Lit Final
City of Dis
Barrier to introspective self, crimes/sins we can't/don't want to face within ourselves, guilt, denial, pride, critique; crimes against self (lapses but not malice) vs. crimes against others (crimes of malice - intent to inflict)
Minos
Bestial judge of underworld, number of times his tail wraps around himself is which circle you descend to, our conscience: creates guilt
Telos
End or objective to something, wayness implies Telos
Leopard
Fraud, crime, stealth, deception, spots: camo to deceive its prey
She-Wolf
Lust, sexual temptation
Lion
Power, pride, arrogance, narcissism, control of others, failure to see beyond own self-interests
Virgil
Reason, human logic
Who is that mighty one that seems unbothered by burning, stretched sullen and disdainful there, looking as if the rainfall could not tame him?
a) Speaker: Dante the Pilgrim b) Audience: Virgil c) Meaning: i) Looks disdaining: it's beneath you, punishment having no effect on you: Capaneus
Master, now tell me what this Fortune is you touched upon before. What is she like who holds all worldly within her fists?
a) Speaker: Dante the Pilgrim b) Audience: Virgil c) Meaning: i) Questioning Fortune and her distribution of the worldly goods of men
Gloucester's Blinding
a) Blinding of Gloucester: journeys into same storm, addresses same type of conditions, kicked out, rejected, ejected into storm of emotional crisis, realization b) At moment of blindness, he sees à like Oedipus the King c) Encountering darkness personally that shows you reality d) Same introspective crisis e) Gloucester and Lear FOILS f) Are Gloucester and Lear more sinned against or sinning?
Storm
a) Drama comes to a head b) Moving into symbolic landscape à similar to entirety of Inferno c) Exterior landscape reflecting interior landscape d) Act III: act of introspection e) Storm represents Lear's conflicting emotions f) Blinding of Gloucester: journeys into same storm, addresses same type of conditions, kicked out, rejected, ejected into storm of emotional crisis, realization g) Lear forced into shoes of those less fortunate: being humbled/humiliated
Story of Capaneus
a) One of brothers (son of Oedipus and Jocasta) who recruits 7 armies to take back Thebes b) One leader is Capaneus and makes it top of wall, raises sword + looks up at Zeus and says how do you like me now à I have successfully defied your will, Zeus strikes him down c) Prophecy: you'll be a successful soldier but at high point of siege, you will fail d) He was told he'd fail but overcame his prophecy - only reason he failed was because of pride and Zeus' hand e) Capaneus' punishment is himself à punishments are reflections of our own personal lapses
And in good time you gave it.
a) Speaker: Regan b) Audience: King Lear c) Meaning: i) It took you long enough, it's about time
Story of Minotaur
a) Poseidon wanted to express love for Crete and especially King Minos b) Gives them an emblem of his appreciation à A bull: represents fertility, strength, masculinity, power, prosperity c) Here's a gift but have to sacrifice it back to him d) Minos can't sacrifice it back, loves it too much symbolically and using for steers etc. e) God gave it to you, all success due to Poseidon à sacrificing it back recognizes with humility the gift f) Minos' wife, Pasiphae, goes to bull and goes to Daedalus and asks him to make a wooden statue of cow that's hollow and anatomically correct with trap door g) Pasiphae climbs into cow and sleeps with bull h) 9 months later, Pasiphae gives birth to half-bull, half-boy i) Minos reaction is to kill it/get rid of it j) This is Minos' consequence of his decision not to sacrifice the bull k) Minos asks Daedalus to build a maze to house the Minotaur l) Labyrinth: structure in which we keep the consequences of our darkest choices/desires
I am stuck down here by all those flatteries that rolled unceasing off my tongue up there.
a) Speaker: Alessio Interminei b) Audience: Dante the Pilgrim c) Meaning: i) Crime is punishment, punishment is crime
In me you see the perfect contrapasso!
a) Speaker: Bertran de Born b) Audience: Dante the Pilgrim c) Meaning: i) Bertran de Born: holding head in hand like a lantern ii) Perfect correspondence between crime and punishment: he's holding what he did iii) Separated father and son (king and prince): split domestic unit and political unit
What I was once, alive, I still am, dead! Let Jupiter wear out his smith, from whom he seized in anger that sharp thunderbolt he hurled, to strike me down, my final day; let him wear out those others, one by one, who work the soot-black forge of Mongibello. And with the all his force let him hurl his bolts at me, no joy of satisfaction would I give him!
a) Speaker: Capaneus b) Audience: Dante the Pilgrim c) Meaning: i) He's still the same person he was when he was alive ii) What he made for himself is self-punitive iii) He thinks his defiance is the punishment
Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave my heart into my mouth. I love your majesty according to my bond, no more nor less.
a) Speaker: Cordelia b) Audience: King Lear c) Meaning: i) Bond: monetary bond, contracts
Good my lord, you have begot me, bred me, loved me. I return those duties back as are right fit— Obey you, love you, and most honor you. Why have my sisters husbands if they say they love you all? Haply when I shall wed that lord whose hand must take my plight shall carry half my love with him, half my care and duty. Sure, I shall never marry like my sisters, to love my father all.
a) Speaker: Cordelia b) Audience: King Lear c) Meaning: i) Only loving you because I am supposed to ii) Impacting suitors view of her iii) Should be 50/50 split between husband and father
No cause, no cause.
a) Speaker: Cordelia b) Audience: King Lear c) Meaning: i) She has had a part in it too ii) She's admitting her own responsibility in situation iii) Mutual admission and forgiveness iv) Cordelia is responsible to some degree Know how to push each other's buttons
What shall Cordelia speak? Love, and be silent.
a) Speaker: Cordelia b) Audience: Reader, play watchers c) Meaning: i) Love can't be spoken ii) Love is displayed in actions
Then poor Cordelia; and yet not so, since I am sure my love's more ponderous than my tongue.
a) Speaker: Cordelia b) Audience: Reader, play watchers c) Meaning: i) Ponderous: full of substance ii) Love has more weight than any words she can use iii) He'll only love them as much as they love him: should be unconditional iv) Very demeaning: quality of love that should be present
The fourth day came, and it was on that day my Gaddo fell prostrate before my feet, crying: 'Why don't you help me? Why, my father?' There he died. Just as you see me here, I saw the other three fall one by one, as the fifth day and the sixth day passed. And I, by then gone blind, groped over their dead bodies. Though they were dead, two days I called their names. Then hunger proved more powerful than grief.
a) Speaker: Count Ugolino b) Audience: Dante the Pilgrim c) Meaning: i) We are selfish
Lifting his mouth from his horrendous meal, this sinner first wiped off his messy lips in the hair remaining on the chewed-up skull, then spoke: 'You want me to renew a grief so desperate that just the thought of it, much less the telling, grips my heart with pain; but if my words can be the seed to bear the fruit of infamy for this betrayer, who feeds my hunger, then I shall speak-in tears.
