Information on Inferno through Canto XXXI

Book VI (6)

As usual, note who is here and how they are punished. Know what the place looks, sounds, and smells like. Note the mythical creature(s) here. Who is Cerberus? Note the main sinner here and how Dante regards him--with contempt, indifference, or pity? Look closely at the text. This is still the realm of the incontinent. Think about what that means here.

Note the description of Cerberus: "His eyes are red, his beard is greased with phlegm, his belly is swollen, and his hands are claws to rip the wretches and flay and mangle them" (16-18).

I'll bet Yeats may have borrowed the next lines for his poem, "The Second Coming":

And they, too, howl like dogs in the freezing storm, / turning and turning from it as if they thought / one naked side could keep the other warm."

Remember too: Hell is gyre shaped.

Now note the wonderful description of Cerberus:
"When Cerberus discovered us in that swill / his dragon-jaws yawed wide, his lips drew back / in a grin of fangs. No limb of him was still" (22-24).

Again, note how Dante treats this sinner. Know too, that we learn here, in the footnotes, that while sinners can see the past and prophesy the future, they cannot see the present. Pay attention to the sinner's prophesy.

This character is also the first we encounter to ask to be remembered on Earth. "But when you move among the living/ oh speak my name to the memory of men!" Note what the footnote in your book says about this. And remember how this is one reason that I think Hamlet's father is actually in Hell.

Canto VII (7)

Which sinners are in Circle 4? Which are in Circle 5? What is a hoarder? Compare to the wasters. What is the difference between the wrathful and the sullen?

Know how each is punished and why each is punished in this particular way.

Again, note the great diction: "Plutus clucked and stuttered in his rage" (2).
Great, descriptive verbs!

Note the simile. Note also the dialogue--Virgil to Dante and then to the sinners (notice the difference in diction but also in tone): "'Do not be startled, for no power of his, / however he may lord it over the damned, / may hinder your descent through this abyss.' / And turning to that carnival of bloat / cried: 'Peace, you wolf of Hell. Choke back your bile / and let its venom blister your own throat. / Our passage through this pit is willed on high/ by that same Throne that loosed the angel wrath of Michael on ambition and mutiny.' / As puffed out sails fall when the mast gives way / and flutter to a self-convulsing heap--so collapsed Plutus into that dead clay" (4-15).

Notice the mythical allusions (consider the Odyssey). Why can't Dante recognize some of these sinners? What is Virgil's explanation?

Canto VIII (8)

Who is Phlegyas? Describe him.

Who is Filippo Argenti? How does Dante treat Argenti? How does Virgil react to Dante's treatment of Argenti?

Who are the Rebellious Angels? How does Virgil react to the Rebellious Angels?

Again, note the diction: "two horns of flame / flared from the summit, one from either side" (3-4).

Note the metaphor and the characterizing dialog: "No twanging bowspring ever shot an arrow/ that bored the air it rode dead to the mark/ more swiftly than the flying skiff whose prow/ shot toward us over the polluted channel/ with a single steersman at the helm who called: 'So, do I have you at last, you whelp of Hell?'" (13-17).

Note how Dante's weight affects the boat and how Phlegyas reacts to this.

What is the name of the city that lies ahead? What does it look like?

Canto IX (9)

What do Virgil and Dante need in order to overcome the obstacles at the border of Dis? What are the Three Infernal Furies? What do they symbolize? Who has the power to turn them into stone? How does Virgil protect Dante here? Which sinners are here? What circle is this?

Note the diction and the metaphors: "My face had paled to a mask of cowardice / when I saw my Guide turn back. The sight of it/ the sooner brought the color back to his. / He stood apart like one who strains to hear/ what he cannot see, for the eye could not reach far/ across the vapors of that midnight air" (1-6).

Canto X

Usury is another concept that will come up in the next couple of cantos. Today, usury means lending money at exorbitant interest rates. The word has been used often in referring to the payday-lending industry and recent legislation.

In the Middle Ages, usury meant lending money at any interest rate. One was supposed to make one's living off of one's talents--talents like painting, shoe-making, building, copying manuscripts, etc. You were not supposed to make money from money. Part of this is a sign of Medieval anti-Semitism. You will see that in the canto.

Canto X--the Heretics

Who is Farinata degli Uberti? How does Dante know him?
How do these two treat each other?

Who is Cavalcante dei Cavalcanti? How does Dante know him? What does Dante say to upset Cavalcanti? How does he "fix" this later?

Note the many-leveled symbolism of this encounter, especially as it pertains to a rival poet.
Note all the gyre-imagery (pertains to Yeats' poem, "The Second Coming"). It is even in the dialog:

"'Supreme Virtue, who through the impious land/ wheel me at will down these dark gyres,' I said, / speak to me, for I wish to understand'" (4-6).
Note the reference to Epicurus and his followers--it is in the footnotes.

Note how the sinner flatters Dante in this realm: "'O Tuscan, who go on living through this lace/ speaking so decorously, may it please you pause/ a moment on your way, for by the grace/ of that high speech in which I hear your birth,/ I know you for a son of that noble city/ which perhaps I vexed too much in my time on earth'" (23-27).

Note the physical movement and the tone of admiration: "My eyes were fixed on him already. Erect, / he rose above the flame, great chest, great brow;/ he seemed to hold all Hell in disrespect" (34-36).

Virgil admonishes Dante to "'mind how you speak to him'" (39).

Note the following description and the use of pathos: "At this another shade rose gradually, / visible to the chin. It had raised itself, / I think, upon its knees, and it looked around me / as if it expected to find through the black air / that blew around me, another traveler. / And weeping when it found no one there, turned back" (52-57).

Note Farinata's connection to the earth still--he blames his plight, in part, on "'edicts pronounced against my strain'" (84).

Farinata regrets the destruction of Florence, something he would not have done.

Know that sinners lack the knowledge of the present! "'We see asquint, like those whose twisted sight / can make out only the far-off,' he said, 'for the King of All still grants us that much light'" (100-102).

"'Except what others bring us / we have no news of those who are alive'" (104-105).
He mentions some sinners, but "'of the rest let us be dumb'" (120).

Great description:
"So saying, he bore left, turning his back / on the flaming walls, and we passed deeper yet / into the city of pain, along a track / which plunged down like a scar into a sink/ which sickened us already with its stink" (134-137).

Note how the above passage foreshadows or transitions into the next canto!

Canto XI--The Heretics

The footnotes talk about the harrowing of Hell. Note that.

Know about Pope Anastasius (496-498)--the Great Schism

Lower Hell is based upon Aristotle's The Ethics and The Physics. It ends two ours before Holy Saturday.

Note the transition at the opening of the canto: "We came to the edge of an enormous sink / rimmed by a circle of great broken boulders" (1-2).

Know Plotinus (see footnotes).

Malice differs from sins of incontinence because it has to do with intent. Earlier, we had the sins of incontinence. They have more to do with our animal appetites.

Virgil: "'Malice is the sin most hated by God. / And the aim of malice is to injure others / whether by fraud or violence. But since fraud / is the vice of which man alone is capable / God loathes it most. Therefore, the fraudulent / are placed below, and their torment is more painful'" (22-27).

Violence "'sins in three persons, so is that circle formed / of three descending rounds of cruel torments. / Against God, self, and neighbor is violence shown'" (29-31).

"A man may lay violent hands upon his own / persons and substance; so in that second round / eternally in vain repentance moan/ the suicides and all who gamble away / and waste the good substance of their lives / and weep in that sweet time when they should be gay" (40-45).

Unlike the Medieval man, the Renaissance man was supposed to love the world as part of God's creation. We are seeing some of that represented in the above passage.

"Violence may be offered the deity/ in the heart that blasphemes and refuses Him / and scorns the gifts of Nature, her beauty and her bounty" (46-48).

Note the descriptive nature of Dante's question to Virgil: "'But tell me: those who lie in the swamp's bowels, /those the wind blows about, those the rain beats, / and those who meet and clash with such mad howls--/ why are they not punished in the rust-red city / if God's wrath be upon them? And if it is not, / why must they grieve through all eternity?'" (70-75).

Here, Virgil rebukes him for not knowing the answer through reason--particularly, through Aristotle's Ethics. This was the only pagan philosopher permitted and his structures helped to shape the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic church.

Usury is mentioned. Dante asks why it is so bad and Virgil explains:

"'Philosophy makes it plain by many reasons,' he answered me, 'to those who heed her teachings, / how all of Nature, --her laws, her fruits, her seasons,--springs from the Ultimate Intellect and its art: / and if you read your Physics with due care, / you will note, not many pages from the start , / that Art strives after her by imitation, / as the disciple imitates the master; / Art, as it were, the Grandchild of Creation./ By this, recalling the Old Testament / near the beginning of Genesis, you will see / that in the will of Providence, which was meant/ to labor and to prosper. But usurers, by seeking their increase in others ways, / scorn Nature in herself and her followers'" (97-111).

In other words, you are not supposed to make money from money. That was not considered a talent.

Note the transitional nature of the last line of the canto:
"'But come, for it is my wish now to go on:/ the wheel turns and the Wain lies over Caurus, the Fish are quivering low on the horizon, / and there beyond us runs the road we go/ down the dark scarp into the depths below'" (112-116).

Canto XII--Circle Seven: Round One--the Violent Against Neighbors

Dante and Virgil have to evade which mythological creature?

Below is the River of Blood-described in the previous canto: "As they wallowed in blood during their lives, so they are immersed in the boiling blood forever, each according to the degree of his guilt, while fierce Centaurs patrol the banks, ready to shoot with their arrows any sinner who raises himself out of the boiling blood beyond the limits permitted him" (1190).

Know which famous sinners can be found here.

Who is Chiron and what does he do for the pair? What is Chiron's relationship to Achilles?

Note the transitional nature of the first line as well as its descriptive nature, which includes several metaphors.

"The scene that opened from the edge of the pit/ was mountainous, and such a desolation/ that every eye would shun the sight of it: / a ruin like the Slides of Mark near Trent/ on the bank of the Adige, the result of an earthquake/ or of some massive fault in the escarpment--/ for, from the point on the peak where the mountain split/ to the plain below, the rock is so badly shattered / a man on the top might make a rough stair of it" (1-9).

Pay attention to the footnotes about the wicked queen and the Minotaur. Know the story.

Know Nesus' story too, also in the footnotes.

Note the descriptive nature of the following passage: "We drew near those swift beasts. In a thoughtful pause / Chiron drew an arrow, and with its notch / he pushed his great beard back along his jaws. / And when he had thus uncovered the huge pouches/ of his lips, he said to his fellows: 'Have you noticed how the one who walks behind moves what he touches? That is not how the dead go'" (76-82).

Canto XIII--The Violent Against Themselves

This is one of the most poignant for me--the suicides. We know a lot more about issues like depression than they knew in Dante's time and that there is often a bio-chemical component that can now be treated. Even without that understanding, Dante's narrator is sympathetic. Know how the suicides are punished. It actually reminds me of the scene in "The Wizard of Oz," when Dorothy picks an apple from a tree.

Note the Unknown Florentine Suicide who appears at the end of the canto. His anonymity is part of his punishment. There is no remembering him. That is very sad. Now, for the canto and any interesting lines--and especially diction--take note.

I want you to do what Dante does--to bring a scene to life with words. Try reading the lines aloud. The rhythms of the language also contribute to the sensory perceptions. "Its foliage was not verdant, but nearly black. / The unhealthy branches, gnarled and warped and tangled, / bore poison thorns instead of fruit" (4-6).

Look at the description of the Harpies. Note the simplicity of the language. It is simple, but specific. Try to picture this. "Their wings are wide, their feet clawed, their huge bellies / covered with feathers, their necks and faces human. / They croak eternally in the unnatural trees" (13-15).

"I heard cries of lamentation rise and spill / on every hand, but saw no souls in pain / in all that waste; and, puzzled, I stood still. / I think perhaps he thought that I was thinking / those cries rose from among the twisted roots / through which the spirits of the damned were slinking / to hide from us" (22-28).

