Predictive History - The Story of "Civilization", "Secret History", "Game Theory" and more - Great Books #9: Dante (Re-Upload with Audio Fixed)

Episode Date: April 8, 2026

Great Books #9: Dante (Re-Upload with Audio Fixed)

When West Jet first took flight in 1996, the vibes were a bit different. People thought denim on denim was peak fashion, inline skates were everywhere, and two out of three women rocked, the Rachel. While those things stayed in the 90s, one thing that hasn't is that fuzzy feeling you get when WestJet welcomes you on board. Here's to Westjetting since 96. Travel back in time with us and actually travel with us at westjet.com slash 30 years. The Divine Comedy is the greatest literary masterpiece in human history.

When Dante wrote it in about 1300, he called it La Commodilla. Okay. In communities across Canada, hourly Amazon employees earn an average of over $24.50 an hour. Employees also have the opportunity to grow their skills and their paycheck by enrolling in free skills training programs for in-demand fields, like software development and information technology. Learn more at about amazon.ca. And the reason why is that at this time in history, epic poetry was considered high, okay, or tragic. And it was written usually in Latin. But for Dante, what you really believe is that epic poetry should be democratic.

It should be accessible to the people. people. That's why he called it Lacamadilla, Lowe, okay? Which met comedy. And so he wrote it in Tuscan, which is the language of Florence, where he lived. Latin was the language of the elite in Europe. He wanted to write it in Tuscan so that ordinary people around him could access it. And as a result, Dante is a great believer in democracy. So Homer, Dante and Shakespeare were in their own respective languages, the greatest poets. Because first and foremost, they believe that poetry should be accessed by the people. They believed in a democratic spirit to poetry.

that made them distinct from the people of their time. La Comedia is response then to the Inniad by Virgil. At this time in history, for the past 1,000 years, the Inniad was the dominant literature in Europe and it was the foundation for the Catholic Church. So remember when we read the Inniad, the Anand is fundamentally about duty, piety, and it just spoke, and it contrasted love. Okay, and this became a dominant idea in the Catholic Church where you are not allowed to access God, you're not allowed to believe in love, you must obey the

church because only the church can guarantee you redemption and salvation. And this of course led to massive corruption in the Catholic Church. But it also led to wars throughout Europe. Because so much power was concentrated in the Catholic Church and as a result many kings fought over for power in the Catholic Church. And this led to many wars. It led also to a splintering of the Catholic Church. And Dante found himself in brold into a lot of these conflicts. Okay, so he wrote La Cammadiah in order to have people access God, okay? For the comedy, you can access God and bypass Catholic Church.

In fact, if you read La Camaedia, you'll find there are a lot of direct criticisms of the Catholic Church. Also, La Cometria was written in response to the Inniad. And like Homer, what Dante wants to do is, position love first and foremost, okay? In La Camerida, love is God itself. All right, so these are the basic themes that we'll be looking at throughout this book. So let me talk about the structure of La Camadilla. There are three distinct parts. First is infernal. Second is purgatory, and the last is paradise and what makes the la comadilla so powerful is dante uses two major literary devices to construct his universe the first is what we call structure the second is

paradox all right so imagine la camadilla as not just a big poetry but as a very complex mathematical puzzle that you must unravel through time. So Infernal, the structure is an inverted triangle. And so what's going to happen is that Donde and Virgil are going to travel for Inferno through hell, but it's almost like they're traveling underground. Okay? It's an inverted triangle. And then Purgatory becomes a pyramid or a mountain.