a) Speaker: Count Ugolino b) Audience: Dante the Pilgrim c) Meaning: i) Who feeds my hunger: all the way back to Canto II/III à hunger for vengeance, justice, retribution ii) Count Ugolino eating brains of Archbishop Ruggieri iii) Vengeance isn't as satisfying as you'd think, can be consumed by it iv) Don't allow yourself to be blinded by anger v) Odysseus killed all suitors
If I have heard correctly, all of you can see ahead to what the future holds but your knowledge of the present is not clear.
a) Speaker: Dante the Pilgrim b) Audience: Farinata, heretic shade in sixth circle c) Meaning: i) Journey into deepest self ii) It's easier to know what's right and wrong at a distance iii) Becomes fuzzier the closer it gets to you
I would use even harsher words than these, for your avarice brings grief upon the world, crushing the good, exalting the depraved. You shepherds it was the Evangelist had in mind when the vision came to him of her who sits upon the waters playing w**** with kings.
a) Speaker: Dante the Pilgrim b) Audience: Pope Nicholas III c) Meaning: i) Avarice: greed ii) Simony crushes goodness: paying to sin, goes against actual religion, dishonors God/Jesus iii) City of Rome: Tiber River and Po River - seat of Christianity iv) Selling out sacraments for money Thais in previous canto reflected here by City of Rome (aka priests): WORKING IN PAIRS
You have built yourselves a God of gold and silver!
a) Speaker: Dante the Pilgrim b) Audience: Pope Nicholas III c) Meaning: i) Simony is worse form of fraud 1) Simoniacs a. Crime: buying and selling of sacraments or offices, could purchase indulgences, worse form of fraud b. Punishment: Sinners upside down in holes with legs and feet protruding and flames dancing on soles, similar to holes priests stand on for baptism
But why am I to go? Who allows me to? I am not Aeneas, I am not Paul, neither I nor any man would think me worthy.
a) Speaker: Dante the Pilgrim b) Audience: Virgil c) Meaning: i) I am not a hero ii) Dante protests his unworthiness
The neck was twisted - their faces looked down on their backs; they had to move ahead by moving backward, for they never saw what was ahead of them.
a) Speaker: Dante the Poet b) Audience: Us, reader c) Meaning: 1) Sorcerers/Soothsayers a. Crime: Magic/sorcery, tried to bend divine will to their own, because they wish to see too far ahead, they see behind and walk a backwards track b. Punishment: Heads twisted around back so hair flows down front and tears flow down to buttocks
Soon after leaving him I saw two souls frozen together in a single hole, so that one head used the other for a cap. As a man with hungry teeth tears into bread, the soul with capping head sunk his teeth into the other's neck, just beneath the skull.
a) Speaker: Dante the Poet b) Audience: Us, reader c) Meaning: i) Count Ugolino eating brains of Archbishop Ruggieri
I heard the note of anger in his voice and turned to him; I was so full of shame that it still haunts my memory today. Like on asleep who dreams himself in trouble and in his dream he wishes he were dreaming, longing for that which is, as if it were not, just so I found myself: unable to speak, longing to beg for pardon and already begging for pardon, not knowing that I did.
a) Speaker: Dante the Poet b) Audience: Us, reader c) Meaning: i) Disorienting language reflect journey itself ii) Exhaustion taking its toll
The crowds, the countless, different mutilations, had stunned my eyes and left them so confused they wanted to keep looking and to weep.
a) Speaker: Dante the Poet b) Audience: Us, reader c) Meaning: i) Entire landscape of mutilations, amputations ii) Split what ought to be whole iii) The fascination of abomination iv) We are seeing our own vulnerability to it
Disgusting overflow of stench.
a) Speaker: Dante the Poet b) Audience: Us, reader c) Meaning: i) First reference to stench
And that repulsive spectacle of fraud floated close.
a) Speaker: Dante the Poet b) Audience: Us, reader c) Meaning: i) Geryon: face appealing like honest man, body ends in scorpion stinger ii) Fraud: deception with malicious intent
So may God grant you benefit from reading of my poem, just ask yourself how I could keep my eyes dry when, close by, I saw the image of our human form so twisted - the tears their eyes were shedding streamed down to wet their buttocks at the cleft. Indeed I did weep.
a) Speaker: Dante the Poet b) Audience: Us, reader c) Meaning: i) He's laughing at goofy way they're being punished: crying
Tongues confused, a language strained in anguish with cadences of anger, shrill outcries and raucous groans that joined with sounds of hands, raising a whirling storm that turns itself forever through that air of endless black, like grains of sand swirling when a whirlwind blows.
a) Speaker: Dante the Poet b) Audience: Us, reader c) Meaning: i) Indecisive: form of moral failure
I held onto his neck, as he told me to, while he watched and waited for the time and place, and when the wings were stretched out just enough, he grabbed on to the shaggy sides of Satan; then downward, tuft by tuft, he made his way between the tangled hair and frozen crust. When we had reached the point exactly where the thigh begins, right at the haunch's curve, my guide, with strain and force of every muscle, turned his head toward the shaggy shanks of Dis and grabbed the hair as if about to climb - I thought that we were heading back to Hell.
a) Speaker: Dante the Poet b) Audience: Us, reader c) Meaning: i) Lake named after tailbone
Before they turned left-face along the bank each one gave their good captain a salute with farting tongue pressed tightly to his teeth, and he blew back with his bugle of an ass-hole.
a) Speaker: Dante the Poet b) Audience: Us, reader c) Meaning: i) Left-face: drilling ceremony
And when I raised my eyes a little higher I saw the master sage of those who know, sitting with his philosophic family. All gaze at him, all pay their homage to him; and there I saw both Socrates and Plato, each closer to his side than any other.
a) Speaker: Dante the Poet b) Audience: Us, reader c) Meaning: i) Master sage: Aristotle ii) Father: Socrates (questioning), he came first iii) The organizational context of the story: Aristotle iv) Aristotle (1), Socrates (2), Plato (3) according to Dante v) Socrates (1), Plato (2), Aristotle (3) in chronological order
It was no road for one who wore a cloak! Even though I had his help and he weighed nothing, we could hardly lift ourselves from crag to crag. and had it not been that the bank we climbed was lower than the one we had slid down - I cannot speak for him - but I for one surely would have quit.
a) Speaker: Dante the Poet b) Audience: Us, reader c) Meaning: i) Moment of exhaustion ii) Both Dante the Pilgrim and Dante the Poet iii) Moral exhaustion: self examination
My lungs were so pumped out of breath by the time I reached the top, I could not go on farther, and instantly I sat down where I was.
a) Speaker: Dante the Poet b) Audience: Us, reader c) Meaning: i) Moment of exhaustion ii) Both Dante the Pilgrim and Dante the Poet iii) Moral exhaustion: self examination
And now, down there, we found a painted people, slow-motioned: step by step, they walked their round in tears, and seeming wasted by fatigue. All were wearing cloaks with hoods pulled low covering the eyes (the style was much the same as those the Benedictines wear at Cluny).