Look at this wonderful dialog and the diction. By the way, unless you are writing in verse, I want you to put different speakers in new paragraphs. At the end, note how Virgil apologizes for having to hurt the sinner and how he promises that Dante will talk about the sinner when he gets back on earth as a kind of compensation for the pain caused: "'If you break off a twig, what you will learn / will drive what you are thinking from your head.' / Puzzled, I raised my hand a bit and slowly / broke off a branchlet from an enormous thorn: / and the great trunk of it cried: ' Why do you break me?' / And after the blood had darkened all the bowl / of the wound, it cried again: 'Why do you tear me? / Is there no pity left in any soul? / Men we were, and now we are changed to sticks; / well might your hand have been more merciful were we no more than souls of lice and ticks.' / As a green branch with one end all aflame / will hiss and sputter sap out of the other / as the air escapes--so from that trunk there came / words and blood together, gout by gout. / Startled, I dropped the branch I was holding / and stood transfixed by fear, half turned about / to my Master, who replied: ' O wounded soul, / could he have believed before what he has seen / in my verses only, you would yet be whole, / for his hand would never have been raised against you. / But knowing this truth could never be believed / till it was seen, I urged him on to do / what grieves me now; and I beg to know your name, / that to make you some amends in the sweet world / when he returns, he may refresh your fame'" (29-54).

Pay attention to how the sinner blames others for his plight: "'Through every strife / I was so faithful to my glorious office / that for it I gave up both sleep and life./ That harlot, Envy, who on Caesar's face / keeps fixed forever her adulterous stare, / the common plague and vice of court and palace, / inflamed all minds against me. these inflamed / so inflamed him that all my happy honors / were changed to mourning. Then, unjustly blamed, my soul, in scorn, made me at last, though just, unjust to myself. By the roots of this tree / I swear to you that never in word or spirit / did I break faith to my lord and emperor / who was so worthy of honor in his merit./ If either of you return to the world, speak for me, / to vindicate in the memory of men / one who lies prostrate from the blows of Envy'" (61-78). Again, note the attitude toward suicide: "'Like the rest, we shall go for our husks on Judgment Day, / but not that we may wear them, for it is not just / that a man be given what he throws away'" (103-105).

Canto XIV--Circle Seven, Round Three--the Violent Against God [blasphemers], Nature [homosexuals], and Art [usury]

Know how they are punished.

Who is Capaneus?

"Enormous herds of naked souls I saw, / lamenting till their eyes were burned of tears; / they seemed condemned by an unequal law, / for some were stretched supine upon the ground, / some squatted with their arms about themselves, and others without pause roamed round and round" (16-21).

According to the footnotes, why did Rhea have to dupe Saturn?

What is the name of the frozen lake at the bottom of the Inferno?

Canto XV--Circle Seven: Round Three--The Violent Against Nature

This may be my favorite canto because it is a tribute to a beloved teacher. It conjures in my mind teachers and mentors who greatly influenced my own life. Ser Brunetto Latino is the main character here. He is here because he is supposedly a homosexual. In real life, there is no proof one way or the other whether Latino was a homosexual. He was married and had several children. He might have been gay, but it was against the law. Those found or even assumed guilty of homosexual acts were often hunted down, tortured, and then executed--publicly.

By the way, Dante is the one who places homosexuals in his Inferno. Some people still feel that way. I do not and would therefore not include one in writing a contemporary Inferno.

Nice simile: "They stared at us / as men at evening by the new moon's light / stare at one another when they pass by / on a dark road, pointing their eyebrows toward us / as an old tailor squints at his needle's eye" (17-21).

"And I, when he stretched out his arm to me, / searched his baked features closely, till at last / I traced his image from my memory / in spite of the burnt crust, and bending near / to put my face closer to his, at last / I answered: 'Ser Brunetto, are you here?'" (25-30).

"I did not dare descend to his own level/ but kept my head inclined, as one who walks / in reverence meditating good and evil" (43-45).

"And he: 'Follow your star, for if in all / of the sweet life I saw one truth shine clearly, / you cannot miss your glorious arrival. / And had I lived to do what I meant to do, / I would have cheered and seconded your work, / observing Heaven so well disposed toward you. / But that ungrateful and malignant stock / that came down from Fiesole of old / and still smacks of the mountain and the rock, / for your good works enemy. / And there is cause: the sweet fig is not meant / to bear its fruit beside the sorb tree. / Even the old adage calls them blind, / an envious, proud, and avaricious people: / see that you root their customs from your mind'" (55-69).

Look at how the narrator expresses his grief over Brunetto's plight: "'Ah, had I all my wish,' I answered then, ' you would not yet be banished from the world / in which you were a radiance among men, / for that sweet image, gentle and paternal, / you were to me in the world when hour by hour / you taught me how man makes himself eternal,* lives in my mind, and now strikes to my heart; / and while I live, the gratitude I owe it / will speak to men out of my life and art'" (79-87). *

This teacher taught Dante his art--poetry. When we create art, we create a kind of immortality--for ourselves and for the subjects of that art. Note too, that Dante offers Latino the same kind of immortality. Dante will tell the world about his beloved mentor. Latino does not have to ask to be remembered. Dante will make sure that this is so.

Canto XVI--Circle Seven: Round Three--the Violent Against Nature and Art

How is Dante recognized by "the three stooges"--Jacopo Rusticucci, Guido Guerra, and Tegghiaiao Aldobrandi?

What does Virgil do at the end?

Note the transitional sentence at the beginning of this canto. For your Infernos, you will need transitional sentences at the beginning and at the end of the cantos.

"We could already hear the rumbling drive / of the waterfall in its plunge to the next circle, / a murmur like the throbbing of a hive, / when three shades turned together on the plain, / breaking toward us from a company / that went its way to torture in that rain" (1-6).

By the way--and a side note--DO NOT END YOUR INFERNOS WITH "AND THEN I WOKE UP" OR ANYTHING EVEN REMOTELY CLOSE TO THAT.

How does Virgil tell Dante to treat these sinners?

Note the following description and the simile. You will be describing and using similes and metaphors: "As naked and anointed champions do / in feeling out their grasp and their advantage / before they close in for the thrust or blow--/ so circling, each one stared up at my height, / and as their feet moved left around the circle, / their necks kept turning backward to the right" (22-27).

Again, the sinners suffer the anxiety of not being remembered: "'Therefore, if you win through this gloomy pass/ and climb again to see the heaven of stars; / when it rejoices you to say "I was," / speak of us to the living.' They parted then, / breaking their turning wheel, and as they vanished / over the plain, their legs seemed wings" (83-87).

Look at the end of this canto in its amazing descriptive and transitional nature. Think again of Yeats' poem, "The Second Coming" and the "rough beast."

"Reader, I swear / by the lines of my Comedy--so may it live--/ that I saw swimming up through that foul air / a shape to astonish the most doughty soul, / a shape like one returning through the sea / from working loose an anchor run afoul / of something on the bottom--so it rose, / its arms spread upward and its feet drawn close" (127-134).

Note the wonderful swimming motion--only it is swimming through air!

Canto XVII--Circle Seven: Round Three--the Violent Against Art and Geryon

Geryon is the monster of what particular vice? It's not usury.

By the way, how are the usurers punished?

Again, note the descriptive and transitional method of the opening. Note too the classical mythological allusions:

"'Now see the sharp-tailed beast that mounts the brink. / He passes mountains, breaks through walls and weapons. / Behold the beast that makes the whole world stink.' / These were the words my Master spoke to me; / then signaled the weird beast to come to the ground / close to the sheer end of our rocky levee. / The filthy prototype of Fraud drew near / and settled his head and breast upon the edge / of the dark cliff, but let his tail hang clear. / His face was innocent of every guile, / benign and just in feature and expression; / and under it his body was half reptile. / His two great paws were hairy to the armpits; / all his back and breast and both his flanks / were figured with bright knots and subtle circlets: / never was such a tapestry of bloom / woven on earth by Tartar or by Turk,/ nor by Arachne at her flowering loom. / As a ferry sometimes lies along the strand, / part beached and part afloat; and as the beaver, / up yonder in the guzzling Germans' land, / squats halfway up the bank when a fight is on--/ just so lay that most ravenous of beasts/ on the rim which bounds the burning sand with stone. / His tail twitched in the void beyond that lip, / thrashing, and twisting up the envenomed fork / which, like a scorpion's stinger, armed the tip" (1-27).

How are these sinners adorned?

"He half-arose, / twisted his mouth, and darted out his tongue / for all the world like an ox licking its nose" (67-69).

Note how frightening the following passage is and how it characterizes both narrator and guide:

"Returned, I found my Guide already mounted / upon the rump of that monstrosity. / He said to me: 'Now must you be undaunted: / this beast must be our stairway to the pit: / mount it in front, and I will ride between / you and the tail, lest you be poisoned by it.' / Like one so close to the quaternary chill / that his nails are already pale and his flesh trembles / at he very sight of shade or a cool rill--/ so did I tremble at each frightful word. / But his scolding filled me with that shame that makes / the servant brave in the presence of his lord. / I mounted the great shoulders of that freak / and tried to say 'Now help me to hold on!' / But my voice clicked in my throat and I could not speak" (73-87). Again, note the wonderful description--using a simile.

Note too the rhythms of the language, which make you feel as though you are actually riding the beast with them:

"As a small ship slides from a beaching on its pier, / backward, backward--so that monster slipped / back from the rim. And when he had drawn clear / he swung about, and stretching out his tail / he worked it like an eel, and with his paws/ he gathered in the air, while I turned pale" (94-99).

Note the reference to Icarus and Phaethon. Read the footnotes and know those stories. Both characters are famous "over-reachers." Again, note where Yeats took from this particular canto for "The Second Coming":

"Slowly, slowly, he swims on through space, / wheels and descends, but I can sense it only / by the way the wind blows upward past my face. / Already on the right I heard the swell / and thunder of the whirlpool. Looking down / I leaned my head out and stared into Hell. / I trembled again at the prospect of dismounting / and cowered in on myself, for I saw fires / on every hand, and I heard a long lamenting. / And then I saw--till then I had but felt it--/ the course of our down-spiral to the horrors / that rose to us from all sides of the pit. / As a flight-worn falcon sinks down wearily / though neither bird nor lure has signalled it, / the falconer crying out: ' What! spent already!'--/ then turns and in a hundred spinning gyres / sulks from her master's call, sullen and proud--/ so to that bottom lit by endless fires / the monster Geryon circled and fell, / setting us down at the foot of the precipice / of ragged rock on the eighth shelf of Hell. / And once freed of our weight, he shot from there / in the dark like an arrow into air" (109-131).

Canto XVIII (18)--Circle Eight: Malebolge: the Fraudulent and Malicious

Bolgia 1--The Panderers and Seducers

What does Malebolge mean?

Describe Malebolge.

How many concentric ditches are there?

Describe what serves as the ditches.

Besides Venedico Caccianemico, what famous mythological sinner is here? Think of Medea....

"All these sinners were naked; on our side/ of the middle they walked toward us; on the other, / in our direction, but with swifter stride. / Just so the Romans, because of the great throng/ in the year of the Jubilee, divided the bridge/ in order that the crowds may pass along,/ so that all face the Castle as they go/ on one side toward St. Peter's, while on the other,/ all move along facing toward Mount Giordano./ And everywhere along that hideous track/ I saw horned demons with enormous lashes / move through those souls, scourging them on the back./ Ah, how the stragglers of that long rout stirred, / their legs quick-march at the first crack of the lash!" (28-38).

What is the Year of the Jubilee all about? What does it have to do with a particular pope hated by Dante?

Panderer: someone who caters to or exploits the weaknesses of others; to provide gratification for desires--to the basest emotions; a pimp.

Seduce: to persuade to disobedience or disloyalty; to lead astray usually by persuasion or false promises; to carry out the physical seduction of.

Seducer: One who seduces.

How did Venedico Caccianemico of Bologna exploit his own sister? Why?

