A Hell of a City: Dante’s Inferno on the Road to Rome – From the dark wood to Rome

• Rome is a historical, literary, cultural, and physical place that plays a primary role in the poem (13:10).
• Dante’s use of the vernacular language and his invention of “terza rima” give meaning to the poem (20:00).
• Dante’s choice of Virgil as a guide is a reflection of his views on poetry and philosophy (34:00).
• The second canto gives verticality, brings the reader to heaven, and is beyond time and space (41:00).

• “I want to emphasize how important it is for each of us as readers of the poem to undertake each our own pilgrimage in the journey of reading the poem.” – Cachey, 13:30
• “One of the most impressive and concrete examples of Dante’s ambition and of his innovative and poetic mind is the invention of a new meter for his sacred poem.” – Sbordoni, 20:50
• “I think that while Dante wanted to bring philosophy into his consideration (…), it’s the dramatization of a human life going through a historical world that I think poetry gives him the possibility to do that in a way that captures and engages with people’s feelings and people’s ideas and other people’s lives, too.” – Lummus, 34:27
• “From Dante’s perspective, poetry is a higher form of knowledge in so far as it enables him to change hearts to have us have a conversion experience, if you will, in the reading of this poem.” – Cachey, 36:10

Note: This transcript was automatically generated using Otter.AI, an artificial intelligence transcription tool. 

Dolly Duffy  00:08

Happy New Year and welcome to the launch of the Rome book club, our newest series on think ND. I’m Dolly Duffy, the executive director of your Notre Dame Alumni Association. And I’m so happy to be with you today. Before we kick off today’s discussion about Dante and the inferno, I wanted to share a little bit about ThinkND. And how many of you have helped this community grow, we launched thinking D in September of 2019. And how fortuitous it was that we did that just before the pandemic hit, and people were home and really looking for opportunities to consume information. And now more than 14,500 people in more than 70 countries receive the weekly digest learning from each other and from the Notre Dame family. And this growth has been no small feat, and it’s a testament to the dedication and talent of so many of our campus partners like the Rome Go Global Gateway, and our faculty from across the colleges that work so hard to bring Notre Dame right to you. Today’s Rome book club event is hosted, as you can imagine, by the Rome Global Gateway. And to lead today’s discussion, I’m happy to welcome Silvia Dall’Olio Executive Director for the gateway. And I want you to know that I did practice that last name. I’m not sure I nailed it. But I did practice it. Before I turn it over to Sylvia, though, I want to let you know about a new feature that you’ll find in some of this semester’s think nd events, it’s called Community circles. These will typically be held immediately after discussion. And there’ll be an opportunity for you to continue the conversation. For an additional 15 minutes, we’ll open the breakout rooms, each with one faculty member present, kind of like a post event reception. And I would think that the Italians do receptions really well. So I encourage you to stick around, stay in these receptions and have a chance to have more conversation, this informal times for you to continue to engage with these faculty, and we hope you enjoy this opportunity in the near future. Without further ado, I’ll turn the discussion over to Silvia. Silvia, it’s all yours.

Silvia Dall’Olio  02:17

Thank you nothing. And it is my pleasure to join you in welcoming all of you and thank you for participating in our journey to Italy viaggiare in Italian Rome book club. The this first series of the rumba club is titled A hell of a city, Dante’s Inferno on the road to Rome, and we will spend the next four weeks discussing Dante’s Inferno, the first part of the Divine Comedy written by the Italian poet, I’m telling you, it is our hope that over the course of the next few weeks, we will build a virtual community and connect with people globally to reflect upon the material presented. We are excited and humbled by the amount of interest in this program as we have over 300 participants registered to join us over the next four weeks. We are excited to share also that our community has eight countries from around the world represented. We have designed this Rongbuk club to have as much interaction and engagement as possible with discussion boards and community circles. We hope that you will find our experience with the journey of to Italy book club to be insightful and engaging. And we hope that you stay connected not only to us here at the wrong Global Gateway and the Center for Italian studies another day, but to the global community that we will be held over the course of these next few weeks. At this time, I would like to thank all of the co sponsors of the journey to Italy Rome book club, the wrong Global Gateway, Notre Dame International, the Center for Italian studies and the Notre Dame Alumni Association. Each of the team members have put so much time and lent their talents to bring this program to life from its original conception. And now a few practical tips for you to fully engage with the conversation here tonight. We ask that if you have questions from the three faculty members, please use the Google Form that we are sharing with you now and this will allow us to facilitate the questions as effectively as possible. We will try and answer as many of them as possible given the time constraints but please remember if we don’t get to all of them tonight, we will do have we will have a private moderated discussion bore on LinkedIn to continue the discussion. The link to the discussion board is being shared with you right now as well. As we as you may know when we promoted this event we share the few pre recorded videos that are posted now on think Andy where all three faculty discussed a few themes for the for the from the Divine Comedy. For those of you who have not had the chance to watch it I recommend that you way to think in the and now on to Dantec. I’d like to welcome our speakers tonight, Professor Ted Katchi, who will lead today’s meeting is professor of Italian and the Reno family director of Italian and Dante’s Studies at the University of Notre Dame. He is the director of the Center for Italian studies and the diverse program in dantas studies and was also the inaugural Academic Director of the wrong Global Gateway. So it is truly a pleasure to have him and his colleagues in our great our book club today. Professor David Lummus, is the co director of the Center for Italian studies and visiting assistant professor of Italian and Notre Dame, doctors. gordonii is a faculty member in Italia based at the wrong Global Gateway. More recently, Professor lemons and professors bologna have collaborated on the teaching of the course all roads lead to Rome, which is the foundational course for all students who spend a semester studying abroad in Rome. And now leave the microphone to Ted who will lead the discussion engaging with David and Chiara as well as all of you who are here with us today. Thank you.

