Dante #8: Hell Cantos 20-32

Okay. Good morning. Welcome back. So there are a couple of outstanding issues from last class that I would like to address. So, Carol's son, who was here, he had a question about what is the difference between pride and ego. And this is a very hard question. Okay. So first let's think about what the ego is. So in the Cabala, and the Cabala tradition is very much influenced by the Divine Comedy. If you learn the Cabala and you read the Divine Comedy you see a lot of similarities, and these are not coincidental. But in the Cabala tradition there is a divine spark in everyone, but it's covered by the husk.

Okay, the husk, you can say it's the body, it's the ego. But for the Cabala tradition the ego is basically just the body and the desire to fulfill the body, which means material pleasures. Okay, so in the Cabala tradition that's what the ego means. Dante doesn't see it that way. For Dante the ego is really the divine. Okay? In that it can propel us to good things and to bad things. So it's potentiality as opposed to just good or bad. Okay? It's potentiality. And the ego can lead us astray.

And when it leads us astray, it's because of pride. Okay? And so for Dante, pride is an issue because it wants you... It wants the other egos to subordinate to your ego. All right? So it's one of superiority, a feeling of superiority where you are above others. And for Dante, that's a problem because that limits your access to God. Okay? Love is about equality. It's about being egalitarian and treating others with respect and trusting others. And the ego, the pride, it's about elevating yourself above others. Okay. And the classic example of pride in the Divine Comedy is Virgil, right?

Virgil. Okay. So that's the difference. In most religious traditions they don't really separate the two. Ego is pride. But for Dante there is a difference. Ego is potentiality. It's possibility, and pride is a perversion of the ego. Okay. The ego should lead you towards faith, hope and love. And without the ego you could not actually go on this path. But if you go on the wrong path, it leads you to pride. Okay. And again in the Divine Comedy, even though it is not explicit, Virgil is the manifestation, the expression, of pride.

Okay. And we can see that in his actions, but it'll become more obvious as we go along. Okay. So that's the first issue. Does it make sense to everyone? Okay. Second issue is the issue of homosexuality.

And this is an issue that raised concerns. So one question that I was asked yesterday is, okay, what's the difference between homosexuality and heterosexuality? Okay. So thank you for phrasing that question. And I went back and I thought about this, and even though my explanation is okay, it's not truthful enough, because the way for us to understand truth is Occam's razor. Okay, Occam's razor is the idea of elegance. Meaning I should be able to pretty simply and clearly explain the idea, and I was not able to do that yesterday.

It raised a lot of questions. It raised a lot of doubts. So even though we were approaching the truth, we were not at the truth. So let me today try to more clearly and simply explain the problem of homosexuality. Okay? And so yesterday I made things a bit complicated. I brought in the idea of incest and that was very confusing. Okay? Let's not do that. Okay? Let's just stick with Dante. So with Dante, the key to understanding him is to first appreciate the punishment at work. Okay? Because for Dante, the punishment is God's perfect justice.

Okay? So we need to understand the punishment first. And the punishment for these homosexuals is they are in a plain where there's raining missiles on them. Okay? And so they have to dodge these missiles. For homosexuals, they have to do it in a, okay, they have to do it in a group, and if one of them strays from the group, that person is punished harder. Now, this is interesting to think about, why would homosexuals be punished in such a manner? Okay, so now let's not think about what they did wrong, but if the punishment is you have to stick together as a group and you're being punished as a group, and if you fall away from the group, you're punished even harder.

What kind of people should be punished like that? Right? If we knew what the punishment is and we understand that these punishments are a reflection of God's perfect justice, then what kind of people, what did you do wrong in society that would make God punish you like this?

Yes.

So basically, it's the idea of factionalism, right? Or mafia or fraternity. Does that make sense? Because the idea of fraternity, the idea of mafia, the idea of factionalism is that you only care about your own group and you're going to hurt others in order to achieve your own interests. And that's why they're being punished like this. Okay? So now if it's these people who are engaged in mafia or fraternity or factionalism that would be punished like this, what does this have to do with homosexuality?

Okay, that's a question. All right, and again this should be clear. All right, so make sure that my logic is clear to you each step of the way. Right, the punishment is they're being punished for factionalism. The question then is what does this have to do with homosexuality? Okay. Yes.

All that matters is your individual merit. That's what's ideal. But in reality, the people who often triumph are people who are able to conspire together. Right? So the question then is how are homosexuals able to conspire together? Okay. So, and the reason why is they're often persecuted by society. So they have to work in secret. Okay. And so they help each other in order to obtain success. They're not doing it out of evil or malice. They're doing it just to be able to love each other. Okay? And so that's why if you just look at history, if you look at any bureaucracy in any society, the group of people who often climb [snorts] highest in this bureaucracy tend to be homosexuals.

Doesn't make sense. Okay. And you go back to Imperial China, the eunuchs, right? You, sorry, you go to the Vatican, right? You go to Washington DC, you go to Hollywood. It's usually homosexuals that climb to the top. Again, I'm not saying this is evil, but just so that they can practice their love for each other, they have to work together, and they have to help each other, and so they become a mafia, right? The pig mafia, the gay mafia. And because of the mafia they're able to climb higher together, because they're able to coordinate together secretly in a way that others are not able to.

Does that make sense? Yes.

A bad, and the reason why is that if a certain group are able to amass more power for themselves, right? This forces other people to form their own factions. Does it make sense? In order to compete. You have no choice in the matter, right? So now you have more factionalism going on. All right? And so now what happens is that the elite fight amongst themselves because it's factional politics now. And when the elite fight amongst themselves, what they're doing is they're monopolizing all resources for themselves, which creates more inequality, right, in society.

If you don't have a faction, when most people don't have a faction, you're completely screwed. And so there's this massive inequality which creates all this economic pressure. And the only way for you to respond if you're an ordinary person, a faction, is to commit fraud, right? And then what happens is lawlessness takes. So that's why Dante is concerned about homosexuality. He knows that yes, these best and brightest are homosexuals, and for him there's nothing wrong with homosexuality. It's what homosexuality leads to in the society that's a problem.

And Dante is right. If you just look at any society, okay, with a bureaucracy, eventually the homosexuals take over and this creates factionalism. This creates moral decay. This creates lawlessness. This creates, right? So does this make sense now? Yes.

Okay, not just, you look at Washington DC, where the Trump family is just engaged in the most egregious corruption and they're not even hiding it. Okay? They're just open about it. They're like, you know, if you're in prison, you give me like, you know, $10 million, I'll let you out. It's open. Okay. Now, let me ask you this. Okay. Let's imagine Donald Trump, he's kicked out of office in 2028. The Democrats come in. What are they going to do?

They had to pretend at least the family was important. Yeah. I mean, they probably had these homosexual affairs on the side, but at least they were hypocrites. At least they made a point of playing to the public perception, right? Yes.

Okay, so Dante implants in the Divine Comedy a lot of paradoxes, which allows us to think deeper, and we are able to arrive at the truth through exploration and through debate. Okay. Yes, I think one thing that would be worth exploring is to actually interview, you know, maybe people around us who are homosexuals, you know, what exactly Dante is trying to convey here, because I guess at the end of the day, all punishment is self-punishment, right?

Okay. And look, censorship is a reality in this. Ideally, we'd be free to completely explore and that's what leads to greatest truth. But we're living in a time of massive censorship, and where you'll be judged unfairly for things you say. Okay? This is a different time. I mean, when I was growing up, when we were in college, free speech was the primary ideal. It's something like, you don't do that to people. You may disagree with them, but you don't censor them. That was what was considered a sin.

Now it's this very common practice to cancel people for things they say. People are judged very harshly. Yes.

Because if Augustine and Dante would be saying the purpose of a relationship would be reproduction, and if you're lusting, that could happen. You're just wanting it in maybe an incorrect way or too much. But in homosexuality, the telos is off, because there is no reproduction that could happen. And so I see this as, or I don't see this, I'm reading scholars who are pointing out that homosexuality is just simply an incorrect telos, and lust is a correct telos, but at an incorrect proportion. And so all of this extra stuff might be fine and social.

It just seems like muddying the waters where understanding would simplify it.

You trust your intuition, right? If your telos is, I want to write poetry for the rest of my life and I don't want to have children, then you should just follow your intuition. Okay. So that's the difference. But absolutely right, Aristotle is very important at this time in history. All right. Any more comments or questions? This is great, by the way, and it really shows your depth of understanding has radically improved over the past few days. Yes. Previously you said that any great art in history, whether it's Homer or the Divine Comedy, was often created by one single person, right? And is often driven by the strong will. But I think, go back to the question about self-indulgence, there also can be those narcissists can also hold a strong will, right? So what separates an artist's sacred inwardness from a narcissist?

Okay. All right. All right. Great. Any more questions before we start? Okay. Let's start. Inferno 21. Canto 21. "We came along from one bridge to another, talking of things my Comedy is not concerned to sing. We held fast to the summit, then stayed our steps to spy the other cleft of Malebolge and other vain laments. I saw that it was wonderfully dark. As in the Arsenal of the Venetians, all winter long a stew of sticky pitch boils up to patch their sick and tattered ships that cannot sail, instead of voyaging, some build new keels, some tow and tar the ribs of hulls worn out by too much journeying.

Some hammer at the prow, some at the stern, and some make oars, and some braid ropes and cords. One mends the jib and another the mainsail. So not by fire, but by the art of God, below there boiled a thick and viscous mass that covered all the banks with glue. I saw it, but I could not see within it. Nothing was visible but boiling bubbles, the swelling of the pitch, and then it sank. And while I watched below attentively, my guide called out to me, 'Take care.

Take care.' And then from where I stood, he drew me near. I turned around as one who's impatient to see what he should shun, but is dashed down beneath the terror he has undergone, who does not stop his flight, and yet would look. And then in back of us I saw a black demon as he came racing up the cliffs. He was surely barbarous to see, and how relentless seemed to me his act. His wings were open, his feet were light. Across his shoulder, which was sharp and high, he had slung a sinner upward from the thighs.

In front the demon gripped him by the ankles. Then from our bridge he called, 'O Malebranche, I've got an elder of Santa Zita for you. Shove this one under. I'll go back for more. His city is well furnished with such stores. There everyone's a grafter but Bonturo. And there for cash they'll change a no to yes.' He threw the sinner down, who wheeled along the stony cliff. No mastiff ever was unleashed with so much haste to chase a thief. The sinner plunged, then surfaced, black with pitch. But now the demons from beneath the bridge shouted, 'The Holy Face has no place here.

