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object:The Divine Comedy
object:TDC
class:book
author class:Dante Alighieri
subject class:Christianity
subject:Christianity
subject class:Poetry

class:Theological Fiction

gr summary:The Divine Comedy describes Dante's descent into Hell with Virgil as a guide; his ascent of Mount Purgatory and encounter with his dead love, Beatrice; and finally, his arrival in Heaven. Examining questions of faith, desire and enlightenment, the poem is a brilliantly nuanced and moving allegory of human redemption.

Dante Alighieri was born in Florence in 1265 and belonged to a noble but impoverished family. His life was divided by political duties and poetry, the most of famous of which was inspired by his meeting with Bice Portinari, whom he called Beatrice,including La Vita Nuova and The Divine Comedy. He died in Ravenna in 1321.

  1.01 - The Dark Forest. The Hill of Difficulty. The Panther, the Lion, and the Wolf. Virgil.
  1.02 - The Descent. Dante's Protest and Virgil's Appeal. The Intercession of the Three Ladies Benedight.
  1.03 - The Gate of Hell. The Inefficient or Indifferent. Pope Celestine V. The Shores of Acheron. Charon. The
  1.04 - The First Circle, Limbo: Virtuous Pagans and the Unbaptized. The Four Poets, Homer, Horace, Ovid, and Lucan. The Noble Castle of Philosophy.
  1.05 - The Second Circle: The Wanton. Minos. The Infernal Hurricane. Francesca da Rimini.
  1.06 - The Third Circle: The Gluttonous. Cerberus. The Eternal Rain. Ciacco. Florence.
  1.07 - The Fourth Circle: The Avaricious and the Prodigal. Plutus. Fortune and her Wheel. The Fifth Circle: The
  1.08 - Phlegyas. Philippo Argenti. The Gate of the City of Dis.
  1.09 - The Furies and Medusa. The Angel. The City of Dis. The Sixth Circle: Heresiarchs.
  1.10 - Farinata and Cavalcante de' Cavalcanti. Discourse on the Knowledge of the Damned.
  1.11 - The Broken Rocks. Pope Anastasius. General Description of the Inferno and its Divisions.
  1.12 - The Minotaur. The Seventh Circle: The Violent. The River Phlegethon. The Violent against their Neighbours. The Centaurs. Tyrants.
  1.13 - The Wood of Thorns. The Harpies. The Violent against themselves. Suicides. Pier della Vigna. Lano and Jacopo da Sant' Andrea.
  1.14 - The Sand Waste and the Rain of Fire. The Violent against God. Capaneus. The Statue of Time, and the
  1.15 - The Violent against Nature. Brunetto Latini.
  1.16 - Guidoguerra, Aldobrandi, and Rusticucci. Cataract of the River of Blood.
  1.17 - Geryon. The Violent against Art. Usurers. Descent into the Abyss of Malebolge.
  1.18 - The Eighth Circle, Malebolge: The Fraudulent and the Malicious. The First Bolgia: Seducers and Panders. Venedico Caccianimico. Jason. The Second Bolgia: Flatterers. Allessio Interminelli. Thais.
  1.19 - The Third Bolgia: Simoniacs. Pope Nicholas III. Dante's Reproof of corrupt Prelates.
  1.20 - The Fourth Bolgia: Soothsayers. Amphiaraus, Tiresias, Aruns, Manto, Eryphylus, Michael Scott, Guido Bonatti, and Asdente. Virgil reproaches Dante's Pity.
  1.21 - The Fifth Bolgia: Peculators. The Elder of Santa Zita. Malacoda and other Devils.
  1.22 - Ciampolo, Friar Gomita, and Michael Zanche. The Malabranche quarrel.
  1.23 - Escape from the Malabranche. The Sixth Bolgia: Hypocrites. Catalano and Loderingo. Caiaphas.
  1.24 - The Seventh Bolgia - Thieves. Vanni Fucci. Serpents.
  1.25 - Vanni Fucci's Punishment. Agnello Brunelleschi, Buoso degli Abati, Puccio Sciancato, Cianfa de' Donati, and Guercio Cavalcanti.
  1.26 - The Eighth Bolgia: Evil Counsellors. Ulysses and Diomed. Ulysses' Last Voyage.
  1.27 - Guido da Montefeltro. His deception by Pope Boniface VIII.
  1.28 - The Ninth Bolgia: Schismatics. Mahomet and Ali. Pier da Medicina, Curio, Mosca, and Bertr and de Born.
  1.29 - Geri del Bello. The Tenth Bolgia: Alchemists. Griffolino d' Arezzo and Capocchino. The many people and the divers wounds
  1.30 - Other Falsifiers or Forgers. Gianni Schicchi, Myrrha, Adam of Brescia, Potiphar's Wife, and Sinon of Troy.
  1.31 - The Giants, Nimrod, Ephialtes, and Antaeus. Descent to Cocytus.
  1.32 - The Ninth Circle: Traitors. The Frozen Lake of Cocytus. First Division, Caina: Traitors to their Kindred. Camicion de' Pazzi. Second Division, Antenora: Traitors to their Country. Dante questions Bocca degli
  1.33 - Count Ugolino and the Archbishop Ruggieri. The Death of Count Ugolino's Sons.
  1.34 - Fourth Division of the Ninth Circle, the Judecca: Traitors to their Lords and Benefactors. Lucifer, Judas Iscariot, Brutus, and Cassius. The Chasm of Lethe. The Ascent.


  Chapter 1 - The Shores of Purgatory. The Four Stars. Cato of Utica. The Rush.
  Chapter 2 - The Celestial Pilot. Casella. The Departure. Already had the sun the horizon reached
  Chapter 3 - Discourse on the Limits of Reason. The Foot of the Mountain. Those who died in Contumacy of Holy
  Chapter 4 - Farther Ascent. Nature of the Mountain. The Negligent, who postponed Repentance till the last Hour. Belacqua.
  Chapter 5 - Those who died by Violence, but repentant. Buonconte di Monfeltro. La Pia.
  Chapter 6 - Dante's Inquiry on Prayers for the Dead. Sordello. Italy.
  Chapter 7 - The Valley of Flowers. Negligent Princes. After the gracious and glad salutations
  Chapter 8 - The Guardian Angels and the Serpent. Nino di Gallura. The Three Stars. Currado Malaspina. 'Twas now the hour that turneth back desire
  Chapter 9 - Dante's Dream of the Eagle. The Gate of Purgatory and the Angel. Seven P's. The Keys.
  Chapter 10 - The Needle's Eye. The First Circle: The Proud. The Sculptures on the Wall.
  Chapter 11 - The Humble Prayer. Omberto di Santafiore. Oderisi d' Agobbio. Provenzan Salvani.
  Chapter 12 - The Sculptures on the Pavement. Ascent to the Second Circle.
  Chapter 13 - The Second Circle: The Envious. Sapia of Siena. We were upon the summit of the stairs,
  Chapter 14 - Guido del Duca and Renier da Calboli. Cities of the Arno Valley. Denunciation of Stubbornness.
  Chapter 15 - The Third Circle: The Irascible. Dante's Visions. The Smoke.
  Chapter 16 - Marco Lombardo. Lament over the State of the World. Darkness of hell, and of a night deprived
  Chapter 17 - Dante's Dream of Anger. The Fourth Circle: The Slothful. Virgil's Discourse of Love. Remember, Reader, if e'er in the Alps
  Chapter 18 - Virgil further discourses of Love and Free Will. The Abbot of San Zeno.
  Chapter 19 - Dante's Dream of the Siren. The Fifth Circle: The Avaricious and Prodigal. Pope Adrian V.
  Chapter 20 - Hugh Capet. Corruption of the French Crown. Prophecy of the Abduction of Pope Boniface VIII and
  Chapter 21 - The Poet Statius. Praise of Virgil. The natural thirst, that ne'er is satisfied
  Chapter 22 - Statius' Denunciation of Avarice. The Sixth Circle: The Gluttonous. The Mystic Tree.
  Chapter 23 - Forese. Reproof of immodest Florentine Women. The while among the verdant leaves mine eyes
  Chapter 24 - Buonagiunta da Lucca. Pope Martin IV, and others. Inquiry into the State of Poetry. Nor speech the going, nor the going that
  Chapter 25 - Discourse of Statius on Generation. The Seventh Circle: The Wanton.
  Chapter 26 - Sodomites. Guido Guinicelli and Arnaldo Daniello. While on the brink thus one before the other
  Chapter 27 - The Wall of Fire and the Angel of God. Dante's Sleep upon the Stairway, and his Dream of Leah and Rachel.
  Chapter 28 - The River Lethe. Matilda. The Nature of the Terrestrial Paradise.
  Chapter 29 - The Triumph of the Church. Singing like unto an enamoured lady
  Chapter 30 - Virgil's Departure. Beatrice. Dante's Shame. When the Septentrion of the highest heaven
  Chapter 31 - Reproaches of Beatrice and Confession of Dante. The Passage of Lethe. The Seven Virtues. The Griffon.
  Chapter 32 - The Tree of Knowledge. Allegory of the Chariot. So steadfast and attentive were mine eyes
  Chapter 33 - Lament over the State of the Church. Final Reproaches of Beatrice. The River Eunoe.