Note the great dialog: "...and as he spoke, one of those lashes fell/ across his back, and a demon cried, 'Move on,/ you pimp, there are no women here to sell'" (64-66). The demon seems to be enjoying himself!

Know about Jason, the Golden Fleece, and Hypsipyle (in the footnotes).

Bolgia Two: The Flatterers

Know how they are punished.

Canto XIX

Simoniacs: sellers of ecclesiastic favors and offices. In the Middle Ages, the church and the government were one and the same. If you wanted to get ahead, you did so only through the church. It did not matter whether you were a teacher, a barber, a brewer, a shoemaker, a lawyer, or a bishop. Simoniacs sold ecclesiastic favors--perhaps indulgences, but also, as put down in your books, political offices or other goodies. Consider a contemporary framework of lobbyists and members of Congress. If Alaska got the new bridge to a remote island inhabited by some fifty people, some contractor would stand to make a lot of money--and all at the taxpayer's expense. Maybe the national education budget will be cut in its place--to pay for the bridge and the contractor and his/her cronies. People in positions of power are supposed to lead but they are also supposed to serve and they are supposed to serve our best interests. Now add to that yet another moral component. If one follows the ten commandments, and Christians are supposed to do so, then one does not steal. To award a position of power to someone who does not deserve it is to steal that position from one that does. In addition, stealing is stealing, period. One certainly does not steal from the poor unfortunates. And here you have cut the education budget for millions (stealing) in favor of building a bridge that will benefit only a handful of people. Not only that, but in this case, we have the Church, the symbol of moral righteousness or rectitude, and it's pandering to rich people and taking from the poor for the gain of a few powerful individuals. This is not exactly a good role model. And yet, it's as real today as it was then. We just call them lobbyists and politicians instead of Simoniacs.

Know how the Simoniacs are punished and why. Know what I mean by symbolic retribution.
Know about Extreme Unction (Last Rites for the dying).

Know about Pope Nicholas III.

Some great descriptions:

"I saw along the walls and on the ground / long rows of holes cut in the livid stone; / all were cut to a size, and all were round" (13-15).

"They seemed to be exactly the same size / as those in the font of my beautiful San Giovanni, / built to protect the priests who come to baptize; / one of which, not so long since, I broke open to rescue a boy who was drowning in it" (16-20).

"From every mouth a sinner's legs stuck out / as far as the calf. The soles were all ablaze / and the joints of the legs quivered and writhed about. / Withes and tethers would have snapped in their throes. / As oiled things blaze upon the surface only, so did they burn from the heels to the points of their toes" (22-29).

Dialog:
"'Master,' I said, 'who is that one in the fire / who writhes and quivers more than all the others? / From him the ruddy flames seem to leap higher. / And he to me: 'If you wish me to carry you down / along that lower bank, you may learn from him / who he is and the evil he has done.' / And I: ' What you will, I will. You are my lord and know I depart in nothing from your wish; / and you know my mind beyond my spoken word'" (28-36).

"We moved to the fourth ridge, and turning left / my Guide descended by a jagged path / into the strait and perforated cleft. / Thus the good Master bore me down the dim / and rocky slope, and did not put me down / till we reached the one whose legs did penance for him. / 'Whoever you are, sad spirit,' I began, 'who lie here with your head below your heels / and planted like a stake--speak if you can.' I stood like a friar who gives the sacrament / to a hired assassin, who, fixed in the hole, /recalls him, and delays his death a moment" (37-48).

Note the anger in the following dialog:
"'Are you there already, Boniface*? Are you there / already?' he cried. 'by several years the writ / has lied. And all that gold, and all that care--/ are you already sated with the treasure / for which you dared to turn on the Sweet Lady / and trick and bleed her at your pleasure?' / I stood like one caught in some raillery,/ not understanding what is said to him, / lost for an answer to such mockery" (49-57).

*read the footnote a bout Boniface VIII
Look at this description: "The sinner's feet jerked madly; then again / his voice rose, this time choked with sighs and tears, / and said at last: 'What do you want of me then? / If to know who I am drives you so fearfully / that you descend the bank to ask it, know / that the Great Mantle** was once hung upon me" (61-66).

** read footnote about the Great Mantle

"'Beneath my head are dragged all who have gone / before me in buying and selling holy office; / there they cower in fissures of the stone. / I too shall be plunged down when that great cheat / for whom I took you comes here in his turn. / Longer already have I baked my feet / and been planted upside-down, than he shall be / before the west sends down a lawless Shepherd / of uglier deeds to cover him and me'" (70-78).

Canto XX

Though forbidden, fortune-telling, numerology, astrology, and other such practices were very popular in the Middle Ages. Popes were even said to have had their charts done. Even though it was practiced, everyone knew it was a sin. You sinned if you went to a fortune teller. You were an even bigger sinner if you were a fortune-teller. Know how these sinners are punished. It's actually a little bit funny, when you think about it. Know that he encounters Tiresias. Know Tiresias' story as delineated in the footnotes.

Cantos XXI & XXII

Graft: to implant living tissue surgically; to unite with a stock. the acquisition of gain (as money) in dishonest or questionable ways; illegal or unfair gain.

Canto XXI

Know how they are punished and pay special attention to some of the wonderfully and horribly descriptive passages of those punishments.

Note how it relates to the word "graft." "I saw the pitch; but I saw nothing in it / except the enormous bubbles of its boiling, / which swelled and sank, like breathing, through all the pit. / And as I stood and stared into that sink, / my Master cried, 'Take care!' and drew me back / from my exposed position on the brink./ I turned like one who cannot wait to see / the thing he dreads, and who, in sudden fright, / runs while he looks, his curiosity / competing with his terror--and at my back / I saw a figure that came running toward us / across the ridge, a Demon huge and black. / Ah what a face he had, all hate and wildness! / Galloping so, with his great wings outspread / he seemed the embodiment of all bitterness. / Across each high-hunched shoulder he had thrown / one haunch of a sinner, whom he held in place / with a great talon round each ankle bone" (19-36).

There is also some great dialog in this canto, so take note. These Demons seem to be having fun at their jobs. They also have some great Mafia or gang-sounding nicknames. The ending of this canto is absolutely hilarious.

Canto XXII

Great similes:

"All my attention was fixed upon the pitch: / to observe the people who were boiling in it, / and the customs and the punishments of that ditch. As dolphins surface and begin to flip / their arched backs from the sea, warning the sailors / to fall-to and begin to secure ship--/ So now and then, some soul , to ease his pain / showed us a glimpse of his back above the pitch / and quick as lightning disappeared again. / and as, at the edge of a ditch, frogs squat about / hiding their feet and bodies in the water, / leaving only their muzzles sticking out--/ so stood the sinners in that dismal ditch; / but as Curlybeard approached, only a ripple / showed where they had ducked back into the pitch. / I saw--the dread of it haunts me to this day--one linger a bit too long, as it sometimes happens / one frog remains when another spurts away; / and Catclaw, who was nearest, ran a hook / through the sinner's pitch hair and hauled him in. / He looked like an otter dripping from the brook (16-35). Again, we get some great names and descriptions and dialog.

Canto XXIII--The Hypocrites

Know how the hypocrites are punished. Know why they are punished this way.

Who is Caiaphas? How is his punishment different from the friars'?

Who accompanies Caiaphas in his punishment?

Know the Aesop fable referenced on page 1097 in Dante's words and in the footnotes on the same page.

Why does Virgil have to protect Dante? Note the description of the actions: "Seizing me instantly in his arms, my Guide-- / like a mother wakened by a midnight noise / to find a wall of flame at her bedside / (who takes her child and runs, and more concerned / for him than for herself, does not pause even / to throw a wrap about her) / raised me, turned, / and down the rugged bank from the high summit / flung himself down supine onto the slope / which walls the upper side of the next pit. / Water that turns the great wheel of a land-mill / never ran faster through thte end of a sluice / at the point nearest the paddles--as down that hill / my Guide and Master bore me on his breast, /as if I were not a companion, but a son" (34-47).

Look at the beauty of these lines. Dante uses alliteration as well as evocative rhythms and a brief "brush stroke" of a description: "About us now in the depth of the pit we found / a painted people, weary and defeated" (56-57).

When writing your own Infernos, consider applying such devices. Try reading your own work aloud too.

What kind of clothing do these kind of people wear? What kind of monks were they?

It's interesting that the Hypocrites ask of Dante's background.

Why are the friars called the "Jovial Friars"?

Who are the Pharisees and how are they punished?

Who lies to Dante and Virgil? Who is the "father of lies"?


Canto XXIV (24)--Circle VIII--Bolgia VII: The Thieves

If you have read The Kite Runner, you know that one of the characters says that stealing or thievery is the worst sin because it encompasses so many other sins. When we kill, we steal a life--not only from that person but from his/her family. When we cheat, we steal answers, etc. In Dante's Divine Comedy, pride is the worst of the seven deadly sins because every other sin (even stealing) has at its basis a kind of hubris. In Shakespeare's Hamlet or Macbeth, pride lies at the root of their transgressions. "I'm so special. Ghosts talk to me. And because I'm so special that ghost must be my dad," thinks Hamlet.

"I'm so special that I deserve to be king, even if it isn't my time," thinks Macbeth. His wife is guilty of an even greater pride. She gets him to do it because she wants to be queen. She doesn't have time for people to die of natural causes. She also knows that she has her husband under her control. Having a husband under control just isn't enough for her, though.

But let's get back to the thieves.


They have a great punishment, so pay attention. Know how it works in terms of symbolic retribution.

Vanni Fucci is one of the characters. Know about him.

Note the early reference to "the turning season of the youthful year, / when the sun is warming his rays beneath Aquarius / and the days and nights begin to near / their perfect balance" (1-4).

Note the descriptive nature of the following passage and how it also characterizes Virgil--and in the context of his relationship with his pupil. Note too, the metaphors / similes--in blue.

"...so in that place / when I saw my Guide and Master's eyebrows lower, / my spirits fell and I was sorely vexed; / and as quickly came the plaster to the sore: / for when he had reached the ruined bridge, he stood / and turned on me that sweet and open look* / with which he had greeted me in the dark wood. / When he had paused and studied carefully / the heap of stones, he seemed to reach some plan, / for he turned and opened his arms and lifted me. / Like one who works and calculates ahead, / and is always ready for what happens next-- / so, raising me above the dismal bed / to the top of one great slab of the fallen slate, / he chose another saying: ' Climb here, but first / test it to see if it will hold your weight. / It was no crime for a lead-hung hypocrite: / for scarcely we--he light and I assisted--/ could crawl handhold by handhold from the pit; / and were it not that the bank along this side / was lower than the one down which we had slid, / I at least--I will not speak for my Guide--/ would have turned back" (15-37).

* He turned that sweet and open look upon him. That reveals a lot about the nature of their almost father-son relationship. Though it is not a relationship of equals or a peer-type friendship, there is real love between these two.

"My lungs were pumping as if they could not stop; / I thought I could not go on, and I sat exhausted / the instant I had clambered to the top. / 'Up on your feet! This is no time to tire!'/ my Master cried. 'The man who lies asleep / will never waken fame, and his desire / and all his life drift past him like a dream, / and the traces of his memory fade from time / like smoke in air, or ripples on a stream. Now, therefore, rise. Control your breath, and call / upon he strength of soul that wins all battles / unless it sink in the gross body's fall. There is a longer ladder yet to climb: this much is not enough. If you understand me, / show that you mean to profit from your time'" (43-63).

Note the wonderful mythical allusions. Read about the phoenix and remember also, Yeats could be referring to that creature also in his poem, "The Second Coming." You will be using mythical allusions in your work, so pay attention:

"Precisely so, philosophers declare, / the Phoenix dies and then is born again / when it approaches its five hundredth year" (106-108).