Here we swim differently than in the Serchio. If you don't want to feel our grappling hooks, don't try to lift yourself above that ditch.' They pricked him with a hundred prongs and more, and then taunted him, 'Here one dances undercover, so try to grab your secret graft below.' Okay.

Okay. All right. Let's keep on going.

But he called out, "Can't you forget your savagery before you try to maul me? Just let one of your troops step forward, hear me out, and then decide if I'm to be hooked." At this they howled, "Let Malacoda go." And one of them moved up, the others stayed. And as he came, he asked, "How can he win?" "Malacoda, do you think I've come," my master answered him, "already armed, as you can see, against your optics obstacles, without the will of God and helpful fate?

Let us move on. It is the will of Heaven for me to show this wild way to another." At this the pride of Malacoda fell as the prong dropped to his feet. He told his fellows, "Since that's the way things stand, let us not wound him." My guide then spoke to me, "O you who crouch bent low among the bridge's splintered rocks, you can feel safe and now return to me." Okay. So, Dante and Virgil see these demons. Okay. And in this stage in the story, there are some things that are unusual.

What's unusual about the story? What is it that's happening that didn't really happen... What strikes you as strange in the story so far? Yes. That demons are the ones punishing, whereas before it was like natural.

Where's Dante? He's hiding, right? This hasn't happened. This is the first time that Dante is hiding. So what does this tell us about the emotional state of Virgil? How's he feeling right now?

Why would Dante hide here but not elsewhere? Right. They went to the city of Dis and that was also ruled by fallen angels. But Dante didn't hide. Yes.

What are ways in which you can respond with fear to your own fear? How is Virgil responding to his fear?

How does Virgil choose to confront the demons? Right? Virgil's afraid of the demons. So what does he do to deal with the demons?

Why should we be suspicious here of what's going on?

If you're a demon and someone is flexing at you, what should your response be? Yeah. Like, I can punch you out, man. Right. So this is very suspicious. You know, again, this is a paradox. And whenever there's a paradox, it forces us to think deeper, right? Why are the demons being so obedient, right? Why are the demons lowering themselves? And so what do you think the answer is?

We are in the circle of fraud, guys. Deception, right? Do you understand? Okay, that's what these demons are. They are engaged in deception. They enjoy deception, right? Does that make sense? And if you are this demon and you're a head demon and you love deception, you think you can deceive Virgil. Why?

Okay. Okay. So let us think of an example from real life. Okay. All right.

All right. So the demon recognizes, hm, Virgil thinks he's got God on his side, right? Well, I can probably rip him off now, right? Because he's so arrogant. He's so full of himself. It's easier to trick arrogant people than it is to trick humble people. Okay? Does that make sense? All right. Let's keep on going.

Line 88. My guide then spoke to me, "O you who crouch bent low among the bridge's splintered rocks, you can feel safe and now return to me." At this I moved and quickly came to him. The devils had edged forward, all of them. I feared that they might fail to keep their word. Just so I saw the infantry, when they marched out under safe conduct from Caprona. They trembled when they passed their enemies. My body huddled closer to my guide. I did not let the demons out of sight.

The looks they cast at us were less than kind.

To us, he said, "There's no use in going much farther on this ridge, because the sixth bridge at the bottom there is smashed to bits. Yet, if you two still want to go ahead, move up and walk along this rocky edge nearby; another ridge will form a path. Five hours from this hour yesterday, 1,266 years passed since that roadway was shattered here.

I'm sending ten of mine out there to see if any sinners lift their heads for air. Go with my men. There's no malice in them."

Their brows are menacing. They promise trouble." And he to [snorts] me, "I do not want you frightened. Just let them gnash away as they may wish. They do it for the wretches boiled in pitch." They turned around along the left bank, left-hand bank. But first each pressed his tongue between his teeth, a signal for their leader, Barbariccia, and he had made a trumpet of his ass. Okay. So what does Dante do here that he's never done? Yeah. Do you guys see this? Okay. He's actually challenging Virgil verbally.

Maybe before he had his doubts, right? But he kept them secret out of respect for Virgil. So why is Dante doing this? Why is Dante challenging Virgil and saying we really shouldn't trust these guys, right? He's now verbally challenging Virgil.

Excuse me.

Okay. Yes. Well, just his intuition maybe says it. So, Right.

So he could see the truth more simply than Virgil. So he's trying to show that this is the turning point where I will be, you know, the better poet or the better person in the Okay.

It's an act of, like, Virgil, I love you and I want to protect you as you're protecting me. Okay. So what this is telling us is that what this journey really is, it's a journey into love, where Dante before had tremendous respect for Virgil, but now they're just becoming very close because of all these adventures they're having in Hell, right? Does that make sense, guys? And so what's really important to understand is not just the cosmology, not just understand dynastyology, but really understand that this is ultimately a journey and a love story between Dante and Virgil.

Okay. So there's this conflict between the two, but there's also real deep affection between the two and it's very much real. Okay. And we know what's going to happen. We know that eventually they'll have to part. Okay. But the idea is to create so much affection in us for Virgil and Dante that when they do part, we cry with them when they do part. Okay. Does that make sense? All right. I guess she had said something that I wanted to build off of. Dante the poet.

So there's three Dantes. Dante the poet sat down to write this recollection to explain faith, hope, and love. But I guess they could all be unified as capital T Truth. And he's in the realm of liars, right? And so essentially he would be like, the longer that we stay here in the realm of liars, they're ruining my poem of truth, right? So let's get out of the lie realm, because I'm transcribing Right?

What can Dante do for them? Why should they talk to him? Talk to him? Yes.

Canto 22. "Before this I've seen horsemen start to march and open the assault and muster ranks, and seen them too at times beat their retreat. And, O your land, O Aretines, I've seen raiders and raiding parties galloping, the clash of tournaments, the rush of jousts, now done with trumpets, now with bells, and now with drums, and now with signs from castle walls, with native things and with imported wear. But never yet have I seen horsemen, or seen infantry, or ship that sails by signal of land or star, moved to so strange a bugle.

We made our way together with ten demons. What ferocious company! But 'in church with saints, with gluttons in the tavern.' But I was all intent upon the pitch, to seek out every feature of the pouch and of the people who were burning in it. Just as the dolphins do when with arched back they signal to the seamen to prepare for tempest so that their vessel may be spared, so here from time to time, to ease his torment, some sinners showed his back above the surface, then hid more quickly than a lightning flash.

And just as on the margin of a ditch frogs crouch with their snouts alone above the water so as to hide their feet and their plump flesh, so here on every side these sinners crouched, but faster than a flash. When Barbariccia drew near, they plunged beneath the boiling pitch. I saw, and still my heart shudders and recalls, one who delayed, just as at times a frog is left behind while others dive below. Graffiacane, who was closest to him, then hooked him by his pitch-tangled locks and hauled him up.

He seemed to me an otter. By now I knew the names of all those demons. I'd paid attention when the fiends were chosen. I'd watched as they stepped forward one by one. 'O Rubicante, see you set your talons right into him so you can flay his flesh,' so those cursed ones cried out together. And I, 'My master, if you can, find out what is the name of that unfortunate who's fallen victim to his enemies.' My guide, who then drew near that sinner's side, asked him to tell his birthplace.

He replied, 'My homeland was the kingdom of Navarre. My mother, who had had me by a wastrel of himself and his possessions, had placed me in the service of a lord. Then I was in the household of the worthy King Thibault. There I started taking graft. I pay my reckoning for that in this heat.' And Ciriatto, from whose mouth jut right and left two tusks like a wild hog's, then let him feel how one of them could mangle. The mouse had fallen in with evil cats, but Barbariccia clasped him in his arms and said, 'Stand off there while I fork him fast,' and turning toward my master, he said, 'Ask him, if you would learn some more from him, before one of the others does him in.'" Okay, stop.

Yes. Go ahead. In graft, they take resources and things away from people who should have them.

Exactly. I'm going to get away with this. Right. Exactly. Right. It's not that I'm better than you. I can get away with this. I'm smarter than you. That's what graft is. I'm going to get away with this. There's no punishment. I'm so sneaky. I'm so clever. I can get away with this. So why would this punishment be fitting for these people?

Okay, they are in the boiling pitch. That kind of sucks. They escape and they're caught by demons who do what to Outsmart them.

But they can't help themselves. They're like, "No, I have to escape." Because they're always like, "I'll get away." Right? But we know for a fact you're not going to get away, because this is Hell. This is God's perfect justice. There's no way you're going to escape Hell. But for some reason they're like, "No, I will escape this time," even though for the past 10 million times I was caught by the demon and, you know, destroyed. Okay. Does that make sense? Okay. Yes.

He had his master's enemies in his hand, but handled them in ways that pleased them all. He took their gold and smoothly let them off, as he himself says, and in other matters he was a sovereign, not a petty swindler. His comrade there is Don Michel Zanche of Logodoro, and their tongues are never too tired to talk of Sardinia. Ah me, see that one there who grinds his teeth.

If I were not afraid, I'd speak some more, but he's getting set to scratch my scurf.' And their great marshal, facing Farfarello, who was so hot to strike, he rolled his eyes, said, 'Get away from there, you filthy bird.' If you perhaps would like to see or hear Lombards or Tuscans, I can fetch you some, but let the Malebranche stand aside so that my comrades may not fear their vengeance. Remaining in this very spot, I shall, although alone, make seven more appear when I have whistled, as has been our custom when one of us has managed to get out.'" Okay, so Dante and Virgil want to meet more of these sinners, and the sinner says, "Well, they're all in hiding."

We should be wary of everything people do here. Okay. All right. Keep on going.

The Navarrese, in the nick of time, had planted his feet upon the ground. Then in an instant he jumped and freed himself from their commander. At this each demon felt the prick of guilt, and most he who had led his men to blunder. So he took off and shouted, 'You are caught.' But this could help him little. Wings were not more fast than fear. The sinner plunged right under.

The other, flying up, lifted his chest. Not otherwise the wild duck, when it plunges precipitously when the falcon nears, and then exhausted, thwarted, flies back up. But Calcabrina, raging at the trick, flew after Alichino. He was keen to see the sinner free and have a brawl. And once the barrator had disappeared, he turned his talons on his fellow demon and tangled with him just above the ditch. But Alichino clawed him well. He was indeed a full-grown kestrel, and both fell into the middle of the boiling pond. The heat was quick to disentangle them, but still there was no way they could get out.

