Monday, September 20, 2010

Summer Reading: Inferno (canto 24)

With the bridges in the Malebolge collapsed, Dante must climb the scree to continue. In a strange twist of medieval physics, Virgil (who is weightless, being a soul without a body) hoists Dante from below. Finally, they reach the eighth ditch, which is filled with snakes! These vipers stab right through the terrorized sinners, who catch fire, turn to ash, and then, in a parody of the Resurrection, are reconstituted. Chilling! Dante recognizes one soul, a Florentine damned for jacking a church. The man prophecies that his party, the Blacks, will triumph over Dante's Whites—and so they would.

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