Theodore Cachey  06:13

Thank you, Silvia. And let me begin by wishing Silvia Happy Birthday. And I was going to suggest that all the participants sing Happy Birthday, but I’m afraid that it would crash the Zoom connection. So algorri Silvia, and thank you for that kind introduction. I want to, as is customary at the beginning of a class, go over the syllabus, but not so much go over the syllabus, I want to just point you to one of the documents that have been pre distributed and that’s in this first, tranche, so to speak, of further resources. And I’d ask God, or maybe you can put it up on the on the screen. And for those of you who don’t have your paperwork in front of you, but I just wanted to highlight a couple of resources, several resources. And I hope when you get a chance, you’ll be able to review these materials, online materials online resources in the first place. CHIARA I’m looking for the it’s part of the template, the Downtown Line and the Princeton downtick project and so on. So this is you should be able to access the attic, you should be able to access this on the thinkin D page. At the top you have Dante on line, which is the website of the Sochi tiedown Teskey toyana. And I would highlight there the bibliography which is fabulous English language all International Bibliography, which is at at your fingertips. And second on that list is the Princeton Dante is the Princeton Dante project with rings, which has all of the texts of Dante including the online Divine Comedy in the translation of Professor Hollander, which we’ve recommended as the text for this course. At the bottom of that list, we have the diverse family program and Dante studies in the center for Italian studies at Notre Dame, which I hope you will visit and I wanted to take the opportunity to invite you all to the lead off event in our upcoming Dante in America. Daunting America lecture series on January 29, you can register and participate virtually in two lectures one by David Wallace of the University of Pennsylvania, on Dante’s hell is heaven American Dante’s and really a member of the Notre Dame faculty, Laura walls will be lecturing on Dante and the American transcendentalist on January 29, from 1230 to 230. But you can find information on our Center for Italian site studies and you can register to register at that site. And then finally, recommended texts and supplementary resources. I just wanted to say bring to your attention. The book understanding Dante, which was published in our Notre Dame Dante series is a wonderful general reference work, as are the Cambridge companions, edited by our Notre Dame colleague, co edited by our Notre Dame colleague, zig Baranski. And you, we encourage you to access these materials as a first stop in trying to do background into the bibliographical work. And I’m sure that in the course of our discussions, we’ll be referencing these resources for you. And so, for that reason, I wanted to start by just pointing these, this page out in the material that we pre distributed. Thank you caller, you can take that off now. And let me just say that we, our plan is to introduce a few iconic elements, iconic moments rather, as a way of introducing you to the poem. And our goal is to really provide an introductory experience of reading together in community, Dante’s poetry. And to give you some basic tools for continuing to read the poem, read the inferno and the entire Divine Comedy on your own. Reading Dante has always been a community effort. Since the poem was completed 700 years ago, the 700 years of the commentary tradition represents a kind of choral response to Dante’s poem, a kind of ongoing super blog or message board, in which readers have responded to the poem and debated its significance. And this method of focusing on the text as a point of departure for discussion is really the model that David and count and I would like to practice together with you in our four meetings. And we invite you to join in through the comments or the questions, or directly as you are inspired to do so. The road to Rome theme that we’ve introduced and emphasized in our selection of the condos that we will read together, and the materials that we’ve prepared for you and participation of the discussions addresses directly one of Dante’s most important concerns. The pilgrimage to Rome represents, in fact one of the fundamental models in forming the story and the structure of the Divine Comedy. The journey of the poem is a kind of pilgrimage to Rome, taking Rome in its celestial and transcendent sense, as we’ll see in our discussions. Rome, the city of Rome is a historical, literary, cultural, and physical place that plays a primary role in the poem. For instance, as we’ll discover in reading the poem, the beginning of the poem today, Dante’s journey takes place in 1300. In counterpoint to the Jubilee. This is the first Jubilee in the history of the Catholic Church, proclaimed in the same year by Pope Boniface, the eighth Dante’s great political nemesis. Before we start to discuss the questions that we’ve prepared for today’s meeting, I want to emphasize how important it is for each of us as readers of the poem to undertake each our own pilgrimage. In the journey of reading the poem. I’m often asked, well, how is Dante relevant for today? The answer is very simple. Dante confronted a world that was politically, economically, spiritually, culturally, in profound crisis. The world was upside down or out of joint, we might say, which Otto sound very familiar to us, Dante himself as an individual, for his part, found himself in the midst of a life crisis, you might say the most famous midlife crisis in all of literature, his journey, and our reading of the poem is designed to enable us to reorient ourselves, and to emerge with a new perspective. The process of reading the poem of learning how to read the poem, is the point of the exercise the means by which we can reorient ourselves and emerge with a new perspective. The great Dante scholar to the Linda Bartolini has recently written an essay titled Dante, teacher of his reader. The author of the Divine Comedy is in many ways the teacher of us as readers, he teaches us how to read the poem, and as you will see, or have already Seeing if you’ve been able to review the material that we pre distributed for today. Our pedagogy for this book club, so to speak, is accordingly designed to support you in becoming independent readers of Dante’s poem. And with that, I’d like to turn now to a reading in community of the first four to six of the first Konto first of 100 consoles of the poem, and I’d like to ask Kouta to read the first 12 of the 14,233 and DECA syllables are 11 syllable verses of the Divine Comedy counter.

