We did it! This week was a slog. I had hours and hours into reading and re-reading to try and keep up with the continuity and understand what was happening. Thank goodness for the summary before each Canto started because in some cases, I wouldn’t know what was happening.

Sometimes I read the text and then I go back to the summary and wonder, how in the world did the author come to that conclusion based on what I read? Lost in translation I guess. In this section in particular, there were numerous notes saying ‘this isn’t exactly how it was written and here is the exact translation. This didn’t make sense, so I translated it as such…’.

I appreciate that actually. While maybe not the version of the text that we would want to use for research, I appreciate someone taking the initiative of this is more in the spirit of what is going on. As long as it is noted in places that were modified, we are free to form our own opinion by reading middle age Italian :).

This section is over 100 pages in my book, so I am not going to be able to go too deep into all the sins. What was noted by the translator and I have come to enjoy is the punishment is related to the crime. For instance the grafters were perpetually submerged in boiling pitch. The pitch represents the sticky hands in the living world. The thieves morph back and forth between reptilian figures because people who steal are snakes.

I think when I look at this section in the light of modern terms, I have to think that there is too many divisions of sin in hell. We have the Simoniacs (which I had to look up the definition) who are people that used their position to sell influence. As you would expect, this was largely church administrators and politicians. Then you have the Hypocrites who do one thing and say another. But the worse of them all is the Falsifiers. Honestly, I have a hard time distinguishing one sin from the other, they all seem intertwined to me.

Speaking of Falsifiers, there were three distinct categories with the worst of the worse being the Alchemist. Maybe as a scientist I don’t see a big deal. I theorize that alchemy was a crime against nature and therefore a crime against god. I also suppose that maybe they were considered cheats which clearly holds more wrath than crimes of passion in Dante’s time. But really, alchemy is one of the worst crimes known to man?

This section more than any has a lot of obscure references. To date there has been a lot of Greek and Roman mythology that I have struggled with. The characters are slightly familiar but their back story is basically a blank to me. Many of the previous levels are heavily referenced in those common stories. In this level, there are so many interactions with contemporaries that it makes it really hard to follow. It paints a picture that as Dante’s wrath goes, so do the characters that he perceived wronged him get more detailed and deeper in hell.

I can understand that, I fact I think that it is brilliant. I am going to write a comedy making fun of my enemies. The more angry I am at them, the worse their situation is going to be in the story. All the while, I am not committing any actual sin because it is art, fiction, its entertainment. The only problem is that if you are 700 years removed from Florence, it is hard to get the jokes.

Next week, I will be finishing The Inferno. We are about to find out who is going to be at the same scale as the devil. The following week, I am going to an analysis of the Inferno and then we will be into Purgatory and ascending toward Heaven for the remainder of the book. So, after this very heavy week of reading, things are going to get a lot easier and then a break.

End Your Programming Routine: What I take away from this week is that this is clearly a story of Dante using a heavenly setting, not a heavenly story with contemporary characters. The latter reason was why I started down this journey in the first place, but I am committed now so we are going to find out who Dante holds next to the Devil and who is next to God. It definitely will effect my final opinion and recommendation of the Devine Comedy, but it is nice to know.