I'm midway through Life's journey, facing dismal fate [1]
When poet Virgil comes to woods to set me straight [2]
Just like Dickens' Scrooge: Show ... what lies ahead:
No "Christmas Carol"; punishment awaits the dead
Such sorry, sinful smell:
I'm gonna get a tour of Hell!

We cross the River Acheron; I tremble: fear [3]
"Abandon all hope", sign says, "ye who enter here" [4]
The First Circle: Limbo: the Pagans there
Were born too soon for Christian grace (methinks, "unfair") [5]
The best of Greece and Rome
In Circle One, eternal home [6]

Too shtupped, so wild are they:
Cleopatra, Helen (Troy)
Overcome by unbridled lust
No rest; blown around; no joy [7]

Third Circle: Glutt'ny! [8]

Greedy misers; squanderers: both sides, one coin
With heavy weights, in endless war, the two conjoin [9]
The wrathful and sullen are in a fix:
Both stuck in swampy water of the River Styx [10]
A battle, next, depicts:
The entrance into Circle Six! [11]

[interlude, as the guardians of Hell resist, but are overcome by the angel from Heaven]

Uh-oh, they opt for heresy [12]
Trapped within their flaming tombs
Cir-cle Sev-en: three sep'rate rings
Where Justice decrees their dooms:

For vi'lence, bloody!

Boiling blood; in gnarled bush; on burning sand
The vi'lent, suicidal, and blasphemers stand [13]
Eighth Cir-cle: ten ditches: degrees of fraud [14]
In Circle Nine: the treasonous: in ice, ne'er thawed [15]
At "bottom of the shelf"
Are Judas; Luci-fer himself! [16]

Our tour: traumatic; sabbatical, long-drawn
Emerge to see the Easter dawn! [17]



[1] Dante is thirty-five when the narrative begins, half of the Biblical "three score and ten" (70-year) life span. (Psalm 90:10) Quoted the OS here: Opening phrase of TOS translates roughly as "Midway through LIfe's journey...."
He has "lost his way" in the "wood of darkness" (sin). The story begins on the night before Good Friday.

[2] The Roman poet Virgil (October 15, 70 BCE – September 21, 19 BCE) is best known for the "Aeneid", the follow-up to Homer's "Iliad" and "Odyssey". It recounts the fleeing of Aeneas from the sacking of Troy (presumably preceded by the many “sackings” of Helen) so recently parodied by your humble servants, to Aeneas' eventual settling in Italy and founding the city that would become Rome. The work is the national epic of Rome, and considered by scholars to be a way for the Romans to have tied themselves to the glory of the former Grecian civilization. Dante used Virgil as a symbol of knowledge and enlightenment, despite Virgil's paganism.

[3] The river Acheron is the border of Hell (to Dante).

[4] Above the Gates of Hell is the famous inscription, copied literally here: "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here."

[5] Here Dante meets Julius Caesar, Socrates, Aristotle, the Greek and Roman poets Homer, Horace, Ovid, and Lucan. They have committed no sin, but merely lived before Jesus, and hence had no opportunity to accept His grace. Seems kind of mean to punish them for being born too early -- shouldn't they get a chance to do so down in Limbo? Just asking...

Life in Limbo wasn't too bad -- it had green fields and a castle, where lived the wisest men of antiquity, including the poet Virgil himself. Their only grief was separation from God and Heaven.

[6] Interestingly, Dante also finds in Circle 1 the Islamic philosophers and wise men Averroes and Avicenna.

There was a lot of cultural intermingling among Europe and near-Asia back then, without having your luggage sniffed or your body scanned. Averroes (1126 -1198 A. D.) was an Andalusian polymath; a master of Islamic philosophy and theology, law and jurisprudence, logic, psychology, politics, Arabic music theory, and the sciences of medicine, astronomy, geography, mathematics, physics, and celestial mechanics. He is known for writing the most elaborate commentaries on Aristotelian logic, and for astronomical and physics theories later incorporated into the works of Johannes Kepler and Sir Isaac Newton. His philosophy influenced both Christian and Jewish philosophers of the period.

Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā) (c. 980 - 1037), was a Persian polymath and the foremost physician and philosopher of his time. He was also an astronomer, chemist, geologist, logician, paleontologist, mathematician, physicist, poet, psychologist, scientist and teacher. Ibn Sīnā is considered a father of modern medicine and clinical pharmacology, particularly for his introduction of systematic experimentation and quantification into the study of physiology, his discovery of the contagious nature of infectious diseases, (re-"discovered" 800 years later by Pasteur and Lister), the introduction of quarantine to limit the spread of contagious diseases, the introduction of experimental medicine, evidence-based medicine, clinical trials, randomized controlled trials, efficacy tests, clinical pharmacology, neuropsychiatry, risk factor analysis, the idea of the syndrome, and the importance of dietetics and the influence of climate and environment on health.

During the Western world's Dark and Middle Ages, Islamic scholars led the world. What went wrong???