Silvia Dall’Olio  15:50

I’m going to share my screen this time correctly, hopefully and make it large for you. Then men’s will come in the nostra vita Mehrotra why don’t I say Silva Skora Killa Donita via Aurasma Rita? I quantity the choleric Casa De La Salle Vasavada AR spray 40 kilometers care novela powder some Tamara K Paco to Martha by Petra turtle bank Mitra Why did all the last record was a key Voskhod, you know so very near commitment right on track and this one called kelabra Severe abandoned i.

Theodore Cachey  16:40

Now I’m going to read from the translation that you have on the screen there. I don’t know if you can see this from a book called Dante’s Inferno translations by contemporary poets. And this translation is by the Nobel Prize winning laureate, the late Seamus Heaney, who, as many of you know, was a great translator of Dante. In the middle of the journey of our life, I found myself a stray in a dark wood where the street road had been lost sight of how hard it is to say what it was like, in the thickets in the thick of thickets in a woods, so dense and gnarled. The very thought of it renews my panic. It is bitter, almost as death itself is bitter, but to rehearse the good. It also brought me I will speak about the other things I saw there. So I asked David and Chiara to offer initial comments on our first question, which is, how many different ways can one interpret these first lines of the poem, beginning with the first verse, the middle of our life of the journey of our life? And what do you notice about the rhyme scheme? David, do you want to take the first crack at that?

David Lummus  17:59

Sure. Thanks, Ted. Well, it’s hard to think of a first line of a poem that’s so personal and yet so universal as the first line of the Divine Comedy. You know, it’s, it’s, it invites us all into it because it refers to everyone to, you know, the, the, all of us the journey of our life. So it’s both this universally human journey, but also, it’s that journey that is individual and specific to Dante himself. You know, Midway, you know, the commentary on Midway. Dante’s about 35, whenever he writes the beginning of the fictional date of this poem, 1300. It imitates Christ’s age, the crucifixion. But it also it brings out that idea that you mentioned earlier Ted, the, the midlife crisis, right, and, you know, my I studied Giovanni Boccaccio, primarily, the author of the new camera on, written in the generation after Dante and Boccaccio, was one of the earliest commentators on and most important commentators on on Dante’s Inferno, and he noticed that, that midway, they the indicates a pivot point in a conversion, right from bad to good. So that idea that midlife crisis isn’t just ours. I think it’s been a part of the conversation since the beginning.

Theodore Cachey  19:33

 Thank you. Thanks, David. Chiara, do you have you want to say something about the rhyme scheme? I think it’s a marvelous and quite fascinating aspect of this poem.