Their wings were stuck and meshed in glue like pitch. And Barbariccia, grieving with the rest, sent forth four to fly out toward the other shore with all their forks. And speedily enough on this side and on that they took their posts, and toward those two stuck fast, already cooked beneath that crust, they stretched their grappling hooks. We left them still contending with that mess."

The sinner has lied to the demons. So what's going on here? This is a contradiction. Okay. So let's think about this. Okay. So the demons are saying you're lying to us. And then the sinner says, "Then I must have too many tricks if I bring greater torment to my friends."

Is this a lie? What's he saying here? What are you saying here?

Okay? Do you understand? If I'm lying to you, I have no friends in the world. Right? You interpret it to say, "Okay, well then he's not lying to me." But it could be true, right? If I'm lying to you, I have no friends in the world. You understand? And this is what we call sophistry, right?

Right? You just think you're smarter than everyone else. You think that you know more than everyone else and you'll get away with everything, so you keep on doing it. Okay? And so he's just playing tricks with words.

Does it make sense? So he's not lying, because you cannot lie in Hell, but he's engaging in sophistry. Okay. He constructs words to manipulate you. Does that make sense? All right. Let's keep on going.

Story summary of Aesop's frog and mouse. Mouse first asks the frog for help with crossing a river to visit the frog's home. The frog agrees but ties the mouse's leg to his own with a reed for safety. Halfway across, the frog, motivated by greed for the mouse's food, tries to drown the mouse by diving down below the surface. The mouse's dead body floats to the surface, still tied to the frog. A hawk sees the floating mouse, swoops down and carries off both the mouse and the frog. So, I guess the frog being treacherous ends up being prey as well for the hawk.

For even now your thoughts have joined my own in both our acts and aspects. We are kin, with both our minds, I've come to one decision. If that right bank is not extremely steep, we can descend into the other moat and so escape from the imagined chase.' He'd hardly finished telling me his plan when I saw them approach with outstretched wings, not too far off, keen on taking us. My guide snatched me up instantly, just as the mother who's awakened by a noise and catches sight of blazing flames beside her will lift her son and run without a stop, she cares more for the child than for herself, not pausing even to throw on a shift.

And down the hard embankment's edge, his back lay flat along the sloping rock that closed one side of the adjacent moat. He slid. No water ever ran so fast along a sluice to turn the wheels of a land mill, not even when its flow approached the paddles, as said my master raced down that embankment while bearing me with him upon his chest, just like a son and not like a companion. His feet had scarcely reached the bed that lies along the deep below them, those ten demons were on the edge above us.

But there was nothing to fear. For that high providence that willed the ministers of the fifth ditch denies all of them the power to leave it.

I mean, it's gratuitous, because God has already willed Dante to go to Heaven, right? So obviously the demons can't actually do anything to them. They're protected by God. So why is Dante actually writing the scene? Yes.

So that's the idea here. So even though they are rivals, ultimately this journey will make them into best friends. Okay. Keep on going. "Below that point we found a painted people who moved about with lagging steps in circles, weeping, with features tired and defeated. And they were dressed in cloaks with cowls so low they fell before their eyes, of that same cut that used to make the clothes for Cluny's monks. Outside, these cloaks were gilded and they dazzled, but inside they were all of lead, so heavy that Frederick's capes were straw compared to them, a tiring mantle for eternity. We turned again, as always, to the left along with them, intent on their sad weeping.

But with their weights that weary people paced so slowly that we found ourselves among new company each time we took a step, at which I told my guide, 'Please try to find someone whose name or deed I recognize, and while we walk, be watchful with your eyes.' And one who took in my Tuscan speech cried out behind us, 'Stay your steps, O you who hurry so along the darkened air. Perhaps you'll have from me that which you seek.' At which my guide turned to me, saying, 'Wait, and then continue following his pace.' I stopped, and I saw two whose faces showed their minds were keen to be with me.

Both their load and the tight path forced them to slow. When they came up, they looked askance at me a long while, and they uttered not a word until they turned to one another, saying, 'The throbbing of his throat makes this one seem alive. And if they're dead, what privilege lets them appear without the heavy mantle?' Then they addressed me, 'Tuscan, you who come to this assembly of sad hypocrites, do not disdain to tell us who you are.' I answered, 'Where the lovely Arno flows, there I was born and raised in the great city.

"I'm with the body I have always had. But who are you, upon whose cheeks I see such tears distilled by grief? And let me know what punishment it is that glitters so." And one of them replied, "The yellow cloaks are of a lead so thick their heaviness makes the balances beneath them creak. We both were Jovial Friars and Bolognese. My name is Catalano, Loderingo his, and we were chosen by your city together for the post that's usually one man's, to keep the peace. And what we were is still to be observed around Gardingo." I then began, "O friars, your misdeeds," but said no more, because my eyes had caught sight of one crucified by three stakes on the ground.

When he saw me, that sinner writhed all over, and he breathed hard into his beard with sighs. Observing that, Friar Catalano said to me, "That one impaled there, whom you see, counseled the Pharisees that it was prudent to let one man and not one nation suffer. Naked he has been stretched across the path, as you can see, and he must feel the weight of anyone who passes over him. In like torment in this ditch afflicts both his father-in-law and others in that council which for the Jews has seeded so much evil."

What is hypocrisy? Why do people engage in it? [snorts] It is basically saying one thing and doing another.

Why do they do that? To please me, right? And so why would they do that?

Line 124. Then I saw Virgil stand amazed above that one who lay stretched out upon a cross so vilely in his eternal exile. And he addressed the friar in this way, "If it does not displease you, if you may, tell us if there's some passage on the right that would allow the two of us to leave without our having to compel black angels to travel to the steep to get us out." He answered, "Closer than you hope, you'll find a rocky ridge that stretches from the great round wall and crosses all the savage valleys, except that here it's broken, not a bridge.

But where it ruined slopes along the bank and heaps up at the bottom, you can climb." My leader stood a while with his head bent, then said, "He who hooked sinners over there gave us a false account of this."

Yet then the plaster soothed the sore as quickly. For soon as we were on the broken bridge, my guide turned back to me with that sweet manner I first had seen along the mountain's base. And he examined carefully the ruin, and having picked the way we would ascend, he opened his arms and thrust me forward. And just as he who works as he labors, who's always ready for the step ahead, so as he lifted me up toward the summit of one great crag, he'd see another spur, saying, 'That is the one you will grip next, but try it first to see if it is firm.' That has no path for those with cloaks of lead.

For he and I, he light, I pushed along, could hardly make it up from spur to spur. And were it not that down from this enclosure the slope was shorter than the bank before, I cannot speak for him, but I should surely have been defeated. But since Malebolge runs right into the mouth of its last well, the placement of each valley means it must have one bank high and half the other short. So we reached at length the jutting where the last stone of the ruined bridge breaks off.

The breath within my lungs was so exhausted from climbing, I could not go on. In fact, as soon as I had reached that spot, I sat. 'Now you must cast aside your laziness,' my master said. 'For he who rests on down or under covers cannot come to fame. And he who spends his life without renown leaves such a vestige of himself on earth as smoke bequeaths to air or foam to water. Therefore, get up. Defeat your breathlessness with spirit that can win all battles if the body's heaviness does not deter it.

A longer ladder still is to be climbed. It's not enough to have left them behind. If you have understood, now profit from it.'" Okay?

What do you think of a teacher like that? There's quite a few teachers like that in China. But what's your impression of a teacher like that? I mean, he's not wrong, right? He or she's not wrong.

And there are lots of students who are able to get into Tsinghua or Beida or Yale or Harvard because of a teacher like that. How do you feel about a teacher like that? Have you had a teacher like that? And what's your impression? Yeah. Yes.

It's kind of the same narrative.

So I'm just going to put the amount of effort that's needed for me to get an A, and just so, I guess for me my understanding of education is not to, you know, get that job. It's to, you know, better yourself, and also learning is fun.

They can just, you know, strive towards enjoying the journey.

So, just for some context for those who are watching on the live stream who do not know the Chinese system, in the Chinese system, at the end of high school, everyone takes a comprehensive examination that tests six subjects. So you can have a great love of math, but if you don't do well in English, you're really, really screwed. Okay? It's comprehensive. So it's not just about passion. It's about discipline. You have to do well on all six subjects. Okay? So let's continue. Okay? Now, what Virgil says to Dante is cast aside your laziness, because what we're trying to achieve is eternal fame.

If you want to be the greatest poet in the world, you have to work a lot harder. What could Virgil say instead to motivate Dante? And it'd be a lot more effective, by the way.

Exactly right. What is Dante doing right now? Right? He's trying to get to Beatrice. Beatrice came to Virgil and says, I want to see Dante again. Bring him to me. Right? That is what Virgil's mission is, to take Dante to Beatrice. Right? So what Virgil should be saying to Dante is, Beatrice is waiting for us. Let's get there as soon as possible. And that's going to motivate Dante a lot more than, hey, everlasting fame, man. That's what we want. Okay. So it shows you the virtual psychology.

Okay. And that's why this is a great work of literature, because Virgil is a real person, right? He's not just a plot device. He has his own motivations. He has his own psychology. He has his own worldview. All right. All right. Let's keep on going.

I had bent downward, but my living eyes could not see the bottom through that dark, at which I said, 'O master, can we reach the other belt? Let us descend the wall, for as I hear and cannot understand, so I see down but can distinguish nothing.' 'The only answer that I give to you is doing it,' he said. 'A just request is to be met in silence by the act.' We then climbed down the bridge, just at the end where it runs right into the eighth embankment.

And now the moat was plain enough to me. And there within I saw a dreadful swarm of serpents, so extravagant in form, remembering them still drains my blood from me. Let Libya boast no more about her sands. For if she breeds chelydri, cenchres with amphisbaena, she never showed, with all of Ethiopia or all the land that borders the Red Sea, so many such malignant pestilences. Among this cruel and depressing swarm ran people who were naked, terrified, with no hope of a hole or heliotrope. Their hands were tied behind by serpents.

These had thrust their head and tail right through the loins and then were knotted on the other side. And there a serpent sprang with force at one who stood upon our shore, transfixing him just where the neck and shoulders form a knot. No O or I has ever been transcribed so quickly as that soul caught fire and burned, and as he fell, completely turned to ashes. And when he lay undone upon the ground, the dust of him collected by itself and instantly returned to what it was. Just so it is asserted by great sages that when it reaches its 500th year, the phoenix dies and then is born again.

