okay, so i jumped right into the book, and right away it took me off guard by its very small and hard to read text.
it also has what seems to me to be latin in some parts.
i dont know about you, but i dont know latin, but most of the words were cognates, so it wasnt too hard to interpret their meanings.
dante first talks about going through a dark forest, which im believing might be some outskirt of hell???
after being chased by a lion and a leopard, and a wolf, he meets virgil.
ok back up, i remember something in the bible saying something to the extent that “the devil is like a lion in waiting, preying on the weak” could this be another form of the dark prince himself?
he also talks about the wolf alot. idk how this could be interpreted.
anyway, he meets virgil (another poet) who im guessing has been there a very long time
virgil takes dante into hell.
dante is apprehensive. ofcourse any human being would be apprehensive about taking a journey through hell!
virgil reassures him that the “Ladies of Heaven” are the ones who sent virgil to help dante, so he shouldnt be scared.
i have to be careful on how i read this because this whole freaking book is a poem! haha
which could lead to everything being an interpretation of something or another
ive done my fair share of Rhetoric.
but this is somewhat confusing.
okay so back to whats going on.
so they enter hell. and he sees what virgil tells him are the souls of the “uncommitted”. they are being eternally stung by hornets and wasps & worms eat their blood and tears.
this is pretty disgusting.
the uncommitted, are ones who didnt quite make it into heaven, but didnt quite make it into hell either.
therefore they didnt committ to either god or satan so they are forever to be stuck in the quagmire that they’re in.
further on, dante and virgil get on a boat to cross a lake.
now this “lake”, is a little bit familiar to me. in the sence that ive seen it not only in movies such as “Hercules” but its also described in the bible.
in the animated movie hercules, Hades has such a lake where condemned souls are confined to.
in the bible, it talks of a “lake of fire & brimstone” in hell.
although it does not say that the lake is on fire, it does make this reference many times.
also of the “carrier of souls”, that ferries souls to the inner workings of hell.