Chiara Sbordoni  19:53

Yes, sir. Thanks, Ted. So I would like to say that to start seeing that data was incredibly ambitious and as we will see his poem that comedy was meant to be the foundational poem of Christianity written in the vernacular language of contemporary Florence. This was already a huge innovation writing an epic poem, not in Latin, but in the vernacular. And in the text of parody, so 25 down to refers to the comedy as to the sacred poem, to which both heaven and earth have set their hand. So now one of the most important elements characterizing poetry and poetic text usually beside the language, of course, is their meter, the kinds of verses used, the way they are structured together, the rhythm that the structure creates, and how sounds are organized in the structure through rhymes and silences. consultancies, the meter creates an essential tension between the rhythm and the sound on the one hand, and the syntax and meaning on the other hand, so one of the most impressive and concrete examples of Dante’s ambition, and his innovative and capable poetic mind is the invention of a new meter for his sacred poem. This meter is called that Serena. It’s structural unit is the tariffs that are stands out 300 concealable versus which means versus made of 11 syllables. The indica syllable, indica syllable is an was a dantas time the most prestigious kind of verse in what we down to becomes the Italian politic tradition, you can already get how a meter is structured around the stance of three verses echoes at this level of the text, the ternary structure already forming the macro level of the poem divided in three canticles. So in fairness, that audio Paradiso, but how does the text Saaremaa work? I’ll go back to our PowerPoint, hopefully, and share my screen again with you. And I hope you can see it. So so how does the TR Saaremaa work? We assigned to each verse, a capital letter, the first and third verse in each third set, as you can see, rank together vetoes Marieta. And the second verse provides the link to the next third set rhyming with the first and third verses of the next third set so schooled on do rock powder. The resulting pattern is that the sequence ABA, B, C, B, C, D, C, D, D, etc. Except in the first and last set of each Canto, each rhyme is repeated three times, in this way that academia is an open meter that continually projects the text forward an ideal meter for a narrative poem in which the rhyme words are often charged with the essential meaning of the text. This meter is also called the mind cut and our chain line, because the way the second verse of it starts have links to the following tests that can figuratively remind us of the links of a chain. And here I just want to show you that the third set was immediately perceived as the fundamental unit of the text. And it is visually evident since the beginning of the textual history of the poem. And I will stop here. So in this image of the eight Thompson illuminated manuscript at the British Library, dating back to the 1440s, were Easter’s that is emphasized by an illuminated, initial, as you can see. And I’ll leave it back to you type.

Theodore Cachey  24:04

Thank you, Kara. And just as a kind of continuation of these comments. I think that the date 1300 We should also relate to Dante’s political life. He was a prior of the city of Florence at that time, and in a last letter, a letter that we have a report from the Renaissance. He states that the beginning of his political troubles began in 1300. When he was a prior it was one of the chief political figures in the Florentine commune at the time. All my troubles in other words, all my troubles that eventually led to Dante’s exile in 1302, began in 1300. I biographically, we might say, and so I think it’s important to keep in mind that the the Personal biographical reality of Dante, and that the wood, the dark wood in which he is lost, is also the dark wood of the political controversies, the political violence of his times. And also, just to reiterate a point that I made in the video in the introductory video, here you can see in these first verses, the distinction between the pilgrim who finds himself in a dark wood, and the author who’s struggling to write about that experience, also in the switch between the present and the past tenses, which he actually blurs a bit. So it’s fascinating, and I hope you’ll develop a an interest in considering always, what’s the difference in perspective between the pilgrim as character in the poem and the author, Dante, who actually dramatize is the struggle to write the poem. And then beyond that is actually the kind of the the puppeteer of the whole enterprise, the distinction between Dante the pilgrim and Dante, the Pope, let me move on, if I may to, and I hope that this is generating some, I’m sure that it’s generating further questions that I hope you’ll share with us, and that we will address in due course, our second question is more structural with respect to the totality of the poem. How do Kontos one and two that you’ve read today actually represent introduction of the introduction to the entire poem, and not just to the first canticle the inferno? David, do you want to take a first shot at that? 

David Lummus  26:51

Sure. It’s an extent Yeah, it’s, I guess, there are a number of things that that that stand out whether it’s the you know, the, the invocation, the Muses in part in the second Kanto or the introduction of characters kind of people, he characterizes the pilgrim. He characterizes the guy and he sets the stage for for the journey which is mentioned but doesn’t happen yet. So I think what for me, I think that the most the signals that have their introductory cantos is the fact that they’re not going anywhere yet. Right? This is This is a poem about movement like Kiara mentioned earlier, but the rhyme scheme it’s even it’s the wrench scheme itself is pushing you forward so as readers and as and as following the pilgrim we’re not moving yet so it’s it’s the fact that we’re standing still there at the in the dark wood or the fact that we’re not moving it sets aside these two candles is special also. Because when Dante stops moving especially in the inferno, you he’s in trouble.

Theodore Cachey  28:04

No, that’s that’s a really interesting point Kiana.

Chiara Sbordoni  28:11

I would like to thank you, David. And thank you, Todd, I would like to go for instance, as an example of these primal character, character of the first counter, I would like to go to towards the end of the counter at lines 112 Two through 129. Where Virgil is giving Dante’s sort of a preview of the, or of an overview of the journey they are setting out to undertake, Virgil proclaims himself Dante’s guide and describes the path from the dark woods through hell. We’re down to we’ll hear the cries of the damned souls eternally punished in Israel, and then through purgatory where the souls who are repenting for their sins are happy to suffer their transitory punishment. So he points out to the eternal nature of, of Hell and Paradise and to the transitory state of those who go through purgatory. And and finally through paradise and here Virgil emphasizes the art of wheel that it takes to be saved and to ascend to heaven. And at the same time, this is verjus first explicit recognition of his own limits as a guide. We will talk more about this momentarily. But Virgil here announces in these verses, he announces that another guide will take over and accompany down to through the third realm if he will want to if he wants to go. In a more subtle way, Dante had already prefigured the path from hell to Purgatory and to paradise in a work in the image of the hill illuminated by the Sun that rich at The beginning of the account that retrospectively comes back to the readers mind as an iconic or symbolic image of the setting, or the journey appealing in almost subliminal way to the imagination of the reader.