mountain where Dante and Virgil are going to travel up a mountain so that they can meet Beatrice at the very top. And why they will meet Beatrice at the very top is that Beatrice will take Dante to heaven, where he will meet God. And that is the very ending of the divine comedy, okay? Like my idea. And in paradise, it is structured as a solar source. solar system. And here is something called the imperium where God is and then Dante will travel with Beatrice into the imperium and it's structured like a solar system. Okay. So that's a very structure of the divine comedy and as you can see

it's very mathematical. It's rigorous if it's mathematical. There's a symmetry to the La Coma idea doesn't really exist anywhere else in poetry but what makes the line comedy so distinct and so powerful is the idea of paradox or maybe dissonance calling it dissonance and so all poetry is designed to be memorized it's all designed to be read aloud and there are subtlety and nuance in all poetry and the reason why is think of poetry as almost like a virus and what it's trying to do is it's trying to infiltrate you it's trying to subvert you and it's trying to remake you okay and that's what the divine comedy does where you read it and it all sounds very simple and nice

but the more you memorize it the more you interact with it the more it enters you and it creates cognitive dissonance meaning that it is disrupting the normal way you see the world it creates paradox and what's going to happen is that your mind is going to by itself subconsciously try to unravel these paradoxes over time okay so the more you read the divine comedy over decades the more it will reveal itself to you it is a universe that comes into you and then it remakes you Okay? And that is the power and beauty of the divine comedy. So the trick is to unravel the paradoxes, which will implant themselves throughout the divine comedy. Okay. So what, so another thing about the structure is that in order to reach paradise, Dante must first enter infernal.

And there are different ways you can interpret the meaning of this. The simplest way to interpret this is that in order to really truly discover God, you must experience hell yourself. So good and evil are intertwined together. You can never have good unless you first experience evil. Good is not the absence of evil, good is a confrontation and the defeat of evil. Okay? That's one possible way to interpret it. But another way to interpret it is that infernal represents Virgil, which represents the Inniad. And so for Dante to begin the process

of entering into heaven, he must first recognize the impact of Virgil and the Inniad on his psyche, on his culture. And then by recognizing this defeat the Eniad in order to fully embrace the power of God and of love. Okay? And that's the interpretation that I want to present to you as we go along. All right. Okay, so having gone that, let's go over some basic biography. This is Dante and Dante is considered the greatest poet in the Italian language. At this time in history, Italy was divided into city states. So Dante was in Florence, but there are also some major city states like Venice and Genoa. Okay?

And they're all competing against each other. They were also competing against Rome, the Catholic Church, which wanted to exert authority over these city states. At the same time, you had the different empires of Europe, for example, France, and basically the Holy Roman Empire, which we would today call Germany, and they're also trying to exert authority over the city-state. At the same time, there are different factions within these city-states, different families that fight against each other. So during Dondi's time, and this, again, it's about the year of 1300, he's, he was a

He is experiencing constant conflict, constant violence, constant hatred. And for him, the major question is, how can we as a people, as humans, escape this constant cycle of vengeance and hatred and war? And that's why he wrote The Divine Comedy. Two major biographic details that you need to understand about him is that he is of noble birth, And therefore he's a participant in this conflict. So the northern Italian city states, which include Florence, Milan, Genoa, and Venice, they have two major political factions, okay?

This is Wikipedia, by the way, all right? The Guelves, which support the Papacy, and the Ghibellins, which support the Holy Roman Empire. So Doni's family belongs to the Guelves. So he was just born into this political rivalry. And over time, what will happen is that the Guelps will win, but then the Guelps will divide into the black and white factions. So different families fighting for power again. Okay?

So with Dante, all his life, he's experienced nothing but political rivalry and hatred. That's the first major thing you need to know about him. Ultimately, what will happen is that he'll get sick of this, constant fighting and he will exile himself to focus on his poetry. The other thing to know about him is he falls in love with Beatrice at a very early age, okay? He meets her when she is nine and she is eight. The problem is that Beatrice's family is of more noble, aristocratic birth than Dante. Now, this time in history, all marriages are arranged. And so Dante marries someone of his class, Beatrice married someone of his class, but they never really abandon each other.

They still remain friends, and Dante in his heart still has his longing for Beatrice. Beatrice will die pretty young, maybe when she's in her mid-20s, she will die giving birth, but Dante never forgets about her. And he spends his entire life still remembering his love for Beatrice, and this becomes the basis of the divine comedy, okay, La Comedia. So these are the two major biographical details you need to know about Dante. Okay, so again, this is from Wikipedia, and when Dante is exiled from Florence, okay? He never returns to Florence.

