Dante’s Inferno – Third Level Inquiry

Following my second level inquiry, here are tasks of the third and final level inquiry, still for my WEM Self-Project.

Is there a moment of choice or of change in the poem?

Before entering the Hell, Dante seems to be in a comfort of his life. It is Beatrice (the woman he loves) who sends Virgil to guide Dante to the path of salvation. So, if there is a change, it would be in Dante himself, before and after he witnesses punishments and hopelessness provided for sinners, and in that he warns us to not fall into the same hole.

Is there cause and effect?

Dante must have related his own life and experiences in this poem, as most of the time he would speak about Florence and the city’s political movements. Besides historical and mythical characters, Dante also puts numbers of Florence people onto the circles of Hell. It seems that Dante wants to punish them for their failures (according to him). So, yes, I think there is cause and effect in Dante’s mind, and he might have reflected very hard to set those sinners and the level of their punishments.

What is the tension between the physical and psychological, the earthly and the spiritual, the mind and the body?

In writing those punishments in amazing details, Dante has tried to transform the physical experience he brought us to imagine, to a spiritual enlightenment. Whatever the sin, the punishments will take much longer and severe than the deeds; it makes us think how unworthy it is to ever do those sins!

What is the poem’s subject?

A warning to Florence people and to all human kind, that each sin must lead to a just punishment.

Do you feel sympathy?

I sympathize with all human kind who is at present still in their path of life. Many of us take it for granted in living our daily lives, making our worldly business the most real thing and treating religion as an abstract thing to do.

As for the characters in the Hell circles, maybe my sympathy goes to them who are in Limbo. Some of them might have lived a good life without sins, but because they were born before Christ or have not been introduced to Him, they must linger within the Limbo. It’s really not their choices, and in a way it’s almost unfair for them. But anyway, it reminds me too of how much I must be grateful that God had put me to be Christian.

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Richard III - Act I - II Summaries

I read this Shakespeare’s play both for Let’s Read Plays (I skipped last February’s theme: History, and so would pay it off this month). I would also read this for my WEM Self-Project, and as usual, the first few posts would be dedicated for summaries, as inquired for the First Level Inquiry. Now, let us summarize Act I and II….

Act I

Scene I

In peace time Richard, who has a deformed body, was bored, and so he sets up an adversary between his brother Clarence and King Edward IV (Richard’s brother) so that Clarence would be imprisoned. After that he intends to marry Lady Anne after killing her husband and father-in-law.

Scene II

King Henry VI was stabbed just like Prince Edward, Anne’s husband. Anne was first enraged with Richard whom she knew was the murderer; but under his smart courting, Richard finally conquered the lady.

Scene III

Queen Elizabeth worried that the throne would go to King’s brothers, not to her too-young sons. Richard complained that Elizabeth had roused King’s dislike against him and Clarence, while Queen Margaret—who was King Henry’s widow—accused Richard and cursed everybody. In the end Elizabeth and everybody else seemed to take side with Richard.

Scene IV

Two murderers were sent by Richard to murder Clarence up in the Tower (prison). After reasoning with their own consciences and even debating with the-victim-to-be, Clarence was stabbed by one of the murderers, while the other one fled away.

Act II

Scene I

While dying, King Edward IV reconciled all the disputed factions within the family: the Queen, the Dukes, and Richard. King Edward regrets very much of Clarence’s death whose execution-warrant revision had come late (another trick from Richard!). The King accused the others for not pleading for Clarence’s life.

Scene II

King Edward finally died, and everyone agreed that a small train should dispatch The Prince to be crowned. Apparently Buckingham conspired with Richard to (I guess) kidnap and murder the Prince.

Scene III

Citizens foresaw that troubles will happen in their country after the King died; the factions of King’s and Queen’s relatives would be vying for the throne.

Scene IV

While waiting for Prince Edward’s arrival, a message came that Lord Rivers and Grey had been imprisoned by Richard and Buckingham. Queen, Duchess of York and young York fled to a sanctuary, carrying the Seal of England which had been trusted by Archbishop of York to the Queen.

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My Favorite Opening Line: The Classics Club June Meme

Frankly speaking, I don’t usually pay too much attention to books’ opening lines. It is the closing line that is usually more memorable for me. If the later were the task for this month’s The Classics Club monthly meme, I would instantly have posted my answer, as there is indeed one closing line that I like to read again and again—I’ll keep that to myself to make you more curious, and who knows…CCP might bring that subject as our future meme topic? :)

So, unfortunately, this month’s meme topic is:

What is your favourite opening sentence from a classic novel (and why)?