Theodore Cachey  30:15

Thank you, Cara and I, I really liked the way you’re modeling our discussion and making specific reference to verses from the poem. I think that’s something that we’ll be doing a lot of we’re, we’re going to be doing close readings of the poem. And I’m glad that you brought to our attention those verses towards the end of conto, one that are indeed giving us a preview of the whole poem. And I would just add, if we put it together with Konto, one and two, we’re getting the whole cosmos of the poem. After Konto. Two, we’re going to go to hell. But already in one in two, we’re going all the way up to heaven and encountering via three J, Mary Lou chia. And so there’s a kind of verticality between the first two contour contours of the poem that it’s also preparatory for the entire poem and not just the first canticle and Dante so clever, if you notice, in the first line of contour one, and the last line of the second content of the inferno, he uses the word Camino the way the path, almost as if he’s sewing together, these two condos as Pro Emiel condos to the entire poem. Moving on, are our third discussion point. And here we should, we’re gonna get great insight from our classicist, David Lummis. But But I want to ask Jada first, according to my script, what, why is it Virgil? Okay, everybody knows about Aristotle, Aristotle was the great philosopher sage of the medieval and classical and medieval and, and modern or the modern world. Why is Dante choosing Virgil as his guide de Kado? Why don’t you go first, because otherwise, it’ll occupy all the space.

Chiara Sbordoni  32:09

Though imbued with a philosophical and theological culture of his own times, and in particular, as you were saying, Ted aristata, as the Greek philosopher had been reinterpreted by Christians, theologians like St. Thomas Aquinas, who was almost done this contemporary. Nevertheless, Duncan was not a philosopher. He simply was a poet, and the search his models and guides her necessarily to be poets, poets, the Dante had read and annotated and interpreted when Dante decided to write the comedy, which, as we said, he meant for it to be the Christian foundational poem, which we can really consider the first poem of its kind written in Italian vernacular, and in this new typesetting meter we discussed earlier, Dante’s model hadn’t necessarily to be that of a Latin author who had written a poem since there weren’t not similar examples in, in the Italian vernacular, the Dante in the Florentine vernacular that Dante was using. And since then, he was very ambitious. As I said earlier, he chose the poet who probably best represented the golden age of Latin literary literary tradition. So Virgil, Virgil, had lived in the first century BC at the time of Emperor Auguste Augustus. And he had celebrated in his poem and aid the Trojan here and as and his journey to Italy and his conquests of the kingdom of the lightning King. So Nas was the founder, in a way I mean, his offspring will eventually found Rome, and, and Rome is central to Dante’s political, religious and cultural conception of the world’s history and, and the words destiny in a Christian perspective. So the wrong song and represented by Virgil is the Imperial Rome, which in Dante’s perspective, established the kind of justice and political stability that was the necessary setting for Christ’s mission on earth, and for the following spread of Christianity. These are some of the reasons I think, why. 

Theodore Cachey  34:19

Thank you. Thanks, David. 

David Lummus  34:21

That’s, that’s,that’s perfect care. There’s really not a whole lot to add, I mean, virtual. You know, besides the question of poetry versus philosophy that Ted mentioned, which was key, I think, you know, because poetry has an element of dealing directly with a representation of history and life that philosophy abstracts and I think that Dante wanted to bring philosophy into his consideration and it definitely is throughout with Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, but it’s, it’s the dramatization of a human life and human life going through a historical world. that I think poetry gives him access. It gives him the possibility to do that in a way that captures and engages with people’s feelings and people’s ideas and other people’s lives too. And I think that he chooses virtual because, you know, the end needed and not just the need but all of Virgil’s poetry had such a profound effect on on him around lines ad was a recess, it was an ad to run the lines ad to the First Canto, the inferno, where he taught, he tells he tells Virgil that you are my teacher and my author, you’re the glory in light of all other poets. I mean, the the profound effect that the reading of the Aeneid had on Dante there in the rereading of vignette, and Dante, I think, can’t be underestimated. So it’s overestimated.

Theodore Cachey  35:54

Yeah. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. And just Just to follow up on your earlier point, David, I think the Dante poetry has the power to change people. It has the emotional force to reform a person poetry is the emotion of poetry that beauty can persuade, in a way that philosophical knowledge, okay, the intellect I understand something, I understand the theorem, I can answer. You know, from Dante’s perspective, poetry is a higher form of knowledge, insofar as it enables him to change hearts to have us have a conversion experience, if you will, in the reading of this poem. As you can tell each of these questions we could go on for an hour, but we’re trying to do a little bit of a run through just to get some meat on the fire, if you will, and to stimulate your, your own thoughts and further discussion. Our fourth question is following up on Virgil. And my theme that I’ve introduced of the difference between the pilgrim as character and Dante the poet, how are those attitudes toward Virgil explicated in, in the in the first two counters? How is the Pilgrims attitude different from the poet’s attitude as dramatizing the content? You want to go on with that, David? Go ahead.