a) Speaker: Dante the Poet b) Audience: Us, reader c) Meaning: i) Painted people: Thin superficial layer ii) Comparing cloaks to Christian monks
I came to a place where no light shone at all, bellowing like the sea racked by a tempest, when warring winds attack it from both sides. The infernal storm, eternal in its rage, sweeps and drives the spirits with its blast: it whirls them, lashing them with punishment. I learned that to this place of punishment all those who sin in lust have been condemned, those who make reason slave to appetite.
a) Speaker: Dante the Poet b) Audience: Us, reader c) Meaning: i) Punishment a physicalization of appetite ii) Wind controls them à Lust controls us iii) Buffeted about morality, ethically, experimentally iv) In mode of sexual desire, do things we know we shouldn't do v) Those who make reason slave to appetite: church officials angry at this line, Jesus/faith/God slave to appetite not reason, not just faith but rationality
If I had words grating and cruel enough that really could describe this horrid hole supporting the converging weight of Hell, I could squeeze out the juice of my memories to the last drop. But I don't have these words, and so I am reluctant to begin. To talk about the bottom of the universe the way it truly is, is no child's play, no task for tongues that gurgle baby-talk.
a) Speaker: Dante the Poet b) Audience: Us, reader c) Meaning: i) Reference back to Canto I Lines 8-9 ii) In order to understand the absolute worst/most inhumane, we have to confront what's worse in us
From a steaming stench below, the banks were coated with a slimy mold that stuck to them like glue, disgusting to behold and worse to smell. The bottom was so hollowed out of sight, we saw it only when we climbed the arch and looked down from the bridge's highest point: there we were, and from where I stood I saw souls in the ditch plunged into excrement that might well have been flushed from our latrines; my eyes were searching hard along the bottom, and I saw somebody's head so smirched with shit, you could not tell if he were a priest or layman.
a) Speaker: Dante the Poet b) Audience: Us, reader c) Meaning: i) Stench: stink: stench: latrines: shit ii) Shouldn't be any priest down there in the first place iii) Flatterers being punished in poo
When he had finished saying this, the thief shaped his fists into figs and raised them high.
a) Speaker: Dante the Poet b) Audience: Us, reader c) Meaning: i) Vanni Fucci: worse than Capaneus à something admirable about Capaneus, nothing admirable about Vanni Fucci à kind of defiance WORKING IN PAIRS, FOILS ii) Vanni Fucci: steals from church sacristy
Throughout the circles of this dark inferno I saw no shade so haughty toward his God, not even he who fell from Thebes' high walls.
a) Speaker: Dante the Poet b) Audience: Us, reader c) Meaning: i) Vanni Fucci: worse than Capaneus: something admirable about Capaneus, nothing admirable about Vanni Fucci: kind of defiance WORKING IN PAIRS, FOILS
I have seen troops of horsemen breaking camp, opening the attack, or passing in review, I have even seen them fleeing for their lives; I have seen scouts ride, exploring your terrain, O Aretines, and I have seen raiding-parties and the clash of tournaments, the run of jousts - to the tune of trumpets, to the ring of clanging bells, to the roll of drums, to the flash of flares on ramparts, to the accompaniment of every known device; but I never saw cavalry or infantry or ships that sail by landmarks or by stars signaled to set off by such strange bugling!
a) Speaker: Dante the Poet b) Audience: Us, reader c) Meaning: i) Wordplay on farting ii) 4 stanzas about farting iii) Logic to humor: moral exhaustion iv) Relief for us as readers v) Grotesque vulgarity
I raised my eyes, expecting I would see the half of Lucifer I saw before. Instead I saw his two legs stretching upward. If at that sight I found myself confused, so will those simple-minded folk who still don't see what point it was I must have passed.
a) Speaker: Dante the Poet b) Audience: Us, reader i) Center of gravity of Earth reached ii) Must pass through *********
And so I looked and saw a kind of banner rushing ahead, whirling with aimless speed as though it would not ever take a stand; behind it an interminable train of souls pressed on, so many that I wondered how death could have undone so great a number.
a) Speaker: Dante the Poet b) Audience: Us, readers c) Meaning: i) Most people fall into this category à moral lapse that is very common ii) Linkage between crime and punishment à exaggerated form of crime itself iii) Punishment is symbolic embodiment of lapse iv) Crime is punishment and punishment is crime
Midway along the journey of our life I woke to find myself in a dark wood, for I had wandered off from the straight path. How hard it is to tell what it was like, this wood of wilderness, savage and stubborn (the thought of it brings back all my old fears), a bitter place! Death could scarce be bitterer. But if I would show the good that came out of it I must talk about things other than the good. How I entered there I cannot truly say, I had become so sleepy at the moment when I first strayed, leaving the path of truth; but when I found myself at the foot of a hill, at the edge of the wood's beginning, down in the valley, where I first felt my heart plunged deep in fear.
a) Speaker: Dante the Poet b) Audience: Us, readers c) Meaning: i) Our capacity to lapse into sin ii) Geography is symbolic iii) Moral risk: Moral clarity iv) Is/was: Retelling story: He made it through v) Journey about hope, faith, clarity as it is about negative darkness vi) Confront what's in us that's drawn to the dark places vii) Sleepy: Clouded judgement, moral complacency, fuzzy from indulgence, lack of awareness viii) Headed towards light but interrupted ix) Source of negative impulses live in us x) Inward journey xi) Symbolically: Hell we carry in us bad choice to bad choice to bad choice xii) Journey from lossness to clarity
Let's exchange charity. I am no less in blood than thou art. If more, the more thou'st wronged me. The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices make instruments to plague us. The dark and vicious place where thee he got cost him his eyes.
a) Speaker: Edgar b) Audience: Edmund c) Meaning: i) Edgar stabs Edmund then speaks to him ii) Edgar isn't the only one who's been less than blood in the society iii) Edgar: he is the legitimate son iv) Edmund embraced bastard so much we are glad to see him die: metaphoric bastard v) Not a play that rewards goodness: the worse you are, the more you thrive, meek shall inherit the earth vi) Justice is possible vii) Pleasant vices: talking about Gloucester viii) Edmund: thee, Gloucester: he, got: sex
Come on, sir. Here's the place. Stand still. How fearful and dizzy 'tis to cast one's eyes so low! The crows and choughs that wing the midway air show scarce so gross as beetles. Halfway down hangs one that gathers samphire—dreadful trade! Methinks he seems no bigger than his head. The fishermen that walk upon the beach appear like mice. And yon tall anchoring bark, Diminished to her cock, her cock a buoy almost too small for sight. The murmuring surge that on th' unnumbered idle pebbles chafes cannot be heard so high. I'll look no more Lest my brain turn and the deficient sight topple down headlong.