Lifelong, it never feeds on grass or grain, only on drops of incense and amomum. Its final winding sheets are nard and myrrh. And just as he who falls and knows not how, by demon's force that drags him to the ground, or by some other hindrance that binds man, who when he rises stares about him, all bewildered by the heavy anguish he has suffered, sighing as he looks around, so did the sinner stare when he arose. Oh, how severe it is, the power of God, that as its vengeance showers down such blows.

My guide then asked that sinner who he was. To this he answered, "Not long since I rained from Tuscany into this savage maw. I knew that I was, the bestial life pleased me and not the man. I'm Vanni Fucci, chief beast, and the den that suited me, Pistoia." And I to Virgil, "Tell him not to slip away, and ask what sin has thrust him here. I knew him as a man of blood and anger." The sinner heard and did not try to feign, but turned his mind and face intent toward me and, coloring with miserable shame, he said, "I suffer more because you've caught me in this misery you see than I suffered when taken from the other life.

I can't refuse to answer what you ask. I'm set down so far because I robbed the sacristy of its fair ornaments, and someone else was falsely blamed for that." But lest the sight give you too much delight, if you can ever leave these lands of darkness, open your ears to my announcement here. Pistoia first will strip herself of Blacks, and Florence will renew her men and manners. From Val di Magra, Mars will draw a vapor which turbid clouds will try to wrap.

The clash between them will be fierce, impetuous. A tempest fought upon Campo Piceno, until that vapor, vigorous, shall crack the mist and every White be struck by it. And I have told you this to make you grieve."

Darius, the king of Persia, offered him many, many bribes in order to stop fighting, and his man told him, let's just take the bribes. Okay. Yet at the same time this thief is a lot lower in the Inferno than a great conqueror like Alexander the Great, who killed a lot of people. Why is thievery so bad?

Why is thievery so evil as it warrants such a low status in Hell? And also, if someone's stealing, it's often because maybe they need the money, right? Maybe if my child is hungry, I'm going to go steal something from other people, right? Have you guys seen the movie The Bicycle Thief? A very good Italian movie, right? And if you haven't, it's a really good movie, but it's just this guy who's a very normal guy. This is postwar Italy, absolutely no money, and he has to feed his kid.

So he goes and steals a, and then, you know, he becomes a villain and society around him. So why is thievery such a sin? Yes.

And the punishment is they all get bitten by snakes and then they die and then they resurrect and they get bitten by more snakes. Right? So this is a paradox for us. Yes. One reason, you know, in criminology or in law and economics, you know, the punishment is sometimes measured, or punishment is calculated, partially by the ability of the society to find the crime. If a crime is very hard to find, to be observed, then the punishment must be multiplied by the factor of this hiddenness. So sacrilege and all this fraud is more damning, or more difficult to be found than open killing or other crimes against humanity.

Although it is a higher crime, it is easy to be discerned by the Zuts, if there is Zuts.

So that's the metaphor, the snake bite, right? A venomous, treacherous snake. Okay. Yes.

And it doesn't really care, it's not a judgment. All right. Let's keep on reading. Inferno Canto 25. "When he had finished with his words, the thief raised high his fists with both figs and cried, 'Take that, O God, I square them off for you.' From that time on those serpents were my friends, for one of them coiled around his neck as if to say, 'I'll have you speak no more.' Another wound about his arms and bound him again and wrapped itself in front so firmly he could not even make them budge an inch."

He's joining us live from New Haven. It's a real treat for us. It'll be live streamed to everyone. And what he's going to do is he's going to talk about Shakespeare and then we're going to talk about Dante. We're going to compare and contrast Shakespeare with Dante. Okay. So he's obviously one of the world's foremost experts on Shakespeare, and we are obviously experts on Dante already. So it'll be a very lively discussion. Okay. So something that'll be really fun. So please come about 8:50. We'll start at 9:00 promptly and we'll go for about an hour.

Okay. So, yep. Yep.

Okay. But still, even if this was a large community, it would only be about a thousand people. Okay. It would only be about a thousand. So we have this strange paradox where for Dante the thief, by impacting a thousand people, it's a worse sin than Alexander the Great killing a million people. Okay. And how do we reconcile this paradox? And that's why it's important to read Paradiso first, because without reading Paradiso it is impossible to reconcile this paradox. There are certain aspects here that explain the difference. First is the idea of immortality of the soul, and this is something that Beatrice will tell Dante, that the soul is immortal.

It's eternal. It can never die off. If your body dies off, your soul will still be around. Then what we also learn is that the soul aspires to return to God. Okay. The soul, its greatest desire, its greatest happiness, is to be with God. All right. The soul returns to God.

We also learn that what allows us to return to God is the idea of faith, hope, and love. Okay. All right. So once you understand these three principles, then we can understand how this works. The million people die. It's not a big deal. They lose their bodies, to come back later on. But there's a thousand people who feel betrayed, who are suspicious of each other. It is now impossible for them to live a life of faith, hope, and love. And in fact, it will probably make them more likely to sin.

Okay? So now they're moving away from God. Okay? So it's not the absolute numbers that matter. It's how people choose to live their lives that matters. And the sin, the worst possible sin, is treachery in a way that forces other people to commit treachery as well. All right? To force you away from God. Does this make sense, guys? Okay. All right. Okay. Let's continue.

Canto 25, verse, let's see, 10. "Ah, Pistoia, Pistoia, must you last? Why not decree yourself incineration, since you surpass your seed in wickedness? Throughout the shadowed circles of deep Hell I saw no soul against God so rebellious, not even he who fell from Thebes' walls." He fled and could not say another word. And I saw a centaur full of anger shouting, "Where is he? Where's that bitter one?" I do not think Maremma has the number of snakes that centaur carried on his haunch until the part that takes our human form.

Upon his shoulders, and behind his nape, there lay a dragon with its wings outstretched. It sets ablaze all those it intercepts. My master said, "That centaur there is Cacus, who often made a lake of blood within a grotto underneath Mount Aventine. He does not ride the same road as his brothers, because he stole, and most deceitfully, from the great herd nearby. His crooked deeds ended beneath the club of Hercules, who may have given him a hundred blows, but he was not alive to feel the tenth." While he was talking, so Cacus ran by, and just beneath our ledge, three souls arrived.

But neither I nor my guide noticed them until they had cried out, "And who are you?" At this the words we shared were interrupted, and we attended only to those spirits. I did not recognize them, but it happened, as chance will usually bring about, that one of them called out the other's name.

Where was Cianfa left behind? At this, so that my guide might be alert, I raised my finger up from chin to nose. If, reader, you're slow now to believe what I shall tell, that is no cause for wonder, for I who saw it hardly can accept it. As I kept my eyes fixed upon those sinners, a serpent with six feet springs out against one of the three and clutches him completely. It gripped his belly with its middle feet and with its fore feet grappled his two arms, and then it sank its teeth in both his cheeks.

It stretched its rear feet out along his thighs and ran its tail between the two, then straightened it again behind his loins. No ivy ever gripped a tree so fast as when that horrifying monster clasped and intertwined the other's limbs with its. Then, just as if their substance were warm wax, they stuck together, and they mixed their colors. So neither seemed what he had been before. Just as when paper is kindled, where it still has not caught flame in full, its color dark, though not yet black, while white is dying off.

The other two souls stared and each one cried, "Ah me, Agnel, how you change! Just see, you're already neither two nor one." Then two heads were already joined in one. When in one face where two had been, dissolved, two intermingled shapes appeared to us. Two arms came into being from four lengths. The thighs and legs, the belly, and the chest became such limbs as never had been seen. And every former shape was canceled there. That perverse image seemed to share in both, and none, and so, and slowly it moved on.

Just as the lizard, when it darts from hedge to hedge beneath the dog days' giant lash, seems, if it cross one's path, a lightning flash, so seemed a blazing little serpent, moving against the bellies of the other two, as black and livid as a peppercorn.

Attacking one of them, it pierced right through the part where we first take our nourishment, and then it fell before him at full length. The one it had transfixed stared but said nothing. In fact, he only stood his ground and yawned as one whom sleep or fever has undone. The serpent stared at him, he at the serpent, one through his wound, the other through his mouth were smoking violently, their smoke met. Let Lucan now be silent where he sings of sad Sabellus and Nasidius, and wait to hear what flies off from my bow.

Let Ovid now be silent where he tells of Cadmus and Arethusa, if his verse had made of one a serpent, one a fountain. I do not envy him. He never did transmute two natures face to face so that both forms were ready to exchange their matter. These were the ways they answered to each other. The serpent split its tail into a fork. The wounded sinner drew his steps together, the legs and then the thighs along with them, so fastened to each other that the juncture soon left no sign that was discernible.

Meanwhile, the cleft tail took upon itself the form the other gradually lost. Its skin grew soft, the other's skin grew hard. I saw the arms draw in at their armpits and also saw the monster's two short feet grow long for just as much as those were shortened. The serpent's hind feet twisted up together became the member that man hides, just as the wretch put out two hind paws from his member. And while the smoke veils each with a new color and now breeds hair upon the skin of one, just as it strips the hair from off the other, the one rose up, the other fell, and they never turned aside their impious eye lamps, beneath which each of them transformed his snout.

He who stood up drew his back toward the temples, and from the excess matter growing there came ears upon the cheeks that had been bare. Whatever had not been pulled back, but kept superfluous, then made his face a nose, and thickened out his lips. He who was lying down thrust out his snout, and even as the snail hauls in its horns, he drew his ear straight back into his head. His tongue, which had before been whole and fit for speech, now cleaves. The other's tongue, which had been forked, now closes up, and the smoke stops.

The soul that had become an animal, now hissing, hurried off along the valley. The other one behind him speaks and spits. And then he turned aside his new-made shoulders and told the third soul, "I'd have Buoso run on all fours down this road as I have." And so I saw the seventh ballast change and rechange. May the strangeness plead for me if there has been some confusion in my pen. And though my eyes were somewhat blurred, my mind bewildered, those three sinners did not flee so secretly that I could not perceive Puccio Sciancato clearly.

He was the only soul who had not been changed among the three companions we had first met at first. The other one made you, Gaville, grieve.