  Chapter 1 - The Ascent to the First Heaven. The Sphere of Fire. The glory of Him who moveth everything
  Chapter 2 - The First Heaven, the Moon: Spirits who, having taken Sacred Vows, were forced to violate them. The Lunar
  Chapter 3 - Piccarda Donati and the Empress Constance. That Sun, which erst with love my bosom warmed,
  Chapter 4 - Questionings of the Soul and of Broken Vows. Between two viands, equally removed
  Chapter 5 - Discourse of Beatrice on Vows and Compensations. Ascent to the Second Heaven, Mercury: Spirits who for
  Chapter 6 - Justinian. The Roman Eagle. The Empire. Romeo. "After that Constantine the eagle turned
  Chapter 7 - Beatrice's Discourse of the Crucifixion, the Incarnation, the Immortality of the Soul, and the Resurrection of the Body.
  Chapter 8 - Ascent to the Third Heaven, Venus: Lovers. Charles Martel. Discourse on diverse Natures.
  Chapter 9 - Cunizza da Romano, Folco of Marseilles, and Rahab. Neglect of the Holy Land.
  Chapter 10 - The Fourth Heaven, the Sun: Theologians and Fathers of the Church. The First Circle. St. Thomas of Aquinas.
  Chapter 11 - St. Thomas recounts the Life of St. Francis. Lament over the State of the Dominican Order.
  Chapter 12 - St. Buonaventura recounts the Life of St. Dominic. Lament over the State of the Franciscan Order. The Second Circle. Soon as the blessed flame had taken up
  Chapter 13 - Of the Wisdom of Solomon. St. Thomas reproaches Dante's Judgement.
  Chapter 14 - The Third Circle. Discourse on the Resurrection of the Flesh. The Fifth Heaven, Mars: Martyrs and Crusaders
  Chapter 15 - Cacciaguida. Florence in the Olden Time. A will benign, in which reveals itself
  Chapter 16 - Dante's Noble Ancestry. Cacciaguida's Discourse of the Great Florentines.
  Chapter 17 - Cacciaguida's Prophecy of Dante's Banishment. As came to Clymene, to be made certain
  Chapter 18 - The Sixth Heaven, Jupiter: Righteous Kings and Rulers. The Celestial Eagle. Dante's Invectives against
  Chapter 19 - The Eagle discourses of Salvation, Faith, and Virtue. Condemnation of the vile Kings of A.D. 1300.
  Chapter 20 - The Eagle praises the Righteous Kings of old. Benevolence of the Divine Will. When he who all the world illuminates
  Chapter 21 - The Seventh Heaven, Saturn: The Contemplative. The Celestial Stairway. St. Peter Damiano. His Invectives
  Chapter 22 - St. Benedict. His Lamentation over the Corruption of Monks. The Eighth Heaven, the Fixed Stars.
  Chapter 23 - The Triumph of Christ. The Virgin Mary. The Apostles. Gabriel.
  Chapter 24 - The Radiant Wheel. St. Peter examines Dante on Faith. "O company elect to the great supper
  Chapter 25 - The Laurel Crown. St. James examines Dante on Hope. Dante's Blindness.
  Chapter 26 - St. John examines Dante on Charity. Dante's Sight. Adam.
  Chapter 27 - St. Peter's reproof of bad Popes. The Ascent to the Ninth Heaven, the 'Primum Mobile.'
  Chapter 28 - God and the Angelic Hierarchies. After the truth against the present life
  Chapter 29 - Beatrice's Discourse of the Creation of the Angels, and of the Fall of Lucifer. Her Reproof of Foolish and Avaricious Preachers.
  Chapter 30 - The Tenth Heaven, or Empyrean. The River of Light. The Two Courts of Heaven. The White Rose of
  Chapter 31 - The Glory of Paradise. Departure of Beatrice. St. Bernard.
  Chapter 32 - St. Bernard points out the Saints in the White Rose. Absorbed in his delight, that contemplator
  Chapter 33 - Prayer to the Virgin. The Threefold Circle of the Trinity. Mystery of the Divine and Human Nature. "Thou Virgin Mother daughter of thy Son,






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--- OBJECT INSTANCES [0]

TOPICS


AUTH


BOOKS


CHAPTERS

1.01_-_The_Dark_Forest._The_Hill_of_Difficulty._The_Panther,_the_Lion,_and_the_Wolf._Virgil.
1.02_-_The_Descent._Dante's_Protest_and_Virgil's_Appeal._The_Intercession_of_the_Three_Ladies_Benedight.
1.03_-_The_Gate_of_Hell._The_Inefficient_or_Indifferent._Pope_Celestine_V._The_Shores_of_Acheron._Charon._The
1.04_-_The_First_Circle,_Limbo__Virtuous_Pagans_and_the_Unbaptized._The_Four_Poets,_Homer,_Horace,_Ovid,_and_Lucan._The_Noble_Castle_of_Philosophy.
1.05_-_The_Second_Circle__The_Wanton._Minos._The_Infernal_Hurricane._Francesca_da_Rimini.
1.06_-_The_Third_Circle__The_Gluttonous._Cerberus._The_Eternal_Rain._Ciacco._Florence.
1.07_-_The_Fourth_Circle__The_Avaricious_and_the_Prodigal._Plutus._Fortune_and_her_Wheel._The_Fifth_Circle__The_Irascible_and_the_Sullen._Styx.
1.08_-_Phlegyas._Philippo_Argenti._The_Gate_of_the_City_of_Dis.
1.09_-_The_Furies_and_Medusa._The_Angel._The_City_of_Dis._The_Sixth_Circle__Heresiarchs.
1.10_-_Farinata_and_Cavalcante_de'_Cavalcanti._Discourse_on_the_Knowledge_of_the_Damned.
1.11_-_The_Broken_Rocks._Pope_Anastasius._General_Description_of_the_Inferno_and_its_Divisions.
1.12_-_The_Minotaur._The_Seventh_Circle__The_Violent._The_River_Phlegethon._The_Violent_against_their_Neighbours._The_Centaurs._Tyrants.
1.13_-_The_Wood_of_Thorns._The_Harpies._The_Violent_against_themselves._Suicides._Pier_della_Vigna._Lano_and_Jacopo_da_Sant'_Andrea.
1.14_-_The_Sand_Waste_and_the_Rain_of_Fire._The_Violent_against_God._Capaneus._The_Statue_of_Time,_and_the_Four_Infernal_Rivers.
1.15_-_The_Violent_against_Nature._Brunetto_Latini.
1.16_-_Guidoguerra,_Aldobrandi,_and_Rusticucci._Cataract_of_the_River_of_Blood.
1.17_-_Geryon._The_Violent_against_Art._Usurers._Descent_into_the_Abyss_of_Malebolge.
1.18_-_The_Eighth_Circle,_Malebolge__The_Fraudulent_and_the_Malicious._The_First_Bolgia__Seducers_and_Panders._Venedico_Caccianimico._Jason._The_Second_Bolgia__Flatterers._Allessio_Interminelli._Thais.
1.19_-_The_Third_Bolgia__Simoniacs._Pope_Nicholas_III._Dante's_Reproof_of_corrupt_Prelates.
1.20_-_The_Fourth_Bolgia__Soothsayers._Amphiaraus,_Tiresias,_Aruns,_Manto,_Eryphylus,_Michael_Scott,_Guido_Bonatti,_and_Asdente._Virgil_reproaches_Dante's_Pity.
1.21_-_The_Fifth_Bolgia__Peculators._The_Elder_of_Santa_Zita._Malacoda_and_other_Devils.
1.22_-_Ciampolo,_Friar_Gomita,_and_Michael_Zanche._The_Malabranche_quarrel.
1.23_-_Escape_from_the_Malabranche._The_Sixth_Bolgia__Hypocrites._Catalano_and_Loderingo._Caiaphas.
1.24_-_The_Seventh_Bolgia_-_Thieves._Vanni_Fucci._Serpents.
1.25_-_Vanni_Fucci's_Punishment._Agnello_Brunelleschi,_Buoso_degli_Abati,_Puccio_Sciancato,_Cianfa_de'_Donati,_and_Guercio_Cavalcanti.
1.26_-_The_Eighth_Bolgia__Evil_Counsellors._Ulysses_and_Diomed._Ulysses'_Last_Voyage.
1.27_-_Guido_da_Montefeltro._His_deception_by_Pope_Boniface_VIII.
1.28_-_The_Ninth_Bolgia__Schismatics._Mahomet_and_Ali._Pier_da_Medicina,_Curio,_Mosca,_and_Bertr_and_de_Born.
1.29_-_Geri_del_Bello._The_Tenth_Bolgia__Alchemists._Griffolino_d'_Arezzo_and_Capocchino._The_many_people_and_the_divers_wounds
1.30_-_Other_Falsifiers_or_Forgers._Gianni_Schicchi,_Myrrha,_Adam_of_Brescia,_Potiphar's_Wife,_and_Sinon_of_Troy.
1.31_-_The_Giants,_Nimrod,_Ephialtes,_and_Antaeus._Descent_to_Cocytus.
1.32_-_The_Ninth_Circle__Traitors._The_Frozen_Lake_of_Cocytus._First_Division,_Caina__Traitors_to_their_Kindred._Camicion_de'_Pazzi._Second_Division,_Antenora__Traitors_to_their_Country._Dante_questions_Bocca_degli
1.33_-_Count_Ugolino_and_the_Archbishop_Ruggieri._The_Death_of_Count_Ugolino's_Sons.
1.34_-_Fourth_Division_of_the_Ninth_Circle,_the_Judecca__Traitors_to_their_Lords_and_Benefactors._Lucifer,_Judas_Iscariot,_Brutus,_and_Cassius._The_Chasm_of_Lethe._The_Ascent.