a) Speaker: Edgar b) Audience: Gloucester c) Meaning: i) Gloucester wants to kill himself ii) Edgar wants to make sure he doesn't iii) How to instill hope in someone who's given up all hope iv) Looks over edge which does not exist: hopelessness, despair v) Midway air: air between cliffs and sea vi) Murmuring surge: waves vii) Unnumbered idle pebble chafes: rocks viii) Constructing a fictional moment: drama ix) Edgar constructing a play for Gloucester x) Shakespeare examining creating a fictional play to teach people lesson xi) Lesson Edgar needs to teach his father: life goes on, life is beautiful and big, reason for faith, hope, joy xii) Don't give in, don't give up xiii) Teach us courage, sympathy, empathy, compassion xiv) Gloucester jumps and hits: audience laughs, audience is very sad/weeping
Gone sir. Farewell. And yet I know not how conceit may rob the treasury of life when life itself yields to the theft. Had he been where he thought, by this had thought been past. Alive or dead?— Ho you, sir, friend! Hear you, sir? Speak.
a) Speaker: Edgar b) Audience: Gloucester, reader, Gloucester c) Meaning: i) He's afraid that Gloucester may really die ii) Talks to us like Edgar then Tom then Fisherman iii) Play in which a play is constructed, fiction within fiction, drama within drama iv) Thy life's a miracle: life's a local of wonder, we can be fulfilled v) In this scene we see Shakespeare's own sense of self as writer/thinker vi) Edgar performs great play to put sense of miracle in Gloucester's life vii) Shakespeare providing theme of work
I pant for life. Some good I mean to do, despite of mine own nature. Quickly send—be brief in it—to th' castle, for my writ.
a) Speaker: Edmund b) Audience: Albany, Kent, Edgar i) Nature at beginning ii) Moral agency possible even though there's bad aspect to our human nature iii) Execution out for Lear and Cordelia and Edmund means to end the order iv) Tragedy: it's going to be too late v) Why does it have to be too late? There are some acts that are irredeemable
Thou'st spoken right; 'tis true. The wheel is come full circle; I am here.
a) Speaker: Edmund b) Audience: Edgar c) Meaning: i) What goes around comes around
Yet Edmund was beloved. The one the other poisoned for my sake, and after slew herself.
a) Speaker: Edmund b) Audience: Kent, Albany, Edgar c) Meaning: i) Goneril + Regan: fighting over Edmund, poisons Regan then kills herself because Albany finds out ii) Edmund plays both of them by pledging himself to both of them iii) Edmund was loved and fought over
This is the excellent foppery of the world that when we are sick in fortune—often the surfeit of our own behavior—we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars, as if we were villains by necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion, knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical predominance, drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforced obedience of planetary influence, and all that we are evil in by a divine thrusting-on.
a) Speaker: Edmund b) Audience: Reader, play watchers c) Meaning: i) Foppery: foolishness ii) Edmund talking to Christian audience iii) Surfeits: acts of ill-conception iv) Heavenly compulsion: the will of God v) Hypocrisies of Shakespeare's time: critiquing from inside vi) Whenever we suffer the consequences of our own bad actions, we want to blame it on something bigger
Thou, nature, art my goddess. To thy law my services are bound. Wherefore should I stand in the plague of custom and permit the curiosity of nations to deprive me for that I am some twelve or fourteen moonshines lag of a brother? Why "bastard"? Wherefore "base"? When my dimensions are as well compact, my mind as generous, and my shape as true as honest madam's issue? Why brand they us with "base," with "baseness," "bastardy," "base," "base"—Who in the lusty stealth of nature take more composition and fierce quality than doth within a dull, stale, tirèd bed go to th' creating a whole tribe of fops got 'tween a sleep and wake? Well then, legitimate Edgar, I must have your land. Our father's love is to the bastard Edmund as to the legitimate.—Fine word, "legitimate"!—Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed and my invention thrive, Edmund the base shall top th' legitimate. I grow, I prosper. Now, gods, stand up for bastards!
a) Speaker: Edmund b) Audience: Reader, play watchers c) Meaning: i) Letter from Edgar to kill Gloucester but actually written by Edmund ii) Nature: wholesome, purity (1) Elizabethan era: what we want to keep out, what will eat you, absence of civilization, fear, unpredictability, without law iii) Nature of his birth: not dictated by social/cultural structure iv) He's claiming he's not ashamed of it v) Law of Nature: natural selection, desire, survival of the fittest vi) Wherefore: why, For that: just because vii) Plague because illegitimate son can't inherit anything, society shamed illegitimacy viii) Curiosity: idiosyncrasies, cultural morays ix) Moonshine: month x) Edmund 12 or 14 months younger than Edgar xi) Base: low, low down, worthless xii) Bodies are the same, just as smart xiii) Honest madam's issue: Gloucester's wife, issue is Edgar xiv) Secrecy behind his conception xv) Dull, stale, tired bed à marriage bed xvi) Fops: foolish man, idiots xvii) Better than legitimate children xviii) Decides his own fate, embraces the situation he was born into xix) Go to: having sex, lame tired xx) Invention: act of ill-conception xxi) Top: screw xxii) Call for justice xxiii) You made me who I am and now I'm gonna be what you made me
Down here we see like those with faulty vision who only see what's at a distance; this much the sovereign lord grants us here. When events are close to us, or when they happen, our mind is blank, and were it not for others we would know nothing of your living state.
a) Speaker: Farinata, heretic shade in sixth circle b) Audience: Dante the Pilgrim c) Meaning: i) It's easier to know what's right and wrong at a distance ii) Becomes fuzzier the closer it gets to you
Prithee tell him, so much the rent of his land comes to; he will not believe a fool.
a) Speaker: Fool b) Audience: Kent c) Meaning: i) Speaking of nothing, that's how much he's getting from his land since he technically doesn't own it anymore
Then 'tis like the breath of an unfee'd lawyer. You gave me nothing for 't.—Can you make no use of nothing, nuncle?
a) Speaker: Fool b) Audience: Kent, King Lear c) Meaning: i) If you wanted something that seemed of substance, you should've paid for it. To Kent ii) Can't you make use of what I just said? To Lear
Why? For taking one's part that's out of favor. Nay, an thou canst not smile as the wind sits, thou'lt catch cold shortly. There, take my coxcomb. Why, this fellow has banished two on 's daughters, and did the third a blessing against his will. If thou follow him, thou must needs wear my coxcomb.—How now, nuncle? Would I had two coxcombs and two daughters.
a) Speaker: Fool b) Audience: King Lear c) Meaning: i) Lear left the kingdom in disarray which puts misfortune on his 2 favorite daughters and saved Cordelia accidentally by not giving her part of the kingdom
Truth's a dog that must to kennel. He must be whipped out, when Lady Brach may stand by th' fire and stink.
a) Speaker: Fool b) Audience: King Lear c) Meaning: i) They have to disguise their criticism because Lear doesn't take it well ii) Lear never wants to hear the true critique so he whips it out of the Fool, who in turn compares himself to a dog iii) Brach: bitch iv) Lady Brach stinks: in heat
Have more than thou showest, Speak less than thou knowest, Lend less than thou owest, Ride more than thou goest, Learn more than thou trowest, Set less than thou throwest, Leave thy drink and thy w**** And keep in-a-door, And thou shalt have more Than two tens to a score.