Okay. So what is unusual about this canto is Dante spends a lot of time in the description. Right? Dante is usually very economical. He spends maybe a tercet and then he moves on. Here we have an entire canto talking about the... Why would he do that? And again, I don't actually know the answer. I'm just pointing this out, right? This is unusual for Dante. He's usually very succinct, very economical, very terse, and now he's spending a lot of time going in detail over the metamorphosis. Why would he do that?

Any speculations? Again, I don't know the answer. I mean, I just want to speculate. Any Maybe he wants to contrast this with Heaven, where the scheme is grandiose and extremely expansive and unlimited.

Where this guy turns into a fly. It's pretty disgusting. It's pretty scary. Don't watch it. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. But the idea of metamorphosis, right, that we can lose our human form and become something else, that's actually very, very scary. And it's hard to think of something even more scary than that idea. And maybe he's using that in order to evoke a sense of fear and dread as we approach the inner sanctums of Hell. Great. These are all great suggestions. Okay. All right. Let's keep on going.

Canto 26. "Be joyous, Florence. You're so great indeed that over land and sea you beat your wings. Through every part of Hell your name extends. Among the thieves I found five citizens of yours, and such that shame has taken me. With them you can ascend to no high honor. But if the dreams dreamt close to dawn are true, then little time will pass before you feel what Prato and the others crave for you. Were that already come, it would not be too soon, and let it come, since it must be. As I grow older, it will be more heavy.

Verse 10. "Were that already come, it would not be too soon, and let it come, since it must be. As I grow older, it will be more heavy." We left that deep, and by protruding stones that served as stairs for our descent before, my guide climbed up again and drew me forward. And as we took our solitary path among the ridges, jagged bursts and rocks, our feet could not make way without our hands. It grieved me then, and now grieves me again when I direct my mind to what I saw.

And more than usual, I curb my talent, that it not run where virtue does not guide, so that if my kind star or something better has given me that gift, I not abuse it. As many as the fireflies the peasant, while resting on a hillside in the season when he who lights the world least hides his face, just when the fly gives way to the mosquito, sees glimmering below down in the valley there, where perhaps he gathered grapes and tills, so many were the flames that glittered in the eighth abyss. I made this out as soon as I had come to where one sees the bottom.

Even as he who was avenged by bears saw, as it left, Elijah's chariot, its horses rearing, rising right to Heaven, when he could not keep track of it except by watching one lone flame and its ascent, just like a little cloud that climbs on high, so through the gullet of that ditch each flame must make its way. No flame displays its prey, though every flame has carried off a sinner. I stood upon the bridge and leaned straight out to see. And if I had not gripped a rock, I should have fallen off without a push.

My guide, who noted how intent I was, told me, "Within those fires there are souls, each one is swathed in that which scorches him." "My master," I replied, "on hearing you I'm more sure. But I'd already thought that it was so, and I had meant to ask, who is within the flame that comes so divided at the top that it would seem to rise out of the pyre where Eteocles was laid with his brother?" He answered me, "Within that flame Ulysses and Diomedes suffer. They who went as one to rage now share one punishment.

And there together in their flame they grieve over the horse's fraud that caused a breach, the gate that let Rome's noble seed escape. There they regret the guile that makes the dead Deidamia still lament Achilles, and therefore the Palladium. If they can speak within those sparks," I said, "I pray you, and repray, master, may my prayer be worth a thousand, please do not forbid my waiting here until the flame with horns approaches us, for you can see how out of my desire I bend toward it."

Line 70. Line 70. "And he to me, 'What you have asked is worthy of every praise. Therefore, I favor it. I only ask you this. Refrain from talking. Let me address them. I have understood what you desire of them. Since they were Greek, perhaps they'd be disdainful of your speech.'" And when my guide had judged the flame had reached a point where time and place were opportune, this was the form I heard his words assume. "You two who move as one within the flame, if I deserved of you while I still lived, if I deserved of you much or a little when in the world I wrote my noble lines, do not move on.

Let one of you retell where, having gone astray, he found his death." The greater horn within that ancient flame began to sway and tremble, murmuring just like a fire that struggles in the wind. And then he waved his flame tip back and forth as if it were a tongue that tried to speak, and flung toward us a voice that answered, "When I sailed away from Circe, who had beguiled me to stay more than a year there, near Gaeta, before Aeneas gave that place a name, neither my fondness for my son, nor pity for my old father, nor the love I owed Penelope, which would have gladdened her, was able to defeat in me the longing I had to gain experience of the world and of the vices and the worth of men.

Therefore, I set out on the open sea with but one ship and that small company of those who never had deserted me. I saw as far as Spain, as far as Morocco, along both shores, I saw Sardinia and saw the other islands that sea bathes. And I and my companions were already old and slow when we approached the narrows, where Hercules set up his boundary stones, that men might heed and never reach beyond. Upon my right I had gone past Seville and on the left already past Ceuta. 'Brothers,' I said, 'O you who have crossed a hundred thousand dangers, reached the west, to this brief waking time that still is left unto your senses, you must not deny experience of that which lies beyond the sun and of the world that is unpeopled.

Consider well the seed that gave you birth. You were not made to live your lives as brutes, but to be followers of worth and' I spurred my comrades with this brief address to meet the journey with such eagerness that I could hardly then have held them back. And having turned our stern toward the morning, we made wings out of our oars in a wild flight, and always gained upon our left-hand side.

"At night, I now could see the other pole in all its stars. The star of ours had fallen and never rose above the plane of the ocean. Five times the light beneath the moon had been rekindled, and as many times was spent, since that hard passage phased our first attempt, when there before us rose a mountain, dark because of distance, and it seemed to me the highest mountain I had ever seen. And we were glad. But this soon turned to sorrow, for out of that new land a whirlwind rose and hammered at our ship against her bow.

Three times it turned her around with all the waters. And at the fourth it lifted up the stern so that our prow plunged deep, as pleased another, until the sea again closed over us."

So this is a paradox, because weren't we told to live a life of faith, hope, and love? And here Ulysses is pursuing what he loves and he's exploring new lands and he's living a life of faith that there must be new knowledge out there for me to discover. Why would he be in Hell?

What did he do wrong? Yes. First, he could be just wanting to explore more without actually understanding what he's seeing. And also about the mountain being Purgatory. It could be a way of saying that if you avoid Purgatory then you finish in like Interesting.

He has no anchor. Right. Remember how in Paradiso it is Dante's love for Beatrice that propelled him to Heaven, right? Well, in your exploration, what anchors you is your love for family. You have to ask yourself, why am I exploring? Where am I going? And Ulysses didn't know, so he just fell off the face of the earth because there was nothing to hold him back. Okay. And that's why the punishment is the flame, because the flame of ambition, right? And he's just trapped in his ambition, but there's no body to it.

There's nothing to hold that flame back. The flame just wanders about. Okay. So again, what Dante is saying, this is really important, is that we as individuals are ultimately anchored by our family, our community or our society. Without these things, we are really nothing. Okay, does that make sense? Okay. Any other questions or thoughts about this? Yes.

Exile, right? Does that make sense? Not exile. Okay? And that's why Dante is so pissed off right now, because he's writing this in exile from Florence and he's like, I can't be who I am without Florence. Okay? You're taking away my identity. Does that make sense? All right. Yes.

Okay. And I want to commend everyone, okay? Because now the discussion is much more interesting. All right. So this is great. What was happening? Okay. Canto 27 now.

Keep on going.

I was from there, the hills between Urbino and the ridge where Tiber springs.' I still was bent attentive over him when my guide nudged me lightly at the side and said, 'You speak. He is Italian.' And I, who had my answer ready, said already, without delay, I began to speak to him. 'O soul that is concealed below in flame, Romagna is not now and never was quite free of war inside its tyrants' hearts. But when I left her none had broken out. Ravenna stands as it has stood for years. The eagle of Polenta shelters it and also covers Cervia with his wings.

The city that already stood long trial and made a bloody heap out of the French now finds itself again beneath green paws. Both mastiffs of Verrucchio, old and new, who dealt so badly with Montagna, use their teeth to bore where they have always done. The cities on Lamone and Santerno are led by the young lion of the white lair. From summer unto winter he shifts factions. That city with its side bathed by the Savio, just as it lies between the plain and mountain, lives somewhere between tyranny and freedom.

And now I pray you, tell me who you are. Do not be harder than I've been with you, that in the world your name may still endure.' After the flame, in customary fashion, had roared a while, it moved its pointed tip aside, and then it sent forth this breath, 'If I thought my reply were meant for one who could return into the world, this flame would stir no more. And yet since none, if what I hear is true, ever returned to life from this abyss, then without fear of facing infamy, I answer you. I was a man of arms, then wore the cord, believing that so girt I made amends, and surely what I thought would have been true had not the highest priest, may he be damned, made me fall back into my former sins.

And how and why I'd have you hear from me. While I still had the form of bones and flesh my mother gave to me, my deeds were not those of the lion, but those of the fox. The wiles and secret ways, I knew them all, and so employed their arts that my renown had reached the very boundaries of earth. But when I saw myself come to that part of life when it is fitting for all men to lower sails and gather in their ropes, what once had been my joy was now dejection.

Repenting and confessing, I became a friar, and, poor me, it would have helped. The prince of the new Pharisees, who then was waging war so near the Lateran, and not against the Jews or Saracens, for every enemy of his was Christian, and none of them had gone to conquer Acre or been a trader in the Sultan's lands, took no care for the highest office or the holy orders that were his, or for my cord, which used to make its wearers lean. But just as Constantine on Mount Soracte, to cure his leprosy, sought out Sylvester, so this one sought me out as his instructor to ease the fever of his arrogance.

He asked me to give counsel. I was silent. His words had seemed to me delirious. And then he said, 'Your heart must not mistrust. I now absolve you in advance. Teach me to batter Palestrina to the ground. You surely know that I possess the power to lock and unlock Heaven, for the keys my predecessor did not prize are two.' Then his grave arguments compelled me so my silence seemed a worse offense than speech. And I said, 'Since you cleanse me of the sin that I must now fall into, Father, long promises and very brief fulfillments will bring a victory to your high throne.' Then Francis came as soon as I was dead for me.

But one of the black cherubim told him, 'Don't bear him off. Do not cheat me. He must come down among my menials. The counsel that he gave was fraudulent. Since then, I've kept close track to snatch his scalp. One can't absolve a man who's not repented, and no one can repent and will at once. The law of contradiction won't allow it.' O miserable me, how I started when he took hold of me and said, 'Perhaps you did not think that I was a logician.' He carried me to Minos, and that monster twisted his tail eight times around his hide.