[7] Circle Two contains those whose lust overcame right and reason. Theirs is the most mild punishment, as lust is a normal part of humanity, although it must be moderated: They are blown about by the winds of a violent storm, with no hope of rest, just as unbridled lust causes one to be driven endlessly and blown about helplessly, risking the Presidency to be blown about by an intern.

[8] Appetite is as natural to life as the sex drive, but again, to overindulge is a sin. The gluttons are forced to lie in a vile slush made by freezing rain, black snow (ash), and hail. This symbolizes the garbage that the gluttons made of their lives on earth, slavering over food.

[9] In the Fourth Circle were both the greedy, avaricious ones who hoarded wealth for its own sake, and those who wastefully squandered. Both deviated from the ideal, each in opposite ways. Dante describes their punishment better than we can:

"… I saw multitudes to every side of me; their howls were loud
while, wheeling weights, they used their chests to push.
They struck against each other; at that point,
each turned around and, wheeling back those weights,
cried out: 'Why do you hoard?' 'Why do you squander?' "

[10] Yes, it's the same River Styx that in Greek mythology (and in our Trojan War parody) was the border between Earth and Underworld (thanks for remembering that!), but Dante, 2500 years later, has it running inside Hell itself, dividing the upper parts (passive sins, or natural human tendencies carried to extreme) from the lower parts (active sins; deliberate malice).

In this, the Fifth Circle, the wrathful fight forever, as they did on Earth, and the sullen lie gurgling beneath the water, withdrawn "into a black sulkiness which can find no joy in God or man or the universe."
Dante's concept of "poetic justice" becomes more and more clear: The punishment not only fits the crime; it relates directly to it. In fact, his trilogy is often cited as one of the chief sources of the concept of poetic justice: souls in Hell are eternally fixed in the state that they themselves have chosen.

[11] Beyond the Styx and its marshlands are the walls of the city of Dis (long before that word became urban slang, so there! Read the classics, homeboys and homegirls!). Dis is used by Dante as both the name of Satan and his realm. Dis is also mentioned in the sixth book of Virgil's "Aeneid", one of the principal influences on Dante in his depiction of Hell. The city of Dis is encountered not long after Aeneas and the Sibyl enter the cavern of Hell. Homage by Dante to the real Virgil here.

The walls of Dis are guarded by fallen angels. Virgil is unable to convince them to let Dante and him enter, and they threaten Dante. An angel sent from Heaven lets them in and rebukes those who opposed Dante.

[12] The heretics are far worse than those in Circle One, who either lived before Christ or did not accept His grace, but rather actively espoused heretical doctrines. (According to *Dante's* theology, of course. One of the advantages of being a writer is that you get to decide who's right. Hey it's *your* book, poem, parody, etc. ;). They spend eternity in flaming tombs.

Fun, not-at-all trivia, for those who wonder why the Islamic wise men are in Circle One and not here: Islam *does* in fact accept Jesus as a prophet of God (and accepts Moses and Abraham as well), just not the final prophet, that one being Muhammad. (A fact not often mentioned in the press, it seems.) With Jews, Christians, and Muslims having so much common ancestry, heritage, and commonality of theology, why in Hell can't they all just get along? (pardon the parodically-appropriate expletive.)

[13] Circle Seven:
(a) Outer ring, housing the violent against people and property, who are immersed in a river of boiling blood, to a level commensurate with their sins: Alexander the Great is up to his eyebrows in it. (Let that be a lesson to would-be empire-builders today. :)

(b) Middle ring: the suicides (violent against themselves -- seems to us that that's less evil than being violent against other people, but as said above, it's Dante's show), who are transformed into gnarled thorny bushes and trees. They are torn at by the Harpies. Unique among the dead, the suicides will not be bodily resurrected after the final judgment, having given their bodies away through suicide. Instead they will maintain their bushy form, with their own corpses hanging from the limbs.

Fave line from "Saturday Night Live" "news" show, "Weekend Update":
True story: O. J. Simpson revealed that he had considered suicide, but his mother had taught him that you don't get to Heaven if you kill yourself.
Commenter: "Simpson added that his mother said that you *do* get to Heaven if you kill *other* people." :-)

(c) Inner ring: The violent against God (blasphemers), the violent against nature (sodomites), and the violent against order (usurers), all reside in a desert of flaming sand with fiery flakes raining from the sky. (TT: "Usurers"? Hey, I'm in the financial business, and I resemble that remark!) ... Some decades ago, sodomy (gay sex) was coyly referred to even in statute (law) books as "the abominable and detestable crime against nature." Hence Dante's saying that they were violent to nature. Umm.... one can't help but think of the scandals within the Catholic Church over the past few decades, and of those in glass houses throwing stones... Before all good Catholics hit the One button, please keep reading:

"Dante converses with two Florentine [i. e., from Florence, Italy] sodomites from different groups. One of them is Dante's mentor, Brunetto Latini. Dante is *very surprised* [We'll bet he was!] and touched [Hope he's speaking metaphorically here, and not literally "touched"] by this encounter, and shows Brunetto great respect for what he has taught him." So, even in writing his magnum opus of Christian/Catholic theology, Dante acknowledges gays in high places 700 years ago.