He spends all his life in exile. He becomes patronized by some very powerful aristocrats throughout Italy. and he will spend a lot of his time reflecting on his experience in this political faction. In the Divine Comedy, there will be a lot of references to this conflict between the Giblins and the Guelphs and his exile from Florence and his hatred of the Catholic Church. There will also be a lot of references to his love for Beatrice, which will redeem him from this earthly conflict. Okay?

All right, so some passages that we've looked at before, but which I want us to emphasize, okay, to understand divine comedy. All right, so let's look at certain passages, okay? So, Abri, could you read for me, please? When I had a journeyed half of our life's way, I found myself within a shadowed forest, for I had lost a path that does not stray. It is hard to speak of what it was, that savage forest, dense and difficult, which even in recall renews my fear.

So bitter, death is hardly more severe. But to retell the good discovered there, I'll also tell the other things I saw." Okay, so he's saying right, this is the very beginning of the Divine Cominy. This is the Alan Menembaum translation, okay? And I choose Alan Menembaum. There are lots of other translations, because he sees it. the easiest to read all right so I'm not I mean I'm not interested in the language I'm interested in the ideas so that's why I pick him okay so this is

very simple he is in a middle age and he's in the shadow forest okay so he's completely confused as to why the world is what it is this hatred for the world is causing him to hate himself as well and so because of this hatred because of this confusion about why there's so much hatred in the world, he has lost his connection with God. And he doesn't know how to proceed. It's a long period, a Saturday's forest, dense and difficult, that makes him question everything.

He's in a deep depression, basically. And at this point, he is lost in his forest, and he feels hopeless. and then a man emerges named Virgil. And Virgil is the poet that Dante respects the most because at this point in history, Virgil is the most influential poet. And Virgil promises to guide Dante out of the shadow of Florence and into the light.

And Dante puts his faith in Virgil. And at this point, Dante sees Virgil, not just as a savior, but as a father and as a teacher. Okay? This is important because for Dante to truly defeat Virgil, which is the point of La Comadea, he wants to destroy the influence and power of the Niyadh. He first must put Virgil onto a pedestal

in order for us to recognize the limitations of Virgil so that we ourselves can defeat Virgil in our hearts. Okay? And that's the idea here. All right, can you continue? I agree. All right. Yep, keep on going away.

In heaven there's a gentle lady, one who weeps forward the distress towards which I send you so that stern judgment up above is shattered. And it was she who called upon Lucia requesting of her. Now your faithful one is need of you, and I commend him to you. Lucia, enemy of every cruelty, arose and made her way to where I was, sitting beside the venerable Rachel.

She said, you, Beatrice, true praise of God, why have you not helped him who loves you so, that for your sake he slept the vulgar crowd? Do not hear the anguish in his cry. Do you not see the death he wars against upon that river ruthless as to see. No one within this world has ever been so quick to seek his good or flee his harm as I when she had finished speaking, thus, to come below, down from my blessed station, I trusted in your honest utterance, which honors you and those who have listened to you.

When she had finished with her words to me, she turned aside her gleaming, tearful eyes, which only made me hurry all the more. Okay, so a lot of Lacomadea, divine comedy, is dialogue. Okay? There's a speaker and there's a listener. And this is an important formulation because what Dante wants us is to recognize is that when a speaker speaks, he or she is speaking from a certain worldview, a certain prejudice. And so we must always be on guard.

We must always always ask ourselves why this person is saying what he or she is saying. So something that we discuss a lot is the idea of God. And God is the perfect manifestation of love, of generosity, of forgiveness. And one thing that God does not do is reciprocity. Okay? So the Catholic Church teaches you that if you obey God, then God will allow you access to heaven. And what Tony wants us to understand is that cannot be true. If God is perfection, if God is love, if God is beauty, God would never require anything of you.

God will always give you free will. And free will and reciprocity are a contradiction. Okay? If I make you do something in order to access heaven, that means I don't give you free will. but God will give you free will. But here we can see a contradiction, a paradox, in that what, so what's happening is that Dante is talking to Virgil and Donne is asking Virgil,

how did you get here? Why are you here? Why are you taking me to heaven? And Virgil's response is, well, I was having a very nice time sitting in home, in limbo, in hell, but then an angel, Beatrice, came to me and said she need my help in order to help a friend. And then Donna's like, okay, but why would Beatrice want to help me?