a) Speaker: Fool b) Audience: King Lear, Kent c) Meaning: i) People that love Lear must have been forced to disguise themselves (in looks or speech) ii) Ride with somebody more than thou walk: depend upon other people iii) How to remain in power, protect yourself iv) Learn more than thou trust: take in all information given to you, do your research, discern for yourself v) Learn for yourself vi) Trust what others tell you vii) Two tens to a score: doesn't make sense at first viii) Leave behind your impulses/desires/indulgences ix) Keep in a door: stay inside x) Leave behind your indulgences and you'll prosper more than you thought was possible and profit more than expectations
No? What needed then that terrible dispatch of it into your pocket? The quality of nothing hath not such need to hide itself. Let's see. Come, if it be nothing, I shall not need spectacles.
a) Speaker: Gloucester b) Audience: Edmund c) Meaning: i) Nothing comes from nothing
His breeding, sir, hath been at my charge. I have so often blushed to acknowledge him that now I am brazed to it.
a) Speaker: Gloucester b) Audience: Kent c) Meaning: i) Breeding: animals ii) Brazed: metallurgy, double heat metal to make them durable, hardened, cooking barbeque, blushing brazed iii) Critical examination of social and psychological consequences of the naming/designation of "illegitimate"
But I have, sir, a son by order of law, some year older than this, who yet is no dearer in my account. Though this knave came something saucily to the world before he was sent for, yet was his mother fair, there was good sport at his making, and the whoreson must be acknowledged.
a) Speaker: Gloucester b) Audience: Kent c) Meaning: i) How people pay for their good sport? (1) Our error of putting things into motion (2) Outcomes of our indulgences ii) Gloucester was married when he had the affair that produced Edmund iii) He loves them both equally iv) Knave: joker v) His mother fair: pretty vi) Whoreson: literal or exaggerated vii) Gloucester: cut and dry, honest, doesn't sugarcoat, direct, blunt, morally gray, doesn't take things too seriously, funny but a little insensitive, loves his sons the same: generosity of spirit
Sir, this young fellow's mother could, whereupon she grew round-wombed, and had indeed, sir, a son for her cradle ere she had a husband for her bed. Do you smell a fault?
a) Speaker: Gloucester b) Audience: Kent c) Meaning: i) The issue is the child ii) The issue of legitimacy/illegitimacy
Away, get thee away. Good friend be gone. Thy comforts can do me no good at all; thee they may hurt.
a) Speaker: Gloucester b) Audience: Old Man c) Meaning: i) Gloucester: blind, distraught, blood on his face ii) Gloucester is blind but eyes open to truth of his sons and his mortality iii) He's lost it all, it's too late iv) They could hurt the old man since he's helping Gloucester and he doesn't want that to happen v) He allowed himself to be manipulated vi) Lear + Gloucester mirroring each other FOILS
He has some reason, else he could not beg. I' th' last night's storm I such a fellow saw, which made me think a man a worm. My son came then into my mind, and yet my mind was then scarce friends with him. I have heard more since. As flies to wanton boys are we to th' gods; they kill us for their sport.
a) Speaker: Gloucester b) Audience: Old Man c) Meaning: i) Revealed vulnerability of man ii) Catching flies and ripping of wings iii) Are characters more sinned against than sinning?
I have no way, and therefore want no eyes; I stumbled when I saw.
a) Speaker: Gloucester b) Audience: Old Man c) Meaning: i) There's no way that he can right his situation ii) He has become what he's perpetrated iii) Lament
And when the fire, in its own way, had roared awhile, the flame's sharp tip began to sway to and fro, then released a blow of words: 'If I thought that I were speaking to a soul who someday might return to see the world, most certainly this flame would cease to flicker; but since no one, if I have heard the truth, ever returns alive from this deep pit, with no fear of dishonor I answer you.
a) Speaker: Guido da Montefeltro b) Audience: Dante the Pilgrim c) Meaning: i) If I had any hope you'd tell my tales, I wouldn't tell them to you because of shame
Abandon every hope, all you who enter.
a) Speaker: Inscription written above gate to Hell b) Audience: Dante the Pilgrim and Virgil c) Meaning: i) Totality/finality ii) If Hell is a matter of choice iii) Enter it when we make a bad choice/sin iv) Morality is humanly constructed v) Conscience you made the wrong choice vi) Can never undo it vii) You can be forgiven viii) You can never unbecome who you became when you made that decision
This is nothing, fool.
a) Speaker: Kent b) Audience: Fool c) Meaning: i) This is meaningless ii) Nothing comes from nothing
I cannot wish the fault undone, the issue of it being so proper.
a) Speaker: Kent b) Audience: Gloucester c) Meaning: i) Edmund's a nice guy
Is not this your son, my lord?
a) Speaker: Kent b) Audience: Gloucester c) Meaning: i) Issue of legitimacy
I cannot conceive you.
a) Speaker: Kent b) Audience: Gloucester c) Meaning: i) To conceive: put something in motion, bring into motion that takes on a life of its own, an idea (more abstract) ii) Kent: abstract conception iii) Gloucester: biological conception
Kill thy physician, and thy fee bestow upon the foul disease. Revoke thy gift, or, whilst I can vent clamor from my throat, I'll tell thee thou dost evil.
a) Speaker: Kent b) Audience: King Lear c) Meaning: i) Giving fee to disease I'm trying to save you from ii) Disease: daughters (external), pride, arrogance, vanity, propensity to not think things through: impulsive iii) Take it back or else I'll tell you you're evil à Kent banished
Good my liege—
a) Speaker: Kent b) Audience: King Lear c) Meaning: i) Kent comes in: wants Lear to rethink his decision
Whom I have ever honored as my king, loved as my father, as my master followed, as my great patron thought on in my prayers—
a) Speaker: Kent b) Audience: King Lear c) Meaning: i) Kent finally intercedes to speak his opinion
Let it fall rather, though the fork invade the region of my heart. Be Kent unmannerly when Lear is mad. What wouldst thou do, old man? Think'st thou that duty shall have dread to speak when power to flattery bows? To plainness honor's bound when majesty falls to folly. Reserve thy state, and in thy best consideration check this hideous rashness.
a) Speaker: Kent b) Audience: King Lear c) Meaning: i) Kent says he's not afraid of it ii) Conviction, courage, loyalty, duty, love iii) Every time you behave crazy, I will behave rudely iv) Duty: as a friend, second in command v) To being blunt vi) Don't give yourself away in this state vii) Rashness: Making decisions without thinking them through viii) Hideous rashness: ill-conceived
My life I never held but as a pawn to wage against thy enemies, nor fear to lose it, Thy safety being motive.
a) Speaker: Kent b) Audience: King Lear c) Meaning: i) Kent's wit at play, using Lear's words against him
See better and let me still remain the true blank of thine eye.
