I was just reading somewhere else where it was suggested. would yu actually want to do 'The Divine Comedy' trip if you could and go through what Dante has gone through in his poem?
I have only read "Inferno". From my understanding at the end of "Paradiso" Dante meets God. If that was the case for myself then yes. I would take the trip.
Otherwise it is a no. God is the motivation I see. Do you think you will be able to handle it. Dante do not give any clues to his state of minds as he leaves 'Inferno' and 'Purgatorio' neither does he give any guarantees to anyone else to be able to make it. I know that the human mind is easily hurt or traumatised do you think you can psychologically survive the two first ones?
God would be the motivation. Given the chance to experience the "ultimate truth" is something that would attract me. As for being able to handle the experience....my mind would have a difficult time processing what happened. After the trip it is safe to say that I would be found in the local mental health ward. I know from personal experience that the mind is able to heal itself after strenuous events. I know that I wouldn't emerge from the experience unscathed but all wounds heal.
I think this, and your other thread about Dante should be merged with the Dante discussion thread, which coincidentally, you also created. I know we all go through phases but...
Well this question is actually personalised althouhg about Dante it is not looking at the poem itself but talking the concept.
very interesting. I did think about it myself and figured something like this: One might accept the idea and go for the trip because God is the motivation or the ultimate truth as you said, but wether one is able to actually process wether it is God they have ultimately met, after too hellish parts/trips first is questionable. Yes I would believe that one's trip went on and that God was met but wether one was able to recognise or process the ultimate proof is very doubtful. The mind by that time would have been in my own opinion so damaged and traumatised that wether they could make God to be God when they eventually get to Paradiso is a very good question.
(Should maybe point out to all who haven't read the poem that meeting God is not the main focus of The Comedy, just the ending.)
doesn't the end justfiy the means? I am only beginning to delve into this poem but I understood it to be the reason why Dante wrote what he wrote.
The end does justify the poem, but it is not the cause of the poem. There are two main causes of the poem, one is Beatrice and the other is Dante's own sins. This is something most people forget - not about Beatrice (she's well known enough, especially after that god-awful Dante's Inferno game) - but Dante's sins and Beatrice's love for Dante are what kicks the entire series into motion. Look at the first three lines of Inferno and the entire cycle: Longfellow translation When Dante says 'Midway through the Journey of life' he is referring to his own day's common life expectancy of around 70 years. This is how we know the poem is set in the year 1300, and it makes sense of a lot of the references and mock-prophesies in The Comedy. The Comedy contains a lot of apparent prophesies, but most of them refer to things that had already happened when the poem was being composed, apparently to give Dante a kind of odd authority and strength that is mostly lost on modern readers, but the real reason is unknown. 'I found myself within a forest dark,' = Sin 'For the straight-forward pathway had been lost.' = Dante has lost his way, and now beginning to realize this.
I was under the impression that Beatrice existence was in question that they were not sure she existed. Dante was in exile and was in his thirties..young enough. I was thinking what kind of sins could he have committed? There is nothing about his private life that says he had committed any sins... This caught my eye what does the word 'biblical' in this context mean? do you mean to say that in Dante's life they were real prophesies that came true because people in the 1300 believed in prophesies? hence which means modern life does not believe in premonitions and prophesies? about Poetic Justice This is interesting because what it is saying this In other words prophesies is supposed to sinful hence the fortune tellers so the idea of 'looking ahead of time' is a sin hence this passage highlighting the fortune tellers ''walking backwards''...
Dante's Beatrice, her full name was Beatrice Portinari, was a real person. You can visit her tomb. It's in Santa Margherita de' Cerchi in Florence. This is one of the great mysteries of The Comedy. Why would an obviously very pious man like Dante need to be cleansed? Me personally, I think that - due to some of the things in Paradiso - Dante's sin was ignoring his spiritual side for his earthly life. He was a major politician in Florence right up until his exile. The life-expectancy of most people found in The Bible, and at the time it was written. No. I mean to say that in Paradiso Dante 'predicted' his own exile, which had already happened many years before he wrote Paradiso. He wrote it as a prediction, after the thing he predicted came true. Why he did this and what it means is anyone's guess. No. I understand you say you are not terribly familiar with English, but 'Lost on modern readers' means 'Modern readers will not pick this up'. The prophesy of the House of David is one of the things Christians point to when proving the divinity of Jesus. So when we are talking about prophesy as a sin we have to be careful to distinguish a truthfully made prophesy based on a vision from God, and a lie. Fortune-tellers are liars (notice how they are in the Eighth Circle for Fraud) and are thus punished. Dante's prophesy about himself and DXV, while condemning false prophets is a notable contradiction, and there are a number of theories about why this contradiction exists. It should be noted however that a fake prophesy about something that has already happened is not a prophesy in itself. Also, Dante was influenced heavily by the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, which apparently holds that things like this are permissible because they are based on love, and love for god. Also, it should be noted that Dante's prophesies are non-fraudulent. DXV was clearly something Dante believed would happen.
Yes I do understand but I am trying to justify this statement by asking this: Is it because Modern readers/modern people do not believe in prophesies as oppose to people in the 1300 who obviously hold beliefs that prophecies existed. what about? and I am trying to understand what you meant by Limbo? as well as Circle1/2/3/4/5//6/7/8/9 ? are these representative of sins? There is something 9+1= 10 being something to do with Satan??!!
No. I mean to say that most of Dante's prophesies in The Comedy are not prophesies. Only things made to look like prophesies, because the events these 'prophesies' discribe had already happened when Dante wrote about them. In Paradiso Dante is told to write The Comedy, in The Comedy. Google it. It's a well-known Christian concept. No. Even if you just read Inferno you'll notice something about the level of severity of Sin and Punishment between the levels. No. Google it. P.S. Can a mod please put these two posts together? I can't post long replies for some reason. It's claiming a 'Broken link' is stopping me when I try to.
limbo is: Limbo, within Circle 1, contains Does this mean that those who die in original sin are the same as the virtuous pagans who were ignorant of Christ? I am trying to understand these circles. There are no mentions of circle 2/3/4/and 5 for some reason. any way this then circle 6 .
Sort of. Limbo is for the souls of virtuous and good pages who either lived before the coming of Christ, thus they by default are guilty of Original sin (blocking them from Purgatory and Paradise) or who were born outside of Christianity's direct influence. Dante places Saladin in Limbo, for example, but it is important to know that Saladin was very highly regarded in Europe during Dante's time. Since they were outside of the church - not having been baptized, but otherwise lived good lives they are not punished, but still separate from God. Then stop reading the Wikipedia page and read the poem. I'm not being snarky, but there is no point in talking about a poem you clearly haven't read. If you want help with the poem (which I can fully understand without notes) then you might find this helpful. http://www.italianstudies.org/hui235/infstructure.htm
Lemex thank you . You have been great and very helpfull. Thank you for bearing with me I will look at the notes and might come back with more questions if that is OK.
