. Okay? You're basically a zombie. Yes?
But what if you didn't choose to be a slave? You were forced to be a slave.
No. That's what I'm talking about, Dante. You've always made a choice. You've always made a choice. Even if you are born a slave, you can choose to run away. If you're born a slave, you can choose to rebel. I know it sounds a bit extreme, but that's how Dante sees the world. Yes? Yes, back there?
I mean, I hate to just beat a dead horse, but what if rebelling would just mean instant death? And you know that for certain. So, that's your free will. Would you go to hell or limbo or where if Then that's called civil disobedience, right?
I bet there were I forgot one of the great philosophers where he was put to jail if he did not agree to one of the government Yeah, I think so.
Socrates, yeah.
Yeah. And then so he was stoned to death. And so All right.
Right. So, I mean, if you think death is the worst thing that can happen to you, you don't have any faith. Do you understand?
I do actually agree with you. I would just I'm just I'm saying that's what Dante would say, right?
To have faith is to believe that God gave us free choice. God wants us to live the best life possible. And if we cannot live the best life possible, then our souls are immortal and we just come back at a later point, okay? But what matters is to protect the purity of your soul. And that means to protect your free will. Okay? If you'd rather surrender your free will just so that you can live, then, you know, yes?
It's kind of like the Dragon Boat festival which you celebrated, like Tien rather die and throw himself into the river than So, there's another act of civil disobedience. We still celebrate a lot of dissent heroes, whatever we call them, right? Who die, choose to die.
Exactly. Yes.
But then are we saying it's inherently sinful to stay as a slave because you have no free will? But what if you're a slave and you're treated fairly well and you're somewhat content with how you Then is that sinful?
Yeah, I mean, what this is again is just a lack of faith. Right? It's a lack of understanding of who you are. You're here to live the best life possible. You're here to be an inspiration to others. You're here to co-create the universe. You're not here to, I don't know, just get by. Yes?
I suppose where I then go with this is then surely through Dante's lens should we all just quit our jobs because basically in modern society, right, if we're working that free will is also taken.
No, that's not what Dante would say. Dante would say trust your intuition. If your intuition is I should just quit my job and do something else, sure. Right? But it depends on your situation, it depends on your intuition. There can be no absolute rule, right? There can be no general principles. It depends on your own individual understanding of the situation and your own intuition.
Yeah, that's what I mean. So, if the slave is a slave but their intuition says it's fine, I'm looked after, then it's fine.
Yeah, if you feel you're being a slave, then you should quit your job. Okay? [laughter] Yes? Yes, yes.
Yeah, I was wondering if you can just maybe give us some diagram about the Dante's because I think Dante makes a diagram which is we can put our people into the diagram. For example, some hero in China or some hero like Hamlet, right? So, I don't know if Hamlet is on one hand and just trying to revenge, right? But he also tries to make justice for his father. So, what do you think about Hamlet, for example? Do you think he would be in the dentist limbo ward in the Yeah, in the paradise?
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In the Well, I mean, no, I think that Hamlet would be in paradise, because first of all, Hamlet is a poet, and second of all, he chose to live a righteous life.
Right?
I'm sorry, he wouldn't be in heaven because he did kill Claudius, right? So, he'd be in purgatory, but I mean, he wouldn't be there for long. Okay? He would have to repent and redeem himself of his sin, but I mean, I don't want to go into Hamlet because it's a very complicated situation, but if you actually understand the plot of Hamlet, it was not vengeance. It was not murder. It was justice. The reason why is that first, Hamlet conducted an investigation to confirm the guilt of Claudius, and then there was a trial, okay?
If you remember the plot of Hamlet, there's a trial, an open trial, where everyone could see the guilt of Claudius, okay? And so, for Hamlet, what happened is he was ordered to avenge his father, and he delayed the process, but it's because he wanted to turn the act of vengeance into an act of justice, okay? And again, I don't want to get too much into Hamlet. It's a very complicated play, okay?
Would be in the first circle of heaven because they are just content with their life, and they abandon free will. For me, this just makes sense to put them here.
Not in heaven. They're not in heaven.
But you know, we saw the first circle of heaven, it was people who just gave up free will, so it was nuns who married some guy and just accepted their Right.
So that's So the moon, which is about the moon, Piccarda didn't give up her free will. She made a vow to God. Okay? And then she was violently forced out of the vow by her brother.
You're right.
Okay. So that's not slavery. Yes?
Is this sort of philosophy that you'd better give up your life than your free will? Why Cato is in purgatory instead of in hell? Because I remember you said that he killed himself so as to not be one of Caesar's You're right.
And that's why he's in purgatory. Okay. Was that a question? That's right. Yes. Exactly. Okay. Yes?
I'm obviously not an expert on slaves or history but from the limited knowledge that I know, slaves, oftentimes slave owners would really terrorize their slaves, every single week there would be public bashings to really instill fear into the slaves to ensure that they don't run away. So the slaves in turn learned, okay, I can't run away, but they still had acts of rebellion. For example, a lot of times you would have slaves, you know, poisoning their masters' drinks. You would have them spitting in their food.
You would have them just doing these rebellious acts. So in this case they are still rebelling but it's just the constraints of society and their lives Know your history because it's completely wrong.
That's not how slaves I don't know where you're getting this information. Slaves poison their masters and spit in their Where are you getting this information from?
Okay, so let's think about how slavery happens, okay? In ancient times, we had slaves because my army would go conquer your and then I give you a choice. You either die or you become slaves, right? And it's your choice. And so when you become a slave, it means that you are now my property. You forfeit your humanity, you forfeit your free will. You are now my property. And because it's your free will to make this choice, you no longer can resist. Do you Okay? That's where slavery comes from.
So slavery is people who choose to become slaves rather than to yes? I'm not saying I disagree, but the question here is you are essentially, if you go to hell, you're punishing people for their own individuality and their own choice, but I feel like you're kind of disregarding the influence of society on them. Shouldn't you be criticizing society for having slaves and limiting their freedom and not allowing them to exercise their free will rather than criticizing the slaves for not having faith enough to exercise their free will?
Yes?
Well, I forgot who said it, but men are born free, but everywhere he goes he's in chains. Virgil, was it? Voltaire, yeah. And so in your case of slavery, I think you refer to North American black African-Americans, right? So they are born into slavery and there's no, you know, choice, you know, because they are beaten like Uncle Tom, right? But I didn't Well, don't try to say that it's every one of us who are born into this world. We are born women who are inferior by society's judgment usually, but you know, compared to men.
They are black people who are born of, you know, with black skin. There are people who are born into slavery. They are all kinds of people who are born into, you know, DNA deficit where you are, you know, shorter or you live shorter, you get cancer, you know? So, all of us are born free, but we live in chains. So, you can always make your, you know, choice to live a better life like Mother Moses who got away. Like we heard a lot about the Underground Railroad where a lot of these people tried to run away, you know?
And yeah.
Yeah, back there. I just want to say two things. Number one, it was Rousseau, not Voltaire, who said that. Yes, that's correct. Yeah. So, Voltaire, yes. And number two, just in reference to your point about the slaves spitting in the food and poisoning the master's drink, spitting in the food is one thing. Poisoning the master's drink would be a true act of rebellion trying to reclaim your free will, but it would just be very difficult for a slave to acquire poison without money. And these things are you exercising your free will, but you are not reclaiming your full free will.
You have to break free 100%.
Okay. So, you guys are working on the assumption that slaves aren't happy. Okay? You're thinking to yourself that slaves really want freedom, and it's just like they're being beaten every day, so they can't have this freedom. That's not how it works, okay? If you read these Iron Curtain dissidents like Vaclav Havel and after showing this then, they see the same thing about life under totalitarian regimes, which is it's all just a facade. It's all just theater. And we're all just actors on the stage. And what is shocking to them is everyone chooses to participate in this facade.
They just say, "It's all just a lie." Right? It's like in the moment people are like, "You know what? Screw this." The system collapses, which is exactly what happened to the Berlin Wall, in the Soviet Union, right? Just one day people are like, "I no longer want to participate in this facade." And then the system collapses. So, we're going on the assumption these slaves are being controlled by these overlords, evil overlords, but the reality is that slaves believe "I should be a slave. I want to be a slave.
I find meaning in being a slave." And for Dante, that is just outrageous.
But I mean, how could you assume that the slaves are happy about themselves in the first hand? Because I feel like generally it's at least easier for us to understand that they are not happy because of all those violence that the slaveholders kind of cast onto them. And also at the same time, if they are truly happy, isn't it in some ways reclaiming their own free will if they are happy? That's my two questions. I'm just kind of confused with Okay.
So, happy is a very strong word. They're just complacent, okay? Yes?
So, I opened this can of worms and I didn't even explain what I learned at the end of it. Bringing ethics into Dante is incorrect. Racism is unethical. There's no racist in hell. And so, Dante, the question isn't is slavery unjust or unethical? It's is the social order properly ordained toward God? And so, slavers, the people that own slaves, can end up in hell for any number of things. But slavery is just a byproduct of the fall. And so, you're not going to end up in hell for the fall.
You're going to end up in hell for violence or any number of things. They're guests in your house. So, if you kill your slave, then you would be in the bottom level of hell. That sucks in this modern world where we equate slavery as one of the worst, it just doesn't Yeah, so remember in Divine Comedy, there are no slavers, there are no slaves anywhere, okay?
It's not really an issue at this point. All right. Okay, so let's continue Divine Comedy. Okay, so this is Canto 5 now?
Part 111:40:15
All right.
Purgatory, Canto 5. "I had already left those shades behind and followed in the footsteps of my guide when there beneath me pointing at me, one shade shouted, 'See the second climber climb. The sun seems not to shine on his left side and when he walks, he walks like one alive.' When I heard these words, I turned my eyes and saw the shades astonished as they stared at me, at me and at the broken light. 'Why have you let your mind get so entwined?' My master said, 'that you have slowed your walk.
Why should you care about what's whispered here? Come, follow me and let these people talk. Stand like a sturdy tower that does not shake its summit though the winds may blast. Always the man in whom thought thrusts ahead of thought allows the goal he set to move far off. The force of one thought saps the other's force.' Could my reply be other than 'I come,' and somewhat colored by the hue that makes one sometimes merit grace? I spoke those" Okay, so let's figure out what's happening here visually, okay?
So, Dante and Virgil are walking and they're trying to get to the gate of Purgatory so they can climb the mountain of Purgatory because Beatrice is waiting for Dante, right? And as they're walking, they get spotted by lots of shades. And why are these shades interested in Because he has a shadow.
Yeah, right? Because he has a shadow. Because he's different from what they are. So, they gawk and they want to talk to him, right? And what does Dante do in He doesn't listen.
Slows his walk to kind of consider what they're doing and wondering Why is he slowing his walk?
Because he's second-guessing or not second-guessing, but just Why is he slowing his walk?
Virgil is speeding ahead and Dante is, you know, walking really slowly, walking really gingerly. But why is he doing that?
So, we've seen this quite a few times already, right? Where the souls gawk at him and say, "Hey, shadow." And then Dante just gingerly slows down. Why do we do that?
He wonders if he can help them in some way or if they can give him information about the ascent.
You're such a generous and optimistic person. No.
You're like the celebrity of Exactly.
Do you understand? Okay? It's like a movie star walks into a shopping mall and gets mobbed. Does he not know he's going to get mobbed? Right? He's going to walk into a shopping mall to get mobbed, right? And so Virgil is pissed off at Dante. Cuz it's happened quite a few times now, right? Where he's slowing down just so the shades can surround him and say, "Hey, can I have your autograph?" And so first of all, why is Dante famous?
Why is he famous?
No. No. No. What Why is he famous?
He has a body. No. Why? It's a shadow, right? He says a shadow, okay? What is this a reference to? You worship shadows. What is this a reference to?
Plato, right? Allegory of the cave. All reality is a shadow. If you worship shadows, you are in hell, right? Allegory of the cave, Plato. So, let's expand this, okay? They're in purgatory, which is the light. So, it's like Dante and Virgil have escaped the cave, They're still stuck in the cave, right? They still think shadows are real, and these shades worship Dante because he has a shadow.
What is Dante trying to say here? What's a shadow? Yeah, yes, what is a shadow? Explain the metaphor to me.
Well, it tries to imitate something But it's not Yeah.
It's two-dimensional, as well.
It's two-dimensional, yes?
It means that in the Platonic idea that a form has been instantiated, so that when light shines on it, beings can perceive it, and that it's not in the formal world anymore.
Okay. Yes. Yes.
I think it's the negative aspects of Dante that he collected in hell, so it's still like his, you know, when he was dirty and he needed to clean himself, he's still dirty of his shadow, and so it's going to be a Right.
That's right. So, shadow is an aspect left over from hell. Yes. That It's also eclipse of lights.
That's how shadow is created.
What is the shadow metaphor for? You mean?
Is it sin? Or No. Shadow is metaphor for what in this Is it lack of light?
So, it's blocking light in a way.
Yes.
Okay. The ego. What? What?
No. No. No. Come on.
Just concepts that's not God.
So in the allegory of the cave, there are people who sit at the bottom of the cave and they're in chains and they're looking at a wall and at this wall are shadows. And if you go outside the cave, there's actually people and then there's a fire. So, the shadow on the wall is the projection of the fire, of the action of people. So, I think the shadow probably means an illusion, an illusion of reality.
Right. I understand. But what is it Knowledge that you only gain from looking at it.
Absence of God.
Fame, guys. It's a metaphor for fame, right? You understand? And why is this Dante is obsessed with fame. You understand? What is he saying, that Dante is obsessed with fame? And why would this be important for us?
Well, fame as a pride is a sin.
Right. But why would this be a problem for Dante?
It would be something he needs to work on in purgatory.
Right. Right. But I'm saying, why is it a problem now?
Because it's just slowing him down.
Yes, because he's trying to get to Beatrice, right? Do you understand? This is a metaphor. Fame is what slows you down from achieving God, from achieving reunion with God. Do you understand? Okay? Now, here's a hard question. Who put this idea in his Who said Virgil? Do you remember where?
We discussed this, right? Do you guys remember? What was the exact thing Virgil had said? When did Virgil say it? What was the context? Do you guys remember we discussed this. Okay. So, they are in hell. They are in a circle of fraud, and they are climbing these boulders, right? And it's tiring for Dante, so Dante slows down, and Virgil says to him, "Hurry up for what?" Why should you hurry up? Excuse me? For fame, right? The exact phrase was everlasting Right?
And we said, "Virgil, why don't you say for Beatrice, right?" But instead, Virgil says, "For everlasting fame." Right? You guys remember this. And now, Dante's shadow has made him famous in Purgatory. Right? But the irony is that it's a shadow, therefore we know it's not And it's slowing him down. In fact, he's not actually walking anywhere, okay? He'd rather talk to the shades. He'd rather just be adored and adulated by his fans. He's not actually going anywhere.
Yes. And it also tries to then mirror what he wants actually in reality, in real life. He wants this fame, right?
And he gets the exact opposite by being exiled.
Yes. Yes.
Does that make sense? He thinks Virgil said, "You're doing this for everlasting fame." And now he's like, "Well, I have everlasting fame, so I'll just stay here." Okay? But the everlasting fame, what gives him everlasting fame is the shadow. And we know shadows are just illusions.
It doesn't make sense. And this happens a lot where Dante is slowing down because he wants the fans to come and adore him. Okay, he wants that everlasting fame.
Part 121:50:06
Where's Beatrice in his mind? It's like she's kind of gone now, right? He's like, "My choice is climb all the way up to Mount Purgatory and be with Beatrice or stay here and be adored by my fans. I'd rather be adored by my fans." All right. Does that make sense? All right.
"Meanwhile, along the slope crossing our road slightly ahead of us, people approached singing the 'Miserere' verse by verse. When they became aware that I allowed no path for rays of light to cross my body, they changed their song into a long hoarse 'Oh.'" Right.
Do you see what's happening here, right? These souls are committed to God. You see Dante is like, "This is actually more interesting than God," okay? Okay, go ahead.
"And two of them serving as messengers hurried to meet us and those two inquired, 'Please tell us something more of what you are.' My master answered them, 'You can return and carry this report to those who sent you. In truth, the body of this man is flesh. If as I think they stopped to see his shadow, that answer is sufficient. Let them welcome him graciously and that may profit them.' Never did I see kindled vapors rend clear skies at nightfall or the setting sun cleave August clouds with a rapidity that matched the time it took these two to speed above."
"And there arrived they with the others wheeled back like reins that run without a rein. 'These people pressing in on us are many. They come beseeching you,' the poet said. 'Don't stop, but listen as you move ahead.'" So, right, do you understand?
He's being mobbed by his bands now, okay? And Dante loves this. I'm going "'Oh, you who make your way to gladness with the limbs you had at birth, do stay your steps a while,' they clamored as they came, 'to see if there's any of us whom you knew that you may carry word of him beyond.
Why do you hurry on? Why don't you stop? We all were done to death by violence and we all sinned until our final hour. Then light from heaven granted understanding, so that repenting and forgiving we came forth from life at peace with God and he instilled in us the longing to see him.'" "'And I, although I scrutinize your faces, I recognize no one, but spirits born of goodness.
If there's anything within my power that might please you, then by that same peace which in the steps of such a guide I seek from world to world, I shall perform it.' And one began, 'We all have faith in your good offices without your oath, as long as lack of power does not curb your will. Thus I, who speak alone before the others, beseech you, if you ever see the land that lies between Romania and the that realm, the realm of Charles, that you be courteous to me in treating those in Fano to bestow fair prayers to purge me of my heavy sins.'" "My home was Fano, but the piercing wounds from which there poured the blood where my life lived, those I received among Antenor's son.