--- PRIMARY CLASS


book
Theological_Fiction

--- SEE ALSO


--- SIMILAR TITLES [0]


The Divine Comedy
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--- DICTIONARIES (in Dictionaries, in Quotes, in Chapters)



--- QUOTES [4 / 4 - 34 / 34] (in Dictionaries, in Quotes, in Chapters)



KEYS (10k)

   2 Dante Alighieri
   1 Mortimer J Adler
   1 Joseph Campbell

NEW FULL DB (2.4M)

   5 Joseph Campbell

   4 Dante Alighieri
   2 Erik Larson


1:Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. ~ Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy Inferno,
2:The more a thing is perfect, the more it feels pleasure and pain. ~ Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy ,
3:[Comedies], in the ancient world, were regarded as of a higher rank than tragedy, of a deeper truth, of a more difficult realization, of a sounder structure, and of a revelation more complete. The happy ending of the fairy tale, the myth, and the divine comedy of the soul, is to be read, not as a contradiction, but as a transcendence of the universal tragedy of man.... Tragedy is the shattering of the forms and of our attachments to the forms; comedy, the wild and careless, inexhaustible joy of life invincible. ~ Joseph Campbell,
4:Reading list (1972 edition)[edit]1. Homer - Iliad, Odyssey2. The Old Testament3. Aeschylus - Tragedies4. Sophocles - Tragedies5. Herodotus - Histories6. Euripides - Tragedies7. Thucydides - History of the Peloponnesian War8. Hippocrates - Medical Writings9. Aristophanes - Comedies10. Plato - Dialogues11. Aristotle - Works12. Epicurus - Letter to Herodotus; Letter to Menoecus13. Euclid - Elements14.Archimedes - Works15. Apollonius of Perga - Conic Sections16. Cicero - Works17. Lucretius - On the Nature of Things18. Virgil - Works19. Horace - Works20. Livy - History of Rome21. Ovid - Works22. Plutarch - Parallel Lives; Moralia23. Tacitus - Histories; Annals; Agricola Germania24. Nicomachus of Gerasa - Introduction to Arithmetic25. Epictetus - Discourses; Encheiridion26. Ptolemy - Almagest27. Lucian - Works28. Marcus Aurelius - Meditations29. Galen - On the Natural Faculties30. The New Testament31. Plotinus - The Enneads32. St. Augustine - On the Teacher; Confessions; City of God; On Christian Doctrine33. The Song of Roland34. The Nibelungenlied35. The Saga of Burnt Njal36. St. Thomas Aquinas - Summa Theologica37. Dante Alighieri - The Divine Comedy;The New Life; On Monarchy38. Geoffrey Chaucer - Troilus and Criseyde; The Canterbury Tales39. Leonardo da Vinci - Notebooks40. Niccolò Machiavelli - The Prince; Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy41. Desiderius Erasmus - The Praise of Folly42. Nicolaus Copernicus - On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres43. Thomas More - Utopia44. Martin Luther - Table Talk; Three Treatises45. François Rabelais - Gargantua and Pantagruel46. John Calvin - Institutes of the Christian Religion47. Michel de Montaigne - Essays48. William Gilbert - On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies49. Miguel de Cervantes - Don Quixote50. Edmund Spenser - Prothalamion; The Faerie Queene51. Francis Bacon - Essays; Advancement of Learning; Novum Organum, New Atlantis52. William Shakespeare - Poetry and Plays53. Galileo Galilei - Starry Messenger; Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences54. Johannes Kepler - Epitome of Copernican Astronomy; Concerning the Harmonies of the World55. William Harvey - On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals; On the Circulation of the Blood; On the Generation of Animals56. Thomas Hobbes - Leviathan57. René Descartes - Rules for the Direction of the Mind; Discourse on the Method; Geometry; Meditations on First Philosophy58. John Milton - Works59. Molière - Comedies60. Blaise Pascal - The Provincial Letters; Pensees; Scientific Treatises61. Christiaan Huygens - Treatise on Light62. Benedict de Spinoza - Ethics63. John Locke - Letter Concerning Toleration; Of Civil Government; Essay Concerning Human Understanding;Thoughts Concerning Education64. Jean Baptiste Racine - Tragedies65. Isaac Newton - Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy; Optics66. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz - Discourse on Metaphysics; New Essays Concerning Human Understanding;Monadology67.Daniel Defoe - Robinson Crusoe68. Jonathan Swift - A Tale of a Tub; Journal to Stella; Gulliver's Travels; A Modest Proposal69. William Congreve - The Way of the World70. George Berkeley - Principles of Human Knowledge71. Alexander Pope - Essay on Criticism; Rape of the Lock; Essay on Man72. Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu - Persian Letters; Spirit of Laws73. Voltaire - Letters on the English; Candide; Philosophical Dictionary74. Henry Fielding - Joseph Andrews; Tom Jones75. Samuel Johnson - The Vanity of Human Wishes; Dictionary; Rasselas; The Lives of the Poets ~ Mortimer J Adler,

*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***

1:It's the Divine Comedy, not the Divine Tragedy. ~ Cat Bauer
2:Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.
   ~ Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, Inferno, Canto 3, Verse 9,
3:The more a thing is perfect, the more it feels pleasure and pain.
   ~ Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy,
4:If Dante was writing The Divine Comedy in 2013, he might very well have set part of it in the suburbs. ~ Joshua Mohr
5:In the middle of the journey of our life I came to myself in a dark wood where the straight way was lost. —DANTE ALIGHIERI, The Divine Comedy: Canto I ~ Erik Larson
6:Midway upon the journey of our life I found myself within a forest dark, For the straightforward pathway had been lost.” DANTE ALIGHIERI, The Divine Comedy ~ J A Konrath
7:A great model for this is the way that Dante calls on Virgil at the beginning of 'The Inferno,' 'The Divine Comedy,' to help guide him through the underworld. ~ Edward Hirsch
8:...but which of us has read every line of the Iliad, or the Aeneid, or The Divine Comedy, or Paradise Lost? Only men of epic stomach can digest these epic tales. ~ Will Durant
9:Limbo. It’s not Heaven, and it’s not Hell. It’s the in-between.’ (Edward speaking about reading the Divine Comedy.
Luke: ‘This was, I realised, my new address. ~ Jodi Picoult
10:The happy ending of the fairy tale, the myth, and the divine comedy of the soul, is to be read, not as a contradiction, but as a transcendence of the universal tragedy of man. ~ Joseph Campbell
11:In the middle of the journey of our life I came to myself in a dark wood where the straight way was lost. —DANTE ALIGHIERI,
The Divine Comedy: Canto I
(Carlyle-Wicksteed Translation, 1932) ~ Erik Larson
12:HELEN HAYES: “Which part of The Divine Comedy do you like the most, Tiziano?”
TIZIANO CONTI: “The fifth Canto.”
HELEN HAYES: “The Hell, huh?”
TIZIANO CONTI: “L’inferno depicts the truth. ~ Merce Cardus
13:When the Italian poet Dante described the center of hell in his poem The Divine Comedy, he got it wrong. The epicenter of Hades isn't Satan trapped in a block of ice munching on Judas Iscariot like an everlasting carrot stick. The center of hell is a restaurant on Mother's Day. ~ Steve Dublanica
14:This was part of the divine comedy-God's sense of humor undergirding the inner workings of the universe. Sinners participated in the redemption of other sinners; faith, hope and charity triumphed over disbelief, despair, and hatred, while the One who called all creatures to Himself watched and smiled. ~ Sylvain Reynard
15:The happy ending of the fairy tale, the myth, and the divine comedy of the soul is to be read, not as a contradiction, but as a transcendence of the universal tragedy of man. The objective world remains what it was, but, because of a shift of emphasis within the subject, is beheld as though transformed. ~ Joseph Campbell
16:The most recent of the iamides, heavily advertised - authentium. Creates synthetic recollections of things that never happened. A few grams of dantine, for instance, and a man goes around with a deep conviction that he has written The Divine Comedy. Why anyone would want that is another matter and quite beyond me. ~ Stanis aw Lem
17:The last line of the Divine Comedy, in which Dante is faced with the vision of God Himself, is a sentiment that is still easily understandable by anyone familiar with so-called modern Italian. Dante writes that God is not merely a blinding vision of glorious light, but that He is, most of all, l'amour che move il sole e l'altre stelle...'The love that moves the sun and the other stars. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert
18:[Comedies], in the ancient world, were regarded as of a higher rank than tragedy, of a deeper truth, of a more difficult realization, of a sounder structure, and of a revelation more complete. The happy ending of the fairy tale, the myth, and the divine comedy of the soul, is to be read, not as a contradiction, but as a transcendence of the universal tragedy of man. ...Tragedy is the shattering of the forms and of our attachment to the forms... ~ Joseph Campbell
19:[Comedies], in the ancient world, were regarded as of a higher rank than tragedy, of a deeper truth, of a more difficult realization, of a sounder structure, and of a revelation more complete. The happy ending of the fairy tale, the myth, and the divine comedy of the soul, is to be read, not as a contradiction, but as a transcendence of the universal tragedy of man.... Tragedy is the shattering of the forms and of our attachments to the forms; comedy, the wild and careless, inexhaustible joy of life invincible. ~ Joseph Campbell
20:[Comedies], in the ancient world, were regarded as of a higher rank than tragedy, of a deeper truth, of a more difficult realization, of a sounder structure, and of a revelation more complete. The happy ending of the fairy tale, the myth, and the divine comedy of the soul, is to be read, not as a contradiction, but as a transcendence of the universal tragedy of man.... Tragedy is the shattering of the forms and of our attachments to the forms; comedy, the wild and careless, inexhaustible joy of life invincible. ~ Joseph Campbell,
21:The Divine Comedy is a political poem and when you say poetry is not about - he's always quoted out of context, that "poetry makes nothing happen," that doesn't mean you shrug your shoulders and don't try to make anything happen. And Dante felt that poetry was engaged, there was a point of view; it's not my point of view, it's orthodox medieval Christianity, and I have my troubles with that. He didn't feel that you could just rule out so important a section of life - we care about these things, and it's out of caring about them that we write poetry. ~ W S Merwin
22:The happy ending of the fairy tale, the myth, and the divine comedy of the soul, is to be read, not as a contradiction, but as a transcendence of the universal tragedy of man. The objective world remains what it was, but, because of a shift of emphasis within the subject, is beheld as though transformed. Where formerly life and death contended, now enduring being is made manifest-as indifferent to the accidents of time as water boiling in a pot is to the destiny of a bubble, or as the cosmos to the appearance and disappearance of a galaxy of stars. ~ Joseph Campbell
23:author class:Dante Alighieri
The glory of Him who moves all things rays forth through all the universe, and is reflected from each thing in proportion to its worth. I have been in that Heaven of His most light, and what I saw, those who descend from there lack both the knowledge and the power to write. For as our intellect draws near its goal it opens to such depths of understanding as memory cannot plumb within the soul. [2327.jpg] -- from The Divine Comedy: The Inferno, the Purgatorio, and the Paradiso, / Translated by John Ciardi