Note how Vanni Fucci is characterized and how Dante does it through the use of dialog:

"'That you have found me out among the strife / and misery of this place grieves my heart more / than did the day that cut me from my life. / But I am forced to answer truthfully: / I am put down so low because it was I / who stole the treasure from the Sacristy, / for which others once were blamed. But that you may / find less to gloat about if you escape here, / prick up your ears and listen to what I say: / First Pistoia is emptied of the Black, / then Florence changes her party and her laws. / From Valdimagra the God of War brings back / a fiery vapor wrapped in turbid air: / then in a storm of battle at Piceno / the vapor breaks apart the mist, and there / every White shall feel his wounds anew. / And I have told you this that it may grieve you'" (133-150).

Canto XXV (25)--Circle VIII--Bolgia VII: The Thieves

Know what happens to ol' Vanni. Know about the Five Noble Thieves of Florence. By the way, "Noble" relates to class, not behavior.

Know about the merging between Cianfa and Agnello and the punishment in general.

Know how this works in terms of symbolic or divine retribution.

Read the footnote about Cacus, also punished here.

anni blasphemes God and Cacus chases him. Know Vanni and Cacus. Know about the Noble Thieves of Florence. Knwo how they change. It is really cool.

Note the descriptive nature and the concise nature of this passage: "'Where is Cainfa?' he cried; / 'Why has he fallen back?' I placed a finger across my lips as a signal to my Guide./ Reader, should you doubt what next I tell,/ it will be no wonder, for though I saw it happen,/ I can scarce believe it possible, even in Hell./ For suddenly, as I watched, I saw a lizard/ come darting forward on six great taloned feet/ and fasten itself to a sinner from crotch to gizzard./ Its middle feet sank in the sweat and grime/ of the wretch's paunch, its forefeet clamped its arms, its teeth bit throuh both hceeks./ At the same time/ its hind feet fastened on the sinners thighs: its tail thrust forward through his legs and its coil/ over his loins!" (40-54) Very descriptive and very grotesque!

Great description of their metamorphosis: "No ivy ever grew about a tree/ as tightly as that monster wove itself/ limb by limb about the sinner's body;/ they fused like hot wax,and their colors ran/ together until neither wretch nor monster/ appeared what he had begun when he began: / just so, before the running edge of the heat/ on a burning page, a brown discoloration/ changes to black as the white dies from the sheet./ The other two cried out as they looked on:/ 'Alas! Alas! Agnello, how you change!/ Already you are neither two nor one!'/ The two heads had already blurred and blended;/ now two new semblances appeared and faded,/ one face where neither face began nor ended./ From the four upper limbs of man and beast/ two arms were made, then members never seen/ grew from the thighs and legs, belly and breast./ Their former likenesses mottled and sank/to something that was both of them and neither;/ and so transformed, it slowly left our bank./ As lizards at high noon of a hot day/ dart out from hedge to hedge, from shade to shade, / and flash like lightning when they cross the way,/ so toward the bowesls of th ohter two,/ shot a smal monster; livid, furious,/ and black as a pepper corn. Its lunge bit thorgh the part of one of them from which man receives/ his earliest nourishment; then it fell back/and lay sprawled out in front of the two thieves./ Its victim stared at it but did not speak:/ indeed, he stood there like a post, and yawned/ as if lack of sleep, or a feer, had left him week./ The reptile stared at him, he at the reptile;/ two smokes poured out and mingled, dark and vile" (55- 90).

Another great but gross description:

"Responding sympathetically to each other,/ the reptile cleft his tail into a fork,/ and the wounded sinner drew his feet together./ The sinner's legs and thighs began to join:/ they grew together so, that soon no trace/ of juncture could be seeen from toe to loin./ Point by point the reptile's cloven tail/ grew to the form of what the sinner lost;/ one skin began to soften, one to scale./ The armpits swallowed the arms, and the short shank/ of the reptile's forefeet simultaneously lengthened by as much as the man's arm shrank" (100-111).

Great descriptions:

Point by point the reptile's cloven tail / grew to the form of what the sinner lost; / one skin began to soften, one to scale./ The armpits swallowed the arms, and the short shank/ of the reptile's forefeet simultaneously/ lengthened by as much as the man's arms shrank...." (106-112).

"The soul that had become a beast went flitting / and hissing over the stones, and after it/ the other walked along talking and spitting" (133-135).

Canto XXVI (26)--Circle VIII--Bolgia VIII: The Evil Counselors

Know about the prophesy.

Know that this is about "men of gift who abused their genius, perverting it to wiles and stratagems" (1250). Know how these men of gift are punished.

Here Dante encounters Ulysses (Odysseus) and Diomede. Let me give you a context for this. What, you ask, did Ulysses (Odysseus) do wrong? He kept trying to get back home.

First, it has nothing to do with the flings with the nymphs or goddesses. As I said, they don't count.

Here is the medieval context:

Medieval man and woman were supposed to stay focused on the next world, not this one. That is one reason there were no major scientific discoveries until the Renaissance. That is also why it took so long to find the New World.

All works were to be done for the glory of God, not for personal glory. Medieval artists did not sign their paintings. Well, there are some exceptions in the late middle ages....

People were not to seek glory abroad, but to remain at home, to live as simply as possible, and to pray, pray, pray. The more one suffered or denied oneself, the better one was. Ulysses and Diomede were wanderers. Besides, Ulysses was always on about how he was "the great tactician," "the master this and that," yadi-yadi-yadi. And I guess the trickery aspect of the Trojan horse and the fact that they killed lots of people instead of turning the other cheek....

Let's just get to the good stuff:

"I stood on the bridge, and leaned out from the ledge / without being pushed. And seeing me so intent, / my Guide said: 'There are souls within those flames; / each sinner swathes himself in his own torment.' / 'Master,' I said, 'your words make me more sure, / but I had already seen already that it was so / and meant to ask what each spirit must endure / the pains of that great flame which splits away / in two great horns, as if it rose from the pyre / where Eteocles and Polynices lay?'" (43-54).

By the way, know the story of Eteocles and Polynices. See the footnotes in your book.

"'Forever round this path / Ulysses and Diomede move in such dress, / united in pain as they once were in wrath; / there they lament the ambush of the Horse / which was the door through which the noble seed / of the Romans issued from its holy source; / there they mourn that for Achilles slain / sweet Deidamia weeps even in death; / there they recall the Palladium in their pain'" (55-63).

Now pay special attention to this wonderfully characterizing dialog. Note the deferential tone:

"And when the flame had come where time and place / seemed fitting to my Guide, I heard him say / these words to it: 'O you two souls who pace / together in one flame!--if my days above / won favor in your eyes, if I have earned / however much or little of your love / in writing my High Verses, do not pass by, / but let one of you be pleased to tell where he, / having disappeared from the world, went to die'" (73-81).

Note the spin that Ulysses (Odysseus) gives to his story!

"As if it fought the wind, the greater prong / of the ancient flame began to quiver and hum; / then moving its tip as if it were a tongue / that spoke, gave out a voice above the roar. / 'When I left Circe,' it said, 'who more than a year / detained me near Gaeta long before* / Aeneas came and gave the place that name, / not fondness for my son, nor reverence / for my aged father, nor Penelope's claim / to the joys of love, could drive out of my mind / the lust to experience the far-flung world/ and the failings and felicities of mankind. / I put out on the high and open sea / with a single ship and only those few souls / who stayed true when the rest deserted me. / As far as Morocco and as far as Spain / I saw both shores; and I saw Sardinia / and the other islands of the open main. / I and my men wee stiff and slow with age / when we sailed at last into the narrow pass / where, warning all men back from further voyage, / Hercules' Pillars rose upon our sight. / Already I had left Ceuta on the left; / Seville now sank behind me on the right. / "Shipmates," I said, "who through a hundred thousand / perils have reached the West, do not deny / to the brief remaining watch our senses stand / experience of the world beyond the sun. / Greeks! You were not born to live like brutes, / but to press on toward manhood and recognition!** / With this brief exhortation I made my crew / so eager for the voyage I could hardly / have held them back from it when I was through; / and turning our stem toward morning, our bow toward night, / we bore southwest out of the world of man; / we made wings of our oars for our fool's flight. / That night we raised the other pole ahead / with all its stars, and ours had so declined / it did not rise out of its ocean bed. / Five times since we had dipped our bending oars / beyond the world, the light beneath the moon / had waxed and waned, when dead upon our course / we sighted, dark in space, a peak so tall / I doubted any man had seen the like. / Our cheers were hardly sounded, when a squall / broke hard upon our bow from the new land: /three times it sucked the ship and the sea about / as it pleased Another to command./ At the fourth, the poop rose and the bow went down / till the sea closed over us and the light was gone'" (82-131).

*Note the passive nature of what he says. Circe detained him for a year. He says it as though he had no say in the matter.

**Not only was Ulysses guilty of wanderlust, but he corrupted the men who admired him to also be guilty of the same sin. Not only that, but this corruption led to their deaths!

Canto XXVII (27)--Circle VIII--Bolgia VIII: The Evil Counselors

How does Guido da Montefeltro recognize Dante? How does Guido physically explain?

Remember how the sinners "have prophetic powers, but lose all track of events as they approach" (1111). Who does Guido blame for his sin?

Know about the reference to the Sicilian bull (footnoted on page 1112).

Note Guido's plea: "'If you have fallen only recently/ to this blind world from that sweet Italy/ where I acquired my guilt, I pray you, tell me:/ is there peace or war in Romagna/ for on earth/ I too was of those hills between Urbino / and the fold from where the Tiber springs to birth'" (25-30).

How does Dante respond to this question?

Note this too: "'Now, I beg you, let us know your name; / do not be harder than one has been to you; / so, too, you will preserve your earthly fame'" (52-54).

Of which holy order was this sinner?

Who is the "'Great Priest'" sarcastically referred to in line 67?

Who is "'The Prince of the New Pharisees'" referred to in line 82?

Great description and history: "So it stood / until he said: 'Your soul need fear no wound; / I absolve your guilt beforehand; and now teach me / how to smash Penestrino to the ground'" (97-99).

It goes against the rules to absolve someone of his/her sins before he/she commits them. Therefore, the pope who offers this lies.

"'The Gates of Heaven, as you know, are mine/ to open and shut, for I hold the two Great Keys / so easily let go by Celestine'" (100-102).

Which Celestine?

"'Later, when I was dead, St. Francis came / to claim my soul, but one of the Black angels/ said: "Leave him. Do not wrong me. This one's name / went into my book the moment he resolved / to give false counsel. Since then he has been mine, / for who does not repent cannot be absolved; / nor can we admit the possibility / of repenting a thing at the time it is willed,/ for the two acts are contradictory"'" (108-117).

Canto XXVIII (28)--Circle VIII--Bolgia IX: The Sowers of Discord

Know how they are punished.

Know the levels: Sowers of Religious Discord

Sowers of Political Discord

Sowers of Discord Between Kinsmen

Know who Fra Dolcino was and what happened to him.

Know about Bertrand de Born and the story that sent him to the Inferno.

Know that these sinners want to be recognized.

Canto XXIX (29)--Circle VIII--Bolgia X: The Falsifiers (Class I, Alchemists)

Who is Geri del Bello, and how does Dante react to him? How does Geri react to Dante?

How are the Falsifiers punished?

Griffolino was punished as a sorcerer. He was really guilty of what, however?

Canto XXX (30)--Circle VIII--Bolgia X: The Falsifiers (Evil Impersonators, Counterfeiters, False Witnesses)

What happens to Capocchio?

What does it mean to be a Falsifier of Persons?

Who is Master Adam and of what sin was he guilty?

How is Master Adam punished?

Who lies beside Adam and of what are they guilty?

Which sinner gets angry by Master Adam's identification of him and what does he do?

Know about the myth of Myrrha (footnoted on page 1124).

Who is "'the liar who charged young Joseph wrongly'" (97)?

Who was Sinon in Greek legend? What had he done? See footnote on page 1125.

Great dialog:

"'Although I cannot stir / my swollen legs, I still have a free arm / to use at times when nothing else will answer'" (106-108).

"And the other wretch said: 'It was not so free / on your last walk to the stake, free as it was / when you were coining.' And he of the dropsy: 'That's true enough, but there was less truth in you/ when they questioned you at Troy'" (109-113).