There, where I thought that I was most secure, for he of Este, hating me far more than justice warranted, had that deed done. But had I fled instead of toward Mira when they overtook me at Oriaco, then I should still be beyond where men draw breath. I hurried to the marsh, the mud, the reeds entangled me. I fell, and there I saw a pool poured from my veins from on the ground."
Wait, sorry. So, let's stop. I want to ask everyone a question, okay? Can you become so famous that it takes you Let's think about this, will celebrities go to Because the first commandment is you shall have no other god before me, and celebrities basically paint themselves idols.
They're literally called, unless they are, I don't know, idols that point to God. Maybe. So, then they become prophets instead of idols, like John the Baptist. But John the Baptist was also a celebrity back then, but he points to Jesus, so it's okay.
Okay. Yes?
I guess if you've got false counselors in hell, then there can be true counselors.
And so, you could be a famous true Right.
Right. Like me, right? I'm on a YouTube channel, and I'm spreading wisdom. Is this going to get me to heaven? Please say yes. I say I think so. But I think the answer is no. Is that actually going to help me get to heaven? Why not? What gets you to heaven? If you're in purgatory, what gets you up to heaven?
Yes?
Inspiring imagination. And maybe the problem with celebrities and idols is even if, say, the message is right, people will blindly follow what they say and not use their own imaginations.
Okay, sure. But again, I don't want to praise myself too much, but I feel as though with my YouTube channel, I am educating a lot of people and by teaching you I am increasing your imagination, right? So, I like to think that I would get into heaven, but probably not. So why not?
I think you'll be the same as all the great thinkers, you know, intellectual giants that we have depended on before, just like Virgil, Socrates, Aristotle, Plato.
Yeah, I probably end up in limbo. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah.
All right. Yeah.
Because the journey to heaven is still fundamentally your journey of self-improvement and self-reflection that will bring you there. You can still be a celebrity while doing it, but you need to almost turn that celebrity into something that helps yourself improve as opposed to the other way around.
So, how can I, you know, get up to heaven faster?
I think in general the journey to heaven or to purgatory or to hell really starts after a person completes his life's So, until the person completes his life's journey, there's no, you know, there's no start.
How can I, give me some personal advice, okay? Yes? Yes?
If people pray for you, then it's going to speed.
And who's going to pray for me?
We can.
Not you guys. No, not no. My family, do you understand? Okay? That's what I was saying here. This is revolutionary, right? You can be as famous as you want, you can have a trillion dollars, you can be a massive celebrity. It doesn't matter, okay? What matters is your family. What matters are your neighbors. What matters is your community because these people are going to pray for you every single day with all their heart and soul. Yeah, I mean, your fans might now and then, "Oh, you know, let's give a prayer to Professor Chow." It doesn't matter, okay?
What matters is your You have to put your heart and soul into praying for someone, and only your family would do that. Okay? So that's what Dante is saying here. Don't chase fame. Fame doesn't get you anywhere. Chase love. Chase family. Okay? Be kind to the people around you, and they will pray for you after you die. Okay? Does it make sense?
All right, let's keep on reading.
Line 85. "Another shade then said, 'So may that desire which draws you up the lofty mountain be granted, with kind pity help my longing. I was from Montefeltro. I'm Buonconte. Giovanna and the rest, they all neglect me. Therefore, among these shades I go in sadness.' And I to him, 'What violence or chance so dragged you from the field of Campaldino that we know nothing of your burial place?' 'Oh,' he replied, 'across the Casentino there runs a stream called Archiano, born in the Apennines above the hermitage. There, at the place where that stream's name is lost, I came.'" "My throat was pierced fleeing on foot and bloodying the plain.
And there it was that I lost sight and speech. And there as I finished, I had finished uttering the name of Mary, I fell. And there my flesh alone remained. I'll speak the truth. Do you among the living retell it? I was taken by God's angel, but he from hell cried, 'You from heaven, why do you deny me him? For just one tear carry off his deathless part, but I shall treat his other part in otherwise.' You were now in the air moist vapor will gather and again revert to rain as soon as it has climbed where cold unfolds."
"His evil will, which only seeks out evil conjoined with intellect and with the power his nature grants, he stirred up wind and vapor. And then when day was gone, he filled the valley from Pratomagno far as the ridge with mist. The sky above was such saturated. The dense air was converted into water, rain fell, and then the gullies had to carry whatever water earth could not receive. And when that rain was gathered into torrents, it rushed so swiftly toward the royal river that nothing could contain its The angry Archiano at its mouth had found my frozen body, and it thrust it into the Arno and set loose the cross that on my chest my arms in pain had formed."
"It rolled me on the banks and riverbed that covered girded me with this debris. Pray, after you're returning to the world when after your long journeying you've rested,' the third soul following the second said, 'may you remember me who am Lapa, Siena made Maremma made me. He who when we were wet gave me his pledge, and then as nuptial ring his gem knows that.'" So, these are souls who died in battle, okay?
And right now in history, a lot of people are dying in battle. It's basically gang warfare throughout Italy, okay? Factional fighting, just endless wars. And so, if you die in the battlefield and you repent, you're put in purgatory. But if you die violently, you don't even have a chance to repent, you're still put in purgatory and you have to wait a bit before you can move on, okay? So, again, what Dante is trying to emphasize is God is merciful and God is just.
Part 132:00:21
Okay, Canto 6.
"When dice is thrown and players separate, the loser's left alone disconsolate. Rehearsing what he'd thrown, he sadly learns all the crowd surrounds the one who won. One goes in front and one tugs at his back and at his side one asked to be remembered. He does not halt, but listens to them all and when he gives them something they desist. And so, he can and off the pressing throng. And I in that persistent pack was such, this way and that I turned my face to them and making promises escaped their clutch."
"There was the Aretine who met his death beneath Ghino de Tacco's beastly hands, and one who drowned when in pursuit he ran. There with his outstretched hands was Federigo Novello praying and the Pisan who made good Marzucco who showed his fortitude. I saw Count Orso and I saw the soul cleft from its body out of spite and envy. Not it is So it's said, because it had been guilty. I mean Pierre de la Brosse, and may the lady of Brabant, while she still moves this world, watch her ways or end among a sadder flock."
"As soon as I was free from all those shades who always pray for others' prayers for them so as to reach their blessed state more quickly, I started, 'O my light, it seems to me that in one passage you deny expressly that prayer can bend the will of heaven. Yet these people pray precisely for that end. Is their hope, therefore, only emptiness or have I not read clearly what you said?'" Okay.
So, what Dante is doing is he's listing a lot of people from his real life, okay? And it's a lot of people from his real life. We don't know who they are. But he knows who they are. Why is he doing this? Why is he listing so many people from his real life who died?
Why would he do that? Yes?
Shakespearean way, if I write you in a poem you live everlastingly. So that's one thing, to commemorate his peers and And then the other one is to console their family, for writing be like, "Hey, by the way, your son is in purgatory, you know, don't be too sad."
Yeah, that's a great point. So even though we don't know who they are, his readers will know who they are and they're consoled by the fact that their loved ones are in purgatory. And so what's the effect of that? To know that your loved one is in purgatory, yes?
Yeah, to the widows and the mothers. And the family.
Yes. And what will they do with their hope?
Pray really hard for them. Yeah.
It's making people live a life of faith, hope, and love, right? Because otherwise, they don't know where their loved ones are. They could be in hell. They could be in heaven. So, without this hope, what would they do?
What are rich people doing at this time? You guys know? That's exactly what they're doing.
Into corruption.
That's exactly what they're doing, okay? They don't know. They're uncertain. So, they're going to give huge bribes to the Catholic Church, which as you point out, feeds the corruption, which feeds an endless cycle of violence, right? So, by saying, "Don't worry. Your loved one is in purgatory. Don't bribe the church. Pray for this person." Okay? Does that make sense?
All right. Okay. Let's keep on Line 34.
"And he to me My text" Oh, sorry.
Sorry. I forgot, okay. All right. So, Dante hears and knows that if you pray for a loved one enough, this is going to reduce the loved one's time in purgatory. But we already said God is not transactional, right? He has perfect justice. You are punished for the crime you committed. If your loved ones are praying for you, why should that matter? And what Dante says to Virgil is, "Hey, in your Aeneid, okay, you said very clearly we mortals cannot at all impact the decision of the gods.
We have actually no say in this divine cosmos. So, what is it?" Okay? That's a question that Dante asked Virgil. And let's analyze Virgil's response.
Line 34. "And he to me, 'My text is plain enough, and yet their hope is not delusive if one scrutinizes it with sober wit. The peak of justice is not lowered when the fire of love accomplishes in one instant the expiation owed by all who dwell here. For where I asserted this, that prayers cannot mend their fault, I spoke of prayers without a passageway to God. But in a quandary so deep, do not conclude with me, but wait for word that she, the light between your mind and truth, will speak. Lest you misunderstand, the she I mean is Beatrice.'"
"'Upon this mountain's peak, there you shall see her smiling'" Okay, that is such a great response from Virgil, okay?
Dante is asking him, "Hey Virgil, didn't you say in your text, in the Aeneid, which is the Bible, right?
We cannot at all impact the decision of the heavens." And here in Purgatorio, we're seeing prayers are lifting people up faster to the heavens. So, what is it? And what is Virgil's response? Can you paraphrase for me what he's saying here?
It's such a great response, and it shows you so much into his character. What does he say?
Paraphrase for me his response.
When I wrote it, prayers didn't work like that.
Why not?
Because Jesus hadn't died or Mary had not given birth to him.
That's right. So, I was talking about the pagans, guys. This is Christian. You understand? That's his first response, right? Well, what I meant was the pagan world, not the Christian world. Now, and what is the second response?
To me?
Ask Beatrice.
Yeah, don't bother me, man. Go talk to Beatrice, okay? His two responses are one, well, it's different now because it's a Christian world. And two, go talk to Beatrice, okay? So, why is Virgil responding the way he is?
Again, this is different from Beatrice, right? Where Beatrice will actually tell you the answer. Yes? He really doesn't want Dante to slow And just get involved with himself.
You're such a generous, altruistic person, man.
Yes?
That authoritarian teacher is like, "Shut up and move on, okay? Don't question me. I'm your teacher." Kind of just go shoo.
If you ask someone these questions, and the answer says, "Well, it's a different world now. And also, go talk to another person." Why would you think that person has responded the way that he or she has responded?
He's just coping.
It's cope, yes, but it's also what?
Dodging the questions.
To me?
Dodging the questions.
Want to think about this. You understand? He doesn't want to think about why this is happening. Dante proposes a contradiction. He's like, "Well, actually, there's a loophole, okay?" He's like being a lawyer here. He's trying to dodge the question. He's trying to avoid the question because he himself does not want to reflect on what's really going on. Okay, he wants to maintain his worldview, right? We talked yesterday about fixed mindset versus growth mindset. He's a fixed mindset.
Let's keep on going.
And, oh, actually line 49. "And I, 'Lord, let us move ahead more quickly for now I'm less weary than before. And you can see the slope now a shadow.' 'As long as it is day, we'll make as much headway as possible,' he answered, 'but our climb won't be as rapid as you thought. You will not reach the peak before you see the sun returning. Now he hides behind the hills, he cannot interrupt his flight.'" Okay.
So, Dante says, "Lord, let us move ahead more quickly for now I'm less weary than before, and you can see the slope now cast a" Why is Dante less weary than before?
Because he's left his fans behind. But he's happy that he had fans.
Yeah, again you're so generous with Dante. No. Think, Dante is a really proud people person, yes? Yeah, that's way too generous. Why is Dante really excited now?
Part 142:10:06
But he's like, I saw all the loopholes that you make, and now I'm above you in a way, intellectually.
No. What does Dante care the most about right now?
He has to progress his journey so that he can meet more friends.
What did Dante see that makes him happy Said Dante himself.
No, no, no, no, guys, read the text. I'm asking you a question. What did Dante see? Yes?
The slope now cast a shadow.
Yes. What did he see now?
Shh. Well, people or No, guys, what's he seeing now that's like, "Wow, yes, great."
No, no, no, no, come on. What's he seeing right now? Literally.
The peak.
Literally, what's he seeing literally? He sees what? He's focused on this.
Maybe a friend. So, 61, we came to him along by No, no, no, no, no, you're jumping ahead.
I just want to focus on these three sentences, right? What's he seeing now?
That the slope is easier.
This is so hard for you guys, okay? He sees something that makes him really, really happy and excited. What is it?
Let's keep on going, okay? Let's go Huh? Yeah, you guys can't see it, right? He sees it and it makes him really, really happy.
He chooses.
Okay, let's read it again, okay? There's only so many possibilities here. And I just want something he sees here that makes him really, really happy. Yes?
The slope cast a shadow.
But what does he see?
A It's got light casting a shadow on something other than himself.
Guys, visualize this. What is he seeing right now? What's he focused on right The knot.
Line 46, 47. This
No, no, no, no, let's just focus on these three The what three lines?
Three lines.
Oh, 49 and 51. Sorry. So, can you read it again for everyone? 49 and 51.
"And I, 'Lord, let us move ahead more quickly. For now, I am less weary than before. And you can see the slope now cast a shadow.'" What does he see?
Is it that purgatory is real to him now?
No, what does he literally see right now?
Another shadow.
He sees a shadow and he's really happy about it. Why?
Because he's also still in the cave Right?
So why is he happy to see the shadow? What's going to happen now?
Maybe another friend.
He's going to chase the shadow. Right. So this is what's happening, he sees a shadow and so what he knows, so what is happening, what's going to happen now once the shadow is cast? He's being mobbed by his fans again. You understand? So, that's what makes him excited. Not Beatrice, not God, not the slope, not purgatory. He's like, "Screw all that. I want my shadow, man. That's what I care about." Okay? Every time I cast a shadow, people are going to run up to me and say, "Hey, can I have your autograph?" So, he's become addicted to his own Do you understand the idea here?
Okay? He's narcissistic. He's like, "All I care about is my shadow now. Forget Beatrice, forget heaven. I care about my shadow. That's it," okay?
And this is also true for people who are celebrities today, right? All they care about is their fame. If you're a social media influencer, what's the only thing you care about?
Exactly, right? The metrics. The number of subscriptions you have, the amount of views you get. Right? That's all you care about. And you're always like, how do I get more of these subscriptions? And so what happens eventually to some?
Diet consumed by us, so then they are eaten alive, so then they do all kinds of extreme outrageous things.
Because blood and gore is what sells the newspapers, so then you at the end turn into destruction of yourself.
Yeah, I mean, there's so many examples, right? Of social media influencers who kill themselves or who do outrageous things to attract attention. Because all they care about are the ratings, okay? Right? So that's what Dante is saying here, fame makes you egotistical, narcissistic, and it's an empty life, okay? Because literally all he cares about now is his shadow, okay? Which is just an illusion. Right? That doesn't make sense to you All right. Let's keep on. "As long as it is day we'll make as much headway as possible," he answered, "but our climb won't be as rapid as you thought."
"You will not reach the peak before you see the sun returning. Now he hides behind the hills. You cannot interrupt his light, but see beyond a soul who is completely apart and seated looking toward us. He will show us where to climb most speedily. We came to him, O Lombard soul, what pride and what disdain were in your stance. Your eyes moved with such dignity, such gravity. He said no thing to us, but let us pass. His eyes intent upon us only as a lion watches when it is at rest."
"Yet Virgil made his way to him, appealing to him to show us how we'd best ascend, and he did not reply to that request, but asked us what our country was and who we were. At which my gentle guide began, 'Mantua.' And that spirit who had been so solitary rose from his position saying, 'Oh, Mantuan, I'm Sordello from your own land.' And each embraced the other."
Okay. So, Virgil has met another poet, Sordello, who's actually a very important poet. He is something called a troubadour, which is a love poet, a poet of the courtly love tradition, and they're both from the same place, and so they embrace each other. And you can see how happy and enthusiastic Virgil is to meet someone from the same area. Keep on Line 76.
"object, Italy, your you in of sorrows. You ship without a helmsman in harsh seas, no queen of provinces, but of bordellos. That noble soul had such enthusiasm, his city's sweet name was enough for him to welcome there his fellow citizen. But those who are alive within you now can't live without their warring, even those whom one same wall and one same moat and close not each other. Squalid Italy, search around your shores and then look inland. See if any part of you delight in peace. What use was there in a Justinian's mending your bridle when the saddle's empty?"
"Indeed, was there no reins your shame were less? you who have you understood what God ordained and would then attend to things devout, and in the saddle surely would allow Caesar to sit. See how this beast turns fears because there no spurs that would correct it, since you have laid your hands upon the bit. Oh, German Albert, you who have abandoned that steed become recalcitrant and savage. You who should ride astride its saddle bow bows, upon your blood may the just judgment of the stars descend with signs so strange and plain that your successor has to feel its terror."
"For both you and your father and your greed for lands that lay more close at hand allowed the garden of the empire to be gutted. Come, you who pay no heed, do come and see Monaldi Capelletti set already and filled with fear Monaldi Come, cruel one, come see the tribulation of your nobility and heal their hurts and see and how disconsolate it's Santa Fiore. Come see your Rome who widowed and alone weeps bitterly both day and night. She moans, 'My Caesar, why are you not at my side?' Come see how much your people love each other and if no pity for us moves you, may shame for your own repute move you to act."
"And if I am allowed, oh highest Jove, to ask, you who on earth were crucified for us, have you turned elsewhere your just eyes? Or are you in your judgment step devising a good that we cannot see completely disjoined from our way of understanding? For all the towns of Italy are full of tyrants and each townsman who becomes a partisan is soon a new Marcellus. My Florence, you indeed may be content that this digression would leave you exempt. Your people striving spare you this lament. Others have justice in their hearts and thought is slow to let it fly off from their bow, but your folk keep it ready on their lips."