~ glory of Him who moves all things rays forth (from The Paradiso, Canto I)

24:In the mid–path of my life, I woke to find myself in a dark wood,' writes Dante, in The Divine Comedy, beginning a quest that will lead to transformation and redemption. A journey through the dark of the woods is a motif common to fairy tales: young heroes set off through the perilous forest in order to reach their destiny, or they find themselves abandoned there, cast off and left for dead. The road is long and treacherous, prowled by wolves, ghosts, and wizards — but helpers also appear along the way, good fairies and animal guides, often cloaked in unlikely disguises. The hero's task is to tell friend from foe, and to keep walking steadily onward. ~ Terri Windling
25:If we are going to create a financial system that works for all Americans, we have got to stop financial institutions from ripping off the American people by charging sky-high interest rates and outrageous fees.
In my view, it is unacceptable that Americans are paying a $4 or $5 fee each time they go to the ATM.
It is unacceptable that millions of Americans are paying credit card interest rates of 20 or 30 percent.
The Bible has a term for this practice. It’s called usury. And in The Divine Comedy, Dante reserved a special place in the Seventh Circle of Hell for those who charged people usurious interest rates.
Today, we don’t need the hellfire and the pitch forks, we don’t need the rivers of boiling blood, but we do need a national usury law. ~ Bernie Sanders
26:All Being within this order, by the laws of its own nature is impelled to find its proper station round its Primal Cause. Thus every nature moves across the tide of the great sea of being to its own port, each with its given instinct as its guide. This instinct draws the fire about the Moon. It is the mover in the mortal heart. It draws the earth together and makes it one. Not only the brute creatures, but all those possessed of intellect and love, this instinct drives to their mark as a bow shoots forth its arrows. The Providence that makes all things hunger here satisfies forever with its light the heaven within which whirls the fastest sphere. [2327.jpg] -- from The Divine Comedy: The Inferno, the Purgatorio, and the Paradiso,
/ Translated by John Ciardi

~ Dante Alighieri, All Being within this order, by the laws (from The Paradiso, Canto I)

27:And as a ray descending from the sky gives rise to another, which climbs back again, as a pilgrim yearns for home; so through my eye her action, like a ray into my mind, gave rise to mine: I stared into the Sun so hard that here it would have left me blind; but much is granted to our senses there, in that garden made to be man's proper place, that is not granted us when we are here. I had to look away soon, and yet not so soon but what I saw him spark and blaze like new-tapped iron when it pours white-hot. And suddenly, as it appeared to me, day was added to day, as if He who can had added a new Sun to Heaven's glory. Beatrice stared at the eternal spheres entranced, unmoving; and I looked away from the Sun's height to fix my eyes on hers. And as I looked, I felt begin within me what Glaucus felt eating the herb that made him a god among the others in the sea. How speak trans-human change to human sense? Let the example speak until God's grace grants the pure spirit the experience. [2327.jpg] -- from The Divine Comedy: The Inferno, the Purgatorio, and the Paradiso,
/ Translated by John Ciardi

~ Dante Alighieri, And as a ray descending from the sky (from The Paradiso, Canto I)

28:Though I have always made it my practice to be pleasant to everybody, I have not once actually experienced friendship. I have only the most painful recollections of my various acquaintances with the exception of such companions in pleasure as Horiki. I have frantically played the clown in order to disentangle myself from these painful relationships, only to wear myself out as a result. Even now it comes as a shock if by chance I notice in the street a face resembling someone I know however slightly, and I am at once seized by a shivering violent enough to make me dizzy. I know that I am liked by other people, but I seem to be deficient in the faculty to love others. (I should add that I have very strong doubts as to whether even human beings really possess this faculty.) It was hardly to be expected that someone like myself could ever develop any close friends—besides, I lacked even the ability to pay visits. The front door of another person’s house terrified me more than the gate of Inferno in the Divine Comedy, and I am not exaggerating when I say that I really felt I could detect within the door the presence of a horrible dragon-like monster writhing there with a dank, raw smell. ~ Osamu Dazai
29:Dante was standing near the Ponte Vecchio, a bridge that crosses the Arno River in Florence. It was just before 1300… Dante saw Beatrice standing on the bridge. He was a young man, she even younger, and that vision contained the whole of eternity for him.

Dante did not speak to her and saw her very little. And then Beatrice died, carried off by plague. Dante was stricken with the loss of his vision. She was the connection between his soul and Heaven itself, and from it the Divine Comedy was born.

Six hundred fifty years later, during World War II, the Americans were chasing the German army up the Italian peninsula. The Germans were blowing up everything of aid to the progression of the American army, including the bridges across the Arno River. But no one wanted to blow up the Ponte Vecchio, because Beatrice had stood on it and Dante had written about her. So the German commandant made radio contact with the Americans and, in plain language, said they would leave the Ponte Vecchio intact if the Americans would promise not to use it. The promise was held. The bridge was not blown up, and not one American soldier or piece of equipment went across it. We’re such hard bitten people that we need hard bitten proof of things, and this is the most hard bitten fact I know to present to you. The bridge was spared, in a modern, ruthless war, because Beatrice had stood upon it. ~ Robert A Johnson
30:One way to respond to these "sins" is found in The Divine Comedy, in which Dante is ultimately led to the vision of God by his guide, Beatrice. In first traversing through the Inferno, Dante reveals that the inhabitants of the Inferno are not there because they are sinners. Sinners also make up the populations of Purgatory and Paradise. Rather, those souls are in the Inferno because they are sinners who refused to admit to their own sins. They denied their faults and projected them onto others, blaming everyone around them. The lesson we learn is that only when our sins become acknowledged and deeply felt can they be integrated. Deep reflection and prayer are an important part of the integration of the [inner] shadow. Once we admit to our shadow with honesty and an open heart, the shadow has the potential to become transformed.

Once the shadow is integrated, the Seven Deadly Sins can become aspects of a healthy self. Greed and lust become passion, imbuing our journey with heart and fire. Anger transforms into righteousness that acts compassionately for own and other's behalf. The healthy side to gluttony is self-care, something many women have to learn. Envy, once integrated, becomes an appreciation of others. And in a society where doing is valued over being, sloth turns into the ability to be still. Pride enables us to feel good about our accomplishments and grow in confidence and strength. But the path to authenticity is to admit these qualities are within us. It is shadow work that enables holy women to make their hidden struggles into levers with which to free themselves. ~ Helen LaKelly Hunt
31:The great self-limitation practiced by man for ten centuries yielded, between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries, the whole flower of the so-called "Renaissance." The root, usually, does not resemble the fruit in appearance, but there is an undeniable connection between the root's strength and juiciness and the beauty and taste of the fruit. The Middle Ages, it seems, have nothing in common with the Renaissance and are opposite to it in every way; nonetheless, all the abundance and ebullience of human energies during the Renaissance were based not at all on the supposedly "renascent" classical world, nor on the imitated Plato and Virgil, nor on manuscripts torn from the basements of old monasteries, but precisely on those monasteries, on those stern Franciscians and cruel Dominicans, on Saints Bonaventure, Anselm of Canterbury, and Bernard of Clairvaux. The Middle Ages were a great repository of human energies: in the medieval man's asceticism, self-abnegation, and contempt for his own beauty, his own energies, and his own mind, these energies, this heart, and this mind were stored up until the right time. The Renaissance was the epoch of the discovery of this trove: the thin layer of soil covering it was suddenly thrown aside, and to the amazement of following centuries dazzling, incalculable treasures glittered there; yesterday's pauper and wretched beggar, who only knew how to stand on crossroads and bellow psalms in an inharmonious voice, suddenly started to bloom with poetry, strength, beauty, and intelligence. Whence came all this? From the ancient world, which had exhausted its vital powers? From moldy parchments? But did Plato really write his dialogues with the same keen enjoyment with which Marsilio Ficino annotated them? And did the Romans, when reading the Greeks, really experience the same emotions as Petrarch, when, for ignorance of Greek, he could only move his precious manuscripts from place to place, kiss them now and then, and gaze sadly at their incomprehensible text? All these manuscripts, in convenient and accurate editions, lie before us too: why don't they lead us to a "renascence" among us? Why didn't the Greeks bring about a "renascence" in Rome? And why didn't Greco-Roman literature produce anything similar to the Italian Renaissance in Gaul and Africa from the second to the fourth century? The secret of the Renaissance of the fourteenth-fifteenth centuries does not lie in ancient literature: this literature was only the spade that threw the soil off the treasures buried underneath; the secret lies in the treasures themselves; in the fact that between the fourth and fourteenth centuries, under the influence of the strict ascetic ideal of mortifying the flesh and restraining the impulses of his spirit, man only stored up his energies and expended nothing. During this great thousand-year silence his soul matured for The Divine Comedy; during this forced closing of eyes to the world - an interesting, albeit sinful world-Galileo was maturing, Copernicus, and the school of careful experimentation founded by Bacon; during the struggle with the Moors the talents of Velasquez and Murillo were forged; and in the prayers of the thousand years leading up to the sixteenth century the Madonna images of that century were drawn, images to which we are able to pray but which no one is able to imitate.