And then, when he had bit it in great anger, announced, 'This one is for the thieving fire.' For which, and where you see, I now am lost, and in this garb I move in bitterness." And with this his words were at an end. The flame departed, sorrowing and writhing, and tossing its sharp horn. We moved beyond. I went together with my guide along the ridge until the other arch that bridges the ditch where payment is imposed on those who, since they brought such discord, bear such Okay.

Okay. And that strategy does work, and when he died he thought that he was going to Heaven, and St. Francis came down from Heaven to take him to Heaven, as was promised by the Pope. But then one of the fallen angels says, you can't go, because you gave false, fraudulent counsel, and so your actions determine your place in... This is a very strange story for a variety of reasons. Let's start naming the reasons why this is a strange story or it doesn't really make any sense.

St. Francis came up from Heaven and then he was denied. Why is this a paradoxical story? This is a really problematic story. Well, the first paradox is St. Francis agrees with the corrupt Pope Boniface, right? That's kind of, Boniface said that if you help me, I guarantee you a place in Heaven. And this isn't simony, but it's pretty corrupt, right? It's pretty evil. And St. Francis up in Heaven says, "Sure. Sure. That's a deal. I'll come and get the man." And then the black servant had to... This is really problematic.

Okay. That's the first paradox.

Who is the founder of the Franciscan order? Those who are devoted to poverty, one of the least corruptible individuals in history. He's helping a very corrupt pope do evil in the world. What's going on here?

And again, I actually don't know the answer. I'm just throwing this out there. Okay. It's confusing me as well. Something about, even if St. Francis came, hear me. Hello. Something about even if St. Francis came down and agrees with Boniface that he will try to bring this man to Heaven, something about the law of contradiction doesn't allow it. Something about the nature of his... What does it mean, the contradiction? Okay. What it means is yes, your heart says I want to repent, right? But your action says another thing.

Okay. So just because you say something, believe something, doesn't count. Your action has to match these things. Okay? So yes, you did become a friar. You did promise yourself to a life of God. But you also committed treachery. You also lied to the people inside the city, drew them out, and then betrayed them. You also gave the Pope really bad counsel. You should have told the Pope, "Don't do this. Don't go against your enemies." Instead, you helped them trick other people. Okay? You gave false counsel.

You engage in manipulation and treachery, right? So it doesn't matter what you say, your actions speak for themselves. Okay, that's the idea here. You're condemned by your actions. Yeah, guys, there's no answer. We're just offering possibilities. Yes.

All right. Okay. Let's try to unpack what's going on. Okay. Point one is that the Pope, Boniface, says that he has the keys to Heaven. Okay. So what this is saying is that as Pope he is the representative of God on earth. Okay. So he does have a certain power, and that's why the sinner agrees to such duplicity, because he's guaranteed, right. There's a contract at play. Right. Okay. And then because of this contract St. Francis has to come and honor this contract, otherwise you're avoiding the authority of the Church, of the Catholic Church, on earth.

Okay, does that make sense? But this is saying that there are these laws that are above the contract in the Catholic Church. And at this point in history to hear these ideas would be revolutionary, right? Because at this time in history, everyone did believe the Pope was the representative of God on earth. And Catholics still do today. And the Pope literally has a power to grant you access to Heaven. Okay? So that's what I think is going on, but I could be wrong. Okay? Right. This is all just speculation.

Any other thoughts or comments about this? Just following up on what you just said, I think justice trumps the Catholic Church and that authority.

No barrel, even though it's lost a hoop or stave, gapes as one whom I saw ripped right from his chin to where we fart. His bowels hung between his legs. One saw his vitals and the miserable sack that makes of what we swallow excrement. While I was all intent on watching him, he looked at me and with his hands he spread his chest and said, 'See how I split myself.

See now how maimed Mohammed is. And he who walks and weeps before me is Ali, whose face is opened wide from chin to forelock. And all the others here whom you can see were, when alive, the sowers of dissension and scandal, and for this they now are split.

Okay. And then Ali is Muhammad's grandson. He caused a division among the Islamic faith between the Shia Muslims and the Sunni Muslims. Okay. The Shia Muslims believe that only an ancestor, sorry, only a descendant of Muhammad can be caliph, be the supreme leader. And the Sunnis believed no, that's not necessarily the case. Okay. And that caused a massive schism which continues to today. Okay. [snorts] And so for creating this discord their bodies are constantly ripped in half and split all the time. Okay. All right. Let's keep on going.

Line 37. Behind us here, a devil decks us out so cruelly, replacing everyone of this throng underneath the sword edge when we've made our way around the road of pain, because our wounds have closed again before we have returned to meet his blade once more. But who are you who dawdle on this ridge, perhaps to slow your going to the verdict that was pronounced on yourself? 'Accusations. Death has not reached him yet,' my master answered, 'nor is it guilt that summons him to torment, but that he may gain full experience.

I, who am dead, must guide him here below, to circle after circle throughout Hell. This is as true as that I speak to you.' More than a hundred, when they heard him, stopped within the ditch and turned to look at me, forgetful of their torture, wondering. 'Then you who will perhaps soon see the sun, tell Fra Dolcino to provide himself with food, if he has no desire to join me here quickly, lest when snow besieges him, it bring the Novarese the victory that otherwise they would not find too easy.' When he had raised his heel as if to go, Muhammad said these words to me, and then he set it on the ground, and off he went.

Another sinner, with his throat slit through, and with his nose hacked off up to his eyebrows, and no more than a single ear remaining, had with the others stayed his steps in wonder. He was the first before the rest to open his windpipe, on the outside all blood red, and said, 'O you whom guilt does not condemn, and whom, unless too close resemblance cheats me, I've seen above upon Italian soil, remember Pier da Medicina, if you ever again see the gentle plain that from Vercelli slopes to Marcabò.

And let the two best men of Fano know, I mean both Messer Guido and Angiolello, that if the foresight we have here is not vain, they'll be cast out of their ship and drowned, weighed down with stones near La Cattolica, because of a foul tyrant's treachery. Between the isles of Cyprus and Majorca, Neptune has never seen so cruel a crime committed by the pirates or the Argives. That traitor who sees only with one eye and rules the land which one who's here with me would wish his sight had never seen will call Guido and Angiolello to a parley, and then will so arrange it that they'll need no vow or prayer to Focara's wind.' And I to him, 'If you would have me carry some news of you above, then tell and show me who so detests the sight of Rimini.' And then he set his hand upon the jaw of a companion, opening his mouth and shouting, 'This is he, and he speaks not.

A man cast out, he quenched the doubt in Caesar, insisting that the one who is prepared can only suffer harm if he' Oh, how dismayed and pained he seemed to me, his tongue slit in his gullet, Curio, who once was so audacious in his talk. And one who walked with both his hands hacked off, while lifting off his stumps through the dark air so that his face was hideous with blood, cried out, 'You will remember Mosca too, who said, "Alas, what's done is at an end," which was the seed of evil for the Tuscans.' I added, 'And brought death to your own kinsmen.' Then, having heard me speak, grief heaped on grief, he went his way as one gone mad with sadness.

But I stayed there to watch their company and saw a thing that I should be afraid to tell with no more proof than my own self. Except that I am reassured by conscience, that good companion heartening a man beneath the breastplate of its purity. I surely saw, and it still seems I see, a trunk without a head that walked just like the others in that melancholy herd. It carried by the hair its severed head, which swayed within its hand just like a lantern. And that head looked at us and said, 'Ah me.' Out of itself it made itself a lamp.

"And they were two in one and one in two. How that can be, he knows who so decrees. When it was just below the bridge, it lifted its arm together with its head so that its words might be more near us, words that said, 'Now you can see atrocious punishment, you who still breathing go to view the dead. See if there's any pain as great as this. And so that you may carry news of me, know that I'm Bertran de Born, the one who gave bad counsel to the Young King.

I made the son and father enemies. Ahithophel with his malicious urgings did no worse with Absalom and David. Because I severed those so joined, I carry, alas, my brain dissevered from its source, which is within my trunk. And thus in me one sees the law of counter-penalty.'" Okay. So these sinners committed, they sowed discord, and this discord became permanent, right? So we talked about Muhammad and Ali. Then there's Curio, who sowed discord between Caesar and Pompey, who were previously good friends. This led to a massive civil war in Rome, which will end only with the rise of the Roman Empire.

You also have Bertran de Born, and he's lost his head because he caused discord. He caused discord, or civil war, between a father, the king, and a son, the prince. Okay. Just for fun, who would you put into this circle, like today, from history or from today or just from your imagination? Who would you put into this circle? A sower of discord, just for fun. Yes.

Yes. Representatives of Democrats and Republicans and far right, far But can you give me an example?

The moon already is beneath our feet. The time allotted to us now is short, and there's more to see than you see here.' 'Had you,' I answered him without a pause, 'been able to consider why I looked, you might have granted me a longer stay.' Meanwhile, my guide had moved ahead. I went behind him, answering as I walked on, and adding, 'In that hollow upon which just now I kept my eyes intent, I think a spirit born of my own blood laments the guilt which down below costs one so much.' At this my master said, 'Don't let your thoughts about him interrupt you from here on.

Attend to other things. Let him stay there. For I saw him below the little bridge, his finger pointing at you, threatening, and heard him called by name, Geri del Bello. But at that moment you were occupied with him who once was lord of Hautefort. You did not notice Geri. He moved off.' 'My guide, it was his death by violence, for which he still is not avenged,' I said, 'by anyone who shares his shame, that made him so disdainful now, and I suppose for this he left without a word to me, and this has made me pity him the more.' And so we talked until we found the first point of the ridge that, if there were more light, would show the other valley to the bottom.

When we had climbed above the final cloister of Malebolge, so that its lay brothers were able to appear before our eyes, I felt the force of strange laments like arrows whose shafts are barbed with pity. And at this I had to place my hands across my ears.

Just like the sufferings that all the sick of Valdichiana's hospitals, Maremma's, and Sardinia's, from July until September, would muster if assembled in one ditch, so was it here. And such a stench rose up as usually comes from festering limbs. And keeping always to the left, we climbed down to the final bank of the long ridge, and then my sight could see more vividly into the bottom, where unerring Justice, the minister of the high Lord, punishes the falsifiers she had registered. I do not think that there was greater grief in seeing all Aegina's people sick, than when the air was so infected that all animals down to the little worm collapsed, and afterward, as poets hold to be the certain truth, those ancient peoples received their health again through seed of ants.