a) Speaker: Kent b) Audience: King Lear c) Meaning: i) Kent's wit at play, using Lear's words against him
Now by Apollo, thou swear'st thy gods in vain!
a) Speaker: Kent b) Audience: King Lear c) Meaning: i) Rhetoric
Ourself, by monthly course, with reservation of an hundred knights by you to be sustained, shall our abode make with you by due turns. Only shall we retain the name, and all th' additions to a king. The sway, revenue, execution of the rest, belovèd sons, be yours.
a) Speaker: King Lear b) Audience: Albany, Goneril, Cornwall, Regan c) Meaning: i) Terms of agreement ii) Transfer from one to other every month, 100 knights, daughters to take care of him iii) Wants to keep the title, prestige, honor, perks of being king but they get the rest: work, management, civil details iv) One-sided deals: tension: conflict: deals that aren't fair come back to haunt you
Be your tears wet? Yes, faith. I pray weep not. If you have poison for me, I will drink it. I know you do not love me; for your sisters have (as I do remember) done me wrong. You have some cause, they have not.
a) Speaker: King Lear b) Audience: Cordelia c) Meaning: i) He thinks she may be mad at him and want revenge because he disowned her ii) He didn't mistreat other daughters but they treated him poorly iii) He treated Cordelia poorly so she has cause to be upset
But now, our joy, Although our last and least, to whose young love The vines of France and milk of Burgundy strive to be interessed. What can you say to draw A third more opulent than your sisters? Speak.
a) Speaker: King Lear b) Audience: Cordelia c) Meaning: i) Last: youngest, Least: physically small ii) Referring to 2 men by resources they possess iii) His daughter's future is a business deal iv) Language of exchange: merger v) Draw: withdraw money vi) You literally will not receive anything if you don't speak
Let it be so, thy truth then be thy dower!
a) Speaker: King Lear b) Audience: Cordelia c) Meaning: i) Literally disowns her in this moment
Nothing will come of nothing. Speak again.
a) Speaker: King Lear b) Audience: Cordelia c) Meaning: i) People in their ill-conceived actions, put into motion little nothings which snowballs ii) A big nothing will come from a little nothing iii) Takes courage to stop this: courage to admit you're wrong à humility iv) To be the bigger woman/man v) Your own sincerity/genuineness vi) Forgiveness: also a function of courage
Mend your speech a little, let you may mar your fortunes.
a) Speaker: King Lear b) Audience: Cordelia c) Meaning: i) You have to say something to get something
I know not where I did lodge last night. Do not laugh at me; for, as I am a man, I think this lady to be my child Cordelia.
a) Speaker: King Lear b) Audience: Cordelia, Doctor, Kent c) Meaning: i) Consciousness has been damaged
You do me wrong to take me o' th' grave. Thou art a soul in bliss; but I am bound upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears do scald like molten lead.
a) Speaker: King Lear b) Audience: Cordelia, Doctor, Kent c) Meaning: i) Lear thinks he died and Cordelia is an angel ii) Wheel of fire: his life itself, a living Hell, feels responsibility for Hell he's created for others around him iii) Consciousness has been damaged
And my poor fool is hanged.—No, no, no life? Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life, and thou no breath at all? Oh, thou'lt come no more, never, never, never, never, never. Pray you, undo this button.
a) Speaker: King Lear b) Audience: Edgar, Albany, Kent, Messenger c) Meaning: i) Holding Cordelia ii) Fool: beautiful daughter that gave me so much pleasure iii) No 3x iv) Now we see how all little nothings add up to 5x never v) Never implies no hope, nothing over time vi) Final act of unburdening: undo this button, his own error (vanity) has perpetrated it vii) Lear dies having learned his lesson too late
Why, no, boy. Nothing can be made out of nothing.
a) Speaker: King Lear b) Audience: Fool c) Meaning: i) Basically same line as he said to Cordelia ii) Falling into same assumption, right but for wrong reasons iii) Connected to No One (nothing) from the Odyssey iv) But really is something v) What appears to be nothing is actually consequential
In, boy. Go first. You houseless poverty— Nay, get thee in. I'll pray, and then I'll sleep.
a) Speaker: King Lear b) Audience: Fool c) Meaning: i) Lear putting others before himself: caused by his pain and loss
I can be patient, I can stay with Regan, I and my hundred knights.
a) Speaker: King Lear b) Audience: Goneril, Regan c) Meaning: i) 100 to 50 then to 25
Meantime we shall express our darker purpose.—Give me the map there.—Know that we have divided In three our kingdom, and 'tis our fast intent To shake all cares and business from our age, Conferring them on younger strengths while we Unburdened crawl toward death.—Our son of Cornwall, And you, our no less loving son of Albany, We have this hour a constant will to publish Our daughters' several dowers, that future strife May be prevented now. The two great princes, France and Burgundy.
a) Speaker: King Lear b) Audience: Goneril, Regan, Cordelia, Kent, Cornwall, Albany c) Meaning: i) Darker purpose: secret meaning ii) Fast intent: firm, holdfast iii) Lear wants to retire iv) Goneril (Albany), Regan (Cornwall), Cordelia v) Our son: royal "we", thought of themselves as plural, embody entire nation, property as well, makes you sound more powerful, the divine right of kings vi) To publish: make it clear publicly, announce to public vii) Future strife prevented: ironic viii) Burgundy: Northeast France, used to be its own principality
Prithee, go in thyself. Seek thine own ease. This tempest will not give me leave to ponder on things would hurt me more. But I'll go in.
a) Speaker: King Lear b) Audience: Kent c) Meaning: i) Can't get out of interior storm
Come not between the dragon and his wrath.
a) Speaker: King Lear b) Audience: Kent c) Meaning: i) Lear doesn't want that advice right now ii) Little hint that Lear knows he isn't doing the right thing
O vassal! Miscreant!
a) Speaker: King Lear b) Audience: Kent c) Meaning: i) Rhetoric
The bow is bent and drawn; make from the shaft.
a) Speaker: King Lear b) Audience: Kent c) Meaning: i) The decision is about to be executed ii) Get out of the way of my decision making
Thou wert better in thy grave than to answer with thy uncovered body this extremity of the skies.—Is man no more than this? Consider him well.—Thou owest the worm no silk, the beast no hide, the sheep no wool, the cat no perfume. Ha! Here's three on 's are sophisticated. Thou art the thing itself. Unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art.— Off, off, you lendings!
a) Speaker: King Lear b) Audience: Kent, Edgar, Fool c) Meaning: i) Connects back to poor naked wretches ii) Having been irresponsible as a king iii) Sees human kind in Edgar iv) Edgar: nature of humanity laid bare v) Stripped of all extra vi) Here's what we are at our essence vii) Lendings: clothing not properly yours, fickleness of human fortune viii) If we realize our clothing as lendings he's wondering if we can own anything at all à recognizes his mortality and vulnerability
Poor naked wretches, whereso'er you are, that bide the pelting of this pitiless storm, how shall your houseless heads and unfed sides, your looped and windowed raggedness, defend you from seasons such as these? Oh, I have ta'en too little care of this! Take physic, pomp. Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel, that thou mayst shake the superflux to them and show the heavens more just.