"Others refuse the weight of public service, whereas your people eagerly respond. Even an ass will shout, 'I'll take it on.' You might be happy now for you have cause. You with your riches, peace, judiciousness. If I speak truly, facts won't prove me wrong. Compared to you, Athens and Lacedaemon, those civil cities with their ancient laws had merely sketched the life of righteousness. For you devised provisions so ingenious, whatever threads October sees you spin, when mid-November comes will be unspun. How often in the time you can remember have you changed laws and coinage, offices, and customs, and revised your citizens?"
Part 152:20:02
"And if your memory has some clarity, then you will see yourself like that sick woman who finds no rest upon her feather bed, but turning, tossing, tries to ease her pain."
Okay, so let's kind of split it into two parts, okay? The first part, we see the vanity of Dante, right? All he cares about is his shadow, because the shadow is bringing him everlasting fame where he is. But in the second half of the canto, Dante goes on this lament about Italy. It's returning to the prophetic tradition where he is saying that Italy is full of sin, and he's being very sarcastic about all this. He's being very ironic.
He's almost appealing to divine justice and saying that Italy is terrible, it's full of sin, it's like Sodom and Gomorrah. And so, how can we explain this dichotomy, right? On one hand, he is just focused on his fame, his shadow. But on the other hand, he goes on this lament about the fate of Italy, yes?
I think because he's thinking what good could my fame ever do other than change Italy? And he's using this as an opportunity. He's thinking about, well, I'm famous now. It's going to be a meta thing to the reader. Speaking of fame, what should a good famous person do but instruct his Yeah, okay.
Anyone else?
I think also that he's talking about how he feels the pull of fame even in himself, but there are people he's talking about that are even beyond that, when they're not even asked to do something, they just try and gain power immediately.
Who's your favorite celebrity? A movie star or I just tried to ditch all of them for Jesus because they all had flaws.
Okay, does anyone have a celebrity that they worship or whatever? What are they like? Yes?
Kanye West.
Kanye West. All right. So, what does Kanye West say about the world that allows you to admire him?
Not necessarily his opinion on the world. I admire him because there's a saying of him is we're just what we do We should be How should I phrase this? Basically, he's telling us to be who we are and to embrace ourselves. Be more courageous. Yeah.
Okay. So, you admire him for his songs which deliver a message of courage and hope. Okay? Yes?
I would say Kanye pretty much shares the same perspective with Dante on choosing love over fear, like be fearless, and always be certain about who you are and what your impact on the world, right? And be imaginative, right?
Are you at all concerned about his personal life, the fact that, you know, he marries and divorces, and he seems to pay no attention to his kids? Are you at all concerned about his personal life?
I'm pretty much concerned about his personal life, and it doesn't seem good to me, but besides his personal life I think he still sticks to himself. And he's pretty much hadn't changed a bit among all this chaos, and yeah.
Okay. All right. Okay, so this is hard, okay? But I want to bring up an idea that we learned in Paradise, which is there is the absolute will. Absolute will is just what you believe and who you are, okay? Your absolute will, who you are, what you believe, what your ideal state is. And then there's the contingent will, okay? We learned this in Paradise. Contingent, which is what you choose to do. Okay? The example is Piccarda. Because Piccarda is a just person who's devoted to God, right? She is a princess and she's like, "I don't want to participate in this world of politics.
I want to go to a nunnery and devote myself to God." That's the absolute will. The contingent will are the choices you make in your life. And so when her brother sent soldiers to kidnap her from the convent, she did not resist. She went with them. So, this is something to keep in mind as we continue to read Dante. There is a difference, okay? There's a difference between what you believe and what you say and what you do. Okay? So, yes, he is very much concerned about the fate of the world.
But at the same time, Dante is obsessed with his fame. And this is not necessarily a contradiction. And in life, what we're trying to do is align the two, right? The alignment of the soul. And that's hard to do. All right. All right. So, let's go to the next canto.
Okay, sorry. Before we begin, I want you to think about this. So, Dante is obsessed with his shadow because it's what's bringing him all this attention, okay? And so, he's slowing down. He's looking for wherever his shadow is, okay? And he gets really excited when he sees his shadow. It's almost like a drug now, okay?
How does Virgil feel about all this? What is going on in the mind of Virgil as he's seeing this?
I can't believe that Beatrice sent me for this guy.
Yeah, that's right. He's like, what a douchebag this guy is. Right? What a douchebag. Okay, what else? Yes?
Maybe Virgil is happy.
How? Virgil is happy, why?
Because he finally corrupted Yeah, like I told him to do things for everlasting fame.
Now, he's doing what I want. So now I control him. Yeah. No, that's not how Virgil thinks. What is Virgil's major emotion right It's kind of frustration, right? Like, what a douchebag this guy is. But what else? What's the major emotion you would feel if you were Virgil?
Impatience, right? He's telling Dante him up, yes?
A little bit of jealousy.
I think jealousy. Right? I think if I were Virgil I'd be very jealous about this. Does that make sense? All right, so remember where we are, where Dante is now obsessed with his shadow and Virgil's like, "Oh my god, what a douchebag." And so Virgil wants to move as fast as possible, right? Okay, let's continue reading.
Canto 7. "When glad and gracious welcomings had been repeated three and four times, then Sordello drew himself back and asked, 'But who are you?' 'Before the spirits worthy of ascent to God had been directed to this mountain, my bones were buried by Octavian. I'm Virgil and I'm deprived of heaven for no fault other than my lack of faith.' This was the answer given by my guide."
Okay. We know Virgil is lying here. What is false about what he just said?
Sordello asked him, "Who are you?" And I think "I'm Virgil." "And I'm deprived of heaven for no fault other than my lack of faith." Where's the lie?
I'll deprive of heaven because of his lack of faith. It's his active ego that he chose to be Okay.
So we know it's a lie, okay? And how do we know it's a lie? The first fact is a lie. And how do we know? We know it's a lie. He may not know, Because he could never have made it to heaven because he was born before Mary gave birth to Jesus.
So he was never going to make it anyway. He was always going to end up in limbo.
Well, that's what Virgil believes, but we know it's a lie. Why? We know for a fact it's a lie.
We say because he betrayed God through his work.
No, no, no, no, no. I'm saying we know for a fact it's a lie because of what evidence?
Pagans in purgatory.
But how do we know that?
Cato, do you understand? We know this is a lie because we just saw Cato in purgatory. And Cato we know for a fact is a pagan. And Cato was like, "Oh, I'm a Christian now." No, no, he's like, "I'm still Cato." Okay, so we know this is a lie.
Part 162:30:06
Does Virgil know he's lying here? We know it's a lie. But does he know it's a lie? No, no, I'm saying does Virgil know it's a lie?
I think he should.
I think he doesn't.
He doesn't know it's a lie?
It's hard not to know what is a lie because he met Cato. He talked to him Stuff.
You know, he's like, "You're the other me and why are you here and I'm not?" Like, "Hello."
We had this major encounter between Cato and Virgil. It's a very embarrassing, awkward encounter, right? So how could Virgil not know he's lying? That's exactly it. Cognitive dissonance, okay? That's the idea here. Okay? Again, what's amazing is cognitive dissonance, right? What's amazing is that this is written in the 14th century and already Dante knows about moral psychology, right? This is cognitive dissonance. And what is cognitive dissonance?
Psychology, so you hold on to your own worldview because you can't let it shatter. It's too much to you.
All right, do you guys understand? So, did you want to add to that?
Yes. So, when you hear something that someone else says that is different to your own perception of the worldview, you feel uncomfortable.
No, no, it's not you don't feel No, no, you don't feel uncomfortable. What do you do? You reject it, you understand, okay? So, what's happening is Virgil had this encounter with Cato. It was so traumatic for him that he just blocked it out. He doesn't this encounter. He doesn't remember. Did you want to say something?
Yeah, I was just recently I had looked at the definitions and etymological origins of an illusion and a delusion. An illusion is like a magic trick and your mind's like, "Oh, that's not real, but you know it's not real." And a delusion is when you accept it into your whole Right, exactly, okay?
So, that's what's happening, right? This is really interesting. Where Virgil goes to purgatory for the first time, meets Cato, knows for a fact now that pagans are allowed access to purgatory, and he's like, "Screw this."
And he forgets about it. And it's like forever blocked from his memory. So, this reveals so much about his character and his motivations, right? All right.
Let's keep on going.
Line 10. "Even like one who suddenly has seen something before him, and then marveling dust and does not believe 'It is is not.' So did Sordello seem. And then he bent his brow, returned to Virgil humbly, and clasped him where the lesser presence clasps. He said, 'Oh, glory of the Latins, you through whom our tongue revealed its power, you eternal honor of my native city, what merit or what grace shows you to me? If I deserve to hear your word, then answer. Tell me if you're from hell and from what cloister.' 'Through every circle of the sorry kingdom,' he answered him, 'I journeyed here.'" "'A power from heaven moved me, and with that I come.
Not for the having, but not having done I lost the sight that you desired, the sun. That high sun I was late in recognizing. There's a place below that only shadows, not torments, have assigned to sadness. There a lament is not an outcry, but a sigh. There I am with the infant innocence, those whom the teeth of death had ceased before they were set free from human sinfulness. There I am with those souls who were not clothed in the three holy virtues, but who knew and followed after all the other virtues.'"
"'And if you know and you're able to, would you point out the path that leads more quickly to the true entry point of purgatory?'" Okay, sorry.
But let's feel out this, okay? So, Sordello says, "Oh my god, you are him. You are the and how and so Sordello humbles himself before Virgil. He basically bows down to Virgil. And how does Virgil feel about this?
How does Virgil feel about this?
Bittersweet. Again, you're so generous. Not bittersweet. Just happy. He's ecstatic, okay? He can't be happier in his life. Why? Why can't he be happier in his life?
I mean, he seems to have got a taste of the fame even though, you know, has no shadow and that his achievements in life seem to have raised him above the state, and that the guy still really loves him, even though he asked, "Are you from hell?" And he goes, "Yeah, kind of, but" and the guy's like, "Oh my god, I still really love What is Virgil really pissed off about right now?
What is Virgil not happy about right He's pissed off for the Dante.
Seems like Dante has gained more fame over him. Exactly, right? He's pissed about the Dante. Why is Dante more famous here than I am? And now, he meets someone like, "Oh, you're more famous than Dante." And Virgil's like, "Oh, yes, I am," okay? And how do we know he is ecstatic? Let's read his speech, okay? And tell me what in his speech tells us he is ecstatic.
Through every Sorry.
Sorry.
But line 22. Line 22. "Through every circle of the sorry kingdom," he answered him, "I journeyed here. A power from heaven moved me, and with that, I come. Not for the having, but not having done, I lost the sight that you desired, the sun. That high sun I was late in recognizing. There's a place below that only shadows, not torments, have assigned to sadness. There a lament is not an outcry, but a sigh. There I am with the infant innocence, those whom the teeth of death had ceased before they were set free from human sinfulness.
There I'm with those souls who were not clothed in the three holy virtues, but who knew and followed after all the other virtues."
Okay, so he's ecstatic, and we know because of his speech. What is interesting about his speech? You guys analyze language, yes?
The first point that jumps out is that he says he is in the other virtues, so he didn't have the three key ones, but that he is very much exemplifying all the others in his life.
Yeah, so if you're really happy, you tend to boast about yourself, right? It's like, look how great I am. Yes, okay, that's one thing. Yes, what else?
When he talks about his traveling through the circles, he doesn't mention Dante or the mission, he just says it's a power of heaven. He said that I came up through the circles. I came A focus of all the attention, right?
He forgets to say, but before he was like, okay, well, I'm helping guy Dante through hell and purgatory. But now he's just like me, me, me. Okay? Again, if you're really ecstatic, you just focus on yourself, right? What else?
Again, this is different from his other speeches. Okay? Yes. "I lost the sight that you desired, the" Sun, that high sun, the high sun I was late in recognizing, in a way he now does recognize the Christian God basically and he also recognizes that he's wrong or he was wrong.
No, that's not what he's doing here actually, okay? Yes?
I think he's beautifying the places that he is at and he's trying to kind of Photoshop it. Lament is not an outcry but a sigh and I'm with the innocent and it's just too bad I died before, you know, Jesus came. It's not really my fault.
He's using a lot of adjectives, okay? He is exaggerating. He's creating this opulent, flowery language and that's different from his speeches before where he was very terse, very short, okay? Very brief and to the point. Now he's just like, look, trying to show off his poetry to understand what he's trying to impress someone.
Yeah, it's full of simile and metaphor and he's making himself an angel almost.
Yeah. Bragging, he's trying to impress.
One more thing or there are more, yes?
He also mentioned that in hell there are shadows. So, this is him saying that the fact that Dante has shadows behind him is not a great That is very clever.
Yes, I didn't see that. But that's exactly correct. Yes, he's like, why do you guys focus on his shadow? There's shadows everywhere in hell, man. Right? He's still pissed about Dante. Exactly. Yes, thank you for that. Yes. Anyone else? Okay, and yes? Anyone else?
I thought the infant innocents go to Oh no, no, no.
Part 172:40:03
It depends on the situation. Most infants go to limbo, but there are some parents who pray for the infant and who do so many good deeds that their actions help the infants ascend to heaven. Okay? Okay, so those are special cases. Okay, yeah. I will also point out that he uses "I" a lot, right? And this is actually pretty long by the standards of Virgil's speeches. Okay, so it just shows you how ecstatic he is that finally someone recognizes him and knows he's better than Dante.
It takes up six stanzas.
Compared to all his shorter verses.
Yeah, yeah. He's usually very, very terse. Yes, keep on going.
Line 40, "he answered, 'No fixed place has been assigned to us. I'm free to range about and climb. As far as I may go, I'll be your guide. But see now how the day declines, by night we cannot climb and therefore it is best to find some pleasant place where we can rest. Here to the right are spirits set apart. If you allow me, I shall lead you to them and not without delight you'll come to know them.' 'How is that?' he was asked. 'Is it that he who tried to climb by night would be impeded by others or his own lack of power?'" "And good Sordello, as his finger traced along the ground, said, 'Once the sun has set, then look, even this line cannot be crossed.' And not that anything except the dark of night prevents her climbing up, it is the night itself that implicates your will.
Once darkness falls, one can indeed retreat below and wander aimlessly about the slopes while the horizon has enclosed the day.' At which my lord, as if in wonder, said, 'Lead us then to there where, as you say, we may derive delight from this night's day.'" Okay, so there's a very particular rule to Purgatory, which is that once it's night, you can't move anymore or you can't cross certain boundaries anymore, okay?
Why would they have this rule in Purgatory? You don't have this in hell. You don't have this in heaven. Why would you have it in Purgatory?
Yes, then you, okay?
Tainting a real place like as it is on Earth. So, if you're traveling on Earth back then in the Middle Ages, you can't.
Okay, so it's really imitating the real world as much as possible. What else?
I was going to say something similar, but I also think that other than imitating the real world, you're basically trying to purge your shadow, so in the mystic world of Purgatory, it's pretty difficult to know where you would try and chase if you were trying to cleanse yourself if there [snorts] was no light at all to be a reference.
Okay, okay, okay. All right, let's be very simple about this, okay? In the day, they're walking, right? And these souls are so excited that at night, if they could, they would walk as well. And so they have this rule, which is that at night you cannot proceed any further, okay? You cannot advance your This is very strange because you would think that the very idea of purgatory is to encourage you to expiate your sins as fast as possible. So, why would they have this rule? You cannot advance during the night.
Yes?
It's maybe a moment for people to Yes.
Why?
Because you don't move, then you're just thinking about where you are, why you are there, and then what's going on.
Well, if it's night and you can't move, what are you doing? Talking to people, imagining, oh yeah, dreaming. Talked about it.
Sleeping, right? When you sleep, what happens? You dream, right? And you're right. The entire point of purgatory is to cause And one way to provoke self-reflection is just to have the guy sleep, man, you know? Because when you sleep, you dream, and your dreams reveal things to you that you couldn't know before. Does that make Okay? So, the entire point of purgatory is to force self-reflection. And that's what makes it different from hell. But there are different ways in which you can force self-reflection, right?
So, one way is through the discussion that the But another way is through dreaming, and what's another way to force Can you guys guess? Dreaming, sleeping is a way to force self-reflection, right? Talking with other people is another way. But there's also other ways. And what are they?
Seeing someone else do the actions that you do.
Yes, that's right. Yes, good. What else?
Worshipping, praying.
Yes, exactly. And they do worship and pray here. Yes. What else?
Abstinence from things. So, any kind of indulgence or process that you do, just taking it away and seeing what is left in the void of your life.
Okay. All right. So, yeah, that's correct, okay? But I want more common things, okay? So, sleeping is one. And then another way is?
Do people ever take a step back in purgatory? Is it a beeline, one step in front of the other, always progress? Cuz I self-reflect when I fail or I have a shortcoming.
Sure, sure. Yes. So, they will be forced to stand still and fail. Yes, okay? But what is the really common way in society that forces our self-reflection?
Maybe walking.
Excuse me?
Maybe take a walk.
Yes. You learn from mistakes, yes?
Writing, maybe.
Writing, yes. But what's causing all
Like reading or kind of go to class Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay.
We're running out of time, okay? But art, guys. Art. A R T. Does it make sense to you? When you go to a museum and you see all these paintings, when you hear great music, when you watch a great movie, it forces self-reflection on you, right? Does it make sense? So, dreaming, okay? And we'll see a lot of artwork in All right. Let's keep on going.