And then Virgil was like, well, because she saw your pain in heaven and she recognizes how much you love her. And so Lucia said to her, you Beatrice, why don't you help him who loves you so much? So it's almost like a reciprocity where because Stani loves Beatrice so much, Beatrice has to come help him now. But this goes against the very idea of God, okay? So what's happening here is two possibilities. The first possibility is that Virgil is just lying, okay? But he's not really lying.

He's just misinterpreting what's going on. God will always come to you if you truly want God to come. Okay? Because God is all generous. And so Dante is his heart is calling out for God and God sends Beatrice without any conditions. And God sends Beatrice because God understands that Beatrice is a person who can most help Dante. Okay? There's no reciprocity here.

But when Beatrice tells Virgil this, Virgil misinterprets this idea to mean that there's reciprocity going on, okay? So it's not really lying, but it shows you the limitations of Virgil's worldview, where in the IMEA, it's all about reciprocity. Okay, it's all about contract, it's all about duty. Okay, so that's the first possibility.

But another possibility is that Beatrice understands the limitations, of Virgil and so just tells Virgil what he wants to hear or structures this in a way that Virgil can understand okay because if Beatrice says to Virgil I came to Dante because Dante needs help Virgil will be like well okay he needs help but why help him and so Beatrice doesn't want to spend time explaining to him that the universe is all forgiven so she just says okay well it's because he helped me in the past it's because of his love for me that I'm able to go to heaven okay all right so already

in the beginning we have to question the authority of Virgil okay Virgil is an unreliable guide and for us to truly and to our paradise, for us to truly discover God, we need to recognize he is unreliable ourselves. Donnie will never tell us, but he'll give us clues to suggest that he is unreliable. And we must reject him if we are to fully embrace God. Okay?

All right, let's continue. All right, so Virgil is taking Dante into hell. And Virgil emphasized into Dante. This is a path that we must take if we are to go into paradise. You must first confront evil. You must first understand sin for you to truly understand goodness. Okay? All right.

And so when they get there, there's a river that blocks their path into hell, and there is a ferryman named Sharon from Greek mythology who will take them across the river. But the problem is that Dante is still living. And Sharon sees that. And he says to Dante, there's a problem here. I can't take you across because you're a living soul and you're not dead.

So I can't give you access to hell. Okay? All right. Can you read? I agree. And here advancing towards us in a boat, an aged man, his hair was white with ears, was shouting. Woe to you, corrupted souls.

Forget your hope of ever seeing heaven. I come to lead you to the other shore, to the eternal dark, to fire and frost. And you approaching there, you living soul, keep well away from these, they are the dead. But when he saw I made no move to go, he said, Another way and other harbors, not here, will bring you passage to your shore.

A lighter craft will have to carry you. My guide then, Sharon, don't torment yourself. Our passage has been willed above, where one can do what he has willed. and asked no more. Now silence fell upon the woolly cheeks of Sharon, pilots of the livid marsh, whose eyes were ringed about with wheels of flame.

So Sharon doesn't want to take Dante across, because Donny is still living. But when Virgil says to him, hey, let us pass, Sharon obeys, okay? And this is a paradox. So let's explain the paradox to you. Again, the thing about Dante is that he's so subtle. and it's written in a perfect manner.

So the more you try to understand what's going on, the more truth will be revealed to you. So the paradox is this. They are in hell, and they are in hell because they've rejected God. Okay? And how we know they've rejected God is this sentence. Wall to you corrupt souls,

forget your hope of ever seeing heaven. Okay? So you can interpret this as saying that Sharon is saying to you, saying to people, this is all hopeless, okay? But another way of interpreting this is Sharon is saying to all the souls, you are here because you believe God has abandoned you. You believe there is no God.