David Lummus  37:36

Sure. I mean, I think that, you know, the pilgrim embodies, I think Dante’s admiration for, for Virgil. So you can think of them as different versions of the same person, right, once one’s Dante before and once Dante after the comedy if you want. And so the Dante is written, the comedy he’s talking to us right now, is incredibly bold, and the way in which he takes on the authority of the past and so I think there’s a kind of, you know, the Pilgrims reverence for that for the Roman poet helps counterbalance that the boldness of Dante the poet who is asserting himself and his own authority to do the same thing and to do it differently, and maybe, you know, certainly in deadly advances is better than virtual dead.

Theodore Cachey  38:25

 So, if that’sgonna do you want to add something to that, I would just

Chiara Sbordoni  38:30

like to add, that this is one of the great themes on the front end of purgatory Purgatorio. And, I mean, especially, that like, became becomes concrete in in the limit in showing the limitations of Virgil as a non Christian poet and as a pagan, to the point that then encounter for Dante and Virgil go through limbo where Virgil will inhabit for eternity, along with the virtuous pagan philosophers and poets, who are relegated in the first of the nine circles of hell. So they lead in longing without hope of salvation. So as much as done to the pilgrim seems to depend on his guide until the port, as David was saying, repeatedly shows all of Virgil’s limits, and more or less explicitly expresses his ambition to Natale compare himself to Virgil but to decisively leave him behind.

Theodore Cachey  39:31

Yeah, I think it’s really fascinating how, in the first Konto, we’re all oh my god, the pilgrim. He’s so overwhelmed as not as as David was saying, oh, yeah, he’s met his idol, you know, unexpectedly, his great model, and he’s just overflowing with, you know, excitement, but at the same time, it’s clear already an infernal one that Dante the author is making the point that I am going to go beyond On Virgil, I’m going to go where Virgil could not go. For example, in lines that count are alluded to earlier, lines 124 through 129. You can almost hear or feel, Virgil’s longing, you know when he says, where he has his seat, you know, God in every part, he rains, and there he rules. There is his city and his his lofty seat, happy the one whom he elects to be there. And so that’s, that’s Dante, you know, that’s the Christian can go beyond Dante’s Christian poem, as Chiara was making the point that the Divine Comedy is a new kind of literature, a literature that surpasses all of the classical literature, for spiritual reasons, not only artistic reasons, it’s not just a competition. Virgil’s a lesser poet than Dante, although TS Eliot said that he thought that Dante was a better poet than Virgil, which always pains those of us who love Virgil, so much like David, but it’s true. I think, you know, Dave, I don’t know if you would agree, Dante is the greater writer, but it’s not about that. It’s not about that for Dante here. Although it is about that, and other parts of the poem that will that we’ll talk about as well. I want to stay with our time because we want to leave some time for questions. You know, just in general, what’s the function of the second content I think I already alluded to, it gives us that verticality. It takes us up to the Empyrion or heaven. And so we see that the poem is that big, it’s that it’s as big as the cosmos and beyond the cosmos, because the Empyrion Heaven is outside of time and space. So that’s also being represented in the second counter, but in terms of the functionalityfor the poem. Kiana you want to take you want to say something about that?

Chiara Sbordoni  42:18

Okay, sorry, I have to mute myself. Well, I in terms of the of the poem, I would say that counter to establishes the divinely willed nature of the pilgrims journey. So down to the pale green doubts of being able to live up to his great predecessors, the hero in ours and St. Paul, and Virgil. And of course, behind Virgil, down to the poet confirm the validity, the legitimacy of Dante’s journey which is recommended in heaven by the Virgin Mary, through her messengers, and Lucy and ultimately batteries, who was the woman whom Dante had loved in his youth and who had inspired and continued to inspire his poetry or better she was the reason why he had become a poet.

David Lummus  43:12

I agree entirely with what the two of you have been saying. I think the for me the Second Canto, really just it situates Dante’s journey as an individual within a cosmological theological paradigm. Right. So he’s like, like Chiara said, it’s, he’s the, he’s set himself up as being the recipient of God’s grace, and that he’s able to do this because because of a chain of love that reaches him from from beyond

Theodore Cachey  43:45

it, I hope you’ll enjoy and I hope, all of the participants, I’m going to reread the poem. It’s not a long poem, actually, the inferno. And so I hope you’ll, you know, we’re going to focus on just a selection of condos. But we’re going to take we’re talking about the whole Inferno and one of the most enjoyable parts of it is Dante and Virgil as they descend into hell, they run into obstacles, all these different obstacles, the monsters in Upper hell, who want to block the way to their progress, and Virgil. It says, Get out of the way, his, his this journey is ordained from above, you know, that the whole poem is written, to enable Dante to show that Dante this journey, this poem is divinely ordained, and he dramatize it repeatedly in the course of the narrative. So, you know, by the end of it, we are persuaded, you know, he actually makes that point repeatedly. I want to say let’s turn to some questions. I don’t If anyone would like to intervene, we have been collecting some questions. John, I think you’re the coordinator of the questions. And David, you. I’ll follow your lead on this. We have, we’re pretty much on time we have another five, seven minutes, five or 10 minutes we could address some questions.