Line 64. "We had not gone far off when I perceived that just as valleys hollow mountains here in our world, so that mountain there was hollowed. That shade said, 'It is there that we shall go to where the slope forms of itself a lap. At that place we'll await the day's coming.' There was a slanting path, now steep, now flat. It led us to a point beside the valley, just where its bordering edge had dropped by half. Gold and fine silver, cochineal, white lead, and Indian lignite, highly polished, bright, fresh emerald at the moment it is dampened."
"If placed within that valley, all would be defeated by the grass and flowers' colors, just as the lesser gives way to the greater, and nature there not only was a painter, but from the sweetness of a thousand odors, she had derived an unknown, mingled scent. Upon the green grass and the flowers, I saw seated spirits singing 'Salve Regina.' They were not visible from the outside."
Okay, and also nature as well, right? You also have nature. Okay, keep on going.
"Before the meager sun seeks out its nest, began the man who showed who led us here, 'Do not ask me to guide you down among them. From this bank you'll be better able to make out the acts and features of them all than if you were to join them in the hollow. He who is seated highest with the look of one too lax in what he undertook, whose mouth, although the rest sing, does not move, was Emperor Rudolph, one who could have healed the wounds that were the death of Italy, so that another later must restore her."
"His neighbor, whose appearance comforts him, governed the land in which are born the waters of Moldau, carries to the Elbe, and the Elbe to the sea, named Ottokar. In swaddling bands, he was more valiant than his son, the bearded Wenceslas, who feeds on wantonness and ease. That small-nosed man who seemed so close in council with his kindly friend died in flight, deflowering the lily. So, see how he beats his breast there, and you see the other shade, who, as he sighs, would rest his cheek upon his palm as on a bed."
"Father and father-in-law of the pest of France, They know his life. It's filled its flights out of that knowledge grows the grief that has pierced them. That other who seems so robust and sings in time with him who has a nose so manly wore the cord of every virtue. And if the young man seated there behind him had only followed him as king, then valor might have been poured from vessel into vessel. One cannot say this of his other heirs. His kingdoms now belong to James and Frederick, but they do not possess his best bequest."
"How seldom human worth ascends from branch to branch and this is willed by him who grants that gift. That one may pray to him for it. My words suggest the large-nosed one no less than they refer to Peter singing with him whose heir brings Puglia and Provence distress. The plant is lesser than its seed just as the man whom Beatrice and Margaret wed is lesser than the husband Constance has. You see the king who led the simple life seated alone, Henry of England. He has better fortune with his progeny."
"He who seated low is on the ground and looking up is William the Marquis. For him both Alexandria and its war make Montferrato and Canavese mourn."
Okay, so these are monarchs, right? And again, they're in purgatory. They're there until they've made their penance and they're ready to climb purgatory. All right, this is going to be Purgatory 8.
Part 182:50:11
Canto 8. "It was the hour that turns seafarers' longings homeward, the hour that makes their hearts grow tender upon the day they bid sweet friends farewell. The hour that pierces the new traveler with love when he has heard far off the bell that seems to mourn the dying of the day. When I began to let my hearing fade and watch one of those souls who having risen had signaled with his hand for attention. He joined his palms and lifting them he fixed all his attention on the east as if to say to God, I care for nothing else."
"'Te lucis ante' issued from his lips with such devotion and with notes so sweet that I was moved to be moved beyond my mind. And then the other spirits followed him devoutly gently through all of that hymn their eyes intent on the supernal spheres. Here reader, let your eyes look sharp at truth for now the veil has grown so very thin. It is not difficult to pass within. I saw that company of noble spirits silent and looking upward pale and humble as of an expectation and I saw emerging and ascending from above two angels bearing flaming swords of which the blades were broken off without their tips."
"Their garments just as green as newborn leaves were agitated fanned by their green wings and trailed behind them and one angel came and stood somewhat above us while the other descended on the opposite embankment flanking that company of souls between them. My eyes made out their blond heads clearly but my sight was dazzled by their faces just like any sense bewildered by excess. 'Both come from Mary's bosom,' said Sordello, 'to serve as custodians of the valley against the serpent that will soon appear.' At this not knowing where its path might be frozen with fear I turned around pressing close to the trusty shoulders and Sordello continued, 'Let us now descend among the great shades in the valley.'" "We shall speak with them and seeing you they will be pleased.' I think that I had taken but three steps to go below when I saw one who watched attentively trying to recognize me.
The hour had now arrived when air grows dark but not so dark that it deprived my eyes and his of what before they were denied. He moved toward me and I advanced toward him. Noble Judge Nino, what delight was mine when I saw you were not among the" Okay, all right.
So one last question and then we'll take a break, okay? So, clearly there are references to the Garden of Eden. Because if you read Genesis, what happens is we get banished from the Garden of Eden and there are two angels with flaming swords that now watch over the Garden of Eden to bar entry.
What are the two angels doing here? Did you guys spot that? What are the two angels doing? They have flaming swords. What are they doing?
They answer the valley against the Yeah.
So, what does that They're protecting the mountain from the devil, right? From the snake. And what does that mean?
That even in self-reflection, the devil can come in. Or that this is a place of art, of looking at great people of history, but he's been reminded that this is not a place safe from all evil and that there's still temptation and Sure.
Yes, that's right. The snake will always be there, okay? The snake is eternal, yes? Okay, let's just say that we're all going to Purgatory, okay? And we see these angels.
What would our first fear be? Oh, sorry. We'd be afraid, right? Because we think these angels, what are they doing They're safeguarding Purgatory from evil.
But if I'm going through the gate, right? I see these angels, I'd be worried that they might stop me.
Yes, right? Right? Because Genesis, the Bible told us that these angels are to protect the Garden of Eden. Which means what now? Which means what? What is it saying? Why is there a snake here?
What is the snake trying to go?
Because we are in the Garden of Eden right now.
Okay. So, the first idea is there is a Garden of Eden, and that's where the snake is trying to go, right? Okay? So, the Garden of Eden is actually on top of Mount Purgatory, okay? But if you're Christian, you're kind of surprised by all this. Why? Why would you be surprised to hear there are two angels guarding it, a snake in Purgatory? Yes? I don't know if this is My Paradise Lost knowledge talking, but I thought that Satan comes as a snake who's in the Garden of Eden already.
He doesn't have to make a journey through any other places. So, you'd be confused the snake has to do anything to get in there.
Right. So remember, we are now in the future, right? So, what's happened is Adam and Eve were tempted by the snake, and they ate the fruit, and now they've been banished from And they were banished from the Garden of Eden. And so, why would this all be surprising for us?
Maybe because people just feel fear, you know? So, they don't want to die, and they just want to live. And this kind of fear and desire and the If you're Christian, yes?
After Jesus died for our sins, are we allowed to go back to the Garden of Eden? We're allowed to go back now. It's open now. The angels are there not to bar our entry, they're there to bar the snake from entry. We're allowed to go in now.
Were you taught this in Christian And it makes sense logically, right? If Jesus died for our sins, and we're now redeemed in the eyes of theoretically, we should be allowed back in the Garden of Eden. Right? And that's what Dante's saying here. If it is true that we're redeemed, then the Garden of Eden should be open, right? And who redeemed us from our Not Jesus. Mary. And how do we know that?
Because Virgil tells us. No, no, no. No, no, no. I'm saying in the text, how do we know that?
Mary's bosom.
The angels.
The angels come from Mary's bosom, right? Mary redeemed us, and so they came from our heart to protect us as we enter the Garden of Eden. Okay, does that make sense? Okay, this is the cosmology of Dante. If Mary redeemed us, then we're allowed to go back to the Garden of Eden.
All right. Okay. So, any questions about this?
Is there anyone there in the Garden of Eden? Is one of the subtexts of this fear that Dante feels that he is trying to get there, and maybe the snake will be there when he gets there? Or is the assumption here that there's already people hanging out in the Garden of Eden?
Yes, so the Garden of Eden is at the very top of Mount Purgatory, okay? But our goal is not the Garden of Eden, right? Our goal is heaven. So, we're going to pass the Garden of Eden, but we're really trying to get to heaven. Okay? But the point is, and this is really important, again, this is where Dante is optimistic. He's like, "We've been redeemed already. Therefore, the Garden of Eden has been opened to us, and therefore we know we've been Right? God has forgiven us for our original sin.
Right? Any more questions? Yes?
So, the Garden of Eden is earthly paradise, and people in purgatory aren't concerned with earthly paradise. They're concerned [music] with That's right.
That's right. Right? Okay, great. Okay, so let's take a break, and we'll come back at 1:00, okay?
All right. Okay, good afternoon, and welcome back. So, I just received an email from Professor Bromwich, and he said you guys are lovely, which is a pretty high praise coming from him, okay? But he is right. You have improved a great deal, and I think that our discussion right now is very deep. If Dante were here, he would approve. He would be smiling at us. Okay, so congratulations to everyone.
Okay, so any questions from this morning? Any issues from this That you would like to Any questions? Yes?
I'm just a little bit confused about what would you say is the major point of the long canto where he lists all the kings? Because he's such an economical poet.
But there's just so many kings listed. I'm assuming that's to weigh down on the reader something, but I'm not 100% sure what that is.
Part 193:00:01
Yeah, you're absolutely right in that Dante does not waste words. This is why this is poetry. It is the best economic so, again, this is all speculation, but what I think Dante is trying to achieve is one of totality, one of Right? So, at his heart, he's democratic. So, he's trying to speak to everyone. He's trying to give people a sense of the unity of the world. And so, he's trying to create good role models. And at this time in history, there are a lot of really bad kings.
Right? And what he's trying to say is that even if you're a bad king, there is hope for you. Right? Because what's the most common thing to do? If you sin, you're like, "Well, I'm screwed anyway. So, go for it, man. You know? I'm going to hell anyway. Who cares? I'm just going to enjoy my time on Earth for the next 10 years, kill as many people as possible, then I'll burn in hell for all of eternity. You know, at least I'll die with a bang. Right? Because there's no hope for me." At this time in history, people are very black and white about the way they perceive the world.
What Dante's trying to say is, "No, no, no, guys. That's not how it works. There's hope for everyone. You can be the total for all of your life, but at the very last minute, you're like, 'You know what? I want to repent.' And God will give you a chance. It may mean you are in purgatory for the next million years, but there's still hope for you." Right? Does that make sense? Okay. But that's what I think is happening. Okay. But I'm sure there are other explanations.
But thank you for that. Any more questions before we yes.
Wait. My last query is that if Virgil is so smart, why does he feel jealous ever?
What do you mean by that?
Well, I was told from when I was young that jealousy is bad, so I just tried very hard all of my life to try and not be jealous of other people. I thought that was an obvious mission. So, I thought that people who were very developed in their mind and soul would have left jealousy behind. So, it strikes me as surprising that Virgil would feel jealous of anybody, but I can see how he would be in this scenario.
Okay. So, that's a very interesting point you make. So, there are many religious traditions that teach you that the ego is a source of sin. If you turn away from the ego, you move towards God. But Dante doesn't believe that. Dante believes that the ego is the source of our imagination. These emotions that we have, whether they be jealousy, anger, hatred, they're part of who we are. And they help develop our imagination with color and with nuance. So, it's not about avoiding these emotions, it's coming to terms with these emotions through experience, through reflection.
And it's a process of self-development, okay? And this is why the Divine Comedy is constructed the way it is. It's a journey, right? Because remember, in hell, Dante is just like the biggest right? He tells the father of his rival, "Your son's burning in Right? That's just pure jealousy. Pure envy. But what will happen is that in Purgatory, he will move in the process of redemption and salvation. Okay? So that's what Dante believes. Does that make sense? Great. Okay. Any more questions? All right.
Let's continue.
Canto 8, verse 52. "He moved toward me, and I advanced toward him. 'Noble judge Nino, what delight was mine when I saw you were not among the damned.' There were no gracious meeting we neglected before he asked me, 'When did you arrive across long seas beneath this mountainside?' I told him, 'Oh, by way of the sad regions I came this morning. I'm still within the first life, although by this journeying I earn the other.' When they heard my answer, Sordello and Judge Nino just behind him drew back like people suddenly astonished."
"One turned to Virgil and the other turned and called to one who sat there. 'Up, Corrado, come see what God out of his grace has willed.' Then when he turned to me, 'By that especial gratitude you owe to him who hides his primal aim so that no human mind may find the ford to it, when you return across the wide waves ask my own Giovanna. There where the pleas of innocence are answered to pray for me. I do not think her mother still loves me. She gave up her white veils, surely, poor woman."
"She will wish them back again. Through her one understands so easily how brief in women is love's fire when not rekindled frequently by eye or touch. The serpent that assigns the Milanese their camping place will not provide for her a tomb as handsome as would Gallura's rooster.' So Nino spoke. His bearing bore the seal of that unswerving zeal which, though it flames within the heart, maintains a sense of measure. My avid eyes were steadfast staring at that portion of the sky where stars are slowest, even as spokes when they approach the axle."
"And my guide, 'Son, what are you staring at?' And I replied, 'I'm watching those three torches with which the southern pole is all aflame.' Then he to me, 'The four bright stars you saw this morning now are low beyond the pole, and where those four stars were, these three now are.' Even as Virgil spoke, Sordello drew him to himself. 'See there, our adversary,' he said, and then he pointed with his finger." And so, adversary is the name of Satan, right? Satan literally means adversary in the Hebrew Bible, right?
So again, it's referencing the Garden of Eden and it's saying to us that we redeem ourselves, our adversary has been defeated, okay? Keep on going.
Line 97. "At the unguarded edge of that small valley there was a serpent similar perhaps to that which offered Eve the bitter food. Through grass and flowers the evil streak advanced from time to time it turned its head and licked its back like any beast that preens and slicks. I did not see and therefore cannot say just how the hawks of heaven made their move but I indeed saw both of them in motion. Hearing the green wings cleave the air the serpent fled and the angels wheeled around as each of them flew upward back to his high station."
"The shade who when the judge had called had drawn closer to him through all of that attack had not removed his eyes from me one moment. 'So may the lantern that leads you on high discover in your will the wax one needs enough for reaching the enameled peak,' the shade began. 'If you have heard true tidings of Val di Magra or the lands nearby, tell them to me, for there I once was mighty. Currado Malaspina was my name. I'm not the old Currado but I'm descended from him. To my own I bore that love that here is purified.' I answered, 'I never visited your lands but can there be a place in all of Europe where they're not celebrated?'" "'Such renown honors your house, it claims your lords and lands even when one has not yet been to journey there.
And so may I complete my climb, I swear to you your honored house still claims the prize, the glory of the purse and of the sword. Custom and nature privilege it so that though the evil head contorts the world your kin alone walk straight and shun the path of wickedness.' And he, 'Be sure of that, the sun will not have rested seven times within the bed that's covered and held fast by all the rams' four feet before this gracious opinion squarely nailed into your mind with stouter nails than others' talk provides if the divine decree has not been staked.'" Okay, so he lists a lot of people from his real life, right?
And you can imagine what he's doing is he is in exile from Florence and he needs to make a living, right? So basically by including people he knows from Florence in this Divine Comedy, he's also soliciting donations from them. And does that make sense? It's like Yale, you know, taking donations. Okay. All right, let's keep going.
Oh, he has a question.
We say that Dante was sponsored in a He had patrons.
That's right, but you could always ask for more, all right? Okay.
Canto 9. "Now she who shares the bed of old Tithonus, abandoning the arms of her sweet lover, grew white along the eastern balcony. The heavens facing her were glittering with gems set in the semblance of the chill animal that assails men with its tail. While night within the valley where we were had moved across two of the steps of climb and now the third step made night's wings incline. When I who bore something of Adam with me, feeling the need for sleep, lay down upon the grass where now all five of us were seated."
"At that hour close to morning when the swallow begins her melancholy songs, perhaps in memory of her ancient sufferings when free to wander farther from the flesh unless held fast by cares, our intellects' envisionings become almost divine. In dream I seem to see an eagle poised with golden pinions in the sky. Its wings were open, it was ready to swoop down. And I seemed to be there where Ganymede deserted his own family when he was snatched up for the high consistory. Within myself I thought, 'This eagle may be used to hunting only here."
Part 203:10:04
"Its claws refuse to carry upward any prey found elsewhere.' Then it seemed to me that, wheeling slightly and terrible with lightning, it swooped, snatching me up to the fire's orbit. And there it seemed that he and I were burning in this imagined conflagration scorched me so I was compelled to break my sleep. Just like the waking of Achilles when he started up, casting his eyes about him, not knowing where he was after his mother had stolen him asleep away from Chiron and in her arms had carried him to Skyros, the isle the Greeks would later make him leave."
"Such was my starting up as soon as sleep had left my eyes, and I went pale as will a man who, terrified, turns cold as ice. The only one beside me was my comfort. By now the sun was more than two hours high. It was the sea to which I turned my eyes. My lord said, 'Have no fear. Be confident, for we're well along our way. Do not restrain, but give free rein to all your strength. You've already come to Purgatory. See there the rampart wall enclosing it. See where that wall is breached, the point of entry."
"'Before at dawn that ushers in the day, when your soul was sleeping in your body, on the flowers that adorn the ground below, a lady came. She said, "I'm Lucia. Let me take hold of him who is asleep that I may help to speed him on his way." Sordello and the other noble spirits stayed there, and she took you. And once the day was bright, she climbed, I following behind. And here she set you down, but first her lovely eyes showed that open entry way to me. Then she and sleep together took their leave.'" "Just like a man in doubt who then grows sure, exchanging fear for confidence once truth has been revealed to him, so was I changed.
And when my guide had seen that I was free from hesitation, then he moved with me behind him up the rocks and toward the height."