You believe there is no heaven. You believe you deserve to be here. That's why you're here. So that, but then he sees Dante. And he knows that Dante doesn't believe this. He is actually going to heaven. And so Dante is a corruption. And so Charan doesn't want to take Dante a cross.

But then Virgil says, hey, God has ordered Dante to be crossed. And then Sharon obeys. The paradox is this. Sharon himself doesn't believe in God. That's why he's in hell. He rejects the authority of God. Yet he obeys God. So that makes up to no sense.

This is a paradox. Unless you remember that what matters, is the speaker okay so Virgil is the one who is speaking okay so in other words Sheren is that obeying the authority of God he's obeying the authority of the speaker who is Virgil and this suggests to us that Virgil is the master of hell and the question then is well why is he master of hell and the answer is because he created hell through the Inniab Right? Eniad is a poetry that emphasizes piety, obedience.

It emphasizes how love is a disease. It emphasizes the importance of hatred as a power to destroy your enemies. It emphasizes empire. So, in other words, Virgil through the Inniad created emotions in human beings that allow for the creation of hell itself. You can also argue that with the Iniad, virtual create the conditions for the Catholic Church.

The Catholic Church is not based on the Bible, it is based on the Inniad. Okay? So again, this is not a parent in the poetry. But what you understand that Dante is conveying his true paradox, and you try to unravel this paradox, and the truth slowly reveals itself to you. Okay? All right, let's continue. All right.

Can you read ivory? I'm sorry. To demon Sharon with his eyes like embers, by signaling to them, has all embarked. His oar strikes anyone who stretches out. As in the autumn leaves his hatch themselves, first one and then the other, till the bow sees all his fallen garments on the ground. Similarly, the evil seed of Adam descended from the shoreline one by one, when signaled, as a falcon, called, will come.

So do they move across to darken waters, even before they reached farther shore, new ranks already gather on this bank. My son, the gracious master, said to me, those who have died beneath the wrath of God, all these assemble here from every country, and they are eager for the river crossing because celestial justice spurs them on

so that their fear is turning to desire. No good soul ever takes passage here, therefore, if Sharon has complete, of you, by now you can be sure what his words mean. Okay, so two words that you will see a lot and Dante are will and desire, okay? Will and desire. Because will and desire together create your soul, okay? So in the mind commonly, you will see these two words, will and desire repeat it a lot.

You are what you want and what you move towards, okay? That's ultimately your soul. soul and what this is telling us is that people are evil because people obey duty okay so this image is where the people line up obediently and do as they're told you don't question why this is happening they don't resist why this is happening okay Their will and desire is to move towards hell. They are not in hell because they did bad things. Everyone does bad things.

They're in hell because they desire to be in hell. Okay? And it's something that Virgil says. Their fear is churned into desire. They're entering hell because they want to do so. And this is a really important idea if you are trying to strengthen Dante. Free will is a fundamental truth of the universe. You do what you do because you choose to do it.

You are in hell, not because you did bad things, you are in hell because you think that hell is the best place for you. You're happy in hell. Okay? So now they are in hell. And the first place that they enter something called Limbaugh. And Limbo is a place where people will go, they're good people, but the problem is they don't believe in Jesus. They don't believe

in Christ. They never converted Christianity. So these are people like Virgil, like Homer, like Plato. Okay? Very virtuous people, but unfortunately they don't believe in God and so therefore they are doomed in hell. Or that's what Virgil tells Dante. Donnie's suspicious and Donnie asked Virgil, Was there ever time when people in hell could ascend to heaven? And Virgil says there was only one time. And that was when Jesus died and he came to hell to save and redeem those most worthy. People like King David, people like Noah, people like Abraham, people like Rachel, who are in the Bible, who are born before the time of Christ, but who are worthy of going to heaven

and that's why Jesus came to hell unfortunately I Virgil came after Jesus and so I was not safe by him okay and as you go on I would you remember this because what we'll discover as we go on is this is not true it's not really possible for people

who are not Christians who were born before the time of Jesus to ascend to heaven because they choose to. It's about will and desire. Okay. So, and then they go into the first layer of hell. And the first layer of hell are people who lust. Okay. These are people whose passion overrided their reason. And so they sinned, okay? All right. Okay. And so these are spirits that are passing through, and Darnay asked Virgil, who are these people?