("On Symbolists And Decadents") ~ Vasily Rozanov
32:Reading list (1972 edition)[edit]
1. Homer – Iliad, Odyssey
2. The Old Testament
3. Aeschylus – Tragedies
4. Sophocles – Tragedies
5. Herodotus – Histories
6. Euripides – Tragedies
7. Thucydides – History of the Peloponnesian War
8. Hippocrates – Medical Writings
9. Aristophanes – Comedies
10. Plato – Dialogues
11. Aristotle – Works
12. Epicurus – Letter to Herodotus; Letter to Menoecus
13. Euclid – Elements
14. Archimedes – Works
15. Apollonius of Perga – Conic Sections
16. Cicero – Works
17. Lucretius – On the Nature of Things
18. Virgil – Works
19. Horace – Works
20. Livy – History of Rome
21. Ovid – Works
22. Plutarch – Parallel Lives; Moralia
23. Tacitus – Histories; Annals; Agricola Germania
24. Nicomachus of Gerasa – Introduction to Arithmetic
25. Epictetus – Discourses; Encheiridion
26. Ptolemy – Almagest
27. Lucian – Works
28. Marcus Aurelius – Meditations
29. Galen – On the Natural Faculties
30. The New Testament
31. Plotinus – The Enneads
32. St. Augustine – On the Teacher; Confessions; City of God; On Christian Doctrine
33. The Song of Roland
34. The Nibelungenlied
35. The Saga of Burnt Njál
36. St. Thomas Aquinas – Summa Theologica
37. Dante Alighieri – The Divine Comedy;The New Life; On Monarchy
38. Geoffrey Chaucer – Troilus and Criseyde; The Canterbury Tales
39. Leonardo da Vinci – Notebooks
40. Niccolò Machiavelli – The Prince; Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy
41. Desiderius Erasmus – The Praise of Folly
42. Nicolaus Copernicus – On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres
43. Thomas More – Utopia
44. Martin Luther – Table Talk; Three Treatises
45. François Rabelais – Gargantua and Pantagruel
46. John Calvin – Institutes of the Christian Religion
47. Michel de Montaigne – Essays
48. William Gilbert – On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies
49. Miguel de Cervantes – Don Quixote
50. Edmund Spenser – Prothalamion; The Faerie Queene
51. Francis Bacon – Essays; Advancement of Learning; Novum Organum, New Atlantis
52. William Shakespeare – Poetry and Plays
53. Galileo Galilei – Starry Messenger; Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences
54. Johannes Kepler – Epitome of Copernican Astronomy; Concerning the Harmonies of the World
55. William Harvey – On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals; On the Circulation of the Blood; On the Generation of Animals
56. Thomas Hobbes – Leviathan
57. René Descartes – Rules for the Direction of the Mind; Discourse on the Method; Geometry; Meditations on First Philosophy
58. John Milton – Works
59. Molière – Comedies
60. Blaise Pascal – The Provincial Letters; Pensees; Scientific Treatises
61. Christiaan Huygens – Treatise on Light
62. Benedict de Spinoza – Ethics
63. John Locke – Letter Concerning Toleration; Of Civil Government; Essay Concerning Human Understanding;Thoughts Concerning Education
64. Jean Baptiste Racine – Tragedies
65. Isaac Newton – Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy; Optics
66. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz – Discourse on Metaphysics; New Essays Concerning Human Understanding;Monadology
67. Daniel Defoe – Robinson Crusoe
68. Jonathan Swift – A Tale of a Tub; Journal to Stella; Gulliver's Travels; A Modest Proposal
69. William Congreve – The Way of the World
70. George Berkeley – Principles of Human Knowledge
71. Alexander Pope – Essay on Criticism; Rape of the Lock; Essay on Man
72. Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu – Persian Letters; Spirit of Laws
73. Voltaire – Letters on the English; Candide; Philosophical Dictionary
74. Henry Fielding – Joseph Andrews; Tom Jones
75. Samuel Johnson – The Vanity of Human Wishes; Dictionary; Rasselas; The Lives of the Poets ~ Mortimer J Adler
33:Reading list (1972 edition)[edit]
1. Homer - Iliad, Odyssey
2. The Old Testament
3. Aeschylus - Tragedies
4. Sophocles - Tragedies
5. Herodotus - Histories
6. Euripides - Tragedies
7. Thucydides - History of the Peloponnesian War
8. Hippocrates - Medical Writings
9. Aristophanes - Comedies
10. Plato - Dialogues
11. Aristotle - Works
12. Epicurus - Letter to Herodotus; Letter to Menoecus
13. Euclid - Elements
14.Archimedes - Works
15. Apollonius of Perga - Conic Sections
16. Cicero - Works
17. Lucretius - On the Nature of Things
18. Virgil - Works
19. Horace - Works
20. Livy - History of Rome
21. Ovid - Works
22. Plutarch - Parallel Lives; Moralia
23. Tacitus - Histories; Annals; Agricola Germania
24. Nicomachus of Gerasa - Introduction to Arithmetic
25. Epictetus - Discourses; Encheiridion
26. Ptolemy - Almagest
27. Lucian - Works
28. Marcus Aurelius - Meditations
29. Galen - On the Natural Faculties
30. The New Testament
31. Plotinus - The Enneads
32. St. Augustine - On the Teacher; Confessions; City of God; On Christian Doctrine
33. The Song of Roland
34. The Nibelungenlied
35. The Saga of Burnt Njal
36. St. Thomas Aquinas - Summa Theologica
37. Dante Alighieri - The Divine Comedy;The New Life; On Monarchy
38. Geoffrey Chaucer - Troilus and Criseyde; The Canterbury Tales
39. Leonardo da Vinci - Notebooks
40. Niccolò Machiavelli - The Prince; Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy
41. Desiderius Erasmus - The Praise of Folly
42. Nicolaus Copernicus - On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres
43. Thomas More - Utopia
44. Martin Luther - Table Talk; Three Treatises
45. François Rabelais - Gargantua and Pantagruel
46. John Calvin - Institutes of the Christian Religion
47. Michel de Montaigne - Essays
48. William Gilbert - On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies
49. Miguel de Cervantes - Don Quixote
50. Edmund Spenser - Prothalamion; The Faerie Queene
51. Francis Bacon - Essays; Advancement of Learning; Novum Organum, New Atlantis
52. William Shakespeare - Poetry and Plays
53. Galileo Galilei - Starry Messenger; Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences
54. Johannes Kepler - Epitome of Copernican Astronomy; Concerning the Harmonies of the World
55. William Harvey - On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals; On the Circulation of the Blood; On the Generation of Animals
56. Thomas Hobbes - Leviathan
57. René Descartes - Rules for the Direction of the Mind; Discourse on the Method; Geometry; Meditations on First Philosophy
58. John Milton - Works
59. Molière - Comedies
60. Blaise Pascal - The Provincial Letters; Pensees; Scientific Treatises
61. Christiaan Huygens - Treatise on Light
62. Benedict de Spinoza - Ethics
63. John Locke - Letter Concerning Toleration; Of Civil Government; Essay Concerning Human Understanding;Thoughts Concerning Education
64. Jean Baptiste Racine - Tragedies
65. Isaac Newton - Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy; Optics
66. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz - Discourse on Metaphysics; New Essays Concerning Human Understanding;Monadology
67.Daniel Defoe - Robinson Crusoe
68. Jonathan Swift - A Tale of a Tub; Journal to Stella; Gulliver's Travels; A Modest Proposal
69. William Congreve - The Way of the World
70. George Berkeley - Principles of Human Knowledge
71. Alexander Pope - Essay on Criticism; Rape of the Lock; Essay on Man
72. Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu - Persian Letters; Spirit of Laws
73. Voltaire - Letters on the English; Candide; Philosophical Dictionary
74. Henry Fielding - Joseph Andrews; Tom Jones
75. Samuel Johnson - The Vanity of Human Wishes; Dictionary; Rasselas; The Lives of the Poets
   ~ Mortimer J Adler,
34:Swift as a spirit hastening to his task
Of glory & of good, the Sun sprang forth
Rejoicing in his splendour, & the mask
Of darkness fell from the awakened Earth.
The smokeless altars of the mountain snows
Flamed above crimson clouds, & at the birth
Of light, the Ocean's orison arose
To which the birds tempered their matin lay,
All flowers in field or forest which unclose
Their trembling eyelids to the kiss of day,
Swinging their censers in the element,
With orient incense lit by the new ray
Burned slow & inconsumably, & sent
Their odorous sighs up to the smiling air,
And in succession due, did Continent,
Isle, Ocean, & all things that in them wear
The form & character of mortal mould
Rise as the Sun their father rose, to bear
Their portion of the toil which he of old
Took as his own & then imposed on them;
But I, whom thoughts which must remain untold
Had kept as wakeful as the stars that gem
The cone of night, now they were laid asleep,
Stretched my faint limbs beneath the hoary stem
Which an old chestnut flung athwart the steep
Of a green Apennine: before me fled
The night; behind me rose the day; the Deep
Was at my feet, & Heaven above my head
When a strange trance over my fancy grew
Which was not slumber, for the shade it spread
Was so transparent that the scene came through
As clear as when a veil of light is drawn
O'er evening hills they glimmer; and I knew
That I had felt the freshness of that dawn,
Bathed in the same cold dew my brow & hair
And sate as thus upon that slope of lawn
Under the self same bough, & heard as there
The birds, the fountains & the Ocean hold
Sweet talk in music through the enamoured air.
And then a Vision on my brain was rolled.