a) Speaker: King Lear b) Audience: Reader, play watchers c) Meaning: i) External storm distracts him from inner storm ii) Lear addresses poor people of his country, people living lives of despair iii) Homeless, starving, poverty stricken, tattered clothes iv) Lear accepting responsibility by his neglect of the poor people of country v) Hasn't taken care of things within himself either vi) Pomp: pride, physic, take your medicine vii) Shakespeare through Lear talking to us viii) Superflux: excess ix) Human generosity demonstrated God made a just world
Howl, howl, howl! O, you are men of stones. Had I your tongues and eyes, I'd use them so that heaven's vault should crack.
a) Speaker: King Lear b) Audience: Reader, play watchers c) Meaning: i) Lear holding Cordelia's dead body
I gave you all.
a) Speaker: King Lear b) Audience: Regan c) Meaning: i) Lear gave her all of his agreement ii) Held up his end of the bargain iii) Gave her everything
Made you my guardians, my depositories, but kept a reservation to be followed with such a number. What, must I come to you with five-and twenty?
a) Speaker: King Lear b) Audience: Regan c) Meaning: i) Number was 100 but now you say 25?
Those wicked creatures yet do look well favored when others are more wicked. Not being the worst stands in some rank of praise. I'll go with thee. Thy fifty yet doth double five and twenty, and thou art twice her love.
a) Speaker: King Lear b) Audience: Regan then Goneril c) Meaning: i) Lear thought Goneril was being rude but Regan is being more rude ii) Lesser of 2 evils: Goneril iii) Pick your poison iv) Says he'll go with Goneril with 50 men and 2x his love: trying to monetize his love v) Hasn't learned it: he's a king vi) Every aspect of his life is a transaction vii) Never learned to take direct criticism viii) Shown his love by paying for other people ix) We are all King Lear: run the risk of wanting to quantify things that can't be quantified x) Quantify: profound human error
O, reason not the need! Our basest beggars are in the poorest thing superfluous. Allow not nature more than nature needs, man's life's as cheap as beast's. Thou art a lady. If only to go warm were gorgeous, why, nature needs not what thou gorgeous wear'st, which scarcely keeps thee warm. But, for true need— You heavens, give me that patience, patience I need. You see me here, you gods, a poor old man, as full of grief as age, wretched in both. If it be you that stir these daughters' hearts against their father, fool me not so much to bear it tamely. Touch me with noble anger. And let not women's weapons, water drops, stain my man's cheeks! No, you unnatural hags, I will have such revenges on you both that all the world shall—I will do such things—What they are yet I know not, but they shall be the terrors of the earth.
a) Speaker: King Lear b) Audience: Regan, Goneril c) Meaning: i) Why he doesn't need what he thinks he needs ii) If you love me, you don't need to apply reason to love but that's what he's doing iii) He's not used to having to justify his needs iv) Desire v) Doesn't need rationally: emotional needs vi) Logically you don't need what you think you need vii) He's created this problem for himself viii) He's approaching having nothing himself ix) Subject to adversity: causes you to grow x) Very beginning of a coming to moment xi) The lowest of the low still have more than what they need in order to survive xii) Our lives are just as valuable as a wild animal if we don't have more than what we need to survive xiii) It dehumanizes us, identification of free will xiv) Our humanity is embedded in free will xv) You're a lady by social status xvi) Regan dressed scantily clad xvii) You're dressed in a way that defies the weather because she wants to look beautiful: hypocrite in this way xviii) Lear: I'm just as sad as I am old xix) Wretched in grief and age xx) Let me fight back: praying for resilience, righteous anger xxi) "unnatural": daughters not obeying father Lear can't finish his sentence: overcome with emotion so can't think of anything, he can't really do anything - no true power, he's seeing his own implication in what's happening to him
Hence, always rid yourself of desires in order to observe its secrets; But always allow yourself to have desires in order to observe its manifestations.
a) Speaker: Lao Tzu b) Audience: Us, readers c) Meaning: i) Desires needed to understand articulations
These two are the same but diverge in name as they issue forth. Being the same they are called mysteries, mystery upon mystery-- the gateway of the manifold secrets.
a) Speaker: Lao Tzu b) Audience: Us, readers c) Meaning: i) Do oppositional things always but they are same state, suspend rationalistic ideas in order to achieve this ii) Components shrouded in mystery: in their mystery lies their power iii) Journey is destination and destination is journey: mystery contains this implication iv) Oscar Wilde: Religions die when they are proved to be true, science holds dead religions v) Faith, mystery, spiritual, intuition, soul, love vi) Manifold: many vii) Opposition we've been exploring is way in
The Way that can be spoken of is not the constant Way; The name that can be named is not the constant name.
a) Speaker: Lao Tzu b) Audience: Us, readers c) Meaning: i) If it's easily conceivable/articulated, a spiritual way, then it's not the way ii) This way is beyond/greater than what we humans can do iii) In west we become accustomed to idea of God that's easy to articulate iv) Act of arrogance to evoke name of God: ancient orthodox Jews
The nameless was the beginning of heaven and earth; The named was the mother of the myriad creature.
a) Speaker: Lao Tzu b) Audience: Us, readers c) Meaning: i) Presented in single verse in tension ii) Nameless: God, immortal, limitless iii) Named: Earth, definable, mortal, understand iv) Examines duality of Tao and how faith bridges the two v) Tied together: exists in tandem, always already operating together vi) Beginning/mother: both signs of beginning vii) Dimensions that can be rationalized or irrationality viii) Our language will always be inadequate ix) Myriad creatures: many creatures x) It's what we know, easily observable, limited amount vs. infinite, giving birth xi) The Tao is how xii) Beyond human construction of time à spiritual moments à holy moment à sex
Such unconstant starts are we like to have from him as this of Kent's banishment.
a) Speaker: Regan b) Audience: Goneril c) Meaning: i) Acts of ill-conceiving ii) Bad things being initiated
I dare avouch it, sir. What, fifty followers? Is it not well? What should you need of more? Yea, or so many, sith that both charge and danger speak 'gainst so great a number?
a) Speaker: Regan b) Audience: King Lear c) Meaning: i) 100 to 50 then to 25
If you will come to me (for now I spy a danger), I entreat you to bring but five-and-twenty. To no more will I give place or notice.