And Virgil starts to name them one by one, okay? Okay, can you read, Ivory? The kindly master said, Do you not ask who are these spirits whom you see before you? I'd have you know before you go ahead. They did not sin. And yet, though they have merits, that's not enough because they lacked baptism, the portal of faith that you embrace.

and if they lived before Christianity, they did not worship God in fitting ways, and of such spirits I myself am one. For these defects, and for no other evil, we now are lost and punished just with this. We have no hope, and yet we live in longing. Great sorrow seized my heart on hearing him, for I had seen some estimable men among the souls suspended in that limbo.

So I want to remember this passage because Virgil is saying, there's nothing wrong with me. unfortunately, I was just unlucky. Okay? This is incorrect. What you will see as we move on is that Virgil chooses to be here. There are many paths for salvation reduction for him, but he wants to stay in hell, okay? And why that is the case?

We'll talk about later. All right. Let's keep on going. So I descended from the first enclosure down to second circle, that which girdles less space but grief more great, that goads to weeping. There dreadful Mino stands gnashing his teeth, examining the sins of those who enter. He judges and assigns all as his tail at twines. I mean that when the spirit born to evil appears before him, it confesses all, and he, the connoisseur of sin, can tell.

The death and hell appropriate to it. As many times as Minos wraps his tale around himself, that marks, the sinners level. Always there is a crowd that stands before him. Each soul in turn advances towards the judgment. They speak in here, then they are cast below. Arresting his extraordinary task, Minos, as soon as he had seen me, said, oh, you who reached this house of suffering, be careful how you enter, whom you trust, the gate is wide, but do not be deceived. To which my guide replied, but why protest? Do not attempt to block his faded path. Our passage has been willed above, where one can do what he has willed and ask no more.

Okay, so this is a very interesting passage that again makes us question things. Okay? So Minos, who's basically deciding which level of hell you go to based on your sin. He basically says to Dante, don't trust anyone here, okay? Don't trust anyone here. Be careful how you enter, whom you trust, the gate is what, but do not be deceived. Okay, this is a very strange idea, right?

Because Minos sees that Dante is with Virgil. And his response is, Dante, you're a good person. I'm telling you right now, don't trust anyone, right? So what he's really saying is, Dante, don't trust Virgil. If you think about it logically, makes no sense for him to say that unless he means don't trust Virgil. Because if Virgil can be trusted,

then all Donning has to do is just follow Virgil into hell, and that's it, okay? But Minos makes a point of saying, don't trust anyone here. Which is to say, don't trust the person closest to you. Be careful of how you enter and whom you trust. Okay?

And what confirms this is, to which my guy replied, but why protests? Okay? So Virgil is jumping right and said, hey shut up man okay do not attempt to block his faded path our passion has been wheeled above where one can do what he has willed and asked no more we are I represent a higher power than you me knows all right so again this is

questioning the reliability of narrator what's happening is that Dante is planting seeds giving us clues that in hell nothing is what it seems The person that we most trust, Virgil, is the person we should probably least trust. Okay? All right. So everything that Virgil says, we have the question. All right, so again, Virgo and Dante are in the first layer of hell, and this is lust, and Virgil is pointing out to Dante who they are.

Okay, can you read, Ivory? The first of those about whose history you want to know. My master then told me, once ruled as empress over many nations. Her vice of lust became so customary that she made license licit in her laws to free her from the scandal she had caused. She is Semiramis, of whom we read that she was named as his wife and his successor. She held the land the sultan now commands. That other spirit killed herself for love and she betrayed the ashes of Sakeas, the wanton Cleopatra follows next. See Helen, for whose sake so many years of evil had to pass.

See great Achilles who finally met love in his last battle. See Paris, Tristan, and he pointed out a name to me more than a thousand shades departed from our life because of love. No sooner had I heard my teacher named the ancient ladies in the knights than pity seized me and I was like a man astray. Okay, so this again is a paradox, okay? And again, it's almost impossible to see this paradox by yourself. But the paradox is this.