And that made me think a bit harder to find the one perfect answer. There were several opening lines popped in my head (not before I refreshed my memory via the internet, though..):

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”

A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens

“In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.”

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald

“You better not never tell nobody but God.''

The Color Purple, Alice Walker

“124 was spiteful.”

Beloved, Toni Morrison

Why do those quotes likeable to me? Maybe because they represent each of the book’s soul perfectly, as if whenever we read those lines, we would instantly remember the emotion each of the books has set us when we read them.

But still, I cannot find any favorite from them just yet. Maybe, the one opening line from book that has the strongest effect upon me would always be…..

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."

The Bible

Yes, it’s not a novel as required by the meme, so maybe it doesn’t really answer the meme, but it is my favorite opening line from any book I’ve ever read. It always takes my imagination to something I would never see nor experience; something far from any wild imaginations. It brings such a divine feeling, I think.

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What about you, what is your favorite novel opening line?  

Dante’s Inferno – Second Level Inquiry

I was reading Dante’s first part of The Divine Comedy: Inferno, for my Well-Educated Mind Self-Project. I have worked out the first level inquiry by summarizing the cantos the last two weeks:

Canto I – X

Canto XI – XVIII

Canto IX – XXVI

Canto XXVII – XXXIV

And now, here’s the task of second level inquiry, which requires us to analyze the technical construction of the poem. I’m really a newbie in poems (and narrative poems), but despite of the unfamiliarity, I’m glad to have picked Inferno as one of my WEM project; it has widen my knowledge about poems.

The basic narrative strategy

Dante’s Inferno tells a story, with a beginning, middle and end; it might be said to chronologically tell the poet’s journey to Hell and to witness how human being punished for his deeds while they were alive. Inferno describes Dante’s experiences both physically and mentally; it describes in detail physical places, objects, also sensations to represent how human’s sins were weighed.

The poem’s basic form

Inferno is definitely an epic poem; a long tale of Dante’s journey to Hell. And although there are not quite many heroic deeds in it, Virgil’s bravery to guide and protect Dante through dangerous obstacles from one circle to another is enough to make it epic.

The poem’s syntax

Dante uses quite a lot of poetic dictions to form his poem, although not entirely. For example:

When him I heard in anger speak to me

I turned me round towards him with such same

That still it eddies through my memory.

The lines

Inferno’s lines are often naturally divided into halves (hemistich), here’s one example from Canto I:

Then was the fear a little quieted

That in my heart’s lake had endured throughout

The night, which I had passed so piteously.

Here the second line is broken awkwardly, it is normally supposed to be ‘that in my heart’s lake had endured throughout the night’, then followed in the third line: ‘which I had passed so piteously’. But Dante purposely breaks it after ‘throughout’, why? I can only assume that Dante wants to emphasize ‘the night’, because Dante’s journey to hell represents the darkness in human’s soul. Everything seems dark, as dark as ‘night’.

The rhyme pattern

I think Dante uses both masculine rhyme and slant rhyme pattern here. Most of the last syllables are either accented or one-word syllables, and there are similar syllables in a stanza which are not really identical. One example, from the very first stanza of Canto I:

Midway UPON the journey of our LIFE

I FOUND myself within a forest DARK,

For the straightforward pathway had been LOST.

I’m not very good in English poems (as English is not my mother language), but I think ‘life’, ‘dark’ and ‘lost’ are all accented as well as one-word syllables. While ‘upon’ and ‘found’ are not identical, they have a similarity in the pronunciation.

Monologue or dialogue

In Inferno, the dialogue Dante has most often is with Virgil—the Roman poet—who becomes his guide (he has been staying at the Hell, and has been particularly instructed by Beatrice to guide Dante). Dante’s dialogue addressed to Virgil seems to be polite and kind, while Virgil’s is more critical but kind. Dante also carries on dialogue with souls who occupy each circle in Hell. Sometimes he pities them and is quite touched with their suffering, but quite often he is either angry or disgusted with what they have sinned. Sometimes Dante also has a monologue he addresses to his reader, expressing his feeling: fear or angry.