Chiara Sbordoni  45:24

Well, there’s for instance, that beautiful question for from Portland, Oregon. where the person was the participant was the question says, I couldn’t help but wonder how downtown Lincoln both himself the poet and his pilgrim to Virgil and is and St. Paul, that he’s, in fact quite consciously committing one of the sins represented by the beasts that prevent his ascent up the shining mountain that of pride, or am I understanding the Christian or perhaps the classical understanding of pride hubris that proverbially comes before a fall? It is quite extraordinary to call oneself out as a guide to salvation and worthy of such lofty comparisons, though, he seems to humbly say He is not worthy of such comparisons, even as he makes that

Theodore Cachey  46:11

great question that could be at the title of a book, Dante’s pride. You know, while you and David are thinking about how you would respond, I mean, I love the inferno too, if you if you listen to my video. I love it when he says when he has the pilgrim say, I am not a nice, I am not Paul, but of course, Dante the poet is saying exactly the opposite. Yes, you know, I am the new Paul, I am the new NES. And so there’s this incredible challenging level of more than pride, it’s of his awareness or sense of his preordained role of his of his of his role in salvation history. Dante is writing himself into salvation history as a Christological figure, as someone who’s going to bring salvation through his example and through his poem. And so pride inevitably becomes an issue for him in the poem that he has to, in one way or another address, he can avoid this question that has been raised. I can think of a few ways in which he tries to defuse that question. David, you, you must have some they’re coming to mind.

David Lummus  47:43

With Dante’s pride. I mean, I don’t I mean, you know, there’s later on in the, in the, in the inferno, or, you know, Dante starts. He warns us that he’s going to go beyond what he usually is, and usually does with his poetry. And you know, he’s challenging the classical poets always. And I think, is that is that a sin? I mean, he certainly thinks it may be and I think he participates in the sense throughout the unfairness. So that’s, you know, he’s, he’s human, but I don’t I don’t think he’s, he’s kind of overly necessarily prideful. In that sense. I don’t know. Is that does that make sense to?

Theodore Cachey  48:22

Yeah, just start Cata I mean, it there’s a lot of aspects to this question. Yeah. Um, I have a couple of things. But go ahead. Carrie, do you please? Well, you know, I think I think he’s very aware of it. And if we go ahead to the poor guy to audio, in purgatorial 10, you know, he, I can’t remember the exact verse line and that’s my bad, because I should have had it, but, you know, he makes it clear he’s going to spend time, he’s going to spend extra time in Purgatory, in the terrorists of pride. So the question is very on point, with respect to Dante’s personal characteristic, his his personal set of vices and virtues. And if I were to reference I could also reference in Furneaux 26, where before he encounters Ulysses, who’s the prideful, egomaniac alter ego of the pilgrim, as he gets into writing that Konto he writes, and these are lines 19 through 24. I grieve then and now I grieve again, as my thoughts turn to what I saw, and more than is my way I curb my powers, less they run where virtue failed to guide them, so that a friendly star or something better still has granted me its boon. I don’t misuse my gift. So he so he’s, he’s very aware that he wants to stay with virtue. As you know, everything that he’s doing the poem has to be ethical has to be virtuous. And that’s part of what’s under writing it and making it. Okay. Dante’s pride. But I think it’s a it’s a question that we haven’t exhausted. I mean, I think it’s a question. That’s a challenging question for Dante. I, you know, with my students at Notre Dame, I often say, it’s very difficult to understand to get your head around the claim that he’s making. He’s claiming to be a biblical level of author in many ways, he’s making that kind of a claim of his poetry as tantamount to a biblical authority as profit as ethics as polemic, political polemic. But maybe that’s that’s it. I hope that start have a response for that. Do we have another other we have other questions? I believe they’re coming in, but a few

Chiara Sbordoni  51:02

I don’t know. David, if you want to select one.

Theodore Cachey  51:06

We have another five minutes, I think.

David Lummus  51:11

I guess we can go ahead, just in in in order.