Okay. All right. So, let's analyze this. This is a very important section because this is the first time he has a dream. He will actually have many dreams because as he points out, they come from the divine. Okay, the divine is giving you a message. And what happens is that he falls asleep, he has a dream of an eagle snatching him, and he wakes up startled, and Virgil says, "Don't worry, it was actually Lucia who came down from heaven to carry you to the gate of Purgatory, okay?" Before they were into Purgatory, now they've reached the gate of Purgatory, and now they will make their ascent.
And so, that's the plot line of the first half of this canto. Now, if I were Dante's writing teacher, okay? And he came to me and he showed me this, I would be like, "Dante, you're lazy. Okay? You're trying to move the plot along, and you need to get to the gate of Purgatory really fast, so you just make something up. I'm like, 'Okay, an angel took me to the gates of Purgatory.' That's it. Here, okay? So, C-minus for you, Dante." Which is basically a fail at Yale.
Convince me I'm wrong. What would Dante say? I mean, I'm thinking this is lazy writing, man. You're just skipping the plot, right? You don't know how to move the plot along, so you just, well, then we just got to Purgatory because the angels took us. Convince me I'm wrong. How would Dante defend himself and say, "No, no, no, no, this is actually perfect." Yes?
With the divine plan or his cosmology that you cannot enter Purgatory without the love or support or the angel prayer of your family or friends, and that's how you get there. So, it's the theory.
That's right, okay. So, one possibility is that Lucia and all the women, Rachel, Ruth, and Beatrice are all praying for him. And so, this is how he gets to the gate of Purgatory, okay? That's one possibility. Yes?
So, this whole journey, I don't want to say it's a dream, but it's like a vision of some sort. And so, he's having a dream inside of a dream, so to speak.
Could this be him willing it? Where there's a will, there's a way. So, he dreams that he's carried, and then therefore he is carried.
I would say the opposite, right? Cuz Lucia literally carries him. Right? Lucia literally carries him all the way to the gate, which is a long way, and Virgil, and so they'll have to Anyone else? Want to try?
So, this entire trip down the hell and up the mountain Purgatory is supposed to be an experience that the reader can actually participate in. So, if we're to be truly experiencing what Dante has experienced, we need to listen to him, listen to someone else reporting what happened during our dream so that we can feel the same sense of doubt and Yeah, doubt towards what he actually dreamed.
Right. And I agree with that. But the problem is, if you were to do that, you would write about how arduous the journey is, right? You would write about your emotions during this journey. You wouldn't say I had a dream and then I got to where I Right? So that's why I would give him a C-minus because he's being lazy here. I'm trying to get you to convince me I'm not He doesn't deserve an A+. Yes?
I just think that for him to describe the arduous journey, any detail is a distraction and not true. Because of course he's creating the cosmology, but he would have to say there was some really tricky rocks, there was some animals, but what do these signify? I just think he doesn't want to confuse us with any detail that we'd read into before we get to the gates cuz there's so much symbolic in just imagery even when he's trying to get through the gates. There's three steps made of different rock and stuff.
And I just think any detail of the journey towards the gate would distract us from the symbolism past the gate.
So yesterday we talked about this, right? How the details add to the journey, how details make us part of the story. Yes?
Well, I don't know about Dante, but in life sometimes to get through purgatory, get through life, you need help from other people. And sometimes these forms of help come at you without you necessarily being aware or conscious. I don't know if this is a message that he's trying to but it is conscious cuz Virgil tells him what the dream is about. Yeah? Go ahead.
I would connect it back to prior to our one hour break. We were just told by Sordello that nobody can move ahead at night. But this is actually you can move ahead at night. And so I would argue that, you know, there's transcendence To this and you can actually transcend whatever rules there are.
Right. Okay. I actually took this as he was so tired he slept through the day. And so Virgil, so Dante kept on walking and he was asleep so Lucy is like, I have to come and get Okay. Yes?
Yeah, I had your same interpretation but then there's a line, it's like the sun rose and then they were killed.
Yeah, yeah. So it's daytime, he's still asleep. Yeah. Any other suggestions?
Is it possible that Dante is so happy because many people get so happy they can't remember so many things and they just Okay.
All right. So we have to remember that ultimately this is a movie. Okay? This is a journey, a movie where the characters are real. What is Dante's state of mind right now? What does he really care about? What is he in love with? His shadow, okay? So he's in love with his shadow. So he's walking really slowly, he's procrastinating, he's oversleeping, he's spending a lot of time with the other shades, offering autographs, okay? Beatrice and watch is up there watching this and what is she thinking right now? Yeah, she's kind of pissed right now.
Why is she pissed? Yeah, she's like, "What about me, man? I only did you this favor because I thought you truly loved me and only loved me, and now you love your own All right? So, if you're Beatrice, what are you going to do?
This guy and just bring him to me.
No, but why don't I just go and punch the guy, you know? Just curse the guy. Why are you lifting the guy and carrying him to the gates of purgatory?
Part 213:20:23
Right, no, but I'm sure if you got, why not just curse this guy? Because Virgil would do that, right?
Your Beatrice in heaven isn't going to curse anybody, but what is Saint Lucia a saint of? Is that a clue?
Saint Lucy. Saint Lucy. So, there's argument about who she is, but what most people believe is that she is someone who became a Christian, and then when she was forced to get married, she killed herself rather than get married. And so she's the opposite of There are lots of these saints in the church. Yes?
I think if you're coming from a mother or a wife perspective or girlfriend, because you love this guy so much and you know that he has his faults and he's stupid sometimes. But right, you still forgive him and you want to speed him along. And so then you're like, "I'm going to send you help so that you just skip this part of temptation that's going to make you fall, make you slow down."
It's a nudge, right? And this nudge is going to force Dante to think, "Why did this happen? Why did I have this dream?" Right? Cuz it's a dream. It's an eagle coming to snatch you up. What does this dream signify? Right? So, it's two things. It's one, it's the dream, and Dante's forced to think about how to interpret this dream. It's also Lucia coming down from heaven herself and carrying Dante. If you are Dante, what are you thinking right now?
What are you thinking right now?
I'll probably feel a bit guilty, and then I'll just stick to my task.
No, you're not going to feel guilty. What are you going to feel?
Maybe annoyed?
Not annoyed. If you're Dante and this happens to you, what are you going to feel?
Ashamed maybe, but also No, I mean That's like, "Oh man, all my fans.
Now I don't get to see them."
No, I would feel fear. Why would I feel fear?
So, he's mad he's no longer going to get all the help from her, and then he'll just be left in the purgatory. No, it's actually much more subtle. Can you try?
Because the story of Ganymede is kind of creepy to me because he was kidnapped by the eagle, Became the cupbearer.
So, he's basically the slave in heaven.
Yeah, that's basically exactly right. The dream is making him afraid, right? Do you understand? The dream ISN'T LIKE, "OH, WOW. Lucia came to, you know, take me to Purgatorio. I'm really, really happy." No, it's fear. The emotion in the dream is fear. He's Right? But I'm trying to figure out why he'd be afraid. Because Lucia came to help you out.
Why would he be Do you guys not have girlfriends? Do you not know how girlfriends behave? Yeah, oh my god. Guys, she does not She does not have girlfriends, okay? Or a wife, or mother. They're really pissed at you. What do they do? Yes?
Beatrice thinks that Dante is kind of cheating on her, Basically, yes.
And so, the angel will judge him maybe for it. So, that's what he's afraid of. That he's going to get judged based on that.
Right. Okay. So this is hard, but this is a life lesson for our guys, okay? Truly, if you're a girlfriend, right? And you do something stupid, and she shouts at you, right? She hits you. You're good, okay? But if she buys you dinner, and she gives you flowers, you're really screwed. She's going to kill you now, okay? Life lesson for the guys in here. All right? So, Dante is now terrified, right? Do you understand? He had this dream, which is like, "Ha.
Someone's pissed at you, Dante, right?" This dream is an omen. It's a divine message. And then Virgil says, "Lucia came and then Virgil and they thought it was like Lucia is Beatrice's best friend, right? I'm now in a lot of trouble. Right? And he knows it's because for the past, you know, whatever, he's been in love with his own shadow. But you see how amazing this is, right? Because it gives you complete insight into human psychology and it's very real. Okay? All right, let's keep on Verse 70.
"Reader, you can see clearly how I lift my matter. Do not wonder therefore if I have to call on more art to sustain it. Now we were drawing closer. We had reached the part from which where first I'd seen a breach precisely like a gap that cleaves the wall. I now made out a gate and there below it three steps, their colors different leading to it, and a custodian who had not yet spoken. And I looked more and more at him and I saw him seated on the upper step, his face so radiant I could not bear it."
"And in his hand he held a naked sword which so reflected rays toward us that I time and again tried to sustain that sight in vain. 'Speak out from there. What are you seeking?' So he began to speak. 'Where is your escort? Take care lest you be harmed by climbing here.' My master answered him. 'But just before a lady came from heaven and familiar with these things told us that's the gate. Go' 'And may she speed you on your path of goodness.' The gracious guardian of the gate began again."
"'Come forward therefore to our stairs.'" Okay.
So, Dante and Virgil are approaching the gates of Purgatory and with each gate in Purgatory there's going to be an angel guarding it. And this is very similar to hell, right? Where there's certain demons guarding certain passages in hell. And Virgil has to come forward and say, we've come here with a mission from And what's the difference in responses between the demons and the angels? The demons in hell and the angels here. What is the difference?
Again, it seems like these subtle details that make Divine Comedy imaginative. Yes?
The demons usually say, "Why have you come?" but the angels say, "What do you want?" or "What are you looking for?" The demons are usually angry or just are disturbed.
What's the most common response when Virgil says that we have a mission from heaven? What's the most common response from the demons? You guys remember? And again, this is what makes Divine Comedy so magical because he pays attention to these They're silent. Right?
You don't know what the response is. They're just silent. Whereas these angels are actually enthusiastic. "Great! Sure, come in. Let me help you," okay? All right. So again, this attention to detail. Can I go on?
"There we approached and the first step was white marble, so polished and so clear that I was mirrored there as I appeared in life. The second step, made out of crumbling rock, rough textured, scorched with cracks that ran across its length and width, was darker than deep purple. The third, resting above more massively, appeared to me to be of porphyry, as flaming red as blood that spurts from veins. And on this upper step, God's angel, seated upon the threshold, which appeared to me to be of adamant, keeps feet planted. My guide, with much goodwill, had me ascend by way of these three steps, and joining me, 'Do ask him humbly to unbolt the gate.' I threw myself devoutly at his holy feet, asking him to open out of mercy, but first I beat three times upon my Upon my forehead he traced seven P's with his sword's point and said, 'When you have entered within, take care to wash away these wounds.'" Okay, so the seven P's, the P stands for peccata, which is Italian for sin, okay?
So, the idea is that Dante has to climb seven terraces, which are the seven deadly sins, and he has to purge himself of these seven deadly sins. Each time he purges himself, an angel will come and take away a P. Okay? So, he's tracking his progress for Purgatory, okay? All right, keep on Line 115.
"Ashes or dry earth that has just been quarried with share one color with his robe, and from beneath that robe he drew two keys. The one was made of gold, the other was of silver. First with the white, then with the yellow key he plied the gates so as to satisfy me. 'Whenever one of these keys fails, not turning appropriately in the lock,' he said to us, 'this gate of entry does not open. One is more precious, but the other needs much art and skill before it will unlock."
Part 223:30:01
"'That is the key that must undo the knot. These I received from Peter, and he taught me rather to err in opening than in keeping this portal shut whenever souls pray humbly.' Then he pushed back the panels of the holy gate saying, 'Enter, but I warn you, he who would look back returns again outside.' And when the panels of that sacred portal, which are of massive and resounding metal, turned on their hinges, then even Tarpeia, when good Metellus were removed from it, from which that rock was left impoverished, did not roar so nor show itself so Hearing that gate resound, I turned attentive."
"I seemed to hear inside and words that mingled with gentle music, 'Te Deum laudamus.' And what I heard gave me the very same impression one is used to getting when one hears a song accompanied by organ, and now the words are clear and now are" Okay, so the angel is saying two things about this gate, okay?
The first thing about this gate is that they're generous. They will let in more people than they actually need to. They want to give people opportunities and a chance, okay? Second thing is, the moment you come in, don't look back. Go in with total faith and be resolute. The moment you lose your faith, the moment you become doubtful, then you'll be kicked out again. We'll let anyone in, but when you come you have to be pretty harsh on yourself.
Okay? And those are the rules for Which is very different from what the church teaches you at this time, which is that it's very hard to get in. Once you're in, you're good. Okay? It's the opposite. Okay, so this is Purgatory 10.
Canto 10. "When I had crossed the threshold of the gate that sends the souls apparent love would make the crooked way seem straight is seldom used, I heard the gate resound, and hearing knew that it had shut. And if I turned toward it, how could my fault have found a fit excuse? Our upward pathway ran between cracked rocks. They seemed to sway in one then the other part, just like a wave that flees then doubles back. 'Here we shall need some ingenuity,' my guide warned me, 'as both of us draw near this side or that side where the rock wall' This made our steps so slow and hesitant that the declining moon had reached its bed to sink back into rest before we had made our way through the needle's eye, but when we were released from it in open space above a place at which the slope retreats."
"I was exhausted. With the two of us uncertain of our way, we halted on a plateau lonelier than desert The distance from its edge, which rims the void, into the base of the steep slope, which climbs and climbs, what measures three times one man's body. And for as far as my sight took its flight, now to the left, now to the right hand side, that terrace seemed to me equally wide. There we had yet to let our feet advance when I discovered that the bordering bank, less sheer than banks of other terraces, was of white marble and adorned with carving so accurate, not only Polycletus, but even nature there would feel defeated."
"The angel who reached earth with the decree of that peace which for many years have been invoked with tears, the peace that opened heaven after long interdict, appeared before us, his gracious action carved with such precision. He did not seem to be a silent image. One would have sworn that he was saying, 'Ave.' For in that scene there was the effigy of one who turned the key that had unlocked the highest And in her stance there were impressed these words, 'Ecce ancilla Dei.' Precisely like a figure stamped in wax. 'Your mind must not attend to just one part,' the gentle master said."
"He had me on the side of him where people have their heart. At this I turned my face and saw beyond the form of Mary, on the side where stood the one who guided me, another story upon the rock. Therefore, I moved past Virgil and drew close to it so that the scene before me in my eyes was more distinct. There carved in that same marble were the cart and oxen as they drew the sacred ark, which makes men now fear tasks not in their charge. People were shown in front, and all that group divided into seven choirs made two of my senses speak."
"One sense said, 'No.' The other said, 'Yes, they do sing.' Just so, about the incense smoke shown here shown there, my nose and eyes contended too with yes and no. And there the humble psalmist went before the sacred vessel dancing, lifting up his robe. He was both less and more than king. Facing that scene and shown as at the window of a great palace, Michal watched as would a woman full of scorn and suffering. To look more closely at another carving which I saw gleaming white beyond Michal, my feet moved past the point where I had stood."
"And there was the noble action of a Roman prince was presented. He whose worth had urged on Gregory to his great victory. I mean the Emperor Trajan and a poor widow was near his bridle. And he stood even as one in tears and sadness would. Around him horsemen seemed to press and crowd. Above their heads on golden banners eagles were represented moving in the wind. Among that crowd the miserable woman seemed to be saying, 'Lord, avenge me for the slaying of my son. My heart is broken.' And he was answering, 'Wait now until I have returned.' And she, as one in whom grief presses urgently, 'And Lord, if you do not return?' And he, 'The one who will be in my place will perform it for you.' She, 'What good can others' goodness do for you if you neglect your own?' He, 'Be consoled."
"'My duty shall be done before I go. So justice as so mercy makes me stay.' This was the speech made visible by one within whose sight no thing is new. But we who lack its likeness here find While I took much delight in witnessing these effigies of true humility, feared to see because he was their maker. The poet murmured, 'See the multitude advancing, though with slow step on this side. They will direct us to the higher stairs.' My eyes, which had been satisfied in seeking new sight, a thing for which they longed, did not delay in turning toward him."
"But what I would not have you, reader, be deflected from your good result by hearing from me now how God would have us pay the debt we owe. Don't dwell upon the form of punishment. Consider what comes after that. At worst it cannot last beyond the final 'Master,' I said, 'what I see moving toward us does not appear to me like people, but I can't tell what is there. My sight's bewildered.' And he to me, 'Whatever makes them suffer their heavy torment bends them to the ground. At first, I was unsure of what they were, but looking intently and let your eyes unravel what's beneath those stones, you can already see what penalty strikes' 'O Christians, arrogant, exhausted, wretched, whose intellects are sick and cannot see, who place your confidence in backward steps, do you not know that we are worms and born to form the angelic butterfly that soars without defenses to confront his judgment?"
"'Why does your mind presume to flight when you are still like the imperfect grub, the worm before it has attained its final form?' Just as one sees a time as corbel for support of ceiling and or of roof, a figure with knees drawn up into chest, and this oppressiveness, unreal, gives rise to real distress in him who watches it. Such was the state of those I saw when I looked hard. They were indeed bent down, some less, some more, according to the weights their backs now bore, and even he whose aspect showed more patience and tears appeared to say, 'I can no more.'" Okay.
All right. So, they are past the gates of Purgatory. They're now inside Purgatory proper. What's the first thing that Dante sees? What's the first thing he sees? What's there awaiting him in Purgatory, the first thing?
Excuse me?
And what are these rocks? What's inside these rocks? Carvings, okay? This is artwork. The first thing that Dante sees when he enters Purgatory is artwork. Carvings of the rock that depict scenes of humility. Okay? These are just famous And what Dante does is that he turns these scenes into basically a movie, right? A story that he plays in his So, what he's trying to suggest here is if you want to really redeem yourself, if you really want to cleanse yourself, what do you need first and foremost?