"And Sinon then: 'For every word I uttered that was not true / you uttered enough false coins to fill a bushel: / I am put down here for a single crime,/ But you for more than any Fiend in Hell'" (113-117).

"'Think of the Horse,' replied the swollen shade, / 'and may it torture you, perjurer, to recall / that all the world knows the foul part you played'" (118-120).

"'And to you the torture of the thirst that fries / and cracks your tongue,' said the Greek, 'and of the water / that swells your gut like a hedge before your eyes'" (121-123).

"And the coiner: 'So is your own mouth clogged / with the filth that stuffs and sickens it always; / if I am parched while my paunch is waterlogged, / you have the fever and your cankered brain; / and were you asked to lap Narcissus' mirror / You would not wait to be invited again'" (124-129).

Sounds a lot like a "yo' momma" kind of argument.

Canto XXXI (31)--The Central Pit of Maleboge: The Giants

Try to picture this in its wonderful detail.

Nimrod is among the Giants. What did he do? I told you about him earlier in the year when we were reading some of the Old Testament passages.

Who were Ephialtes and Brareus? What did they do?

Who were Tityos and Typhon and what did they do?

Know that Antaeus is also here, mostly for transportation, it seems.

Ms. Losen's Contemporary Inferno

Part I: My Inspiration and Getting to Know Her Better

I'm going to make Virginia Woolf my guide for now.

Why Virginia? She's a great writer. She's witty. She was an atheist and a suicide so she fits the criteria.

I will start by looking at some of her writing--and showing you an example. The first thing I want to do is to establish a kind of voice for my guide. I will also be establishing a voice for my narrator.

Remember, your narrator is not the same as you. It can have some things in common with you, but it is not you. If you make the narrator yourself, you will be too restrained. I'm an experienced writer, so you can trust me on that.

My narrator will be wittier than I am, more self-confident, and definitely outgoing. She will be a good match for the likes of Virginia Woolf. The real me would probably be speechless in such esteemed company. The real me would think of all kinds of witty things to say after the encounter has ended and would probably have talked too much or too little and revealed all the wrong kinds of things. The real me is pretty shy around adults.

The fictional me, however, has time to think. I can think of all the witty things to say because I have time and can actually EDIT what I say. I love and hate editing. Whether I love or hate it, it's work and one of the main reasons for assigning this project.

Now, let me take a look at some of my favorite passages by Virginia Woolf and analyzing them in order to establish a voice for my guide: From the opening of Woolf's novel, Mrs. Dalloway:

"Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. For Lucy had her work cut out for her. The doors would be taken off their hinges; Rumpelmayer's men were coming. And then, thought Clarissa Dalloway, what a morning--fresh as if issued to children on a beach. What a lark! What a plunge! For so it had always seemed to her, when, with a little squeak of the hinges, which she could hear now, she had burst open the French windows and plunged at Bourton into the open air. How fresh, how calm, stiller than this of course, the air was in the early morning; like the flap of a wave; the kiss of a wave; chill and sharp yet (for a girl of eighteen as she then was) solemn, feeling as she did, standing there at the open window, that something awful was about to happen; looking at the flowers, at the trees with the smoke winding off them and the rooks rising, falling; standing and looking until Peter Walsh said, "Musing among the vegetables?" --was that it?--"I prefer men to cauliflowers" --was that it? He must have said it at breakfast one morning when she had gone out on the terrace--Peter Walsh.... She stiffened a little on the kerb, waiting for Durtnall's van to pass. A charming woman, Scrope Purvis thought her (knowing her as one does know people who live next door to one in Westminster); a touch of the bird about her, of the jay, blue-green, light, vivacious, though she was over fifty, and grown very white since her illness. There she perched, never seeing him, waiting to cross, very upright. For having lived in Westminster--how many years now? over twenty, --one feels in the midst of the traffic, or waking at night, Clarissa was positive, a particular hush or solemnity; an indescribable pause; a suspense (but that might be her heart, affected, they said by influence) before Big Ben strikes. There! Out it boomed. First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable. The leaden circles dissolved in the air. Such fools we are, she thought, crossing Victoria Street. For Heaven only knows why one loves it so, how one sees it so, making it up, building it round one, tumbling it, creating it every moment afresh; but the veriest frumps, the most dejected of miseries sitting on doorsteps (drink their downfall) do the same; can't be dealt with, she felt positive, by Acts of Parliament for that very reason: they love life. In people's eyes, in the swing, tramp, and trudge; in the bellow and the uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass bands, barrel organs; in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment of June" (3-4).

What do I love about Woolf? The diction, the rhythms, the way she puts me into the moment, even into her very thoughts. I love the way she loves and celebrates her city--London.

I have given you an idea about how to choose a guide.

Now I am going to choose a place or, in my case, places. Woolf loved and lived in London but she also spent time in the country--at her sister's house and on the east coast of England. When she committed suicide at the age of 61, she lived in the country in a place she named "Monk's House."

I was going to make the setting Monk's House, but it's very small, so I think I'll either start it or end it there. I know--it will be a tour of the places that Virginia Woolf lived or loved.

• London--Regent's Park, St. James Park
  
• Bloomsbury
  
• Piccadilly Circus
  
• Soho
  
• Westminster Abbey
  
• Big Ben
  
• Talland House--the Woolf family's summer home, overlooking the sea
  
• Charleston--the home of Woolf's artist-sister, Vanessa Bell. Also the home of Clive Bell and Duncan Grant. Many famous visitors, including famous economist, John Maynard Keynes and writer E. M. Forester.
  
• Knoll Castle--childhood home of Woolf's best friend, Vita Sackville-West. It figure predominately in Woolf's novel, Orlando. Hey, Vita could be a sinner!
• Sissinghurst--the castle where Vita Sackville-West lived after she was kicked out of Knoll (for not being a male heir)--a castle that has often been featured in movies, most recently in a Masterpiece Theater version of Jane Austen's Emma.
  

End with Monk House. Woolf moved here when the Germans were attacking London. She lived here with her loving husband, Leonard. Woolf ended her life here, by packing her pockets full of stone and walking into the river to drown herself.

As preparation, I might watch the movie, The Hours, again. That will be part of my research.

Do you see that by developing the setting, I have almost developed an outline for my Inferno?

Characters will include some real people (certainly, I will include Vita Sackville-West and Bell and Grant and maybe Keynes), but it will also include stock characters. My characters will be sensitive artistic types (at the upper levels) and harsh, blathering critics and sexists and racists near the bottom.

Since Kurt Vonnegut died three years ago, I will have to include him. Instead of virtuous pagans, I'll make him a virtuous and non-fundamentalist atheist.

Forgive the redundancies--but that was part of my processing or thinking last year. Also, note that I used to require nine cantos, not five. I'll leave nine in my outline, just in case I get inspired to do more. You only need to complete five.

Your Infernos will have five levels, with at least one sinner per level. I say "at least one sinner" because you may choose to speak to or interact with more than one. The one I planned for last year had nine levels--yours needs only five. Also, this is only the initial outline. I can always change my mind during the process.

I. Starting place--London--Piccadilly Circus. A lot of strange and tattooed and pierced people. Pickpockets. Menacing non-London "gypsy" cabs. Planet Hollywood. Rescued by a tiny older woman that turns out to be Virginia Woolf.

2. She takes me to St. James Park and then to Bloomsbury. Here we encounter the Virtuous Atheists.

3. We walk through all the tourist spots, stopping in the National Portrait Gallery where we will meet some artistic-type ghosts.

4. We find ourselves in Regent's Park. We go to the zoo where we encounter those who are cruel to animals. At the end of this one, we will watch a Punch and Judy show.

5. The British Museum--a compendium of man's inhumanity of man as well as some wonderful exhibits of cultural artifacts abducted by the British.

6. The War Museum--with a focus on World War I & World War II.

7. Talland House--as a child, Woolf was sexually abused by her older half-brother. She will encounter him here.

8. Charleston--Vanessa Bell was married to Clive Bell and the mother of two boys. She is an interesting historical figure who was probably not a candidate for mother of the year because she was interested only in her artistic pursuits and her decades-long affair with the artist, Duncan Grant.

9. Monk's House--where Woolf took her own life and took her brilliance away from all of us in doing so.

Preparation for the First Draft:

Because writing is a process, I am going to model some of my process in creating.

This morning, for example, I started thinking about how I would write an Inferno. Virginia Woolf is my guide. Though I already know a great deal about her, I found myself revisiting some of her writing. My two favorite books are A Room of One's Own (a book about writing and sexism) and Mrs. Dalloway. The first is non-fiction and the second is a novel.

Both are written in stream-of-consciousness style.

Actually, because I had decided to start in Piccadilly Circus, I revisited that place, via some photographs I had taken in 1996 and the internet. I will go back to the article I printed later today.

It is now 2010, and because I went to London in 2009, I will probably look at some of my photographs and videos to remind me of various places. I did revisit Regent's Park, my favorite park in London.

I want to get a sense of Woolf's voice first, because I will be recreating that as much as possible. I want to get to know Virginia, in a sense, and because I want to get to know her, I am referring to her by her first name from this point forward. Now, I am looking at passages from A Room of One's Own.

I'll put some of them down here, so you can get an idea of her voice. Notice the style--stream-of-consciousness--and the significance or seriousness of what she is saying. Notice too, that she often uses humor--often sarcasm--when conveying the seriousness of her topic.

A Room of One's Own begins with the first-person narrator expressing anxiety about a speech she is about to give--a speech on the topic of "Women and Fiction." She is walking across a university's grounds (she calls it Oxbridge--a combination of Cambridge and Oxford--a place then forbidden to women students) and is worrying about what she will say, when she is confronted by a campus security cop (called a beadle), a working-class guy who is probably only high-school educated, who takes on a position of superiority over her as she, in a sense, trespasses. I want you to pay attention to how she uses words normally associated with war in this encounter. Note the punctuation--or the lack thereof. She does this on purpose because it impacts the rhythms of the piece. I have also highlighted some of the passages I liked as well as some of the individual words:

All I could do was to offer you an opinion upon one minor point--a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction; and that, as you will see, leaves the great problem of the true nature of woman and the true nature of fiction unsolved. I have shirked the duty of coming to a conclusion upon these two questions--women and fiction remain, so far as I am concerned, unsolved problems. But in order to make some amends I am going to do what I can to show you how I arrived at this opinion about the room and the money. I am going to develop in your presence as fully and freely as I can the train of thought which led me to think this. Perhaps if I lay bare the ideas, the prejudices that lie behind this statement you will find that they have some bearing upon women and some upon fiction. At any rate, when a subject is highly controversial--and any question about sex is that--one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how one came to hold whatever opinion one does hold. One can only give one's audience the chance of drawing their own conclusions as they observe the limitations, the prejudices, the idiosyncrasies of the speaker. Fiction is here likely to contain more truth than fact (4).

