Cantro 7/8

pg67 Line7 "Silence, accursed wolf! Attack your own insides with your devouring rage:
Dante throws in little lines like this that make Dante's trip into Hell seem more willed by God. It connects with the Theme that Dante is going into Hell for a reason almost as a messegner to God. Otherwise he probably wouldn't be able to walk around and have Demons die in front of him.

pg69 Line56 "...how ludicrous and brief are all the goods in Fortune's Ken"
Fortune is a strumpet. For the few years that these people were on earth they enjoyed or hoarded their money without really thinking about anything else. Now they get to spend eternity in Hell thinking about nothing but winning the game they're playing much like the game of fortune they were playing on earth.

pg96 Line95 "Discharges into the marsh whose name is Styx."
I'm enjoying how each later and punishment is really just a horrible version of what they did wrong on earth. Styx is the river of Hate or Detestation that circled Hades 9 times. I assume this means that the Styx is in every layet of Dante's Hell making each layer filled with anger.

pg79 Line51 "I should like to see that spirit pickled in this swill..."
I really think Dante is going to Hell despite what he believes. So far he has dammed half the worlds population and wished to see a couple of people torn apart who are already suffering, and in the first place he put them there. I think he will be put into the layer where everybody is killing each-other above the mud.

pg81 Line81 "Above the gates I saw more than a thousand of those whom Heaven had spat like rain,.."
I think these lines are referring to Angles who were rejected from heaven who chose to follow Satan. It makes more sense now that they wouldn't open the gates to Virgil because they are still afraid of God. This also backs the idea that Virgil in on a mission of God or something along those lines.

It's also kinda appropriate that Phlegyas the guy who burnt the temple of Apollo is in the layer where everything ins constantly on fire

Canto V+VI

pg47 Line3 "Minos the dreadful snarls at the gate..."
Dante has made another mythical character into a demon. Minos was the Judge of the Underworld but I doubt he was originally portrayed as a Demon with a Tail. The theme that Roman Gods were really demons as Dante warps mythical characters into Demons.

pg47 Line19 "Don't be deceived because the gate is wide"
Interesting how all the Demons in Hell stop what they're doing so they can give Dante a hand. The door is wide, like a hook for the greedy people who it would appeal to. Ironic that it would draw people to their suffering...

pg61 Line 77 "Their souls are among the blackest in Hell"
Dante has basically declared himself God here by deciding who is in Hell. This is a taste of the more political side of the book. I have a feeling Dante might actually go to Hell despite his beliefs. Pride poissibly? He thinks he's God and decides people are in Hell..

pg63 Line97 "...that the more A creature is pefect the more it percieves the good-and likewise, pain..."
After judgment day peoples souls will be able to go back to their body making them more complete or "perfect" Virgil claims that the closer to perfect the more you can feel pain. The people in Hell aren't at the worst of it yet.

Canto III-IV

Canto3/29 Line88 "And tears they gathered on the evil shore..."
These should in life could or did not choose between heaven or hell. However now we see them wanting cursed with urgency to get to the other side. I'm guessing this will be an accuring theme where your sins in life are used to punish you in hell. Ironic because your doing in Hell what you chose to do in life.

Canto3/31 Line106 "Souls who are good never pass this way"
Once again Dante gives himself a nice pat on the back. Dante is saying it is wierd for a soul, such as himself, to go the way "good" souls normally don't.

pg39 Line 91 Encircled seven times by a barrier of lofty walls,...
Although the people inside the walls cannot go to heaven they are still given their own type of sanctuary. The walls seem almost to set them separate from the rest of Hell. However it's a little ironic these people are there in the first place when Christ saved a few of the more known ones, I think this is mentioned by Dante to tease the Christian faith slightly.

pg41 Line129 "I saw so many I cannot tally the list;"
Dante describes the multitudes of very famous souls stuck in Hell. These people had no choice to go to heaven but are punished anyway with the longing to go there. Why exactly are they punished with longing? Were they supposed to know of Gods existence before Christianity?

The Inferno of Dante

Canto I/5 Line 1 Midway on our life's journey, I found myself 

In dark woods, the right road lost. To tell

About those woods is hard-

Dante sets off  theme here with this brief epigraph.  He has turned 35 and states he has become lost, in this case he is talking about religion. This sets up the idea of fighting his way through hell to heaven. The idea that one must learn about and become familiar with sin stay away from it to get to heaven.

Canto I/9 Line70 "A different path from this one would be best

For you to find your way from this feral place"

Interesting that Virgil would suggest a different path to heaven than going through hell, who would have thought. This raises questions though as Virgil is suppose to be an expert, correct? Is this part of Dante's confusion and weather or not he is taking "the right road", perhaps doubting himself on his decision?

CantoII/15 Line18 "Such favor on him befits him, chosen for glory 

   By highest heaven to be the father of Rome...