Then I felt when I saw in that dark valley the spirits languishing in scattered heaps. Some lay upon their bellies, some upon the shoulders of another spirit. Some crawled on all fours along that squalid road. We journeyed step by step without a word, watching and listening to those sick souls who had not strength enough to lift themselves. I saw two sitting propped against each other as pan is propped on pan to heat them up, and each from head to foot spotted with scabs. And I have never seen a stable boy whose master waits for him, or one who stays awake reluctantly, so by a horse, with themselves with clawing nails, their itching had such force and fury, and there was no other help.

And so their nails kept scraping off the scabs, just as a knife scrapes off the scales of carp or of another fish with scales more large. "O you who use your nails to strip yourself," my guide began to say to one of them, "and sometimes have to turn them into pincers, tell us if there are some Italians among the sinners in this moat. So may your nails hold out eternally at their work." "We both, whom you see so disfigured here, we're Italians," one said in tears. "But who are you who have inquired of us?"

My guide replied, "From circle down to circle, together with this living man, I'm one who descends. I mean to show him Hell." At this their mutual support broke off, and quivering, each spirit turned toward me, with others who by chance had heard his words. Then my good master drew more close to me, saying, "Now tell them what it is you want." And I began to speak just as he wished, "So that your memory may never fade within the first world from the minds of men, but still live on under many suns, do tell me who you are and from what city, and do not let your vile and filthy torment make you afraid to let me know your names."

One answered me, "My city was Arezzo, and Albert of Siena had me burned, but what I died for does not bring me here. It's true that I had told him, jestingly, 'I'd know enough to fly through air,' and he, with curiosity but little sense, wished me to show that art to him, and just because I had not made him Daedalus, had one who held him as a son burn me.

But Minos, who cannot mistake, condemned my spirit to the final pouch of ten, for alchemy I practiced in the world." And then I asked the poet, "Was there ever so vain a people as the Sienese? Even the French can't match such vanity." At this the other leper, who had heard me, replied to what I said, "Except for Stricca, for he knew how to spend most frugally, and Niccolò, the first to make men see that cloves can serve as luxury, in such a seed and gardens where such seeds can take fast root, and too, Caccia d'Asciano's company.

With him he squandered vineyards and tilled fields, while Abbagliato showed such subtlety. But if you want to know who joins you so against the Sienese, look hard at me. That way my face can also answer plainly, and see that I'm the shade of Capocchio, whose alchemy could counterfeit fine metals. And you, if I correctly take your measure, recall how good at aping nature I was."

I understand all this, but why would alchemy be an issue? In fact, it's the worst thing you can do in fraud. Yes. Because it gives people false hope, and people waste their life pursuing something that is not real, Right?

Yes.

So from my point of view AI may not obey the law of God, because it actually doesn't create something. It's just trying to sort out the information for you.

That's the issue. All right. Yes. So if nuclear power is alchemy, is, for example, fossil fuels or renewable energies also? Okay, so nuclear energy we can debate about. Okay.

But yeah, I would say nuclear energy is alchemy, because, and I think the crucial distinction is that with nuclear energy you're entering into territory that is the very fundamental fabric of nature, of the universe, right? And you don't actually know the consequences of your actions, right? Look, there are people who believe the entire point of the nuclear bomb is to open portals to summon demons into our world. There are literally people who believe that, right? That's alchemy. Okay. So the point is nuclear weapons are not meant to be a weapon.

They're meant to be a portal to summon interdimensional aliens or demons into our world. Okay. Yeah. So it's about intent. Yes. Yeah, with this intention, then I wonder, alchemy is turning lead to gold, which is impossible by the laws of chemistry and God. The splitting of the atom is possible. We've done it. So I wonder if this intention toward a thing that cannot happen is alchemy, whereas a thing that can happen is no different than me taking medicine for a sickness. God put that sickness in my body.

God gave me the ability to cure the sickness. The intention is there in both of them. One is within the realm of the fabric of the universe, one is clearly not.

You would say, "If there's a will, there's a way." You understand? So we think we cannot turn lead into gold, but we actually have succeeded in doing so, because now we have the idea of money, right?

What is money? Money is alchemy. Because what I've done is I've taken a piece of paper, right? Any piece of paper, and I've turned it into gold, right? How's that different from alchemy?

I can now use this money to go buy a house or buy a car. Yes.

So how's that different? I'm not saying, you know, we succeed at turning it into gold. I'm saying for Dante, the concern is where there's a will, there's a way. We can never ever underestimate the human imagination. That's the animating force of the universe, right? So we set our intent on something and this intent is malicious, then that's a sin.

I'm going to give you languages so you guys are messed up, so you can't do that." But the subtle message is that if people so will, continue, they probably can, because there's a will, you know, there's a way. And so that's why God had to send us different languages, to stop, you know, people working towards that goal. So I think it's the same scene that's repeated here. If there's a will, there's a way. So if there's a will to replace God, right, and distort his order that he has established in the natural laws, you know, then it's abomination.

Okay. All right. So this is Inferno 30. Canto 30. "When Juno was incensed with Semele, and thus against the Theban family had shown her fury time and time again, Athamas was driven so insane that, seeing both his wife and their two sons as she bore one upon each arm, he cried, 'Let's spread the nets to take the lioness together with her cubs along the path.' And he stretched out his talons, pitiless, and snatched the son who bore the name Learchus, whirled him around, and dashed him on a rock.

She with her other burden drowned herself. And after fortune turned against the pride of Troy, who had dared all, so that the king together with his kingdom was destroyed, then Hecuba, wretched, sad, a captive, and after she had seen Polyxena dead, and in misery had recognized her Polydorus lying on the shore, she barked out of her senses like a dog. Her agony had so deformed her mind. But neither fury, Theban or Trojan, ever was seen to be so cruel against another, in rending beasts, and even human limbs, as were two shades I saw, both pale, naked, who, biting, ran berserk in just the way a hog does when it slips loose from its sty.

The one came at Capocchio and sank his tusks into his neck, so that by dragging he made the hard ground scrape against his belly. And he who stayed behind, the Aretine, trembled and said, 'That phantom is Gianni Schicchi, and he goes raging, rending others so.' 'Oh,' I said to him, 'so may the other not sink its teeth in you, please tell me who it is before it hurries off from here.' And he to me, 'That is the ancient soul of the indecent Myrrha. She who loved her father passed the limits of just love.

She came to sin with him by falsely taking another shape upon herself, just as the other phantom who goes there had done, that he might gain the lady of the herd, when he disguised himself as Buoso Donati, making a will as if most properly.' And when the pair of raging ones had passed, those two on whom my eyes were fixed, I turned around to see the rest of the ill-born. I saw one who had been fashioned like a lute, if he had only had his groin cut off from that part of his body where it forks.

The heavy dropsy, which so disproportions the limbs with unassimilated humors that there's no match between the face and belly, had made him part his lips like a consumptive who will, because of thirst, let one lip drop down to his chin and lift the other up. 'O you exempt from every punishment in this grim world, and I do not know why,' he said to us, 'look now, and pay attention to this, the misery of Master Adam. Alive, I had enough of all I wanted. Alas, I now long for one drop of water.

The rivulets that fall into the Arno, down from the green hills of the Casentino, with channels cool and moist, are constantly before me. I'm racked by memory. The image of their flow parches me more than the disease that robs my face of flesh. The rigid justice that would torment me uses as most appropriate the place where I had sinned to draw swift sighs from me. There's Romena. There I counterfeited the currency that bears the Baptist's seal. For this I left my body burned above. But could I see the miserable souls of Guido, Alessandro, or their brother, I'd not give up the sight for Fonte Branda.

One of them is in this moat already, if what the angry shades report is true. What use is that to me, whose limbs are tied? Were I so light that in a hundred years I could advance an inch, I should already be well upon the road to search for him among the mutilated ones, although the circuit measures some eleven miles and is at least a half mile across. Because of them I'm in this family. It was those three who had incited me to coin the florins with three carats of dross.

And I to him, "Where are those two poor sinners who give off smoke like wet hands in the winter and lie so close to you upon the right?" "I found them here," he answered, "when I rained down to this rocky slope. They've not stirred since and will not move, I think, eternally. One is the lying woman who blamed Joseph, the other the lying Greek of Troy, because of raging fever they reek so." And one of them, who seemed to take offense perhaps at being named so squalidly, struck with his fist at Adam's rigid belly.

It sounded as if it had been a drum, and Master Adam struck him in the face, using his arm, which did not seem less hard, saying to him, "Although I cannot move my limbs because they're too heavy, I still have an arm that's free to serve that need." And he replied, "But when you went to burning, your arm was not as quick as it was now. Though when you coined, it was as quick and more." To which the dropsied one, "Here you speak true, but you were not so true a witness there when you were asked to tell the truth at Troy."

"If I spoke false, you falsified the coin," said Sinon. "I'm here for just one crime, but you've committed more than any demon." "Do not forget the horse, you perjurer," replied the one who had the bloated belly. "May you be plagued because the whole world knows it." "The Greek, and you be plagued by thirst that cracks your tongue and putrid water that has made your belly such a hedge before your eyes." And then the coiner, "So as usual, your mouth because of racking fever gapes.

For if I thirst and if my humor bloats me, you have both dryness and a head that aches. Few words would be sufficient invitation to have you lick the mirror of Narcissus." I was intent on listening to them when this was what my master said, "If you insist on looking more, I'll quarrel with you." And when I heard him speak so angrily, I turned around to him with shame so great that it still stirs within my memory. Even as one who dreams that he is harmed and, dreaming, wishes he were dreaming, thus desiring that which is as if it were not, so I became within my speechlessness.

I wanted to excuse myself, and did excuse myself, although I knew it not. "Less shame would wash away a greater fault than was your fault," my master said to me. "Therefore, release yourself from all remorse and see that I'm always at your side. Should it so happen once again that fortune brings you where men would quarrel in this fashion, to want to hear such bickering is base."

So first of all, what do we have? Actually, you know what, Carol, could you do me a favor and Google this? Who's actually in Canto 30? So I want to make sure I'm correct here, okay? I want to make sure because this is a very confusing canto and there are lots of different individuals. Okay, so let's see who they are.