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Character Thursday Is Temporarily Absent

I am very sorry to announce that I must stop my weekly meme: Character Thursday for the time being, due to—let’s say—a family crisis that I am enduring at this moment. The last two weeks have been for me like a nightmare. I am right now very exhausted both physically and mentally, and I just can’t stand to be forced to post every Thursday. I am thinking to stop Character Thursday feature at least until the end of this month (I haven’t read many classics lately anyway to give me ideas for character analysis). Hopefully everything would be normal again by next month (July).

Until then, I hope you would still be encouraged to post your own Character Thursdays, despite of my absence. I have opened a linky in my latest Character Thursday post, you can put your links there for the time being (it would be opened until July 31^st). For you who have posted Character Thursday last week (June 6^th), you can also put the link in the linky. I’ll try to squeeze my time to read your posts.

Meanwhile, I am still trying to work out the WEM tasks for Dante’s Inferno, so I would post every now and then anyway. I am right now reading a historical fiction that is correlated to Dante’s Inferno (The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl), but I still have Richard III and An Ideal Husband for June—which, hopefully, I can manage to read somehow. That’s all for now, I really hope my reading and blogging life would be back to normal very soon!.....

Dante’s Inferno – Canto XXVII - XXXIV Summaries

Here is the last eight cantos of Dante’s Inferno, you can read the previous ones here: CantoI – X, Canto XI – XVIII, Canto XIX – XXVI.

Lucifer, Dante & Virgil

Canto XXVII: From another flame came another voice, this time a soul from Romagna. Dante told him that Romagna wasn’t at war, but has been under tyranny’s power. As he’s sure that Dante will never leave the Hell to share his secret, the soul confided about himself to Dante. He was Guido da Montefeltro, formerly lived a tricky life, before he repented and became a Franciscan priest. But Pope Boniface intrigued him to fight Christians by promising him an advanced absolution before he committed sin, which Guido accepted. When he died, the devils took him of thievery, as absolution could not be received before committing a sin.

Canto XXVIII: Dante described terrible wounds suffered by souls in the ninth pouch which surpassed any other wounds from great wars. Their bodies were split open by the devil’s sword from chin to lower abdomen that their entrails hung between their legs; and when their bodies were closed again, they would be ripped open again and again. One of the souls was Mahomet who had been sowers of scandal and schism; and because of the division they had caused, their bodies were thus split as a punishment. Mahomet and other souls also sent their warning to them who still lived on earth.

Canto XXIX: Virgil reprimanded Dante as he was so absorbed to what he was watching that he didn’t notice a soul (his cousin) who had died unavenged, called on him. And so Virgil and Dante have reached the bottom of the eight circle: the tenth pouch, where Dante heard piercing groans, a place to punish forgers. The souls here were very sick; and they were languishing in scattered heaps, lying or crawling. Two of them had their bodies full of itchy scabs which they scratched incessantly without end. One of them had deceived someone by gaining money for teaching the other to fly, and thus he was condemned by practicing alchemy. This was the first of four zones in the tenth pouch: the punishment for falsifiers of metals.

Canto XXX: Entering the second zone of ten pouch, Dante recalled Greek myth stories of how men could treat each others like animals. One soul, Myrrah, disguised as another person to be able to commit incest with her father. These people had sinned of falsifier of other’s person. Some from third zone also mingled here; the sinners of falsifier of coin, represented by Master Adam—a Florentine money counterfeiter who produced coins with St. John Baptist’s stamp—whose punishment was being eternally thirsty. A woman, who falsely accused a man of seducing her, was placed in the fourth zone for falsifier of words (liars). The souls here were punished with burning fever. Dante was spellbound by the scenes and was eager to listen to them, which Virgil reprimanded as a vulgar desire.

Canto XXXI: Dante and Virgil were on the bank of the eighth circle. Dante saw high towers through the thick mist, which turned out to be Giants who stood on the pit. Their navels were on the same level as the eight circle, while their lower bodies were on the ninth circle, at the bottom of the Hell. One of them, Nimrod, had helped building the Tower of Babel and spread confusion of different language throughout the world. Then they met Antaeus, whom Virgil persuaded to carry them in the Giant’s hands to be lowered to the ninth circle, where traitors were punished.

