classics digests, reflections and reviews
It is written in the Ten Commandments: “You shall not steal.” “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife or his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor.” I’ve never thought much about the existential significance of these commandments until I read Dante. Thieves are assigned to the Eighth Circle of Hell, […]
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“I saw horned demons with enormous whips, who lashed those spirits cruelly from behind Ah, how their first strokes made those sinners lift their heels! Indeed no sinner waited for a second stroke to fall-or for a third.” Dante assigned panders and seducers to the Eighth Circle of the Inferno, people who seduce women or prostitute women to others for their own profit. According to Dictionary.com, pander is “a person […]
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“nature follows-as she takes her course- the Divine Intellect and Divine Art;… when it can, your art would follow nature, just as a pupil imitates his master; so that your art is almost God’s grandchild. From these two, art and nature, it is fitting,… for men to make their way, to gain their living; and since the usurer prefers another pathway, he scorns both nature in herself and art, her […]
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One of the prominent feature of Dante’s justice is “contrapasso”, derived from the Latin contra and patior, literally, “suffer the opposite”, in other words, “whatever a man sows, that he will also reap”, or, punishment fits the crime. In the Inferno, the heretics are buried in great tombs of stone, through which flames were scattered, kindling all of them to glowing heat, and from each tomb they cry in agony. […]
Read moreKierkegaard spent his life denouncing/warning those who never took the leap of faith, but instead stood apart as an “objective” spectator of life. These people would end up in the Inferno of Dante, who seems to share Kierkegaard’s aversion to “the vulgar crowd”, the noncommittals, the cowards. In life, they never stood or fought for anything, in death, they are forced to run after a banner without respite; in life, […]
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Bertrand Russell was quoted to have said, “I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.” A fitting retort was given by Electra (Sophocles), “I admire you for your prudence. For your cowardice I hate you.” In Canto II of Inferno, there is another brilliant example of a woman putting a man to shame for his cowardice. Our narrator Dante was reluctant to embark on the journey […]
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I’m finally starting to read “The Divine Comedy” (translated by Allen Mandelbaum) with my GR group. Departing from my usual practice of writing one review at the end, I’ll be jotting down my thoughts, findings and impressions as I read along, in a running series of posts, starting with this one. Mandelbaum translated both Aeneid and Divine Comedy, and received awards for both. No other translator of DC has that […]
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