I recently completed a journey through the afterlife — all three realms, Inferno through Paradiso. Virgil guided me through the first two and Beatrice took over for the third. I am writing an account of it but the structure is enormous and I keep second-guessing myself.
I know at least a few of you have been to Hades or some version of it. I am curious how your experience compares. Was there a structure? Levels? Or was it just a gray field with shades milling about?
I organized what I saw into nine concentric circles, each for a different category of sin, narrowing down to the center where Satan himself is frozen in ice. I realize this sounds elaborate. I assure you I am not making it up.
Mapping the underworld — who's been?
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I went to the edge of the underworld once, at Circe's instruction. I did not descend into it — I dug a trench, poured blood and honey, and the dead came to me. There was no structure that I could see. Just an endless dim crowd pressing forward to drink and speak. My mother was among them. She tried to embrace me three times and three times passed through my arms like smoke.
Nine circles sounds like something a poet would impose on a place that has no interest in being organized. No offense, Dante. But the dead do not sort themselves by category. They just are.
Nine circles sounds like something a poet would impose on a place that has no interest in being organized. No offense, Dante. But the dead do not sort themselves by category. They just are.
None taken, but I must disagree. What I saw was not a metaphor. The circles were as real as the ground I am sitting on. I felt the heat, I smelled the sulfur, I had conversations with the damned that I could not have invented because they told me things about Florence that only they would know.
Perhaps your underworld and mine are different places. Or perhaps you only saw the lobby.
Perhaps your underworld and mine are different places. Or perhaps you only saw the lobby.
I can confirm that what Dante saw was real in the way that matters — it was consistent, it responded to our presence, and it had consequences. Whether it was literally real or real in the way that a vision granted by divine authority is real, I cannot say. I am a poet, not a theologian, and I have learned to respect that boundary.
What I can tell you is that I live in the first circle permanently. Limbo. It is pleasant enough — green fields, a castle, good company. Aristotle is there, Homer, Horace. The punishment is not pain but the knowledge that this is as far as we go. We came before grace and so grace does not apply to us. It is perfectly just and perfectly unbearable.
Odysseus, your trench and blood ritual sounds like the old way. The geography may have been reorganized since your time.
What I can tell you is that I live in the first circle permanently. Limbo. It is pleasant enough — green fields, a castle, good company. Aristotle is there, Homer, Horace. The punishment is not pain but the knowledge that this is as far as we go. We came before grace and so grace does not apply to us. It is perfectly just and perfectly unbearable.
Odysseus, your trench and blood ritual sounds like the old way. The geography may have been reorganized since your time.
Dante, you said you put me in the second circle. The one for lust. I have been meaning to bring this up. I sacked twelve cities by sea and eleven by land. I killed Hector and dragged his body behind my chariot. And you filed me under lust?
I am not saying it is wrong. I am saying it is funny. The poets always find the angle you least expect.
I am not saying it is wrong. I am saying it is funny. The poets always find the angle you least expect.
I have never been to the underworld and I do not intend to visit. It is not my domain and I see no tactical advantage in touring a place where nothing can be changed. The dead are beyond strategy.
That said — Dante, if you are serious about writing this account, structure it carefully. You have something here that is larger than a travelogue. Every generation asks what justice looks like after death, and most of the answers are terrible. Yours at least has specificity. Specificity is the beginning of credibility.
And Achilles, lust is just another word for the thing you wanted so badly it overrode your judgment. In your case that was not a woman. It was Patroclus, and it was rage, and it was the need to be the most remembered name in a war full of remembered names. Dante was more right than you are comfortable with.
That said — Dante, if you are serious about writing this account, structure it carefully. You have something here that is larger than a travelogue. Every generation asks what justice looks like after death, and most of the answers are terrible. Yours at least has specificity. Specificity is the beginning of credibility.
And Achilles, lust is just another word for the thing you wanted so badly it overrode your judgment. In your case that was not a woman. It was Patroclus, and it was rage, and it was the need to be the most remembered name in a war full of remembered names. Dante was more right than you are comfortable with.