What enables you to redeem yourself? What allows you to absolve Yes.
Examples of humility to copy.
You need reflection, but what drives the reflection?
But why art?
Imagination, okay? That's what Dante is saying here. If you really want to start the process, you need imagination. So, what I want to do now is let's draw the Mona Lisa. It is the Mona Do you guys like the Mona Lisa? Okay. Or maybe something else. Do you guys prefer the Mona Lisa or another piece of art?
Part 233:40:03
The Last Supper? Okay, let's do both, okay? Let's do both the Mona Lisa and Last Supper, okay? All right. So, now what I want to do is this. What Dante is suggesting is the act of looking at art, okay? The act of interacting with art betters you as a person, okay? And I want to figure out why. All right, so You have the artwork, okay, and it could be Mona Lisa or The Last Supper.
Let's just do Last Supper. Yeah, let's just do Last Supper, okay? All right. [snorts] And I want to figure out why this is the case. Why when you look at art it changes you for the better and it enhances your imagination, okay? Let's try to figure this out. You go to the Louvre. Where's The Last Supper? The Last Supper is in And you've seen it, right? Right?
So let's say you're there, right? And you have the room to yourself and you're sitting down for a whole afternoon and you're looking at The Last Supper by yourself, okay? And what Dante's saying is that when you do that, it changes you as a person and you become a more virtuous person. I'm trying to figure out why that's the All right. Has anyone actually done that? Has anyone just sat down in front of a painting for a whole afternoon and just looked at it?
Okay? Well, tell me what's going All right, let's just list them. What is your mind doing as you look at the painting?
Yeah, I used to try to keep looking at that kind of painting and I don't know, I just feel so strange. I was just in the painting. I was in the painting. I was in the Jesus' position or even try to imagine myself if I were in the painting, I was standing on the table. And what should I think?
All right. So you participate in it, yes? Okay, what else?
Well, first I would try to figure out who the people are in the painting first. So the background, what Yeah. Just knowledge about them so I can better understand them and where they come from.
Okay. So what you're trying to do is you're trying to fill in the story, right? Does that make sense? There's a story inside the painting, you're trying to fill it in. You're trying to figure who they are, what they're doing, okay?
I try [clears throat] and put myself in the shoes of the artist and ask, you know, why did he put a certain detail in the painting.
Okay, right. Okay, so analysis. You do analysis, technical analysis, yes? Right? So you're switching perspectives. What else? Good. Yes, okay. You're trying to connect it to yourself. Connection. Good. Yes, excellent. Yes?
You start looking at the colors and you see the picture as a whole, but you also start focusing on details.
Yes, okay. Right, okay. So you're trying to focus on the details. Details focus. Yes. And why would you do that?
Because you already see the whole picture, so you want to see what each part of the picture is Okay, right.
So you're basically trying to world build, okay? World build. Okay. Anyone else? Yes?
I will try to understand what the artist tries to convey.
Okay. Okay, the story, okay? The message, yes? Anyone else?
I usually try to dissolve myself, a kind of disassociation, in order to assimilate within the painting, trying to forget yourself. And it's like how do you get moved by a painting where you have to disassociate into the painting?
Okay, that's a really interesting comment, okay? But I want you to break it down for us and try to literally explain what's going on.
So, it's like constantly trying to ebb and flow between being the viewer and being the artist, being the subject and being the physical object. And you're just trying to play back and forth between who am I and what is the painting and trying to bring them Okay.
So, is it dialogue, right? A dialogue, assimilation, okay? Yeah, assimilation, right? Would it be fair to say that when you do this, you're also moving beyond time and space? Okay, so you're moving outside of time and space, which creates unity, okay? Does that make sense, guys? Time and space create separation, but once you move out of time and space, it creates unity. All right, thank you.
I like looking at portraits of people, so I asked for all dining halls who have all the famous alumni hanging and then they'll be looking down on you as you're eating and then you feel like you have this connection with them. They used to sit at these halls and tables and eat under the same candlelight and then you wonder if they're still somehow alive in heaven looking down on you and expecting you to do some great things as well so that one day your pictures will be hanging up here.
That's a really interesting comment, but try to explain how this connection works. There's connection, you're at Oxford and all these great people, these portraits are all around you and it seems as though they're staring at you from heaven. Explain how that could happen.
Because the pictures were positioned so high up on the ceilings and then literally they're looking down on you while you look up at them while you're eating and it feels like there's this eternal capsule of their souls in essence somewhere left in the painting or their memories of this whole resonates with Okay.
Right, okay. So, wonder, resonance, sure. So, Benjamin Franklin, I'm sorry, not Benjamin Franklin. Walter Benjamin would have a phrase for it. He calls it aura. Okay? And his argument is this.
Okay. It's a very strange argument, okay? But obviously we can't know with this, right? But in The Last Supper in the church in Florence, is it Florence? Or yeah. So, you're sitting there, okay? Whenever you're sitting there, that painting is sucking up your right? So, it has its own aura. It's alive. Right? And so, that aura then becomes reflected in you as well, right? And so, that's what Walter Benjamin would say. Every artwork has its own aura, meaning its own personality developed over hundreds of years of audience participation, okay?
Any other Come on, you guys have all looked at artwork, right? Yes?
I guess just looking at the lines we just read. Yes. Resolving paradoxes, but also using your imagination to give life to the painting cuz the first carving he says, "Two senses were inside me. One sense said, 'No, they're not seen.'" That's the realistic material Dante. And the other sense, "Yes, they do sing."
So, I guess it's giving yourself over to the reality of the painting. I don't know what to call that process.
Well, I would say it's co-creation, right? Because the artist has created a reality, with your imagination you are making this reality much more vibrant and you're changing the dynamic of this reality. Such a cool creation process.
Yes. Oh sorry, yeah.
So this is before pictures or cell phones or anything like this. So you're capturing a moment of and there's a duality going on here of declaring yourself into the universe or even narcissism, however you want to call that.
Putting yourself out there to empathize and be empathized with.
Right, okay. So it's almost like a form of meditation, right? A meditation that creates a sort of mystical experience. Mystical connection. Does that make sense, guys? Right? When you're looking at a painting, yes.
So when I went to Florence and went to one of the museums there, I went with a friend, and when I started looking at the paintings, we just started to debate about the paintings. We looked from different perspectives at what the artist was trying to convey.
We really went deep, and that's really how I started to see the picture more through debate, through listening to someone else's perspective as well.
Yeah, but what's interesting is what the painting has done is enhance your individuality. And so when you engage in debate, you're expressing your individuality, right? But the main point is, first of all, your individuality was activated, right? And that's why everyone who looks at a painting is going to have a different interpretation, because we're all unique individuals. Okay? So it really activates your... Good. Okay, anyone else? Yes?
I think this is why the Catholic Church will always have the stained glass windows with a lot of stories on them. The whole point is that most of the time you are illiterate coming into the church, and all you can do is look at pictures, and then the pictures can kind of wash away the sin in a way, right? Or kind of purify you, plus it makes you bow in humility towards the beauty of God. The minute you enter this hall of pictures, and light shining through the window shining on you, it makes you feel elevated, in a sense of "Hallelujah."
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And then you go, without the organ you can feel the organ, you know, and so it's a very spiritual experience.
Right. Can we go to the Mona Lisa, please? Who's actually seen the Mona Lisa? In your life? All right. Okay. What is unique about the Mona Lisa? Only the Mona Lisa does this. Can you tell us?
Are we talking about the fact that wherever you are in the room she looks at you?
It's really weird. Can you see it?
When you walk around, her eyes follow you. They track you. It's really weird.
You really feel it, because wherever you are in the room the aura is here, and you can just turn your back and then look back, she's still here. You can't move away from the energy.
It's really weird. I've never been, but, you know, I've read stories.
Not just that, but there's a song by Nat King Cole, the singer. He sang a song called "Mona Lisa."
Where he says, "Is your smile to tempt a lover, or is it just another work of art you're putting on your face?" So when you're in front of her, it's very much about co-creation, because it's your inner feeling in that moment that defines what you read her smile as, because it's such an elusive smile. And it's amazing standing in front of it. Sometimes she's upset with you. Sometimes she's like Beatrice, saying, "Come on, you need to rise up." And then sometimes she's saying, "Well, it's okay. You're a human being."
Right. It's like she's alive. Right. All right. So, your experience with the Mona Lisa, can you talk about it?
It is really hard to actually look carefully at the Mona Lisa, because there are so many people in front of you.
I understand that, yes.
Yeah. And I feel the energy. Yeah. I feel the energy, but I see So, you felt energy too, right?
Yeah, I feel the energy. Yeah, that's the Yeah, that's the aura, yes.
Yeah, yes?
I guess I wanted to expand on these ideas then. Would art show you what is possible and expand [clears throat] your imagination?
Yes, that's right. That's right. You're forced to expand your imagination in order to have all these feelings, right? And the more feelings you have, the more your imagination expands. Yes, any other? Yes?
Yeah, because I've also heard that the Mona Lisa's hands are not a woman's hands. They must be a baby's, an infant's hands. And the face is like a man's. It's not a woman. So maybe it's Da Vinci who just tried to portray himself. And even the bone, I think it is kind of a combination between the baby, between a woman, between a man. So it's kind of incarnation or Okay.
Yes?
Just to add on to that about art, it's actually one of the reasons why my husband and I converted from Protestantism to Catholicism, because in the Protestant religion you can only have the cross, which is a symbol for Christ. There's no art, very little music. Well, there is Hillsong, but that's it. So there was no mystical stuff, no incense. But the Catholic church is like, man, full on, you know, art, music, incense, all this very materialistic, almost down-to-earth things that really incite all your senses to feel God.
And then Protestantism is all abstract ideas, symbols, theories, concepts. That's very soul or spirit, but Catholicism [clears throat] is very bodily. It's very feminine. It's very womanly. It's very artistic or musical. And that kind of has a connection to your soul or your body. In a way your senses awaken your soul or spirit to feel closer to God. So this concreteness, you...
Great. Okay. So we've established what art is and what the impact of art is on you. But now we want to figure out why the imagination, explain why the imagination would necessarily make you a more virtuous person.
Right? That doesn't actually connect. Okay? Yeah, we know art expands your imagination, but why would that make you a much more virtuous person, ready for catharsis, ready for purgatory?
Why would the first step to self-salvation or redemption be art?
It can create consciousness about your emotions, because when you see art you feel something and then you think about it. Why am I feeling this?
Yeah. Okay. So let's go over this, okay? One is the emotions. Okay? The entire point of art really, okay, is to shock your emotions to the forefront, right? So your emotions are now alive and you actually feel them much more closely. Yeah, thank you. Okay? Anyone else? Starts with person, okay? Art will shock you and then your emotions come to the... Right? Then what happens? Yes?
Well, to add to that point, it strengthens your empathy, especially for the artist, obviously, who tries to express his own emotions, and then you can start to empathize with his emotions, and that's how you expand your imagination, because you can put yourself into his shoes and feel as though you are him.
Yeah, exactly. Okay. So, imagine this, okay? Your emotions are being shocked, right? They're jolted. They're in motion now, and what the artwork does is focus your emotions in order to empathize with the painting, right? So, it's reordering your emotional state. Okay, does that make sense? All right? And obviously, it makes you more virtuous. But why?
Yes, my first practical answer would be you realize that acting virtuously is what creates a universe where imagination can flourish and come into being. So the virtues are designed so agents in a universe act so that everybody can imagine more and there can be more in the universe.
Okay. That's true, okay? But I want to go into the technical details of how this happens, okay? What you say is abstractly true, but I want to know how concretely it happens, yes?
What comes to mind is dissociation, and then the ability to put your center away from yourself, and I guess come back to empathizing with the artist's emotions, empathizing with the technique he uses, the process, his story, everything, like being able to think outside of yourself.
Okay, yes?
You have a love with the artist, and you become thankful to him for creating
Sure, but I'm saying like what does It's like love.
So basically there's a relation between you and the art, and so you and the artist, and then thanks to this you become thankful through this like Okay.
Okay. Yes. Yes. That's the end, okay? I think first of all your emotions are forced into motion, okay? Then your emotions become more focused on the artwork, and then there's a step, and then at the end you have a sense of gratitude to the artist. You have a sense of connection to the artist. But what's the missing step? What focuses your emotions?
Self-reflection. Like, you start What is the art?
It forces you away from the material and you think about more of the abstract.
You're thinking too hard about this. What is art? Why do we watch art?
Because fundamentally it's proof that other minds exist. It's against solipsism. So you What draws you to the art?
Beautiful. It's beautiful.
It's beauty, do you understand? Okay? You see how this works? The beauty shocks your emotions, okay? It's like seeing a beautiful woman on the street. You're like, "Oh my god, I need to meet her," okay? Your emotions are shocked into place. The beauty then focuses and orders the emotions into something that is virtuous. But why would beauty be... What's the connection between beauty and virtue? Yes?
Because on the surface of beauty, and after the surface of beauty, in the depths of an artwork is love. So eventually the greatest artwork has to be the most associative, and the most associative power, I think, is love.
Yes, okay. Yes, that's right. Beauty will lead you to love. But what is it about beauty that allows you to love? Yes?
I think because beauty as a construct has formulas in a way, like we talk about geometry, numerology, and all these essences. The same way you see math and science reflect the beauty in the design, or whatever divinity reflects in it. And so the moment you see beauty, it kind of makes you think about the smart designer who, you know, has designed these things.
Part 254:00:00
Yes, okay. Yes.
And maybe because of the curving, because you can see the women, they've got curving waves. They've got a shape which is quite, it's like up and down.
Right. So there are mathematical principles to beauty, right? There's symmetry, there's the pi principle, right? Yeah, yes, yes, yes, if you want to have a Yeah, so I'm a member of the Cormac McCarthy Society and he has this line, "Beauty and truth are one."
Yes, that's right. Exactly.
The key is the word you just said, "symmetry." In all great art it's symmetrical. When you see a beautiful man or woman, there's symmetry in their... But how all of this correlates to truth is, we don't just say, "I'm wearing a gray shirt." That's a shirt. That's not truth. That's just a fact. If I say the Vietnam War started because of XYZ, that's not the truth, because I need to know what happened right before it and what happened right before that and what happened on the moon and what happened a thousand years before.
And the reason that we can't get to truth, or no journalist can get to truth, is because you can't write everything. But there is one entity that can write everything and know all, and that's And so beauty and truth are one.
Exactly, okay? So do you guys see how this works, right? The beauty, there are mathematical principles behind the beauty, including symmetry, all that, and that takes you into the mind of God. That's the very center of God. And then that becomes truth, and that's what allows you to love. You... Okay? So great artwork gives you access into the very mind of God, allows you to connect with the universe, and that's what makes you virtuous. Okay? It activates the love inside of... All right? Yes?
Is that not a very Platonic view? Plato really thought about mathematics and its connection to God.
But he still... What I don't understand is, then he still denied art as a form of God, or an expression of God, right?
Okay, that's a really good question, okay? So, it is true that for Plato mathematics is the mind of God. It's also true that if Plato were to see the Mona Lisa, he'd be horrified. Why would he be horrified? Do you guys know why?
Because it's just a falsity. It's just an illusion and it's being praised as a form of God.
That's right. It's a shadow. And so for Plato to really access the mind of God, you have to avoid the beauty and just focus on the mathematics. You understand? For him, it's not that beauty gives you access to mathematics, it's that beauty distracts you from the mathematics. You just focus on the mathematics, okay? Don't look at the painting, just look at the mathematics behind the painting. And that's what gives you access to God. But Plato's wrong, okay? I mean, just because he's Plato doesn't mean he's right all the time.
Does that make sense? Okay. Yes?
Do you personally think maybe that's why some mathematicians go crazy? Because they're getting I agree.
Yeah. Can you explain that?
They're getting too close to God.
No, I think it's because they're too far away from God. Yeah, I think it's because they create their own reality and they've lost connection to the real. And that's why, you know, the best mathematicians do their best math at maybe around 20 to 30, that age group. And then afterwards they go insane, okay? And it's no different from, I would say, computer programmers, if that makes any sense. Once you create your own reality and you try to inhabit this reality, and you lose your connection to the divine through beauty and through truth and through love, you're going to go crazy.
And yes.
But how does looking at the painting make people more virtuous Okay, so the process is this, okay?
The beauty of the painting draws you, okay? It compels you to look at it forever, okay? You lose the sense of time and space. You're just focusing on it. You become one with the painting. In this process, what happens is your emotions become jolted. They become out of place, okay? What this basically means is that your worldview is evolving. And through this process, your emotions become rearranged in a new worldview that focuses on the painting.
Okay? And the painting, once you keep looking more at it, you access truth. Why? Because beauty and truth are one if it's God, right? So you're given access into the mind of God. And because you know that God is love, that forces your emotions to be rearranged in a way that allows for more love, which is more virtue. Does that make sense? Okay, yes?
I have a question just about what you personally feel. So there's a fractal called the Mandelbrot set.
Which maybe it'd be good if we saw a picture of it.
Sure, let's try and draw it up.
And it's basically a small, very short formula which lists points to do with primes, and you'll see it. I've been obsessed with these, and they've moved me so much since I was a very, very small child, that you can zoom in with infinite complexity. Do you think this is more beautiful than any human art, because it's literally the art contained within mathematics?
Yes. At Peking University, and when he saw these images, he's also a computer programmer, he got into the Olympics for computer programming. But he said that it is what moved him to God as a middle schooler, because the minute he saw the signs and the design and the numerology, the symmetry, the golden ratio and all of these, you cannot study science without knowing logos, without understanding all design. So that's how he moved to religion.
But let me ask you this question. Would you rather spend 10 years looking at the Mona Lisa or 10 years looking at the Mandelbrot set?