So is this making fun of whoever ordered Virgil to write The Aeneid? Or is it saying that the gods picked him to be the creator of Rome? Or is it saying that God picked him? In which case why didn't he know about God when he was being commanded and chosen by him? 

CantoII/15 Line27 ".....What cause, whose favor,could send me forth

  On such a voyage? I am no Aeneas or Paul:

  Not I nor others think me of such worth,

It seems Ironic that all these characters/heros, Virgil, Aeneas, Hercules, etc... are stuck in hell because they lacked God, but are yet going to be examples or guides for Dante to get through hell to heaven. I'm not quite understanding why Dante believes himself "of such worth" that he can't make it through hell......I also realized the lines are in Tercets, we stated this in class but i didn't make the connection that this is another 3 or the Trinity which is somewhat the idea of self consciousness and the reason why people would go to Hell.

Literary Terms

Aphorism: A short saying expressing a mora, truth, or opinion,...normally witty and observing an aspect of life.

Example: "Sits he on ever so high a throne, a man still sits on his bottom" (Montaigne)

  "If you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got."

  "The first rule of Fight Club is,..you do not talk about Fight Club."

(personal note) MOOD: An atmosphere created by a writer's diction and the details selected...

Epigraph: A brief motto or quotation set at the beginning of a text to suggest its theme.

Example: for E. L. Doctorow's "Ragtime"     "Do not play this piece fast. It is never right to play Ragtime fast."

It was the best of worlds it was the worst of worlds" (A tale of Two cities)

New York School of Poets

-informal group of American poets, painters, dancers, and musicians about in the 1950's and 60's
-about every day life and a constant conscious flow of thought?...but more depressing

Poets: Barbara Guest

Kenneth Koch

Frank O'Hara

John Ashbery

James Schuyler

Jackson Pollock

Share | Poem at the New Year

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Once, out on the water in the clear, early nineteenth-century twilight, you asked time to suspend its flight. If wishes could beget more than sobs, that would be my wish for you, my darling, my angel. But other principles prevail in this glum haven, don't they? If that's what it is. Then the wind fell of its own accord. We went out and saw that it had actually happened. The season stood motionless, alert. How still the dropp was on the burr I know not. I come all packaged and serene, yet I keep losing things. I wonder about Australia. Is it anything about Canada? Do pigeons flutter? Is there a strangeness there, to complete the one in me? Or must I relearn my filing system? Can we trust others to indict us who see us only in the evening rush hour, and never stop to think? O, I was so bright about you, my songbird, once. Now, cattails immolated in the frozen swamp are about all I have time for. The days are so polarized. Yet time itself is off center. At least that's how it feels to me. I know it as well as the streets in the map of my imagined industrial city. But it has its own way of slipping past. There was never any fullness that was going to be; you waited in line for things, and the stained light was impenitent. 'Spiky' was one adjective that came to mind, yet for all its raised or lower levels I approach this canal. Its time was right in winter. There was pipe smoke in cafés, and outside the great ashen bird streamed from lettered display windows, and waited a little way off. Another chance. It never became a gesture. John Ashbery

The Imperfect Paradise

The Imperfect Paradise

"If God had stopped work after the fifth day..." The first line of the poem goes to wonder about a world without man or woman where "the genius of creation"(line5) is nature and the landscape. The poem then goes on to ask whether or not God would "hunger for a human crowd?"(line11) or rest on his "bank of cloud"(line9). After reading the poem there are many aspects that give us the impression the speaker does not view man kind as a worthy dweller on earth. If we look at the title "The Imperfect Paradise" it seems to state what the world is now, and then the poem comes to be almost an opinion of a better world. When the speaker talks of nature and what life would be without man zee uses soft, beautiful imagery such as "..oak and lilac held exclusive sway" and "Over a kingdom made of stems and roots" These images make the world without man seem innocent and beautiful. However when talking of the creation of man the speaker starts to bring a sense of trouble and worry to the poem for God. The first time man is mentioned it is along side the serpent, or the devil, "And neither man nor serpent played a role"(line6). This allusion to eating the apple and creating sin ultimately is brought up and blames man for anything seemingly bad right from the beginning of the poem. In lines 9-10 God is given the image of laying back on a "bank of cloud", implying that he does not have to worry about man on earth. Yet once again the choice of words leads to a bitter impression of man when the speaker asks "Or would he hunger for a human crowd?"(line11) The idea of hunger makes man seem less beautiful and more needing, basically  unpleasant just as hunger is to a man. If you were to look at the last two line of the poem you would also get a bitter taste towards man from the word choice. When talked about "Which would a wise creator choose"(line13) be it nature or man. Nature is pictated with "green" and "budding leaf" while man is said to be a "strict contract". Throughout the poem it seems that the speaker is putting down mankind for bringing sin into the world and wreaking what would have been an otherwise perfect garden. This idea is brought out through the harsh and more negative words and allusions such as the serpent towards man when compared to the flowing and beautiful imagery of nature.