Chiara Sbordoni  51:16

The one on the comedy was

David Lummus  51:19

interesting. Why is this word considered a comedy? What is the meaning of comedy in this context? It’s a classic question, right? There’s

Theodore Cachey  51:31

books and books have been written. Because it’s new. You know, Dante writes an epic poem. That’s a comedy. Okay, epic, epic poetry. And you’ll see that Dante’s poem has all the characteristics of epic poetry. He’s got invocations to the Muses. He’s got similes, fabulous similes. He’s got the gods up in heaven. That’s like Inferno to is like the, in the in the classical epics, where you have Zeus and everybody figuring out what they’re going to do you know, this, this communication between the gods and but it’s not, it doesn’t have epic high style. It’s mixes all the styles, it has a comedic stylistic character, which the scholars we’ve learned from the scholarship is very much inspired by the Bible. And if we think of the New Testament, where you have the Gospels, in which pimps and prostitutes are main, and fishermen, are main characters in a story that is more than epic, and its significance, it’s its salvation history. So that, that mixing of high and low that comes out of the biblical the New Testament, in particular tradition, is really guiding Dante, I think, to conceive of his poem as, as a comedy, in the way that it mixes high and low, there’s no nothing is ruled out all of reality is included. Other I think it’s that’s a question that we will come back to, in the in the course of the of our discussions. Cat or David, do you want to say anything more about that? And then I think we’ll,

David Lummus  53:26

it’s always been for me, like the classic definition. It’s a comedy because it’s not a tragedy, you know, it’s,

Theodore Cachey  53:32

it ends well, right.

David Lummus  53:34

It starts off badly and it ends it ends. Well,

Theodore Cachey  53:37

we ended we ended heaven.

Chiara Sbordoni  53:39

You know, themeselves says that in the letter in which he comments upon paradise, why he calls it a comedy.

Theodore Cachey  53:49

And it’s a fabulous passage. It actually calls it two things infernal 16. And again, I apologize because I’m, I’m not following my own recommendation that we have to cite carefully. passages, but in fertile 16 At the end of infernal 16 is where he actually calls the poem, his comedy. And then in parodies, he calls it comedy two times in the inferno, at the beginning of Konto, Inferno 20, and infernal 16 And then in the pot of these Oh, II calls it in kind of almost mirror like passages in the power of these, oh, he calls it my sacred poem. And so it’s both a comedy, which we think of as something low and commonplace, but it’s sacred. And so, you know, I think I think it has two titles, if you will, Dante’s Divine Comedy, which is, we can talk about the title maybe a little bit next time. It feels like we’re, we’re I hope that this is stimulating your go read Dante juicers, and I wanted to just preview that now. Next time we will pick up, I think maybe we’ll start with a little bit of a continuation we’ll, we’ll look maybe pick up on the questions. But we will focus on the material that’s been pre distributed, we’d like you to read through it. And the videos, Paolo and Francesca, inferno five, which is one of the it’s arguably the most famous and the most anthologized of the Kontos of Dante’s Divine Comedy. Silvia. With that, I want to hand it back over to you. And thank you for giving us this platform to have a little fun discussing Dante’s poem.

Chiara Sbordoni  55:43

Thank you, Ted. And of course, Chiara and David, thank you for this sparkling beginning of what hopefully will be a longer conversation, and also to the whole group who is still with us. Please, to all participants, feel free to share the series also with your friends. And we’re accepting registration throughout the entire program, as each meeting in ways can also stand alone. So thank you for joining us today. And we’re starting now the the new feature that was mentioned earlier, the community circle, essentially breakout rooms right now. And we will remain into these breakout rooms for 15 minutes. And I invite you to continue the discussion around two questions that were suggested by our faculty panelist today. And if you will, also to introduce yourself to the group. So the questions that are recommended for discussions are what are your impressions of Dante’s comedy having now red candles one and two? And the second question is, is there anything, Ted, please?

Theodore Cachey  56:53

No, I just I’m sorry to interrupt I just wanted I had a footnote, Crowder was signaling to me that door questions different questions about the translation? And this is also a perennial question. It’s the most translated Poem of the traditional literature into English of the classical literature of literary classics. We have recommended the Hollander translation, simply because it has the facing page, as you’ve noticed, we like to go back and forth between the Italian and the English and anyone who knows another language and particularly a romance languages will be able to start to make out Dante is Italian. And it also has wonderful notes, which are very choral kind of like our discussion today in which Hollander will say, well, there’s this commentary, there’s that commentary. So we like to use that as a conversation starter, in our theme of a discussion community, the study of Dante as a community effort and community activity, but we can talk we can provide more information about other translations in as we go forward. Thank you. I’m sorry. Silvia for internal use

Chiara Sbordoni  58:07

was very helpful, I think. So again, going back to the breakout rooms, community circles, two questions to discuss if you want to participate. One is your impressions on candles one and two. The second one is, is there anything that particularly strikes you about these two premium candles they would like to discuss further. Please note that each room will have one of our faculty. In it, we expect that we will follow the rules of civil discourse and you will respect each other’s comments. Please note that if you choose not to participate in the breakout rooms, you may leave the meeting and join us again next week. For those of you who are joining the community circle Breakout Rooms know that we’re opening the rooms now. And you can see the Foursquare in your zoom menu. If you click on that button, you should be able to select the room you’d like to join. These are each name by the faculty name. If you don’t have this option available, please give us a moment and we will place into you guys into a room so we’ll see in the community circles shortly. Thank you