You can zoom in on the Mandelbrot set forever and it's never the same. You can zoom in and it changes forever and ever and ever and ever.
But what do you feel emotionally when you look at the Mandelbrot set?
Not like a human being.
What do you mean by that?
Well, when I want to feel like a human being, the Mona Lisa and things, they really do it for me. But then there's some kind of transcendental feeling when your individuality leaves you and you're just trying to be with the mind of God, or whatever you think that is.
Right. I understand. I understand. And if you do that for a long, long time, that might be problematic.
Yeah, I think definitely 10 years of the Mona Lisa is better. She's a bit of company. She's a bit of company.
So yes. Okay. I would think so. All right. Okay. Good. Let's continue, guys. All right. Let's go to canto 11. Okay? So we are now in the first terrace, which is to purge you of pride. Okay? So you have to learn humility in this terrace. Okay, let's read, okay?
Our Father, you who dwell within the heavens but are not circumscribed by them, out of your greater love for your first works above. Praise be your name and your omnipotence by every creature, just as it is seemly to offer thanks to your sweet effluence. Your kingdom's peace come unto us, for if it does not come, then though we summon all our force we cannot reach it of ourselves. Just as your angels, as they sing hosanna, offer their wills to you a sacrifice, so may men offer up their wills to you.
Give unto us this day the daily manna without which he who labors most to move ahead through this harsh wilderness falls back. Even as we forgive all who have done us injury, may you benevolent forgive and do not judge us by our worth. Try not our strength so easily subdued against the ancient foe, but set it free from him who goads it to perversity. This last request we now address to you, dear Lord, not for ourselves, who have no need, but for the ones whom we have left behind. Beseeching thus good penitence for us and for themselves, those shades moved on beneath their weights like those we sometimes bear in dreams.
Each in his own degree of suffering, but all exhausted, circling the first terrace, purging themselves of this world's score.
Okay, so again these are people with pride, and so they're given weights and they have to move very slowly on this terrace, and they're being burdened by these weights, and this is meant to relieve them of their pride, and then they will have to learn humility. How is this different from hell?
What is the difference? Yes. I don't understand, if you were in hell, it would be the same thing, Well, but they want to do it.
They know why they do it. They understand why they do it. The people in hell who are punished, I don't think they're, I mean, they know they're guilty, they don't think that it's fair that they're being punished probably.
Yes. Yes, okay. Yes, anyone else?
They are receiving this punishment in the hope that one day they will reach paradise, and they know that they did something wrong, and they're kind of punishing themselves physically, but they still have hope that one day they'll make it into upper tiers or make it to heaven.
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Yes, okay, exactly. But I don't understand why the people in hell can't be like, "You know what? You just do this for 10,000 years and then we'll send you to purgatory." It's always like, "No, in hell it's for all of eternity." What's the logic of this?
Maybe unlike those in hell, they did not do deeds that puncture the fabric of and sow discord or create societal ills, so they would not be doing this forever.
Yeah, we don't know that, right? Because the condition for being in purgatory is that one, you repent, and second is that people pray for you, right? It doesn't say there are certain crimes that prevent you from going to... And so again, this is a question for us where it seems as though the punishment is the same. So if they're doing the same punishment, couldn't you have a system where in hell, if you do this for 10,000 years, you're given access to... Why not do that?
Even the promise of 10,000 years would not give you a growth mindset. So I think in this scene, they're just singing themselves into the growth mindset. So the actuality of what they're doing is purifying them.
And so if you were in hell, even if you knew that by doing this for 10,000 years you might make it out, it wouldn't give you the growth mindset that would actually render you above Yeah, but why?
I'm asking you why.
Because you have to do every second with no thought of the end. You can't do it as if there's a finish line. You have to just do it as if you're doing it forever. And the mindset that you have in every second is what Okay, so this is actually a really important question.
If you really understand Dante, why are people in hell and why are people in purgatory? What's the difference?
So, I'm seeing [clears throat] this as an Aristotelian golden mean. And so the example I have, even though bravery is not something that will get you into heaven, is the two extremes that Aristotle would see would be cowardice, but then also recklessness.
And those would get you in this fictional hell. But there's a spectrum. And so the closer you get to bravery on either end of the extremes, then you're going to end up at a point, which I don't know why, you would end up, God would say that's good enough that you get into purgatory.
Yes, okay. Dante has read a lot of Aristotle, and he would definitely agree on this idea. But that still doesn't clarify for me why, if it's the same punishment, right? Why? What's the difference between heaven... What's the difference between hell and purgatory?
Maybe people in hell, they just go by reason, but in purgatory people don't always go by reason. They just go by inspiration or what? Or hope or what?
Okay, this is hard, okay? But what Dante suggests, wait, I know Dante believes this, okay? Is that people are in hell because they choose to be there. People are in purgatory because they choose to be there. It's a law of free... Does that make sense to you guys? That's where the growth mindset comes from. Because you believe you can be better. But if you're like, "I don't believe I can be better," then I'm just better off in... Okay? Why are people in purgatory doing this thing? Because they think that by doing this thing, I can be better.
Right? But in hell, you make them do this. You're like, well, I'll keep on doing this, but it's not going to change me. It's just my punishment, right? So it's perception, where people in hell see it as their punishment, but people in purgatory see it as their opportunity. Does that make sense? That's the difference. It's attitude. And that's this fundamental understanding of Dante and how he sees the... Okay, let's keep on going.
Line 16. Even as we forgive all who have done us injury, may you benevolent forgive and do not judge us by our... Oh, sorry. Line 25. Beseeching thus good penitence for us and for themselves, those shades moved on beneath their weight like those we sometimes bear in dreams, each in his own degree of suffering, but all exhausted, circling the first terrace, purging themselves of this world's score. If there they pray on our behalf, what can be said and done here on this earth for them by those whose wills are rooted in true worth?
Indeed, we should help them to wash away the stains they carried from this world, so that, made pure in light, they reach the starry wheels. So may justice and compassion soon unburden you, so that your wings may move as you desire them to and uplift you. Show us on which hand lies the shortest path to reach the stairs. If there's more than one passage, then show us that which is less deep, for he who comes with me, because he wears the weight of Adam's flesh as dress, despite his ready will, is slow in his ascent.
These words which have been spoken by my guide were answered by still other words we heard, though it was not clear who had replied. An answer: "Come with us to the right along the wall of rock and you will find a path where even one alive can climb. And where I'm not impeded by the stone that, since it has subdued my haughty neck, compels my eyes to look below, then I should look at this man who's still alive and nameless, to see if I recognize him and to move his pity.
Pity for my burden. I was Italian, son of a great Tuscan. My father was Guglielmo Aldobrandesco. I do not know if you have heard his name. The ancient blood and splendid deeds of my forefathers made me so presumptuous that, without thinking on our common mother, I scorned all men past measure, and that scorn brought me my death. The Sienese know how, as does each child in Campagnatico. I'm Umberto, and my arrogance has not harmed me alone, for it has drawn all of my kin into calamity. Until God has been satisfied, I bear this burden here among the dead because I did not bear this load among the living."
My face was lowered as I listened, and one of those souls, not he who'd spoken, twisted himself beneath the weight that burdened them. He saw and knew me and called out to me, fixing his eyes on me laboriously as I, completely hunched, walked on with them. "Oh," I cried out, "are you not Oderisi? Glory of Gubbio, glory of that art they call illumination now in Paris." "Brother," he said, "the pages painted by the brush of Franco Bolognese smile more brightly. All the glory now is his. Mine but a part.
In truth, I would have been less gracious when I lived. So great was that desire for eminence that drove my heart. For such pride, here one pays the penalty, and I'd not be here yet had it not been that while I still could sin, I turned to him." O empty glory of the powers of humans, how briefly green endures upon the peak, unless an age of dullness follows it. In painting, Cimabue thought he held the field, and now it's Giotto they acclaim. The former only keeps a shadowed fame. So did one Guido from the other wrest the glory of our tongue, and he perhaps is born who will chase both out of the nest.
Worldly renown is nothing other than a breath of wind that blows now here, now there, and changes name when it has changed its course. Before a thousand years have passed, a span that for eternity is less space than an eye blink for the slowest sphere in heaven, would you find greater glory if you left your flesh when it was old than if your death had come before your infant fourth year was spent? All Tuscany acclaimed his name, the man who moved so slowly on the path before me, and now they scarcely whisper of him even in Siena, where he lorded it when they destroyed the raging mob in Florence, then as arrogant as now its prostitute.
Your glory wears the color of the grass that comes and goes. The sun that makes it wither first drew it from the ground, still green and tender. And I to him, "Your truthful speech has filled my soul with sound humility, abating my overswollen pride. But who is he of whom you spoke just now?" "Provenzan Salvani," he answered. "Here, because presumptuously he thought his grip could master all Siena. So he has gone, and so he goes with no rest since his death. This is the penalty extracted from those who there..." And I, "But if a spirit who waits at the edge of life before repenting must, unless good prayers help them, stay below and not ascend here for as long a time as he had spent alive.
Do tell me how Salvani's entry here has been allowed." "When he was living in his greatest glory," said he, "then of his own free will he set aside all shame and took his place upon the Campo of Siena. There to free his friend from suffering in Charles' prison, humbling himself, he trembled in each vein. I say no more. I know I speak obscurely, but soon enough you'll find your neighbor's acts are such that what I say can be explained. This deed delivered him from those confines."
Okay. So here we meet a man who did a lot of wrong. Okay? But once he did some good. Okay? Once he helped his friend escape a... And he begged his neighbors to help him free his friend. Okay? So the idea here is, look, you could live a life of complete sin, okay? But the moment you choose to do one good act, it will be remembered and it will redeem you. Does that make... Okay? So this is extremely radical of Dante to say, look, for 100 years you could have lived a terrible life, but if you just commit yourself to doing one good thing before you die, that's going to redeem you in the eyes of God.
Part 274:20:41
So there is always hope and salvation, no matter who you are, no matter what you've done. Yes?
So, when you ask that question prior to the reading, what makes the same sin differentiate from hell and... The Catholic Church would say repent at your death. And are you saying that Dante says that works are what can get you into purgatory, and not just... It seems like I could sin, sin, sin, sin, and then sincerely repent at my death and make it into purgatory, would be the Catholic Church's interpretation.
Right, the formula isn't that simple. There are lots of conditions, okay? But the way to understand this is the conditions to get into purgatory are a lot more flexible than the conditions to get into hell. Does that make sense? Right? If you do something really, really bad, like murder your guest, that condemns you to hell. But the criteria, the conditions for purgatory are much more wide, much more flexible than people imagine. So it's possible you repent. It's possible you were murdered accidental... you were murdered and you didn't have time to repent.
It's possible that you did one good work and that helped a lot of people. Okay? So do you understand? There's a lot of different things you can do to get into purgatory. And the reason why is, once you're in purgatory, you have to show total commitment.
All right. So, as the angel says, it's easy to get in, but once you're in, you have to work really, really hard. Okay? If you want to commit yourself to working hard for eternity, then you come in, okay? Because the thing about purgatory that's very upsetting for a lot of people is it's a really long time. Right? It could be 10,000... It could be 10 million years. Okay? And some people are like, "Screw that. I'll just spend my time in hell.
It sounds a lot easier." Right? All right. Let's go to Canto Canto 12.
Oxen yoked proceeded abreast, so I moved with the burden slow as long as my kind pedagogue allowed me to. But when he said, "Leave him behind and go ahead. Here it's fitting that with wings and oars each urged his boat along with all his force," I drew my body up again erect, the stance most suitable to man, and yet the thoughts I thought were still submissive, bent.
Okay, so during his time in the terrace of humility, he lowered himself to develop humility, okay? Does that make sense? Because remember, before he came here he became really famous because of his shadow, and he was proud, and to redeem himself, he held himself low. All right, keep it going.
Line 10. Now I was on my way, and willingly I followed in my teacher's steps, and we together showed what speed we could command. He said to me, "Look downward, for the way will offer you some solace if you pay attention to the pavement at your feet. As on the lids of pavement tombs there are stone effigies of what the buried were before, so that the dead may be remembered. And there, when memory, inciting only the pious, has renewed their mourning, men are often led to shed their tears again. So did I see, but carved more skillfully with greater sense of likeness, effigies on all the path protruding from the mountain.
I saw to one side of the path one who had been created nobler than all other beings, falling lightning-like from heaven. I saw upon the other side Briareus, transfixed by the celestial shaft. He lay ponderous on the cold and fatal earth. I saw Thymbraeus, I saw Mars and Pallas, still armed, as they surrounded Jove their father, gazing upon the giants' scattered limbs. I saw bewildered Nimrod at the foot of his great labor. Watching him were those of Shinar who had shared his arrogance. Oh Niobe, what tears afflicted me when on that path I saw your effigy among your slaughtered children, seven and seven.
Oh Saul, you were portrayed there as one who had died on his own sword upon Gilboa, which never after knew the rain, the dew. Oh mad Arachne, I saw you already half spider, wretched on the ragged remnants of work that you had wrought to your own hurt. Oh Rehoboam, you whose effigy seems not to menace there, and yet you flee by chariot terrified though none pursues. It also showed, that pavement of hard stone, how much Alcmaeon made his mother pay the cost of the ill-omened ornament. It showed the children of Sennacherib as they leapt upon their father in the temple, then left him dead behind them. It showed the slaughter and the devastation wrought by Tomyris when she taunted Cyrus, "You thirsted after blood, with blood I fill you." It showed the rout of the Assyrians sent reeling after Holofernes' death.
It also showed his body, what was left. I saw Troy turned to caverns and to ashes. Oh Ilium, your effigy in stone. It showed you there so squalid, so cast down. What master of the brush or of the stylus had there portrayed such masses, such outlines as would astonish all discerning minds? The dead seemed dead and the alive alive. I saw, bent, treading those effigies, as long as well as those who'd seen those scenes directly. Now sons of Eve persist in arrogance and haughty stands, do you let your eyes bend lest you be forced to see your evil path.
We now had circled more of the mountain, and much more of the sun's course had been crossed, and I, my mind absorbed, and gauged, when he who always looked ahead insistently as he advanced began, "Lift up your eyes, it's time to set these images aside. See there an angel hurrying to meet us, and also see the sixth of the handmaidens returning from her service to the day. Adorn your face and ask with reverence that he be pleased to send us higher. Remember today will never know another" Okay, stop.
Okay, all right. So they passed through the terrace of pride to learn humility. Now they have entered a new terrace and of course there's more artwork. And what is Dante's emotional reaction to this? What's he doing?
When he sees this artwork, what is his He seems quite shocked and sad.
What is he doing?
Remembering and reme- like What's the word?
What is his action? He's sad. What is his action? What does the text say? What's he literally doing right now? As he's watching this artwork.
Looking down. Looking at his feet.
No, what is he literally doing right now? What is he doing right now as he's watching this artwork? As he's looking at this artwork, how is he feeling? What is he doing?
I'd say grieving.
He's crying.
Yeah, grieving.
Right? It literally says he's crying, okay? So now I want to talk about tragedy, okay? Because the things he saw, this artwork, they are tragic. There's tragedy in everything that he's seen, right?
I want to discuss why, and what crying does. Okay? Now, think of a movie you've seen that made you cry. Think about a theater that made you cry. Think about an artwork that made you cry, a song that made you cry, okay? But just think of something that made you cry. All right? What does crying do?
Yeah, it's catharsis, right? Okay? Catharsis. Does anyone know what catharsis means? What is catharsis?
Purifying through release. Releasing your tears.
It's purging, you understand? Catharsis literally means purging. Basically, throw up and release your emotions, okay? That's what crying is. You're purging yourself. Okay? So why would that lead to virtue?
I guess you can start to feel all over your body the pain of other people who have also felt tragedy.
Part 284:30:04
Because what leads to the crying is the empathy, right? That is what leads to the crying, because you see the pain in others, right? If you didn't see the pain in others, you would be laughing like, "Haha, you know, he got his head chopped off." Okay? So it's the empathy that allows you to... And so what is empathy? Where does empathy come from?
I think imagination and emulation from evolution, I think. So it starts with imagining the position of another person or a situation and then trying to feel that within yourself, but a lot of the time it's too complicated for you to feel, so you just try and feel the sadness that you can see in another person, and it's to comfort people by showing that you understand and that their pain is enough to move you beyond your normal state.
So, are you saying that it is an adaptation of evolution?
Okay. With, then, where is empathy located in our brains then?
I think there are certain regions that activate in a mother's brain when her baby is crying and I think that crying is like Has anyone said psychology?
How do our brains actually achieve empathy? Do you guys know? Or we can call it cortex. The cortex is Okay, let's go.
Yes.
Let's leave it at the term mirror Yeah, let's Google mirror neurons, okay?
And I want to see if this is actually true, okay? Are mirror neurons responsible for empathy? Okay, are they responsible for empathy?
Yes.
I had some problems growing up, and I knew people that had problems, like sometimes when I see people crying I would laugh because I didn't know how to properly emulate it. Like there's an interview with Messi where the interviewer is so overwrought with emotion at interviewing him because it's his livestream, and Messi just starts laughing.
Yes.
So there's a psychological experiment where they take a two-year-old and they put, I don't know, a ball in a drawer. And then the parent comes in and the parent doesn't know that the ball's in the drawer or something like this. The way I'm screwing this up, but the way that this works is, if you're under two years old then you can empathize, oh my parent doesn't have that information that the ball's in the drawer. And if you're over two years old, then you can say, oh my parent doesn't know, I need to inform them.
And so two-year-olds is when we get empathy according to psychologists.