Canto XXXII: Dante tried to describe the horror of the lowest part of the pit in the ninth circle. It was a frozen lake—Cocytus—whose surface was like thick glass because of the terrible coldness. The sinners sat in the ice, frozen, with their teeth chattering. On the first ring, Caina (from Cain), Dante met two souls compressed together head to head in the frozen ice, butting their heads in rage; they were traitors to their kin. In the second ring (Antenora), Dante accidentally kicked the head of a soul which turned out to be Bocca’s, who was punished as traitors to their homeland or party. Then Dante saw two souls, savagely gnawing each other’s head in hatred, and Dante interrogated them.

Canto XXXIII: The two souls were Count Ugolino who was imprisoned without food by Archbishop Ruggieri. Ugolino was imprisoned with his sons, so when the sons died, he ate their fleshes out of hunger. Dante and Virgil forwarded to the third ring (Ptolomaea) where Dante felt a cold breeze, and Virgil said they were about to find the source. Here souls were lying in the ice, only their heads protruded from it; the punishment for traitors to their guests. They still lived on earth, but so great their sins were, that their soul must suffer in Hell before they died, while their bodies on earth were taken over by demons.

Canto XXXIV: Now Dante and Virgil arrived at the lowest bottom of the Hell, the fourth ring of the ninth circle (Juddeca). Through the thick mist Dante saw a tall figure such as a mill which breathed cold wind which he could not figured out the source. Under his feet, souls were completely buried in the ice in various positions. Then Dante saw Lucifer the Satan, a three headed enormous giant with three mouths and three enormous wings, from which came the icy cold winds that freeze Cocytus. Each mouth held a sinner; they were the traitors to their Benefactor, the greatest sin of all. The teeth chewed their bodies ceaselessly without ever killing them. In the first one was Judas Iscariot who betrayed Jesus Christ; he was chewed head first while his legs protruded from the mouth. In the second and third ones were Brutus and Cassius, both murdered Julius Caesar; their heads hanging downwards. After these scenes, Virgil told Dante that he had seen all in Hell, and must leave soon.

With efforts Virgil climbed through Lucifer’s giant body to bring Dante and himself climbing from the center of the earth. Dante was amazed to see Lucifer’s body now turned upside down, and Virgil explained that they have passed the center of the earth, and now they were on the ground again, where life was. When Lucifer fell from Heaven, he thrust down into earth head first and stuck in the center; that has made some changes even on the hemisphere too. But now, through hidden path Virgil guided Dante to emerge to clear world where they saw stars glittering in the sky again.

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Perry Smith - In Cold Blood: Character Thursday (65)

In a crime story, Perry Smith would definitely be the antagonist, because he is the murderer. However, In Cold Blood is not merely a crime story; it is a warning for us that the whole society is responsible to build either good or bad people. Murderers or criminals are not born as criminals at first; they are all born as innocent babies; they start life as we all do: as a blank sheet of paper, ready to be filled with scripts of life.  Here in this story, Perry Smith is not only a villain, he is also a victim.

The series of failure in the development of little Perry has begun—at least—from his parents. After his father decided to have contraband alcohol business for living, Perry’s mother began to get drunk, and other bad things started to follow. They quarreled often, and I guess peace and love have slowly evaporated from their home and family, replaced by violence. Perry was a child with sensitive and tender heart who should be taken in special care; he needed love, affection and tenderness much more than anybody else with different personalities. These violent episodes in the family, unfortunately, happened on the very important phase of Perry’s early development.

After that, his parents separated, and Perry must enter several institutions, and there he did not get any better treatment either. And that because people failed to understand Perry’s needs. If only they gave him love, acceptance and support, I believe it is not too late to bring him to the right path. But, it never happened, and with all the violence he got, he got worse. As a result, Perry grew up as a man with hatred and grudge deep inside him. In the surface he might be a feminine man who loved poetry and cared about others (he really provided comfort for his victims-to-be before he killed them), but inside, he still bore the needs to inflict upon people who had treated him cruelly and unfairly, people who had humiliated him.

The interesting aspect here, is how Perry put the blame not on several certain people who had really troubled him, but on the whole world. It was between he, Perry, and the world. At the end, the instinct of killing occupied him. It didn’t matter who the victim would be, the only matter was that Perry needed to let the world know what they had done to him.

That is my Character Thursday of this week, an analysis of book character of my choice, who is yours?... Just put your post URL in the linky below. Do you like to join us in discussing characters from books you read? See the details of Character Thursday first.