a) Speaker: Regan b) Audience: King Lear c) Meaning: i) 100 to 50 then to 25
When I set sail from Circle, who, more than a year, had kept me occupied close to Gaeta, not sweetness of a son, not reverence for an aging father, not the debt of love I owed Penelope to make her happy, could quench deep in myself the burning wish to know the world and have experience of all man's vices, of all human worth. So I set out on the deep and open sea with just one ship and with that group of men, not many, who had not deserted me. I saw as far as Spain, far as Morocco, both shores; I had left behind Sardinia, and the other islands which that sea encloses. I and my mates were old and tired men. Then finally we reached the narrow neck where Hercules put up his signal-pillars to warn men not to go beyond that point. Brothers, who through a hundred thousand perils have made your way to reach the West, during this so brief vigil of our senses that is still reserved for us, do not deny yourself to experience of what there is beyond, behind the sun, in the world they call unpeopled. Consider what you came from: you are Greeks! You were not born to live like mindless brutes.
a) Speaker: Ulysses b) Audience: Dante the Pilgrim, Virgil c) Meaning: i) Odysseus: Greek, Ulysses: Latin ii) Ulysses and Diomed: deceivers iii) Deception of Trojan horse iv) Dante anti-Ulysses because of Virgil v) Claims of responsibility to family vi) Burning wish to know the world: wanderlust, passion we have for knowledge, intellectual/social curiosity vii) Encased in fire: punishment represents in us passion is crime viii) Hard to maintain social//familial ties ix) Tension between going places and domestic life x) Dante's journey: experience of all man's vices xi) Dante the Poet finds ambition, curiosity, passion in Odysseus and himself xii) Dante figure of exile xiii) Dante adding to Homer's story xiv) Kleos: glory, what you have to do to get it xv) Claims of nostos vs. claims of Kleos xvi) Straits of Gibraltor: from what you know to the unknown xvii) Vigil of our senses: life xviii) Our morality makes it brief xix) Life is short, you need to go and explore, have the courage to continue to embrace the unknown xx) Speaking to us a core human advice
Since your blustering pride will not be stilled, you are made to suffer more: no torment other than your rage itself could punish your gnawing pride more perfectly.
a) Speaker: Virgil b) Audience: Capaneus c) Meaning: i) What he made for himself is self-punitive ii) He thinks his defiance is the punishment
This wretched state of being is the fate of those sad souls who lived a life but lived it with no blame and with no praise. They are mixed with that repulsive choir of angels neither faithful nor unfaithful to their God, who undecided stood but for themselves. Heaven, to keep its beauty, cast them out, but even Hell itself would not receive them, to fear the damned might glory over them.
a) Speaker: Virgil b) Audience: Dante the Pilgrim c) Meaning: i) Damned glory over indecisive: We're bad but at least we did something, took a stand ii) They haven't sinned iii) Exiled because not enough good people stood up for what is good (civil war)
It is the shade of Homer, sovereign poet.
a) Speaker: Virgil b) Audience: Dante the Pilgrim c) Meaning: i) Dante the Poet's structure is Homeric + Virgil influences
Keep right on looking, a little more, and I shall lose my patience.
a) Speaker: Virgil b) Audience: Dante the Pilgrim c) Meaning: i) Disorienting language reflect journey itself ii) Exhaustion taking its toll
Why do you let your thoughts stray from the path they are accustomed to? Or have I missed the point you have in mind? Have you forgotten your Ethics reads, those terms it explicates in such detail: the three conditions that the heavens hate, incontinence, malice, and bestiality?
a) Speaker: Virgil b) Audience: Dante the Pilgrim c) Meaning: i) Ethics: book by Aristotle à bring intellectual order to human morals and behavior ii) Dante the Poet uses Aristotle's classification iii) Using pagan philosopher to define Christian beliefs iv) Incontinence: function of appetite, can't control bodily functions, failure to regulate appetite, ex: sexual desire - control it, punished on upside of Dis - passion: fire v) Malice: purposefully trying to harm (another/yourself), intention vi) Bestiality: behaving like an animal, absence of compassion, ice vii) Aristotelian structure
O foolish race of man, how overwhelming is your ignorance! Now listen while I tell you what she means: that One, whose wisdom knows infinity, made all heavens and gave each one a guide, and each sphere shining shines on all the others, so light is spread with equal distribution: for worldly splendors He decreed the same and ordained a guide and general ministress who would at her discretion shift the world's vain wealth from nation to nation, house to house, with no chance of interference from mankind; so while one nation rules, another falls, according to whatever she decrees (her sentence hidden like a snake in grass). Your knowledge has no influence on her; for she foresees, she judges, and she rules her kingdom as the other gods do theirs. Her changing changes never take a rest; necessity keeps her in constant motion.
a) Speaker: Virgil b) Audience: Dante the Pilgrim c) Meaning: i) Gave each one a guide: Star/sun ii) For worldly splendors: Distributed evenly as well iii) Job of Fortune: Redistribute wealth over time, idea of luck, wealth is a function of chance/luck
Hold tight there is no other way, only by these stairs can we leave behind the evil we have seen.
a) Speaker: Virgil b) Audience: Dante the Pilgrim c) Meaning: i) Must pass through *********
Come on, shake off the cover of this sloth, for sitting softly cushioned, or tucked in bed, is no way to win fame.
a) Speaker: Virgil b) Audience: Dante the Pilgrim c) Meaning: i) Sloth: laziness (7 deadly sins) ii) Win righteousness, wisdom, salvation as opposed to fame iii) Fame: will, ambition, discipline to make a mark for yourself in the world, spiritual?
And now, behold the beast with pointed tail that passes mountains, annulling walls and weapons, behold the one that makes the whole world stink!
a) Speaker: Virgil b) Audience: Dante the Pilgrim c) Meaning: i) Stench in Canto IX ii) Stink emerging now iii) Geryon: growing stench
Lean out a little more, look hard down there so you can get a good look at the face of that repulsive and disheveled t**** scratching herself with s**** fingernails, spreading her legs while squatting up and down: it is Thais the w****, who gave this answer when he asked: 'Am I very worthy of your thanks?': 'Very? Nay, incredibly so!
a) Speaker: Virgil b) Audience: Dante the Pilgrim c) Meaning: i) Thais: prostitute ii) Told him she enjoyed it but actually didn't iii) Lie that enriches her since she's a prostitute
The world will not record their having been there.
a) Speaker: Virgil b) Audience: Dante the Pilgrim c) Meaning: i) They haven't done anything so they can't be remembered
If I have truly understood your words, your soul is burdened with the cowardice which often weighs so heavily on man, it turns him from a noble enterprise like a frightened beast that shies at its own shadow.
a) Speaker: Virgil b) Audience: Dante the Pilgrim c) Meaning: i) Virgil is calling out Dante about being afraid ii) Sounds like Tiresias
The Tao
a) The way: i) Many choices, change through time, path to something, guide, tangible, doing, steps, processes b) The one: i) Singularity, not time dependent, constant, end to the path, intangible, experience to be achieved, being, knowledge without having knowledge c) Destination more important or journey? d) Out of a state of being that doing manifest itself e) Parallel to "mystery" of Holy Trinity and communion bread/wine f) Faith proceeds irrationally à willing suspension of rationalistic g) Church/worship place needed to leave behind rational to embrace irrational