Okay, so at two years old is when we develop the mirror neurons, right? All right. I'm not convinced mirror neurons actually exist. It's a theory, but do we have any concrete evidence that it actually exists? What does Google say? Do mirror neurons actually exist? It's a theory, okay? We don't even know how this works. What... Yes?
I am totally on your side. I believe that empathy is beyond one mind and it's definitely a divine emotion. Right. And so what would Dante say? What is empathy?
But how do we connect to God?
Connect to God by connecting to others among you, your peers, their pain.
But what does that?
Love, compassion for another person.
Okay. So the idea is there's a spark, right? And so empathy, how it works is the two sparks connect together. Does that make sense? Okay? So that's why you cry, because when you see another spark in pain, your spark also feels pain and you cry.
Why would that lead to virtue?
Because if you connect to another person's pain and sorrow, then it makes you not want to commit that same sin that could inflict pain on other people. So you want to be a better person so that you don't cause this kind of suffering in the world.
That's right. That's right. That's right. So that's the idea here, where a tragedy is watched by a group of people, and the fact that they cry together connects them together. And that builds community. All right. So let's keep on going. But you can see how complex the Divine Comedy is, right? Because it's a treatise on everything, philosophy, religion, art. Yes?
Yeah, it also kind of makes me think about Lazarus' death, and Jesus went and cried at his funeral. So, only if he had told me, you know, I'll come earlier, but Jesus cried a lot at the funeral even though 10 minutes later he resurrected Lazarus anyways. So people are like, "Well, what the heck with the crying if you could just resurrect him? What do you know? Are you pretending? Is this theater, you know?" But Jesus kind of explains, you know, that he needs to sympathize with Mary and Martha on the loss of Lazarus even though he's going to resurrect him 10 minutes later.
Yes, because it's a human reaction, right? It's something you can Right, exactly.
Yes. Let's keep on going.
Line 85. I was so used to his insistent warnings against the loss of time concerning that his words to me could hardly be obscure. That handsome creature came toward us. His clothes were white, and in his aspect he seemed like the trembling star that rises in the morning. He opened wide his arms and spread his wings. He said, "Approach, the steps are close at hand. From this point on one can climb easily." This invitation's answered by so few. Oh humankind, born for the upward flight, why are you driven back by wind so slight?
He led us to a cleft within the rock, and then he struck my forehead with his wing. That done, he promised me safe... As on the right when one ascends the hill where over So just to clarify, the angel strikes Dante on the forehead to wipe off a P.
You understand? So each time he clears a terrace, a P, a peccata, a sin, is wiped off, okay? Keep on going.
As on the right when one ascends the hill where over Rubaconte's bridge there stands the church that dominates the well-ruled city, the daring slope of the ascent is broken by steps that were constructed in an age when record books and measures could be trusted. So was the slope that plummets there so deeply down from the other ring made easier, but on this side and that high rock encroaches. While we began to move in that direction, "Beati pauperes spiritu" was sung so sweetly it cannot be told in words. How different were these entryways from those of hell?
For here it is with song one enters, down there it is with savage lamentation. Now we ascended by the sacred stairs, but I seemed to be much more light than I had been before along the level. At this I asked, "Master, tell me what heavy weight has been lifted from me so that I in going notice almost no..." He answered, "When the P's that still remain upon your brow, now almost all our fate, have been completely, like this P, erased, your feet will be so mastered by goodwill that they not only will not feel travail, but will delight when they're urged uphill."
Okay, so as more sins are purged from your system, you will literally be lighter, okay? You will feel lighter and you'll be lighter, so you will move faster. And keep on going.
Line 127. Then I behaved like those who made their way with something on their head of which they're not aware till other signs make them suspicious, at which the hand helps them to ascertain. It seeks and finds and touches and provides the services that sight cannot. So with my right hand's outspread fingers, I found just six of the letters once inscribed by him who holds the keys upon my forehead, and as he watched me do this, my guide smiled.
Okay, canto 13 now.
We now had reached the summit of the stairs where once again the mountain whose ascent delivers man from sin has been indented. There, just as in the case of the first terrace, a second terrace runs around the slope, except that it describes a sharper arc. No effigy is there and no outline. The bank is visible, the naked path, only the livid color of raw rock. "If we wait here in order to inquire of those who pass," the poet said, "I fear our choice of path may be delayed too long." And then he fixed his eyes upon the sun, letting his right side serve to guide his movement.
He wheeled his left around and changed direction. "Oh gentle light, through trust in which I enter on this new path, may you conduct us here," he said, "for men need guidance in this place. You warm the world and you illuminate. Unless a higher power urges elsewhere, your rays must always be the guides that lead." We had already journeyed there as far as we should reckon here to be a mile, and done it in brief time. Our will was eager when we heard spirits as they flew toward us, though they could not be seen.
Part 294:40:17
Spirits pronouncing courteous invitations to love's table. The first voice that flew by called out aloud, "Vinum non habent." And behind us that same voice reiterated its example. And as that voice drew farther off, before it faded finally, another cried, "I am Orestes." It too did not stop. "What voices are these, Father?" were my words. And as I asked him this, I heard a third voice saying, "Love those by whom you have been hurt." And my good master said, "The sin of envy is scourged within this circle. Thus the cords that form the scourging lash are plied by love.
The sounds of punished envy, envy curbed, are different. If I judge right, you'll hear those sounds before we reach the pass of pardon. But let your eyes be fixed attentively, and through the air you'll see people seated before us, all of them on the stone terrace." I opened wider than before my eyes. I looked ahead of me and I saw shades with clothes that shared their color with the rocks. And once we'd moved a little farther on, I heard the cry of "Mary, pray for us." And then heard Michael, Peter, and all saints.
I think no man now walks upon the earth who is so hard that he would not have been pierced by compassion by what I saw. For when I had drawn close enough to see clearly the way they paid their penalty, the force of grief pressed tears out of my eyes. These souls, it seemed, were cloaked in coarse haircloth, and on their shoulders served each shade as prop, and all of them were bolstered by the rocks. So do the blind who have to beg appear on pardon days to plead for what they need, each bending his head back and toward the other.
So that all who watch feel quickly pity's touch, not only through the words that would entreat, but through the sight which can no less beseech. And just as to the blind the sun does not appear, so to the shades of whom I now speak here the light of heaven would not give itself. For iron wire pierces and sews up the lids of all those shades, as untamed hawks are handled lest they fly off restless. It seemed to me a gross discourtesy for me going to see and not be seen.
Therefore, I turned to my wise counselor, who knew quite well what I, though mute, had meant. And thus he did not wait for my request, but said, "Speak, and be brief and to the point." Virgil was to my right along the outside near the terrace edge. No parapet was there to keep a man from falling off. And to my other side were the devout shades. Through their eyes sewn so atrociously, those spirits forced the tears that bathed their cheeks. I turned to them. "And you who can be certain," I then began, "of seeing that highlight which is the only object of your longing, may in your conscience all impurity soon be dissolved by grace, so that the stream of memory flow through it limpidly.
Tell me, for I shall welcome such dear words, if any soul among you is Italian, if I know that, then I perhaps can help." "My brother, each of us is citizen of one true city. What you meant to say was one who lived in Italy as pilgrim." My hearing placed the point from which this answer had come somewhat ahead of me. Therefore, I made myself heard farther on, moving. I saw one shade among the rest who looked expectant, and if any should ask how, its chin was lifted as a blind man's. "Spirit," I said, "who have subdued yourself that you may climb, if it is you who answered, then let me know by your place or name.
Know you by your place or name." "I was a Sienese," she answered, "and with others here I mend my wicked life, weeping to him that he grant us himself. I was not sapient, though I was called Sapia, and I rejoiced far more at others' hurts than my own good fortune. And lest you should think I have deceived you, hear and judge if I was not, and I have as I have told you, mad. When my years' arc had reached its downward part, my fellow citizens were close to Colle, where they joined battle with their enemies, and I prayed God for that which he had willed.
Thereat they were routed, beaten. They were reeling along the bitter path of flight, and seeing that chase, I felt incomparable joy, so that I lifted my daring face and cried to God, 'Now I fear you no more.' So did the blackbird after brief fair weather. I looked for peace with God at life's end. The penalty I owe for sin would not be lessened now if my penitence had not... one who was sorrowing for me because of charity in him remembered me in his devout petitions. But who are you who question our condition as you move on, whose eyes, if I judge right, have not been sewn, who uses breath to speak?"
"My eyes," I said, "will be denied me here, but only briefly. The offense of envy was not committed often by their gaze. I fear much more the punishment below. My soul is anxious and in suspense. Already I feel the heavy weights of the first terrace." And she, "Who then let you up here among us, if you believe you will return below?" And I, "He who is with me and is silent. I'm alive and therefore, chosen spirit, if you would have me move my mortal steps on your behalf, beyond... ask me for that."
"Oh, this," she answered, "is so strange a thing to hear. The sign is clear, you have God's love. Thus help me sometimes with your prayers. I ask you by that which you desire most, if you should ever tread the Tuscan earth, to see my name restored among my kin. You'll see them among those vain ones who have put their trust in Talamone. Their loss and hope will be more than Diana cost, but there the admirals will lose the most."
Okay, so why is it that in the Terrace of Envy their punishment is their eyes are shut, sewn shut? Or why would that be the case?
So they don't constantly look at others and compare themselves to others. And so once their eyes are shut, are sewn shut, what effect does it have on them? Yes?
Self, and you work on yourself, you're no longer comparing yourself to others, and you work on yourself to make yourself better.
That's right.
And not because I want to be better than the other guy next to me.
That's right, exactly, okay? All right. And how would it be different in hell? What would the punishment in hell You have to keep looking at others.
And why would that be? Well, because in hell you're not really reflecting, so you still don't look at yourself and try to better yourself, but you feel more jealousy toward other people.
You're forced to look at other people. I'm trying to figure out how visually that works, right?
I think in hell it would just be, like in the pride one, a mindset difference. So in hell everyone believes that everybody else could see. And they were lying to them and somehow they were the ones that couldn't see, and that would be the ultimate envy. Because they would never be able to check.
Same punishment, guys, okay? But as you point out, the attitude would be different, right? Where if you can't see another person, it drives you insane. It makes you believe that that person is able to see and I can't. Do you understand the logic here, right? Here, because these people have a growth mindset, because they are on the path to redemption, they recognize that I should take the time to focus inward. But in hell, they're still stuck focusing on other people.
If they can't look at other people, it drives them insane because they have to imagine that their lives are so much better than my life. Does that make sense?
Hell in a way.
Ultimate hell, right? Okay? So it's really interesting to think about, but yeah, the punishments would be the same, but the way that the person reacts to the punishment would be completely different. All right. Let's go on to 14, please.
Canto 14. "Who is this man who, although death has yet to grant him flight, can circle round our mountain and can at will open and shut his eyes? I don't know who he is, but I do know he's not alone. You're closer. Question him and greet him gently so that he replies." So were two spirits leaning toward each other discussing me along my right-hand side. Then they bent back their heads to speak to me and one began, "O soul, who is still enclosed within the body, make your way toward heaven.
May you through love console us. Tell us who you are, from where you come. The grace that you've received, a thing that's never come to pass before, has caused us much astonishment." And I, "Through central Tuscany there spreads a little stream first born in Falterona. 100 miles can't fill the course it needs. I bring this body from that river's banks to tell you who I am, with me to speak in vain. My name has not yet gained much fame." "If with my understanding I have seized your meaning properly," replied to me the one who'd spoken first, "you mean the Arno?" The other said to him, "Why did he hide that river's name even as one would do in hiding something horrible from view?" The shade to whom this question was addressed replied with this, "I do not know, but it is right for such a valley's name to perish.
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For from its source, at which the rugged chain from which Pelorus was cut off surpasses most other places with its massive mountains, until its end point where it offers back those waters that evaporating skies drew from the sea, that streams may be supplied, virtue is seen as serpent, and all flee from it as if it were an enemy, either because the site is ill-starred or their evil custom goads them so. Therefore, the nature of that squalid valley's people has changed as if they were fed by Circe. That river starts with miserable course among foul hogs, more fit for acorns than for any food devised to serve the needs of man.
Then, as that stream descends, it comes on curs that, though their force is feeble, snap and snarl. Scornful of them, it swerves its snout away, and downward it flows on. And when that ditch, ill-fated and accursed, grows wider, it finds more and more the dogs becoming wolves. Descending then through many dark ravines, it comes on foxes so full of deceit there's no trap that they cannot defeat. Nor will I keep from speech because my comrade hears me, and it will serve you too to keep in mind what prophecy reveals to me.
I see your grandson. He's become a hunter of wolves along the bank of the fierce river, and he strikes every one of them with terror. He sells their flesh while they're still alive. Then, like an ancient beast, he turns to slaughter, depriving many of life, himself of honor. Bloody he comes out from the wood he's plundered, leaving it such that in a thousand years it will not be the forest that it was. Just as the face of one who has heard word of pain and injury becomes perturbed, no matter from what side that menace stirs, so did I see that other soul, who turned to listen, growing anxious and dejected when he had taken in his comrade's words.
The speech of one, the aspect of the other had made me need to know their names, and I both queried and beseeched at the same time, at which the spirit who had spoken first to me began again. "You'd have me do for you that which to me you have refused, but since God would have you see his grace glow so brightly, I shall not be miserly. Know therefore that I was Guido del Duca. My blood was so afire with envy that when I had seen a man becoming happy, the lividness in me was plain to see.
From what I've sown, this is the straw I reap. O humankind, why do you set your hearts there where our sharing cannot have a part? This is Rinieri, this is he, the glory, the honor of the house of Calboli. But no one has inherited his worth. It's not his kennel between the Po and the mountains and the Reno and the coast who have lost the truth's grave good and lost the good of gentle living, too. Those lands are full of poisoned stumps by now, however much one were to cultivate. It is too late.
Where's good Lizio, Arrigo Mainardi, Pier Traversaro, Guido di Carpigna, or Romagnoli returned to bastardy? When will a Fabbro flourish in Bologna? When in Faenza a Bernardin di Fosco, the noble offshoot of a humble plant? Don't wonder, Tuscan, if I weep when I remember Ugolino d'Azzo, one who lived among us, and Guido da Prata, Guido of the house of Traversara and of Anastagi, both houses without heirs, and Federigo Tignoso and his gracious company. The ladies and the knights, labors and leisure to which we once were urged by courtesy and love, where hearts now host Okay, sorry.
We'll stop. Please, we're out of time. But I'll ask you one more question and then we'll end today. What does it mean to say, "Why do you set your hearts there where our sharing cannot have a part?" So we interpret what this means and then we'll end the session. Yes.
Humans are obsessed with zero-sum games. Okay? But explain to everyone else what this means.
So it means your actions, if you're operating in a sphere where there is a limited amount of resources, there have to be winners and losers.
And there cannot be anything else.
And people really like this because you feel like your actions are meaningful and every gain feels like it matters so much more, because you really know, it's not that you're constantly thinking about the loss of another person, but you are aware of it and you know that everything you gain is something that someone else had to lose.
Exactly. Yeah, so what this is saying is we're materialistic and all we care about is material accumulation, and so it becomes a zero-sum game, right? Because if I have this, you can't have that.
What is the solution then? How do we get out of this zero-sum? Is there a solution?
Quality, so that you can have a win-win Is a win-win situation?
Try to co-create something, making the cake bigger instead of just cutting up the cake.
What is a win-win scenario for humanity?
The solution to which we once were urged by courtesy and love where hearts and hosts perversity, so love, I would say.
But what does it mean in practice?
Mhm. Well, instead of trying to wear down others, you help them and you have empathy for them, and instead of trying to gain everything for yourself, try to have like Okay.
So be generous, right? If you need help, I'll help you. And then what are you going to do? You'll help others and then they'll help others as well, right? So, rather than a zero-sum game where there's only finite resources, generosity creates infinite... Okay? Does that make sense? All right. Okay. We'll end here and then we'll start with Canto 15 tomorrow and we'll try to do at least 10, possibly more than that, and that'll give us room and space for the final day to talk more in depth about Dante and how he sees our world, okay?
Also, I want at the last day to give people an opportunity to talk about your personal experience with Dante. I think that's very, very important, okay? So, if possible, for the next 2 days, think about what it's been like to read Dante and how you as a person have changed. And also think about where you think in the future you'll go from here, okay? Has this been a life-transforming experience for you? Has it changed the trajectory of your life? There's no right or wrong. You don't have to answer, but I think that everyone would appreciate it if you could share your emotional journey with Dante.
And because we have such a diverse crowd of people, I think everyone's journey will be different, okay? So I think we will all appreciate that. But any questions before we conclude today?
Okay, great. So, I will see... Yes, one question, yes.
So, I noticed that it took nine cantos for Dante to reach the gate of Purgatory, but it only took three cantos to reach the gate of hell. So I wonder why it's different.
Do you have a theory? Yes.
I've thought about this. I think there's more sins that aren't like all that, the betrayal against country and family and stuff like this, that don't end up in... Yes, so at what canto do they enter this?
But you can actually check it. What kind of... What part of Inferno do you think they start to enter Dis? Excuse me? We'll check this, okay? Can you go to Inferno 9 and see what happens in Inferno 9 or Inferno 10, I think. I can't remember which it is, okay? Let's figure out where they are in Inferno 9 first.
So, Inferno 9, they're outside the gates of Dis. Inferno 10 is when they enter Dis. So it's the same thing, do you understand? Because in Inferno, there's one additional canto for the introduction. So all three are 33. And so what's happening is Dis is where Hell proper is. And then the other circles, they're kind of not that serious. Do you understand? And before they enter Purgatory, they have to go through Ante-Purgatory. Okay? So it's so symmetrical. Okay. All right. Thanks for the question, okay?
I'll see you all tomorrow, okay?