"The other [sodomite] is Iacopo Rusticucci, a politician." [Fill in the blank with modern-day equivalent.]

[14] As briefly as possible (Thank you! -- unanimous roar from the crowd):

Pimps and seducers (TT: "I'm innocent! It was the sheep's idea in the first place!")

Flatterers, who are steeped in human dung, which Dante points out is exactly what they dished out on Earth (talk about "poetic justice"!);

Simony (the selling of Church favors and blessings), with several Popes of that era cited, who are stuck upside down in holes in rock resembling baptismal fonts;

Sorcerers and false prophets, who walk around forever with their heads on backwards, able to see only what lies behind, not ahead (need we say more?);

Corrupt politicians (YAY!), who are immersed in a lake of boiling pitch (YAY! YAY!), which represents the sticky fingers and dark secrets of their corrupt deals, and their refusal to allow them to be shown on C-SPAN;

Hypocrites (know any?);

Thieves: Just as the thieves stole other people's substance in life, and because thievery is reptilian in its secrecy, the thieves' substance is eaten away by reptiles, and their bodies are constantly stolen by other thieves. (TT: Hey, again! I resemble that, too! What you got against reptiles, Dante, eh? You want a piece of me? ... oops, turns out the D-man was referring to snakes and lizards, not turtles. Well, they're still family, ya know. ;)

Fraudulent advisers: Bernie Madoff! WMD teams! Karl Rove! Van Jones and the "Reverend" Wright! The list goes on and on--- just exactly how big *is* Hell, anyway? The Earth is only 8,000 mi. (~13,000 km) in diameter, and this ditch alone must be mighty full....

The sowers of discord (those who are "dividers, not uniters" -- good thing we don't have any of those today!)
Dante takes a strange turn here: He sees Muhammad himself, whom he regards as causing a schism from Christianity, and Ali, the cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad, whom Dante holds responsible for the rift between Sunni and Shi'a Muslims -- which is still with us today, alas. Possible explanation: The Muslims in Circle One did not proclaim themselves prophets, nor preach, but were more academics and scientists, born into their faith.

Falsifiers (alchemists, counterfeiters, perjurers, impersonators, Enron executives, Arthur Andersen LLP [Enron's accounting firm], Mark McGuire ....) another *very* densely-populated place, with a mention of the Biblical Joseph, who resisted the advances of Potiphar's wife, whereupon she made false accusations against him. "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned" -- and that woman scorned is in Dante's Hell.

[15] Traitors, distinguished from the "merely" fraudulent, in that their acts involve betraying one in a special relationship to the betrayer, are frozen in a lake of ice, each to a different depth. (Think about *that* the next time you're about to say, ".... when Hell freezes over." ;) The circle is divided into four concentric zones:

Round 1: Caïna, named for Cain, is home to traitors to their kindred. The souls here are immersed in the ice up to their faces – "the place where shame can show itself."

Round 2: Traitors to political entities, such as party, city, or country, are located here.
(All of Congress for the past hundred years -- TT The Cynic ;)
The souls here are immersed in the ice deep enough that they are unable to bend their necks.

Round 3: Traitors to their guests are punished here. (Offering hospitality, then betraying.) The souls here lay supine on the ice, which covers them except for half of their faces. As they cry, their tears freeze and seal their eyes shut – they are denied even the comfort of tears.

Round 4, the lowest and worst, is naturally named for the worst sinner in Christianity, Judas Iscariot, Biblical betrayer of Christ. "Judecca" is for traitors to their lords and benefactors. All of the sinners punished within are completely encapsulated in ice, distorted in all conceivable positions.

[16] Condemned to the very center of Hell for committing the ultimate sin (personal treachery against God) is Satan (Lucifer), who has three faces, each having a mouth that chews on a prominent traitor. The sinners in the mouths of Satan are Brutus and Cassius in the left and right mouths, respectively. They were involved in the assassination of Julius Caesar—an act which, to Dante, represented the destruction of a unified Italy and the killing of the man who was divinely appointed to govern the world. In the central, most vicious, mouth is Judas Iscariot.

Some scholars interpret the three-faced Satan as a deliberate inversion and perversion of the Trinity.

[17] The two poets escape by climbing down Satan's ragged fur, passing through the center of the earth, and emerging in the other hemisphere just before dawn on Easter Sunday, beneath a sky studded with stars.

The symbolism of Dante's sinful ways at the beginning, and his emerging from the land of the dead on Easter Sunday, the day of Christ's resurrection, is pretty easy to see. As for the atrocious pun on "sabbatical" as being "a leave of absence from one's customary occupation, for rest or for training" and "referring to the Sabbath", condemn TT if you will - he confesses, accepts his pun-ishment, and will not betray FG.