As in that trance of wondrous thought I lay
This was the tenour of my waking dream.
Methought I sate beside a public way
Thick strewn with summer dust, & a great stream
Of people there was hurrying to & fro
Numerous as gnats upon the evening gleam,
All hastening onward, yet none seemed to know
Whither he went, or whence he came, or why
He made one of the multitude, yet so
Was borne amid the crowd as through the sky
One of the million leaves of summer's bier.
Old age & youth, manhood & infancy,
Mixed in one mighty torrent did appear,
Some flying from the thing they feared & some
Seeking the object of another's fear,
And others as with steps towards the tomb
Pored on the trodden worms that crawled beneath,
And others mournfully within the gloom
Of their own shadow walked, and called it death
  And some fled from it as it were a ghost,
Half fainting in the affliction of vain breath.
But more with motions which each other crost
Pursued or shunned the shadows the clouds threw
Or birds within the noonday ether lost,
Upon that path where flowers never grew;
And weary with vain toil & faint for thirst
Heard not the fountains whose melodious dew
Out of their mossy cells forever burst
Nor felt the breeze which from the forest told
Of grassy paths, & wood lawns interspersed
With overarching elms & caverns cold,
And violet banks where sweet dreams brood, but they
Pursued their serious folly as of old.
And as I gazed methought that in the way
The throng grew wilder, as the woods of June
When the South wind shakes the extinguished day.
And a cold glare, intenser than the noon
But icy cold, obscured with [[blank]] light
The Sun as he the stars. Like the young moon
When on the sunlit limits of the night
Her white shell trembles amid crimson air
And whilst the sleeping tempest gathers might
Doth, as a herald of its coming, bear
The ghost of her dead Mother, whose dim form
Bends in dark ether from her infant's chair,
So came a chariot on the silent storm
Of its own rushing splendour, and a Shape
So sate within as one whom years deform
Beneath a dusky hood & double cape
Crouching within the shadow of a tomb,
And o'er what seemed the head, a cloud like crape,
Was bent a dun & faint etherial gloom
Tempering the light; upon the chariot's beam
A Janus-visaged Shadow did assume
The guidance of that wonder-winged team.
The Shapes which drew it in thick lightnings
Were lost: I heard alone on the air's soft stream
The music of their ever moving wings.
All the four faces of that charioteer
Had their eyes banded . . . little profit brings
Speed in the van & blindness in the rear,
Nor then avail the beams that quench the Sun
Or that his banded eyes could pierce the sphere
Of all that is, has been, or will be done.
So ill was the car guided, but it past
With solemn speed majestically on . . .
The crowd gave way, & I arose aghast,
Or seemed to rise, so mighty was the trance,
And saw like clouds upon the thunder blast
The million with fierce song and maniac dance
Raging around; such seemed the jubilee
As when to greet some conqueror's advance
Imperial Rome poured forth her living sea
From senatehouse & prison & theatre
When Freedom left those who upon the free
Had bound a yoke which soon they stooped to bear.
Nor wanted here the true similitude
Of a triumphal pageant, for where'er
The chariot rolled a captive multitude
Was driven; althose who had grown old in power
Or misery,all who have their age subdued,
By action or by suffering, and whose hour
Was drained to its last sand in weal or woe,
So that the trunk survived both fruit & flower;
All those whose fame or infamy must grow
Till the great winter lay the form & name
Of their own earth with them forever low,
All but the sacred few who could not tame
Their spirits to the Conqueror, but as soon
As they had touched the world with living flame
Fled back like eagles to their native noon,
Of those who put aside the diadem
Of earthly thrones or gems, till the last one
Were there;for they of Athens & Jerusalem
Were neither mid the mighty captives seen
Nor mid the ribald crowd that followed them
Or fled before . . Now swift, fierce & obscene
The wild dance maddens in the van, & those
Who lead it, fleet as shadows on the green,
Outspeed the chariot & without repose
Mix with each other in tempestuous measure
To savage music. Wilder as it grows,
They, tortured by the agonizing pleasure,
Convulsed & on the rapid whirlwinds spun
Of that fierce spirit, whose unholy leisure
Was soothed by mischief since the world begun,
Throw back their heads & loose their streaming hair,
And in their dance round her who dims the Sun
Maidens & youths fling their wild arms in air
As their feet twinkle; they recede, and now
Bending within each other's atmosphere
Kindle invisibly; and as they glow
Like moths by light attracted & repelled,
Oft to new bright destruction come & go.
Till like two clouds into one vale impelled
That shake the mountains when their lightnings mingle
And die in rain,the fiery band which held
Their natures, snaps . . . ere the shock cease to tingle
One falls and then another in the path
Senseless, nor is the desolation single,
Yet ere I can say where the chariot hath
Past over them; nor other trace I find
But as of foam after the Ocean's wrath
Is spent upon the desert shore.Behind,
Old men, and women foully disarrayed
Shake their grey hair in the insulting wind,
Limp in the dance & strain, with limbs decayed,
Seeking to reach the light which leaves them still
Farther behind & deeper in the shade.
But not the less with impotence of will
They wheel, though ghastly shadows interpose
Round them & round each other, and fulfill
Their work and to the dust whence they arose
Sink & corruption veils them as they lie
And frost in these performs what fire in those.
Struck to the heart by this sad pageantry,
Half to myself I said, "And what is this?
Whose shape is that within the car? & why"-
I would have added"is all here amiss?"
But a voice answered . . "Life" . . . I turned & knew
(O Heaven have mercy on such wretchedness!)
That what I thought was an old root which grew
To strange distortion out of the hill side
Was indeed one of that deluded crew,
And that the grass which methought hung so wide
And white, was but his thin discoloured hair,
And that the holes it vainly sought to hide
Were or had been eyes."lf thou canst forbear
To join the dance, which I had well forborne,"
Said the grim Feature, of my thought aware,
"I will now tell that which to this deep scorn
Led me & my companions, and relate
The progress of the pageant since the morn;
"If thirst of knowledge doth not thus abate,
Follow it even to the night, but I
Am weary" . . . Then like one who with the weight
Of his own words is staggered, wearily
He paused, and ere he could resume, I cried,
"First who art thou?" . . . "Before thy memory
"I feared, loved, hated, suffered, did, & died,
And if the spark with which Heaven lit my spirit
Earth had with purer nutriment supplied
"Corruption would not now thus much inherit
Of what was once Rousseaunor this disguise
Stained that within which still disdains to wear it.
"If I have been extinguished, yet there rise
A thousand beacons from the spark I bore."
"And who are those chained to the car?" "The Wise,
"The great, the unforgotten: they who wore
Mitres & helms & crowns, or wreathes of light,
Signs of thought's empire over thought; their lore
"Taught them not thisto know themselves; their might
Could not repress the mutiny within,
And for the morn of truth they feigned, deep night
"Caught them ere evening." "Who is he with chin
Upon his breast and hands crost on his chain?"
"The Child of a fierce hour; he sought to win
"The world, and lost all it did contain
Of greatness, in its hope destroyed; & more
Of fame & peace than Virtue's self can gain
"Without the opportunity which bore
Him on its eagle's pinion to the peak
From which a thousand climbers have before
"Fall'n as Napoleon fell."I felt my cheek
Alter to see the great form pass away
Whose grasp had left the giant world so weak
That every pigmy kicked it as it lay
And much I grieved to think how power & will
In opposition rule our mortal day
And why God made irreconcilable
Good & the means of good; and for despair
I half disdained mine eye's desire to fill
With the spent vision of the times that were
And scarce have ceased to be . . . "Dost thou behold,"
Said then my guide, "those spoilers spoiled, Voltaire,
"Frederic, & Kant, Catherine, & Leopold,
Chained hoary anarch, demagogue & sage
Whose name the fresh world thinks already old
"For in the battle Life & they did wage
She remained conquerorI was overcome
By my own heart alone, which neither age
"Nor tears nor infamy nor now the tomb
Could temper to its object.""Let them pass"
I cried"the world & its mysterious doom
"Is not so much more glorious than it was
That I desire to worship those who drew
New figures on its false & fragile glass
"As the old faded.""Figures ever new
Rise on the bubble, paint them how you may;
We have but thrown, as those before us threw,
"Our shadows on it as it past away.
But mark, how chained to the triumphal chair
The mighty phantoms of an elder day
"All that is mortal of great Plato there
Expiates the joy & woe his master knew not;
That star that ruled his doom was far too fair
"And Life, where long that flower of Heaven grew not,
Conquered the heart by love which gold or pain
Or age or sloth or slavery could subdue not
"And near [[blank]] walk the [[blank]] twain,
The tutor & his pupil, whom Dominion
Followed as tame as vulture in a chain.
"The world was darkened beneath either pinion
Of him whom from the flock of conquerors
Fame singled as her thunderbearing minion;
"The other long outlived both woes & wars,
Throned in new thoughts of men, and still had kept
The jealous keys of truth's eternal doors
"If Bacon's spirit [[blank]] had not leapt
Like lightning out of darkness; he compelled
The Proteus shape of Nature's as it slept
"To wake & to unbar the caves that held
The treasure of the secrets of its reign
See the great bards of old who inly quelled
"The passions which they sung, as by their strain
May well be known: their living melody
Tempers its own contagion to the vein
"Of those who are infected with itI
Have suffered what I wrote, or viler pain!
"And so my words were seeds of misery
Even as the deeds of others.""Not as theirs,"
I saidhe pointed to a company
In which I recognized amid the heirs
Of Caesar's crime from him to Constantine,
The Anarchs old whose force & murderous snares
Had founded many a sceptre bearing line
And spread the plague of blood & gold abroad,
And Gregory & John and men divine
Who rose like shadows between Man & god
Till that eclipse, still hanging under Heaven,
Was worshipped by the world o'er which they strode
For the true Sun it quenched."Their power was given
But to destroy," replied the leader"I
Am one of those who have created, even
"If it be but a world of agony."
"Whence camest thou & whither goest thou?
How did thy course begin," I said, "& why?
"Mine eyes are sick of this perpetual flow