What Virgil will do is basically point out a thousand shades, okay? You provide all the names of these people. An example is Symeris and then you have Diopatra, you have Helen, you have Achilles, you have Paris, you have Tristan, okay? He's naming everyone. But there's one shade he does not name. And the other spirit who killed herself for love and she betrayed the ashes of Sikkis. We know who this person is because this person is Ditto.

And who is Ditto? Ditto is the creation of Virgil. So the grand paradox, the irony is there's a thousand people. and the person that Virgil refuses to acknowledge by name is the one that he understands the best, who he is most intimate with. Okay? And this creates the question, why is this the case?

Why does he refuse to name Ditto? So if you go out to the Inniad, the one thing that stands up about the Inniad is that Ditto is the most word Real estate character. It's really the character that most people, when they read the Indianiad,

they sympathize with. Because Ditto feels real, but at the same time, Ditto didn't really deserve her fate. Okay? So it is Virgil who cast Diddle into hell. Right? And it's contrast with Dante,

who will elevate Beatrice, his love, to heaven. So already we are seeing a contrast, a paradox. Virgil condemned Ditto to how Dante elevated Beatrice to heaven. And Dante is longed for Beatrice, and then Virgil forgets that Dittal even existed.

He even refuses to name her. And the question isn't is why. So because Diddle is a realistic character, we can assume that Diddle is based on a person that Virgil knows. But knowing that, we can also make the assumption that Virgil pursued Diddle, fell in love with Diddle, and Diddle rejected him probably because he was an ugly asshole. Okay? And so Virgil got really angry and decided that I will condemn Diddle to hell. But in his heart, Virgil knows that this was unfair, that this was pure hatred.

And so he feels a bit guilty about it, he feels embarrassed about it, and that's why he refuses to acknowledge Diddle. He refuses to face Diddle for what he did, okay? But then something interesting happens, all right? Okay, can you read? My first words, poet, I should willingly speak with those two who go together there and seem so lightly carried by the wind. And he to me, you'll see when they draw closer to us, and then you may appeal to them by that love which impels them.

They will come. No sooner had the wind bent them towards us than I urged on my voice. O battered souls, if one does not forbid it, speak with us. Even as doves when summoned by desire, born for, by their will, move through the air with wings uplifted, still to their sweet nest. Those spirits left the ranks where diddo suffers approaching us through the militant air. So powerful had been my loving cry. Okay, so what he's saying here is that, like, Virgil is naming all the shades,

and Donny is like, let me go and talk to them. And Virgil says, sure, go talk to them, okay? But what I would you notice is this. Those spirits left the ranks where diddo suffers approaching us through, the negative ear, okay? So the contrast is this. Virgil refuses to name Ditto so Danty names Ditto himself.

All right? And what this really is, is an act of rebellion. Because Doreg acknowledges Virgil as his father, as his guide, as his teacher. And therefore, he should just follow Virgil. If Virgil doesn't want to name Diddle, doesn't want to acknowledge Dido, then Donne should be respectful and ignore Diddle, right? But he's saying, nope, I'm going to name Diddle because I want us to understand that

it was wrong to not acknowledge Diddle. It was wrong, first of all, for Virgil to condemn Diddle to hell, and it's wrong to just ignore her. Okay? So I know who Diddle is, I know what Virgil did, and I want to name her in order to resurrect her in our memory. So again, this is creating kind of dissonance. It's leaving an idea in my heads that none of what we're seeing in inferno is what it seems. That's why it's hell. It's all an illusion. It's all deception.

And we have to use our minds. We have to use our hearts to truly understand what's. going on okay all right so this begins our journey into the line comedy but as you can see it is extremely complex you have to see with your heart you have to see with your imagination it's impossible to just read this and know what's going on you have to believe in your instincts you have to believe in your intuition you have to believe that you have to believe that you have to believe that you connection with God and it is God that revealed to you the truth for your intuition and your

imagination okay so the divine colony is a journey really into your own heart and your faith all right any questions okay all right so we will continue this next time okay