Lies will flow from my lips, but there may perhaps be some truth mixed up with them; it is for you to seek out this truth and to decide whether any part of it is worth keeping. If not, you will of course throw the whole of it into the wastepaper basket and forget all about it (4-5). (note the sarcasm)

Here then was I (call me Mary Beton, Mary Seton Mary Carmichael or by any name you please--it is not a matter of any importance) sitting on the banks of a river a week ago in fine October weather, lost in thought. That collar I have spoken of, women and fiction, the need of coming to some conclusion on a subject that raises all sorts of prejudices and passions, bowed my head to the ground. To the right and left bushes of some sort, golden and crimson, glowed with the colour, even it seemed burnt with the heat, of fire. On the further bank the willows wept in perpetual lamentation, their hair about their shoulders. The river reflected whatever it chose of sky and bridge and burning tree, and when the undergraduate had oared his boat through the reflections they closed again, completely, as if he had never been. There one might have sat the clock round lost in thought. Thought--to call it by a prouder name than it deserved--had let its line down into the stream. It swayed, minute after minute, hither and thither among the reflections and the weeds, letting the water lift it and sink it, until--you know the little tug--the sudden conglomeration of an idea at the end of one's line: and the cautious hauling of it in, and the careful laying of it out? Alas, laid on the grass how small, how insignificant this thought of mine looked; the sort of fish that a good fisherman puts back into the water so that it may grow fatter and be one day worth cooking and eating. I will not trouble you with that thought now though if you look carefully you may find it for yourselves in the course of what I am going to say. "But however small it was, it had, nevertheless, the mysterious property of its kind--put back into the mind, it became at once very exciting, and important; and as it darted and sank, and flashed hither and thither, set up such a wash and tumult of ideas that it was impossible to sit still. It was thus that I found myself walking with extreme rapidity across a grass plot. Instantly a man's figure rose to intercept me. Nor did I at first understand that the gesticulations of a curious-looking object, in a cut-away coat and evening shirt, were aimed at me. His face expressed horror and indignation. Instinct rather than reason came to my help; he was a Beadle; I was a woman. This was the turf; there was the path. Only the Fellows and Scholars are allowed here; the gravel is the place for me. Such thoughts were the work of a moment. As I regained the path the arms of the Beadle sank, his face assumed its usual repose, and though turf is better walking than gravel, no very great harm was done. The only charge I could bring against the Fellows and Scholars of whatever the college might happen to be was that in the protection of their turf, which had been rolled for 300 years in succession they had sent my little fish into hiding (5-6).

Ms. Losen's First Draft of Canto I:

Let me talk about process.

I reviewed the information and pictures on Piccadilly Circus and then didn't use most of it. As I began to write, I began to hear Virginia's voice come through so I went back to A Room of One's Own and used a direct quote from there and put it in Virginia's mouth.

Also, though I write in first person, the narrator and I are not one and the same. I hate places like the Hard Rock Cafe and Planet Hollywood.

Also, my character is not a member of the Richmond Education Association. I am.

I began writing in the past tense and then remembered that I prefer writing in the present, so I changed everything and liked it better.

2010 Note: I will imagine that there is a big Michael Jackson instead of a big Elvis on the Hard Rock Cafe sign now. I might even include Michael Jackson.

By the way, this program is not allowing me to indent paragraphs, so I am going to write block style. When you write your Infernos, tab or indent at least five spaces. Do not use the block or business style or you will lose points.

Anyway, here goes--Canto I--First Draft (changed a little in 2010):

There is something vaguely familiar about the woman who approaches me just as I leave the tube station and enter the neon glare of Piccadilly Circus in London. Her clothing seems dated, somehow, a navy blue dress with a hip length bodice and a pleated skirt, double-breasted and with a sailor collar with white stripes. Her long grey hair is tied back into a bun at the nape of her neck, but a few careless strands dance about her face, which is remarkably unlined, though she's sixty if she's a day.

She can not be familiar, of course, because the only people I know in London are my cousins, the Keens. Perhaps she thinks I am a long-lost relative of hers, and that is why she gazes in my direction. It is of no concern of mine, surely. And besides, I have things to do, places to go, people to see.

Piccadilly Circus is ablaze with neon and people, mostly younger and with multiple tattoos and piercings. There are some older people also, with unfortunate tattoos and piercings, most of which have expanded with weight and now sags with age. I turn away.

The Planet Hollywood sign, with a larger than life picture of a young Michael Jackson in black military regalia, with the shimmering white glove on his right hand, moon-walking. All the other tourists seem headed in that direction, so that must be the place to go. I wonder if it's as cool as Toronto's Hard Rock Cafe, I consider, and then decide it's probably even cooler.

I step onto the cobbled streets and have just passed the public square where artists do portraits or caricatures for ten pounds, when I feel a tap on my shoulder. I turn to see this troubling woman, smaller than I had originally thought, standing and smiling.

"I'm just a tourist," I begin explaining. "I don't even know where I'm going."

"I know you're a tourist," she says in that wonderfully clipped elite-Londoner's dialect. "I have come here for you."

"I don't recall having made plans for a tour guide," I say as I file through my brain for the plans I had made with the tourist agency. No, a guide would have been nice, but its price was too dear and I would prefer to spend the money at Harrods' or Marks and Spencer or even on an extravagant evening out.

"I know you turned down the guide," she says. "In fact, I know everything about you."

Now I start filing through my brain to see if I might have done anything to alert the Department of Homeland Security because of my speaking engagements with people who want to reform health care.

"No, I'm not a spook for Homeland Security," she says.

"How could you know," I say, and before I can finish, I find myself transported like Ebenezer Scrooge, to a rose garden in Regents Park.

"I know all," she says calmly and turns me in the direction of one of the lakes near the Japanese gardens. "I see all. You too will come to see all."

She takes my trembling arm and guides me past the Princess Diana pink blooms and toward the lake where the mallards and swans glide about while Canada geese fly in and out, hither and thither, if you will. Why am I thinking this way? Hither and thither. The weeping willows are in full lamentation, the lake reflects what it chooses of sky and bridge. Something about a fish.

"Alas, laid on the grass how small, how insignificant this thought of mine looked; the sort of fish that a good fisherman puts back into the water so that it may grow fatter and be one day worth eating," she says and I know from this moment on that this, impossible as it seems, is Virgina Woolf.

Draft 2 of Canto I--Ms. Losen's "Inferno"

I realized that I left out the mythical allusion and I want to make sure I am using at least one simile, so here goes round two. I'll put any changes I make in boldface and make my similes red and my mythical allusions blue so you can see my work:

There is something vaguely familiar about the woman who approaches as I leave the tube station and enter the neon glare of Piccadilly Circus in London. And yet, much of her demeanor seems strange, even alien because it is dated somehow. She wears a navy blue dress, with a bodice that stops at the hips, where a belt rests at the top of a pleated skirt. It has a sailor collar with white stripes.

(Note that I broke up that paragraph. I felt it was getting too long)

Her long gray hair is tied back into a bun, but a few careless wisps dance about her face, which, I note with interest, is remarkably unlined, though she's sixty if she's a day.

She can not be familiar, of course, because the only people I know in London are my cousins, the Keens. Perhaps she thinks I am a long-lost relative of hers, and that is why she gazes like a lost sheep in my direction.

(Technically speaking, "like a lost sheep" could be a Christian mythical allusion too because of references to Christ as the Good Shepherd)

Piccadilly Circus is ablaze with its famous neon signs and odd assortments of people. While the tourists move about like those new to the Underworld,* the primary residents are young, with garish hairstyles--Mohawks and dreadlocks and spikes, many are covered with multiple tattoos and piercings. There are some middle-aged residents as well, with tattoos and piercings that are rather unfortunate, having expanded with weight and sagged with age. From them I turn away.
(*reference to Greek mythology)

The Planet Hollywood sign, with a larger than life picture of a young Michael Jackson in black military regalia, with the shimmering white glove on his right hand, moon-walking. The other tourists seem headed in that direction, so that must be the place to go. I have never been and wonder if it's as cool as Toronto's Hard Rock Cafe. Since this is London, I decide that it must be even cooler.

I step onto the cobbled street and have just passed the public square where, for a ten pound note, one can have one's portrait or caricature done as other tourists walk past. Watching one of these displays, I am startled by a gentle tap on my back. I turn to find the strange woman, smaller than I had originally calculated, standing before me, a wan smile upon her face. She is so tiny that she reminds me of one of the residents of the Sidhe, the Irish otherworld.

"I'm just another tourist," I say. "I don't even know where I'm going."

"I understand that," she says in that wonderfully clipped dialect of the upper-crust Londoner. "It is I who is here at your service."

"I don't recall having hired a guide," I say, remembering that the guide package offered by the travel agency would have been too dear for my budget. A guide would have been nice, but I wanted to be able to spend my money at Harrods' or Marks and Spencer or even on an extravagant evening out. Besides, cousin Peter has turned out to be a great guide. He had grown up around here.

"I know that you turned down the guide package," she says. "In fact, I know everything about you."

Now I start filing through my brain for anything I might have done to alert the Department of Homeland Security. Maybe I should not have spoken to that reporter. Maybe I should not have spoken at that meeting in Norfolk. Maybe I should not have gone to the capitol on the 44th anniversary of Medicare. I rifled through my mind for other possibilities.

"No. I am not a spook for Homeland Security," she says.

"How could you know," I say, and before I can finish, I find myself transported like Ebenezer Scrooge to a rose garden in Regent's Park.

(Note that I took out a comma from the passage above. I wanted a different rhythm in that sentence).

"I know all," she says coolly. With her slender fingers upon my back, she turns me in the direction of one of the lakes near the Japanese gardens. "I see everything. Soon, very soon, you too will see everything."

She takes my now-trembling arm and guides me past the rose garden and toward the lake where the mallards paddle and the swans glide and the Canada geese fly in and out, hither and thither. How odd. Why am I thinking this way? Hither and thither. The weeping willows are in full lamentation, the lake reflects what it chooses of sky and bridge. Something about a fish.

"Alas, laid on the grass how small, how insignificant this thought of mine looked; the sort of fish that a good fisherman puts back into the water so that it may grow fatter and be one day worth eating," she says and I know from this moment on that this, impossible as it seems, is none other than Virginia Woolf.

Ms. Losen's First Draft of Canto II (Later Changed to Canto III)

Brainstorming for Canto II (in place of other Canto II, which is now Canto III) Canto II is now for the Atheists

Since this is now the second canto, I will probably use some of the transitional material I have already prepared in the original second canto--now the third, so forgive the repetition. This will also mean that I will have to change the beginning of the third canto, however, so you will have new material there.

By the way, notice how I do quotes. I rarely write like this:

Virginia said: "Let's go to the party."

Instead, I will usually write like this--when doing prose. If you are doing poetry, it's another story. You may take such liberties, especially if they contribute to the meter or rhyme scheme. You are also braver than I am. Poetry requires a great deal more editing, as you know.

"Let's go to the party," Virginia said.

OR:

"Let's go to the party," Virginia said, "because it will be so much fun."

OR:

"Let's go to the party," Virginia said. "I know lots of people there."

Note that there is no period after "party." It's a comma.

Style-wise, if I'm having a character ask a question I'll do it as follows. First, I'll never say "questioned." Remember George Orwell. Keep it simple. Just say "said" or "asked" as follows:

"Should we go to the party," she asked.

OR:

"Should we go to the party?" she asked.

OR:

"Should we go to the party?" she said.

Do not say "queried," "requested," or anything else like that. Keep it simple. Simple is good.

And please remember that different speakers have their own paragraphs. It's easier to keep track of which character is speaking that way.

And also remember that I want you to paint a picture for me. That is why research is important for all students. You need to know what things are called.

Use my work as a model for yours if you are doing prose--at least in terms of its picturesque qualities, the way it follows the rubric, and the punctuation. I recommend that you read your own work aloud. As an experienced writer, I learn a lot about what isn't right with my own work, just by the way it sounds.

Since I am going to start Canto II with the atheists, I am going to place in Bloomsbury, a part of London where Woolf lived and shared ideas with other brilliant minds of her generation. Besides, I thought Vonnegut might enjoy this area too.

I always picture the setting of the Virtuous Pagans as being like the Harvard University campus--not such a bad place to be. That is why I think Bloomsbury will be fitting. It will not be a sad place, but a place that Woolf and others enjoyed while they lived on this earth and a world that she can continue to enjoy in the afterlife. Creative pursuits are often done in private but they need to be nourished with public discourse. Ideas bounce off other ideas; surrounding yourself with bright people (especially if they are bright in areas that you are not) is a way of enhancing your own intelligence and creativity.

Since I want to describe what is around us, I have had to do some research--not only on Bloomsbury and its history but also on architectural terms so that I can adequately and simply describe it.

Creative writing goes way beyond pulling stuff out of your head. In order to bring it to life, you need an adequate vocabulary. The other benefit to this, is that you become more knowledgeable about the world at the same time.

First Rough Draft of New Canto II:

We have just arrived at the Tottenham Court tube station and we find ourselves standing in front of some three-story Georgian mansions.