Of people, & my heart of one sad thought.
Speak.""Whence I came, partly I seem to know,
"And how & by what paths I have been brought
To this dread pass, methinks even thou mayst guess;
Why this should be my mind can compass not;
"Whither the conqueror hurries me still less.
But follow thou, & from spectator turn
Actor or victim in this wretchedness,
"And what thou wouldst be taught I then may learn
From thee.Now listen . . . In the April prime
When all the forest tops began to burn
"With kindling green, touched by the azure clime
Of the young year, I found myself asleep
Under a mountain which from unknown time
"Had yawned into a cavern high & deep,
And from it came a gentle rivulet
Whose water like clear air in its calm sweep
"Bent the soft grass & kept for ever wet
The stems of the sweet flowers, and filled the grove
With sound which all who hear must needs forget
"All pleasure & all pain, all hate & love,
Which they had known before that hour of rest:
A sleeping mother then would dream not of
"The only child who died upon her breast
At eventide, a king would mourn no more
The crown of which his brow was dispossest
"When the sun lingered o'er the Ocean floor
To gild his rival's new prosperity.
Thou wouldst forget thus vainly to deplore
"Ills, which if ills, can find no cure from thee,
The thought of which no other sleep will quell
Nor other music blot from memory
"So sweet & deep is the oblivious spell.
Whether my life had been before that sleep
The Heaven which I imagine, or a Hell
"Like this harsh world in which I wake to weep,
I know not. I arose & for a space
The scene of woods & waters seemed to keep,
"Though it was now broad day, a gentle trace
Of light diviner than the common Sun
Sheds on the common Earth, but all the place
"Was filled with many sounds woven into one
Oblivious melody, confusing sense
Amid the gliding waves & shadows dun;
"And as I looked the bright omnipresence
Of morning through the orient cavern flowed,
And the Sun's image radiantly intense
"Burned on the waters of the well that glowed
Like gold, and threaded all the forest maze
With winding paths of emerald firethere stood
"Amid the sun, as he amid the blaze
Of his own glory, on the vibrating
Floor of the fountain, paved with flashing rays,
"A shape all light, which with one hand did fling
Dew on the earth, as if she were the Dawn
Whose invisible rain forever seemed to sing
"A silver music on the mossy lawn,
And still before her on the dusky grass
Iris her many coloured scarf had drawn.
"In her right hand she bore a crystal glass
Mantling with bright Nepenthe;the fierce splendour
Fell from her as she moved under the mass
"Of the deep cavern, & with palms so tender
Their tread broke not the mirror of its billow,
Glided along the river, and did bend her
"Head under the dark boughs, till like a willow
Her fair hair swept the bosom of the stream
That whispered with delight to be their pillow.
"As one enamoured is upborne in dream
O'er lily-paven lakes mid silver mist
To wondrous music, so this shape might seem
"Partly to tread the waves with feet which kist
The dancing foam, partly to glide along
The airs that roughened the moist amethyst,
"Or the slant morning beams that fell among
The trees, or the soft shadows of the trees;
And her feet ever to the ceaseless song
"Of leaves & winds & waves & birds & bees
And falling drops moved in a measure new
Yet sweet, as on the summer evening breeze
"Up from the lake a shape of golden dew
Between two rocks, athwart the rising moon,
Moves up the east, where eagle never flew.
"And still her feet, no less than the sweet tune
To which they moved, seemed as they moved, to blot
The thoughts of him who gazed on them, & soon
"All that was seemed as if it had been not,
As if the gazer's mind was strewn beneath
Her feet like embers, & she, thought by thought,
"Trampled its fires into the dust of death,
As Day upon the threshold of the east
Treads out the lamps of night, until the breath
"Of darkness reillumines even the least
Of heaven's living eyeslike day she came,
Making the night a dream; and ere she ceased
"To move, as one between desire and shame
Suspended, I said'If, as it doth seem,
Thou comest from the realm without a name,
" 'Into this valley of perpetual dream,
Shew whence I came, and where I am, and why
Pass not away upon the passing stream.'
" 'Arise and quench thy thirst,' was her reply,
And as a shut lily, stricken by the wand
Of dewy morning's vital alchemy,
"I rose; and, bending at her sweet command,
Touched with faint lips the cup she raised,
And suddenly my brain became as sand
"Where the first wave had more than half erased
The track of deer on desert Labrador,
Whilst the fierce wolf from which they fled amazed
"Leaves his stamp visibly upon the shore
Until the second burstsso on my sight
Burst a new Vision never seen before.
"And the fair shape waned in the coming light
As veil by veil the silent splendour drops
From Lucifer, amid the chrysolite
"Of sunrise ere it strike the mountain tops
And as the presence of that fairest planet
Although unseen is felt by one who hopes
"That his day's path may end as he began it
In that star's smile, whose light is like the scent
Of a jonquil when evening breezes fan it,
"Or the soft note in which his dear lament
The Brescian shepherd breathes, or the caress
That turned his weary slumber to content.
"So knew I in that light's severe excess
The presence of that shape which on the stream
Moved, as I moved along the wilderness,
"More dimly than a day appearing dream,
The ghost of a forgotten form of sleep
A light from Heaven whose half extinguished beam
"Through the sick day in which we wake to weep
Glimmers, forever sought, forever lost.
So did that shape its obscure tenour keep
"Beside my path, as silent as a ghost;
But the new Vision, and its cold bright car,
With savage music, stunning music, crost
"The forest, and as if from some dread war
Triumphantly returning, the loud million
Fiercely extolled the fortune of her star.
"A moving arch of victory the vermilion
And green & azure plumes of Iris had
Built high over her wind-winged pavilion,
"And underneath aetherial glory clad
The wilderness, and far before her flew
The tempest of the splendour which forbade
Shadow to fall from leaf or stone;the crew
Seemed in that light like atomies that dance
Within a sunbeam.Some upon the new
"Embroidery of flowers that did enhance
The grassy vesture of the desart, played,
Forgetful of the chariot's swift advance;
"Others stood gazing till within the shade
Of the great mountain its light left them dim.
Others outspeeded it, and others made
"Circles around it like the clouds that swim
Round the high moon in a bright sea of air,
And more did follow, with exulting hymn,
"The chariot & the captives fettered there,
But all like bubbles on an eddying flood
Fell into the same track at last & were
"Borne onward.I among the multitude
Was swept; me sweetest flowers delayed not long,
Me not the shadow nor the solitude,
"Me not the falling stream's Lethean song,
Me, not the phantom of that early form
Which moved upon its motion,but among
"The thickest billows of the living storm
I plunged, and bared my bosom to the clime
Of that cold light, whose airs too soon deform.
"Before the chariot had begun to climb
The opposing steep of that mysterious dell,
Behold a wonder worthy of the rhyme
"Of him whom from the lowest depths of Hell
Through every Paradise & through all glory
Love led serene, & who returned to tell
"In words of hate & awe the wondrous story
How all things are transfigured, except Love;
For deaf as is a sea which wrath makes hoary
"The world can hear not the sweet notes that move
The sphere whose light is melody to lovers-
A wonder worthy of his rhymethe grove
"Grew dense with shadows to its inmost covers,
The earth was grey with phantoms, & the air
Was peopled with dim forms, as when there hovers
"A flock of vampire-bats before the glare
Of the tropic sun, bring ere evening
Strange night upon some Indian isle,thus were
"Phantoms diffused around, & some did fling
Shadows of shadows, yet unlike themselves,
Behind them, some like eaglets on the wing
"Were lost in the white blaze, others like elves
Danced in a thousand unimagined shapes
Upon the sunny streams & grassy shelves;
"And others sate chattering like restless apes
On vulgar paws and voluble like fire.
Some made a cradle of the ermined capes
"Of kingly mantles, some upon the tiar
Of pontiffs sate like vultures, others played
Within the crown which girt with empire
"A baby's or an idiot's brow, & made
Their nests in it; the old anatomies
Sate hatching their bare brood under the shade
"Of demon wings, and laughed from their dead eyes
To reassume the delegated power
Arrayed in which these worms did monarchize
"Who make this earth their charnel.Others more
Humble, like falcons sate upon the fist
Of common men, and round their heads did soar,
"Or like small gnats & flies, as thick as mist
On evening marshes, thronged about the brow
Of lawyer, statesman, priest & theorist,
"And others like discoloured flakes of snow
On fairest bosoms & the sunniest hair
Fell, and were melted by the youthful glow
"Which they extinguished; for like tears, they were
A veil to those from whose faint lids they rained
In drops of sorrow.I became aware
"Of whence those forms proceeded which thus stained
The track in which we moved; after brief space
From every form the beauty slowly waned,
"From every firmest limb & fairest face
The strength & freshness fell like dust, & left
The action & the shape without the grace
"Of life; the marble brow of youth was cleft
With care, and in the eyes where once hope shone
Desire like a lioness bereft
"Of its last cub, glared ere it died; each one
Of that great crowd sent forth incessantly
These shadows, numerous as the dead leaves blown
"In Autumn evening from a popular tree
Each, like himself & like each other were,
At first, but soon distorted, seemed to be
"Obscure clouds moulded by the casual air;
And of this stuff the car's creative ray
Wrought all the busy phantoms that were there
"As the sun shapes the cloudsthus, on the way
Mask after mask fell from the countenance
And form of all, and long before the day
"Was old, the joy which waked like Heaven's glance
The sleepers in the oblivious valley, died,
And some grew weary of the ghastly dance
"And fell, as I have fallen by the way side,
Those soonest from whose forms most shadows past
And least of strength & beauty did abide."
"Then, what is Life?" I said . . . the cripple cast
His eye upon the car which now had rolled
Onward, as if that look must be the last,
And answered. "Happy those for whom the fold
Of
Composed at Lerici on the Gulf of Spezzia in the spring and early summer of 1822 -- the poem on which Shelley was engaged at the time of his death. Published by Mrs. Shelley in the Posthumous Poems of 1824, from a MS. (now in the Bodleian library), whose corrections, omitted words, passages of unrevised improvisation, difficult hand, and long inaccessibility have so far prevented much certainty in the establishment of a text.