Okay, so these are the falsifiers. Yes, you have Master Adam, who's a counterfeiter. You have Sinon, who's a false witness. You have Gianni Schicchi, who is an impostor. And you have Myrrha. Okay. And so the two people who are having an argument are Sinon and Master Adam, right? Master Adam is a counterfeiter and Sinon is a Greek spy who convinced the Trojans to take in the Trojan horse. They're having an argument about who is worse.

Gianni Schicchi is an impostor who disguised himself as a dead person. Okay. So first of all, what is the connection among all these people? It's a very confusing section. You have a counterfeiter, you have a spy, you have an impostor, you have Myrrha, who disguised herself to commit incest with her own father. Oh, what's going on here?

Maybe this is just a garbage heap of Hell, right? Like you don't belong in any other category, so you just get dumped here. But that's not Dante, right? We already said that with Dante there's a lot of intentionality, there's a lot of creativity, there's a lot of imagination. So what is he doing here?

All right. So let's look at certain things that happen. Okay. So the one who suffers from leprosy. Okay. Their punishment is Gianni the impostor sinks his teeth into the leper. What does this signify, do you think? And again it's all speculation, guys. We don't know. Okay. We don't actually know what the allegorical meaning is. We're just speculating here. Okay. But there's this violent scene where the impostor Gianni sinks his teeth into the alchemist and tries to eat him.

And this is actually the first time in the Divine Comedy we see an argument between two souls, right? These two sinners. And the argument, like, who's right? Well, I mean, technically they're equally bad, right? Because they're in the same area of Hell. So what are they arguing about?

Let's just offer some possibilities, okay? Just speculate. Just use your imagination. Let's throw ideas out here. Let's just brainstorm together. Okay. You have a counterfeiter and you have a spy arguing about who's worse. How would they do Because each of them feels like the other one shouldn't be at the same level where they are.

Yes.

Okay. So why are they all together, right? All these falsifiers. They're all different. Yes.

What word is crucial to Dante that we have not used today, and basically Consciousness, maybe.

Does that make sense? Okay. So remember in Paradiso, the imagination is what makes us unique. It's what makes us co-creators with God, right? It's what allows the universe to expand outwards.

But you could also use your imagination for evil, right? And when you use it for evil, what happens is the universe... You're limiting people's imaginative space. Does it make sense? You're hijacking the imagination for evil ends that brings evil to the world, right? And before we always thought that imagination is a good thing. Well, it should be a good thing. It should be a play, and you can use it to create poetry, to create society. But there are people who can hijack people's imaginations to create evil in this world. Right?

Does that make sense? So as a counterfeiter, what you're doing is you're hijacking people's imagination that this money is very valuable. Right? As a spy, you're hijacking people's imagination that people tell the truth.

The impostor hijacks people's belief that only we can write our own wills, right? So they're all hijacking imagination in some way, right? And if you think about it, for Dante, this would be a lot worse than trying to hijack nature.

And this is interesting because in our society, then, who are the worst people to me? No, not really. That would be acting against God and nature, right? It'd be like sodomy and incest. It'd be in the circle of violence. But this circle, fraud.

Any... Yes. Yeah. Because I have heard in America the highest hierarchical crime is not killer. It's just the people who manipulate others and try to let them believe that the lie is truth. Look, I mean, this is hard for people in China to appreciate, but media people are really powerful in America. You know, it's actually true in China, media people in China have absolutely no power. But in America, if you work in the media, you're really, really powerful. Okay.

Canto 31. "The very tongue that first had wounded me, sending the color up in both my cheeks, was then to cure me with its medicine, as did Achilles' and his father's lance, even as I have heard, which dispensed a sad stroke first and then a healing one. We turned our backs upon that dismal valley by climbing up the bank that girdles it. We made our way across without a word. Here it was less than night and less than day, so that my sight could only move ahead slightly. But then I heard a bugle blast so strong it would have made a thunderclap seem faint.

At this my eyes, which doubled back upon their path, turned fully toward one place. Not even Roland's horn, which followed on the sad defeat when Charlemagne had lost his holy army, was as dread as this. I'd only turned my head there briefly when I seemed to make out many high towers. And I asked him, "Master, tell me, what's the city?" And he to me, "It is because you tried to penetrate from far into these shadows that you have formed such faulty images. When you have reached that place, you shall see clearly how much the distance has deceived your sense, and therefore let this spur you on your way." Then lovingly he took me by the hand and said, "Before we have moved farther on, so that the fact may seem less strange to you, I'd have you know they're not towers, but giants, and from the navel downward all of them are in the central pit at the embankment.

Just as whenever mists begin to thin, when gradually vision finds the form that in the vapor-thickened air was hidden, so I pierced through the dense and darkened fog. As I drew near, always nearer to the shore, my error fled from me, my terror grew. For as on its round wall Monteriggioni is crowned with towers, so towered here above the bank that runs around the pit with half their bulk the terrifying giants whom Jove still menaces from heaven when he sends his bolts of thunder down upon them.

And I could now make out the face of one, his shoulders and his chest, much of his belly, and both his arms that hung along his sides. Surely when she gave up the art of making such creatures, Nature acted well indeed, depriving Mars of instruments like these. And if she still produces elephants and whales, whoever sees with subtlety holds her, for this, to be more just and prudent, for where the mind's acutest reasoning is joined to evil will and evil power, there human beings can't defend themselves. His face appeared to me as broad and long as Rome can claim for St.

Peter's pine cone, his other bones shared in that same proportion. So that the bank, which served him as an apron down from his middle, showed so much of him above that three Frisians would in vain have boasted of their reaching to his hair. For downward from the place where one would buckle a mantle, I saw thirty spans of his. "Raphèl maì amècche zabì almi," began to bellow that brute mouth for which no sweeter psalms would be appropriate. And my guide turned to him, "Oh stupid soul, keep to your horn and use that as an outlet when rage or other passion touches you.

Look at your neck and you will find the strap that holds it fast, and see, bewildered spirit, how it lies straight across your massive chest." And then to me, "He is his own accuser, for this is Nimrod, through whose wicked thought one single language cannot serve the world. Leave him alone. Let's not waste time and talk. For every language is to him the same as his to others. No one knows his tongue."

'This giant, in his arrogance, had tested his force against the force of highest Jove,' my guide said. 'So he merits this reward. His name is Ephialtes, and he showed tremendous power when the giants frightened the gods. The arms he moved now move no more.' And I to him, 'If it is possible, I'd like my eyes to have experience of the enormous Briareus.' At which he answered, 'You shall see Antaeus nearby. He's unfettered and can speak. He'll take us to the bottom of all evil.

The one you wish to see lies far beyond and is bound up and just as huge as this one, and even more ferocious in his gaze.' No earthquake ever was so violent when called to shake a tower so robust as Ephialtes was quick to shake himself. Then I was more afraid of death than ever. That fear would have been quite enough to kill me had I not seen how he was held by chains. And we continued on until we reached Antaeus, who, not reckoning his head, stood out above the rock wall full five ells.

'O you who lived within the famous valley where Scipio became the heir of glory, where Hannibal retreated with his men, who took a thousand lions as your prey, and had you been together with your brothers in their high war, it seems some still believe the sons of earth would have become the victors, do set us down below where cold shuts in Cocytus, and do not disdain that task. Do not send us to Tityus or Typhon. This man can give you what is longed for here. Therefore, bend down and do not curl your lip.

He still can bring you fame within the world. For he's alive and still expects long life, unless grace summon him before his time.' So said my master, and in haste Antaeus stretched out his hand, whose massive grip had once been felt by Hercules, and grasped my guide. And Virgil, when he felt himself caught up, called out to me, 'Come here so I can hold you,' then made one bundle of himself and me. Just as the Garisenda seems when seen beneath the leaning side, when clouds run past and it hangs down as if about to crash, so did Antaeus seem to me as I watched him bend over me.

A moment when I'd have preferred to take some other road. But gently on the deep that swallows up both Lucifer and Judas, he placed us, nor did he, so bent over, stay there long, but like a mast above a ship, he rose." Okay. So now we are entering the final circle of Hell. One comment is that Dante creates symmetry, right? So remember in Paradiso what leads us to the Empyrean are these angels, right? And now as we enter the final circle, it's these giants that lead us the way.

I just put this out there, okay? Why giants in Hell? Why angels in Heaven? It's obvious for angels in Heaven, but why giants in Hell? And again, you just have to use your imagination because there's no answer. Okay? You're going to literally look at footnotes and they won't ever tell you why they're using giants instead of, I don't know, other things. Okay? Dante demands your imagination. Yes.

"Had I the crude and scraping rhymes to suit the melancholy hole upon which all the other circling crags converge and rest, the juice of my conception would be pressed more fully, but because I feel their lack, I bring myself to speak, yet speak in fear.

For it is not a task to take in jest, to show the base of all the universe, nor for a tongue that cries out 'mama' and 'papa.' But may those ladies now sustain my verse who helped Amphion when he walled up Thebes, so that my tale not differ from the fact. O rabble miscreated past all others, there in the place of which it's hard to speak, better if here you had been goats or sheep." When we were down below in the dark well, beneath the giant's feet and lower yet, with my eyes still upon the steep embankment, I heard this said to me, "Watch how you pass.

Walk so that you not trample with your soles the heads of your exhausted, wretched brothers." At this I turned and saw in front of me and beneath my feet a lake that, frozen fast, had lost the look of water and seemed like glass.

So this is something that we'll think a lot more about tomorrow. Okay. When I end the Inferno and discuss why it is that the center of Hell is a frozen lake rather than this raging fire as we would expect. We will also meet Lucifer.

And you would think that Lucifer is a king of Hell, but we actually meet Lucifer. He's not really the king of Hell. Okay. So lots of contradictions, lots of paradoxes, and we will start to unravel them tomorrow. Okay. So we'll finish the Inferno tomorrow morning and we'll start tomorrow afternoon. So please review what we've learned. Please go ahead and finish the Inferno and read the first five cantos of Purgatory. I want to thank everyone for the great discussion today. I actually learned a lot from everyone today. A lot of your comments just blew my mind.

Okay. I'm going to go home and think a lot more about some of your comments and some of your ideas. But that's the ideal seminar, right? Where we're all learning from each other, where we're all contributing our own individuality to the larger discussion. So thank you so much and great job today. Okay, I'll see everyone tomorrow.