"Virginia," I find myself saying, instantly regretting the lack of formality.

"You may call me Virginia," she says, and her eyes twinkle and her mouth widens into a Cheshire-cat grin.

"Virginia," I say, only half-believing the word or my senses.

"Not to be mistaken with the Commonwealth or the Virgin Queen," she says, her eyes full of mischief. She opens her arms and enfolds me in them.

"I know this must be a shock," she says. "It was for Dante too, but look what he did with the experience. The Woman Upstairs, the one the earth has called God for centuries--and 'God' is appropriate still--just felt that the process needed an update, that new times called for new interventions. After all, a woman recently ran in the primaries, at least, for president of the United States!"

"Another ran for the Vice-Presidential slot," I remind her.

"Right. Whatever, as you say," she says. "At any rate, the Woman Upstairs...."

"Woman Upstairs," I repeat. "Woman Upstairs?"

"A rose is still a rose by any other name," says Virginia. "Woman Upstairs. God. Allah. The Big Cheese. It's all the same. I don't know why people make such a big deal about the nomenclature. It's one of the problems with the human race, I suppose, that thing you call 'Free Will.' First, one takes a bite of some forbidden fruit, then another one kills his own brother, which angered his mother to no end, mind you. Boys will be boys. Whatever. It made his earthly mother mad but his divine one even angrier. She sentenced him to wander, with a mark upon him so that he would not be killed. I guess it was all part of her plan, something I still don't understand, but all that did was cause him to tell others about how dangerous women were, how they needed to be controlled."

"Does Hillary eventually win?" I ask. "Does she even win the primaries?"

"I can't tell you that. Well, actually, I could, but I won't," she says.

"Besides," says another voice, and I recognize the figure as none other than Kurt Vonnegut, "you have bigger fish to fry."

"Kurt--Sinead, Sinead--Kurt," says Virginia. [My narrator got christened Sinead because of my bald head, like 1980s pop-star Sinead O'Conner. I hope you like it.]

"Pleased to meet your acquaintance," says Kurt. He extends his hand like a banker about to close a big deal.

I am speechless.

"We are here in Bloomsbury," says Virginia, "because this is a place where we atheists thrived back in the 1920s. If we had time, you'd get to talk to the likes of artists Duncan Grant, Dora Carrington, Roger Frye, and my own sister, Vanessa Bell. Or you could hear John Maynard Keynes talk about current economic policies and why the world is in such a mess. Or, since you will be teaching his novel, A Passage to India, this year, you could engage in a discussion with my friend E. M. Forster."

"I wouldn't know where to begin," I say.

"Just ask questions. That is why you are here," she says.

"Is it painful," I ask.

"No, it is fitting," says Virginia. "Look about us. We are in a beautiful setting, in these elegant homes and we are surrounded by the best and the brightest of our generation and even other generations," she says, nodding at Kurt.

"What about God?" I ask.

"God is God," she says. "I know She's there and I know I'm supposed to be in despair because I can't be with Her, but I'm not. The experience is very much like what it was when I was on earth, except that now I no longer have to suffer those lengthy bouts of depression or mania."

"It's more like the Greek underworld, neither here nor there," says Vonnegut, which makes me remember that Vonnegut's master's degree was in anthropology. "It's like being a perpetual student, one that never graduates. And you have all these cool people all around you all the time, fighting and arguing and having a good old time. What could be better than that?"

"You have a point," I say, though I am tempted like Eve to go further. In deference, however, and because I have no wish to make them consider their own situation undesirable, I say nothing.

The first thing I wanted to do was to transition from the previous canto. I ended the last canto with recognizing Virginia Woolf, so I am echoing that by saying her name in the first sentence. Also, because I was going to be meeting new sinners, I did some research.

This canto is about those who abused their substance with substances and includes rock stars Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, and Kurt Cobain. Because of space limitations, I am going to concentrate on Cobain. Besides, it will enable me to use that whole "remember me" thing that Dante uses. I began my process by looking up information on the various singers. That was how I learned that they all died at the age of 27.

I remembered to include a mythical allusion in this draft. I allude to Eurydice, wife of Orpheus, who was snatched too soon into the Underworld.

By the way, notice how I punctuate--where the quotation marks go, where the speaker is in relation to the quote, and how I capitalize. I want you to imitate this.

Well, here goes:
"Virginia," I find myself saying, instantly regretting the lack of formality.

"You may call me Virginia," she says, and her eyes twinkle and her mouth widens into a Cheshire-cat grin.

[note the allusion--to Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland]

"Virginia," I repeat, only half-believing the word or my senses.

"Not to be mistaken for the commonwealth or the Virgin Queen," she says, her eyes full of mischief. But then her smile disappears. She opens her arms and before I know it, enfolds me in them.

"I know this must be a shock," she says. "It was for Dante, too, but look what he did with it. The Woman Upstairs, the one the earth has called God for centuries--and God is all right still--just felt that it was time to repeat the process, that we needed to revise our old ways of thinking. After all, a woman is running for president."

"Woman Upstairs," I repeat. "Woman upstairs?"

"Don't make such a big deal about it," says Virginia. "It's been that way since Day One. That's what you get when you give humans free will. First, one takes a bite of the forbidden fruit, and then another one kills his own brother, which angered his mother no end, let me tell you. She grounded that boy and then God made him wander the world with the mark of Cain.

Everywhere he went, he spread the word about how dangerous women were and how they needed to be controlled. It was pretty easy to do, too, because women were often incapacitated with carrying and nurturing children."

"Does she win," I ask.

"Does who win," Virginia says.

"Hillary," I say. [Remember that I wrote this in the spring of 2008]

"I can't tell you that. Well, I could, but I won't," she says. "Besides, we have bigger fish to fry. You have been chosen for this journey because of your skills as a journalist. When we finish, you will write a story, one that will convey to the world how they should live."

Virginia takes my arm and we begin to move rapidly through space, the various worlds we pass a blur of color and a cacophony of sounds.

We stop in a small, dingy flat with peeling wallpaper, chipped and broken particle-board furniture, and a sofa and some chairs with their foam stuffings exposed by fraying upholstery. The room stinks of body odor and cigarettes and a sweet acrid smell I can't quite identify. The single window is open and we can hear the sounds of traffic and people shouting and fighting in the streets. The yellowing aluminum blinds, covered in a thick layer of dust, reverberate with the sounds, sending dust particles dancing into the air.

"Where are we," I ask, my face as pale as Eurydice when she finds herself in the Underworld.
"Soho. In a crack house, heroin haven, crib, whatever you want to call it, it pretty much means the same thing--despair," says Virginia.

A pale young man, unwashed, with long, blond hair and a week's growth of beard, approaches.

"This is where those who abused their substance with substances now reside," she says. "Among the most famous here, you will see four who left the world at the age of 27. Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, and...."

"Kurt Cobain," I finish. the young rock star's eyes widen and he moves toward us slowly, as though walking through ocean waves.

"How is Frances Bean," he pleads. "How is my baby girl? Has Courtney done anything to her? Does she still love her daddy? Does she still remember her daddy?"

"I haven't heard anything about her lately," I say.

His eyes widen in terror and tears form at the corners of his eyes.

"She's fine," I say, "or she must be. You know as well as I that no news is good news with Courtney. Frances must be sixteen now and I am sure that she remembers her father, as do millions of American fans. Why, you're even a character in a novel by Nick Hornby."

The face relaxes but the tears remain. "Tell her I'm sorry," he says. Tell her I'm very, very sorry. And make sure she remembers me. Tell her not to forget her daddy."

"I will," I say. Cobain turns away and moves back toward a crowd that has gathered in a corner.
I recognize Hendrix and Joplin and Morrison. I begin to walk toward them when Virginia touches my sleeve.

"If we had the time, you could interview the others, but the fact is, we do not," she says.

"Besides, their stories are much the same and we have many more stories to hear in the realms beyond."

More Brainstorming and Outline:

I don't know if I will have time to write a second draft today, but I'm putting down some notes for my revisions.

I had thought about including Sid Vicious among the rock stars and deliberately did not, because he died of a heroin overdose at the age of 21. So I might turn the flat into a seedy nightclub lounge, complete with a big bouncer. Sid might try to get in but he gets tossed by the bouncer. I might call the club "27"--modeled after a NYC club called "21." I'm liking this idea more and more....

Here is my outline:
Canto I--meet Woolf at Piccadilly Circus

Canto II--Those who abused their substance with drugs (dead 27-year-old rock stars)

Canto III--Men and women of genius who abused their gifts with drink--Dorothy Parker, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce

Canto IV--Men of genius who used others for their own gratification--Paul Gauguin and Pablo Picasso

Canto V--People who abused their powers of charisma to incite hatred in others--Maud Gonne and Howard Campbell (a character in several Vonnegut novels)

Canto VI--Those who look the other way when atrocities are committed

Canto VII--Those who participate in atrocities while under the power of a charismatic leader

Canto VIII--Those who use religion and patriotism to justify oppressive behavior

Canto IX--Those who oppress women and other large groups of people--the Taliban, whitesupremacists, slave-owners, the "Oxbridge" system.

Preparation for Canto III (Later to become Canto IV)

• I started with research: William Faulkner September 25, 1897-July 6, 1963, born in New Albany, Mississippi, married Estelle Oldham in Oxford, Mississippi
  
• F. Scott Fitzgerald--Born 9/23/1896 died December 21, 1940--a second heart attack. Born in St. Paul, Minnesota, went to Princeton. Married Zelda Sayre. The Great Gatsby. The lost generation--characterized as a lush in Hemingway's A Movable Feast. Maybe I could have Hemingway and Fitzgerald get into a fist-fight. Need to look up info on Hemingway.
  
• Dorothy Parker (August 22, 1893-June 7, 1967), author, poet, critic, screenwriter. Also known as Dot or Dottie.
  

I found a bunch of her witticisms and might use some of them:

• "Wit has truth in it...wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words."
  
• "The two most beautiful words in the English language are 'check enclosed.'"
  
• "As for helping me in the outside world, the Convent taught me only if you spit on a pencil eraser, it will erase ink."
  
• "Maybe it is only I, but conditions are such these days that if you studiously correct grammar, people suspect you of homosexual tendencies."
  
• "I was the toast of two continents: Greenland and Australia."
  
• "Sorrow is tranquility remembered in emotion."
  
• "It's not the tragedies that kill us. It' s the messes."
  
• "He [Robert Benchley] and I had an office, so tiny that an inch smaller and it would have been adultery."
  
• "Men seldom make passes/ At girls who wear glasses."
  
• "She runs the gamut of emotions from A to B."
  
• "As one delves deeper and deeper into Etiquette, disquieting thoughts come. That old Is-It-Worth-It blues starts up again softly, perhaps, but plainly. Those who have mastered etiquette, who are entirely, impeccably right, would seem to arrive at a point of exquisite dullness. The letters and the conversations of the correct, as quoted by Mrs. Post, seem scarcely worth the striving for. The rules for finding topics of conversation fall damply on the spirit."
  
• "As artists they're rot, but as providers they're oil wells; they gush. Norris said she never wrote a story unless it was fun to do. I understand Ferber whistles at her typewriter. And there was that poor sucker Flaubert rolling around on his floor for three days looking for the right word."
  
• "If you're going to write, don't pretend to write down. It's going to be the best you can do, and it's the fact that it's the best you can do that kills you."
  
• About modern-dance innovator, Isadora Duncan: "Here was a great woman; a magnificent, generous, gallant, reckless, fated fool of a woman. There was never a place for her in the ranks of the terrible, slow army of the cautious. She ran ahead, where there were no paths."
  
• "I went to a literary gathering once....The place was filled with people who looked as if they had been scraped up out of drains. The ladies ran to draped plush dresses--for Art; to wreaths of silken flowerets in the hair--for Femininity; and ,somewhere between the two adornments, to chain-drive pince-nez--for Astigmatism. The gentlemen were small and somewhat in need of dusting."
  