Form: terza rima.

The reference to Dante's Divine Comedy in lines 471-76 and to Petrarch's Triumphs in the title (both of which, like The Triumph of Life, are written in terza
rima stanzas) suggests two probable models for the poem.

132-34.
Mary Shelley's text seems impossible, but no textual authority has been
adduced for amending it. Misreading or miswriting of some kind must be
responsible for that apparently parallel, but conflicting, pair, "were there" and
"were neither." W. M. Rossetti makes some sense out of the passage by amending
"or" in 132 to "for" and "were there" in 134 to "whether", and by placing a
semi-colon at the end of 131.

134.
Of Athens or Jerusalem. Commentators assume that the renouncing figures
of which Shelley is thinking are Socrates in Athens and Jesus in Jerusalem. But
the corruption of the text here makes any interpretation doubtful.

190.
Grim Feature: a reminiscence of Paradise Lost, X, 279, where it
represents Death and carries the Latin meaning of "factura" or "creature."

204.
Rousseau. Compare Byron's portrait of Rousseau in Childe Harold's
Pilgrimage, III, lxxvii-lxxxii.

236.
Frederick and Paul, Catherine and Leopold: Frederick the Great of Prussia,
Czar Paul and Catherine the Great of Russia, and Leopold II of the Holy Roman
Empire.

254.
Plato. In the lines which follow, Shelley refers to the legend that Plato in
his old age fell in love with a boy, whose name, Aster, is Greek for a star as
well as for a particular (and short-lived) flower.

261.
The tutor and his pupil: Aristotle and Alexander the Great.

283-84.
The heirs of Caesar's crime from him to Constantine. Julius Caesar's
crime was to undermine the Roman republic and prepare the way for the
Roman emperors ("anarch chiefs" in 286), a procession of which up to
Constantine Shelley now observes.

288.
Gregory and John. "Gregory the Great is appropriate, as the true founder
of the independent political power of the papacy. Which of many Johns is
involved, there is no way of telling" (H. Bloom).

414.
Lucifer: the Morning Star.

421-22.
The soft note in which his dear lament the Brescian shepherd breathes.
"The favourite song, 'Stanco di pascolar le peccorelle, [being weary of pasturing
the little sheep], is a Brescian national air" (Mrs. Shelley's note).

439.
Iris: classical goddess of the rainbow.

472.
Him: Dante in The Divine Comedy.

544.
Here the MS. breaks off.


~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Triumph Of Life


--- IN CHAPTERS (in Dictionaries, in Quotes, in Chapters)



10

   4 Poetry
   1 Psychology
   1 Philosophy
   1 Occultism
   1 Integral Yoga
   1 Fiction


   3 Dante Alighieri
   2 Sri Aurobindo




07.05_-_The_Finding_of_the_Soul, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  In the mystery of its selecting will,
  In The Divine Comedy a participant,
  The Spirit's conscious representative,

1.03_-_Concerning_the_Archetypes,_with_Special_Reference_to_the_Anima_Concept, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  
  23 Guillaume wrote three Pelerinages in the manner of The Divine Comedy, but
  independently of Dante, between 1330 and 1350. He was Prior of the Cistercian

1.14_-_IMMORTALITY_AND_SURVIVAL, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  
  More precisely, good men spiritualize their mind-bodies; bad men incarnate and mentalize their spirits. The completely spiritualized mind-body is a Tathagata, who doesnt go anywhere when he dies, for the good reason that he is already, actually and consciously, where everyone has always potentially been without knowing. The person who has not, in this life, gone into Thusness, into the eternal principle of all states of being, goes at death into some particular state, either purgatorial or paradisal. In the Hindu scriptures and their commentaries several different kinds of posthumous salvation are distinguished. The thus-gone soul is completely delivered into complete union with the divine Ground; but it is also possible to achieve other kinds of mukti, or liberation, even while retaining a form of purified I-consciousness. The nature of any individuals deliverance after death depends upon three factors: the degree of holiness achieved by him while in the body, the particular aspect of the divine Reality to which he gave his primary allegiance, and the particular path he chose to follow. Similarly, in The Divine Comedy, Paradise has its various circles; but whereas in the oriental eschatologies the saved soul can go out of even sublimated individuality, out of survival even in some kind of celestial time, to a complete deliverance into the eternal, Dantes souls remain for ever where (after passing through the unmeritorious sufferings of purgatory) they find themselves as the result of their single incarnation in a body. Orthodox Christian doctrine does not admit the possibility, either in the posthumous state or in some other embodiment, of any further growth towards the ultimate perfection of a total union with the Godhead. But in the Hindu and Buddhist versions of the Perennial Philosophy the divine mercy is matched by the divine patience: both are infinite. For oriental theologians there is no eternal damnation; there are only purgatories and then an indefinite series of second chances to go forward towards not only mans, but the whole creations final endtotal reunion with the Ground of all being.
  

12.05_-_The_World_Tragedy, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
  
   Dante, the great Christian poet speaks likewise of a life in Hell and a life in Paradise, first, the tragedy, the life of sorrows, transmuted in the end into The Divine Comedy, the life of happiness and bliss. There is an intermediary passage in between through which the poet leads us from the one to the other: the transition is spoken of as a stage of purification through which one has to pass to shake off the human dross from his nature and put on and become in substance the noble metal.
  

1.da_-_All_Being_within_this_order,_by_the_laws_(from_The_Paradiso,_Canto_I), #unset, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
  
   English version by John Ciardi Original Language Italian All Being within this order, by the laws of its own nature is impelled to find its proper station round its Primal Cause. Thus every nature moves across the tide of the great sea of being to its own port, each with its given instinct as its guide. This instinct draws the fire about the Moon. It is the mover in the mortal heart. It draws the earth together and makes it one. Not only the brute creatures, but all those possessed of intellect and love, this instinct drives to their mark as a bow shoots forth its arrows. The Providence that makes all things hunger here satisfies forever with its light the heaven within which whirls the fastest sphere. [2327.jpg] -- from The Divine Comedy: The Inferno, the Purgatorio, and the Paradiso,
   / Translated by John Ciardi <
1.da_-_And_as_a_ray_descending_from_the_sky_(from_The_Paradiso,_Canto_I), #unset, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
  
   English version by John Ciardi Original Language Italian And as a ray descending from the sky gives rise to another, which climbs back again, as a pilgrim yearns for home; so through my eye her action, like a ray into my mind, gave rise to mine: I stared into the Sun so hard that here it would have left me blind; but much is granted to our senses there, in that garden made to be man's proper place, that is not granted us when we are here. I had to look away soon, and yet not so soon but what I saw him spark and blaze like new-tapped iron when it pours white-hot. And suddenly, as it appeared to me, day was added to day, as if He who can had added a new Sun to Heaven's glory. Beatrice stared at the eternal spheres entranced, unmoving; and I looked away from the Sun's height to fix my eyes on hers. And as I looked, I felt begin within me what Glaucus felt eating the herb that made him a god among the others in the sea. How speak trans-human change to human sense? Let the example speak until God's grace grants the pure spirit the experience. [2327.jpg] -- from The Divine Comedy: The Inferno, the Purgatorio, and the Paradiso,
   / Translated by John Ciardi <
1.da_-_The_glory_of_Him_who_moves_all_things_rays_forth_(from_The_Paradiso,_Canto_I), #unset, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
  author class:Dante Alighieri
   English version by John Ciardi Original Language Italian The glory of Him who moves all things rays forth through all the universe, and is reflected from each thing in proportion to its worth. I have been in that Heaven of His most light, and what I saw, those who descend from there lack both the knowledge and the power to write. For as our intellect draws near its goal it opens to such depths of understanding as memory cannot plumb within the soul. [2327.jpg] -- from The Divine Comedy: The Inferno, the Purgatorio, and the Paradiso, / Translated by John Ciardi <   

1.pbs_-_The_Triumph_Of_Life, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
  472.
  Him: Dante in The Divine Comedy.
  

class, #unset, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
     38 ZXA
     35 The Divine Comedy
     34 verb

Liber_46_-_The_Key_of_the_Mysteries, #unset, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
   realities of movement and of life. We shall also invite the great poets
   of the future to create once more The Divine Comedy, no longer
   according to the dreams of man, but according to the mathematics of

--- WEBGEN

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Divine_Comedy
Wikipedia - Dante Alighieri and the Divine Comedy in popular culture
Wikipedia - List of cultural references in the Divine Comedy -- Wikimedia list article
Wikipedia - The Divine Comedy
Wikipedia - The Divine Comedy (Smith) -- Symphony by Robert W. Smith
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