• "I don' t want to review books any more. It cuts in too much on my reading."
  
• "If this world were anything near what it should be there would be no more need of a Book Week than there would of a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children."
  
• "I have heard it said that it took Messrs. Shipman and Hymer [the playwrights] just three-and-a-half days to write their drama. I should like to know what they were doing during the three days."

So much of what I do before I write, is research.

I'm beginning to think that famous writers' quotes will be a source for inspiration. I am planning to include Hemingway and Fitzgerald and maybe even Joyce so I looked up some of what they said.

I found many of the quotes funny, others inspiring to me as a writer. I hope that this works for you too! As I was typing these in, I found myself thinking about how to incorporate them, how to develop characters.

After I finish, I plan to go for a walk. That is one way that I can start to bring my ideas together. There is something about the fresh air--especially in weather like this, that helps me to think, to clarify ideas, and to put them in order. Perhaps this might work for you.

By the way, some of the writers use mild profanity. In order for you to have access to this page, I am going to have to make substitutions. You will be able to tell, however, because I haven't changed the word--just filled in some blanks with the right number of letters.

First, however, I'm going back to Parker:

Quotes from Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)

• I don't care what is written about me as long as it isn't true.
  
• I might repeat to myself slowly and soothingly, a list of quotations from minds profound--if I can remember any of the d_ _ _ things.
  
• I've never been a millionaire but I just know I'd be darling at it.
  
• If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.
  
• Take care of the luxuries and the necessities will take care of themselves.
  
• The best way to keep children home is to make the home atmosphere pleasant--and let the air out of the tires.
  
• This is not a novel to be tossed aside lately. It should be thrown with great force.
  
• That would be a good thing for them to cut on my tombstone: Wherever she went, it was against her better judgment.
  
• The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.
  

Quotes from James Joyce (1882-1941):

• A man of genius makes no mistakes; his errors are volitional and the portals of discovery.
  
• Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age.
  
• Christopher Columbus, as everyone knows, is honored by posterity because he was the last to discover America.
  
• I am tomorrow, or some future day, what I establish today. I am today what I established yesterday or some previous day.
  
• I fear those big words which make us so unhappy.
  
• I want to work with the top people, because only they have the courage and confidence and the risk-seeking profile that you need.
  
• I've put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors bus for centuries arguing over what I mean, and that's the only way of insuring one's immortality.
  
• Ireland is the old sow that eats her farrow.
  
• Ireland sober is Ireland stiff.
  
• Irresponsibility is part of the pleasure of art; it is the part the schools cannot recognize.
  
• Nations have their ego, just like individuals.
  
• No pen, no ink, no table, no room, no time, no quiet, no inclination.
  
• Poetry, even when apparently most fantastic, is always a revolt against artifice, a revolt, in a sense, against actuality.
  
• Shakespeare is the happy hunting ground of all minds that have lost their balance.
  
• The artist, like the God of creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails.
  
• The demand that I make of my reader is that he should devote his whole life to reading my works.
  
• There is no heresy or philosophy which is so abhorrent to the church as a human being.
  
• Think you're escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home.
  
• Whatever else is unsure in this stinking dunghill of a world a mother's love is not.
  
• When I die Dublin will be written in my heart.
  
• Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives. The English reading public explains the reasons why.
  
• Your battles inspired me--not the obvious material battles but those that were fought and won behind your forehead.
  

Quotes from F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940):

• A big man has no time really to do anything but just sit and be big.
  
• A great social success is a pretty girl who plays her cards as carefully as if she were plain.
  
• Action is character.
  
• Advertising is a racket, like the movies and the brokerage business. You cannot be honest without admitting that its constructive contribution to humanity is exactly minus zero.
  
• After all, life hasn't much to offer except youth, and I supposed for older people, the love of youth in others.
  
• All good writing is swimming under water and holding our breath.
  
• An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmaster of ever afterwards.
  
• At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide.
  
• Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.
  
• Either you think, or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you.
  
• Everyone suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues.
  
• Everybody's youth is a dream, a form of chemical madness.
  
• Family quarrels are bitter things. They don't go according to any rules. They're not like aches or wounds, they're more like splits in the skin that won't heal because there's not enough material.
  
• First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you.
  
• For awhile after you quit Keats all other poetry seems to be only whistling or humming.
  
• Forgotten is forgiven.
  
• Genius goes around the world in its youth incessantly apologizing for having large feet. What wonder that later in life it should be inclined to raise those feet too swiftly to fools and bores.
  
• Genius is the ability to put into effect what is on your mind.
  
• Great art is the contempt of a great man for small art.
  
• I like people and I like them to like me, but I wear my heart where God put it, on the inside.
  
• I'm a romantic; a sentimental person thinks things will last, a romantic person hopes against hope they won't.
  
• I've been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit in a library.
  
• In a real dark night of the soul, it is always three o'clock in the morning, day after day.
  
• It is in the thirties that we want friends. In the forties we know they won't save us any more than love did.
  
• It's not a slam at you when people are rude, it's a slam against the people they've met before.
  
• Life is essentially a cheat and its conditions are those of defeat; the redeeming things are not happiness and pleasure but the deeper satisfactions that come out of struggle.
  
• Men get to be a mixture of the charming mannerisms of the women they have known.
  
• Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.
  
• No grand idea was ever born in a conference, but a lot of foolish ideas have died there.
  
• No such thing as a man willing to be honest--that would be like a blind man willing to see.
  
• Nothing is as obnoxious as other people's luck.
  
• Personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures.
  
• Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.
  
• Some men have a necessity to be mean, as if they were exercising a faculty which they had to partially neglect since childhood.
  
• Speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again.
  
• The easiest way to get a reputation is to go outside the fold, shout around for a few years as a violent atheist or a dangerous radical, and then crawl back to the shelter.
  
• The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.
  
• The victor belongs to the spoils.
  
• The world, as a rule, does not live on beaches and in country clubs.
  
• There are no second acts in American lives.
  
• Though the Jazz Age continued it became less and less an affair of youth. The sequel was like a children's party taken over by the elders.
  
• To a profound pessimist about life, being in danger is not depressing.
  
• To write it, it took three months; to conceive it, three minutes; to collect the data in it, all my life.
  
• Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist but the ability to start over.
  
• You can stroke people with words.
  
• You don't write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.
  

Quotes from Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961):

• You lose it if you talk about it.
  
• Writing, at its best, is a lonely life.
  
• A man can be destroyed but not defeated.
  
• A man's got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book.
  
• A serious writer is not to be confounded with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl.
  
• About morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.
  
• All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened.
  
• All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.
  
• All my life I've looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time.
  
• All our words from loose using have lost their edge.
  
• All things truly wicked start from an innocence.
  
• Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.
  
• As you get older it is harder to have heroes, but it is sort of necessary.
  
• Courage is grace under pressure.
  
• Cowardice, as distinguished from panic, is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend the functioning of the imagination.
  
• Every man' s life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.
  
• Fear of death increases in exact proportion to increase in wealth.
  
• Forget your personal tragedy. We are all bit_ _ed from the start and you especially have to be hurt like he_ _ before you can write seriously. But when you get the damned hurt, use it--don't cheat with it.
  
• The world breaks us all. Afterward, some are stronger at the broken places.
  
• Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
  
• You must always be prepared to work without applause.
  
• A writer's problem does not change. He himself changes and the world he lives in changes but his problem remains the same. It is always how to write truly and having found what is true, to project it in such a way that it becomes a part of the experience of the person who reads it.
  
• Survival with honor, that outmoded all-important word, is as difficult as ever and as all-important to a writer.
  
• Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is.
  
• Hesitation increases in relation to risk in equal proportion to age.
  

About F. Scott Fitzgerald: His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly's wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred.

• I don't like to write like God. It is only because you never do it, though, that the critics think you can.
  
• I know now that there is no one thing that is true--it is all true.
  
• I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.
  
• I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.
  
• I never choose a subject--my subject rather chose me.
  
• I've tried to reduce profanity but I reduced so much profanity when writing the book that I'm afraid not much could come out. Perhaps we will have to consider it simply as a profane book and hope that the next book will be less profane or perhaps more sacred.
  
• If a writer knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one ninth of it being above water.
  
• If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.
  
• If you have a success you have it for the wrong reasons. If you become popular it is always because of the worst aspects of your work.
  
• In modern war...you will die like a dog for no good reason.
  
• It's none of their business that you have learned how to write. Let them think you were born that way.
  
• Madam, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you.
  
• My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.
  
• Never go on trips with anyone you do not love.
  
• Never mistake motion for action.
  
• Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.
  
• No weapon has ever settled a moral problem. It can impose a solution but it cannot guarantee it to be a just one.
  
• Pound's crazy. All poets are. They have to be. You don't put a poet like Pound in the loony bin.
  
• Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over.
  
• Somebody just back of you while you are fishing is as bad as someone looking over your shoulder while you write a letter to your girl.
  
• That is what we are supposed to do when we are at our best--make it all up--but make it up so truly that later it will happen that way.
  
• The terrible mood of depression of whether it's any good or not is what is known as The Artist's Reward.
  
• The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.
  
• The first panacea for a misguided nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists.
  
• The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole da_ _ life and one is as good as the other.
  
• The man who has begun to live more seriously within begins to live more simply without.
  
• The only thing that could spoil a day was people. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.
  
• The world breaks everyone and afterward many are stronger at the broken places.
  
• The world is a fine place and worth fight for and I hate very much to leave it.
  
• There are events which are so great that if a writer has participated in them his obligation is to write truly rather than assume the presumption of altering them with invention.
  
• There is no friend as loyal as a book.
  
• There is no lonelier man in death, except the suicide, than the man who has lived many years with a good wife and then outlived her. If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it.
  
• There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it's like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.
  
• There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.
  
• Wars are caused by undefended wealth.
  
• All are apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.
  
• When I have an idea, I turn down the flame, as if it were a little alcohol stove, as low as it will go. Then it explodes and that is my idea.
  
• When writing a novel a writer should create living people--people, not characters. A character is a caricature.
  
• You can wipe out out your opponents. But if you do it unjustly you become eligible for being wiped out yourself.
  

Revising My Outline:

I just realized that I did not have a place for a Virginia Woolf or Kurt Vonnegut--the brilliant writers who are atheists. Besides, I want to use Vonnegut's voice as well as Woolf's. I think they would have fun and that I will have fun with them.

I'll put the Atheists in the first canto because I do not want them to suffer. I want them to have a kind of life that they would have had on earth, to be surrounded by other brilliant minds. Even though Woolf committed suicide, I will not assign her to a lower realm because she had a biochemical disorder that could not be properly treated back then.

This will mean, of course, that I will have to eliminate another canto. I have not yet decided which one but I will keep you posted.

I really hope that by going through the process myself you get a better idea about what I expect from you. Writing can be fun and rewarding, but it's hard work and it's always a good idea, even when writing fiction, to start with research. Fiction, after all, has to tell the truth....

Kurt Vonnegut Quotes

Since I plan on meeting Kurt, I thought I would include some of his quotes. Again, this is part of my process.

• Any person who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.
  
• I want to stay as close to the edge without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see in the center.
  
• If you can do a half-a_ _ ed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.
  
• Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer laugh, since there is less cleaning up afterward.
  
• Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile!
  
• Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand.
  
• Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before....He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way. --Cat's Cradle
  
• Thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative. ''Cold Turkey," In These Times, May 10, 2004
  
• There is a tragic flaw in our Constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president. --"Cold Turkey," In These Times, May 10, 2004
  
• Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college."--Man Without a Country
• Humor is an almost physiological response to fear. --Man Without a Country
  
• I think that novels that leave out technology misrepresent life as badly as Victorians misrepresented life by leaving out sex. --Man Without a Country
  
• 1492. As children we were taught to memorize this year with pride and joy as the year people began living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America. Actually, people had been living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America for hundreds of years before that. 1492 was simply the year sea pirates began to rob, cheat, and kill them. --Breakfast of Champions
  
• The chief weapon of sea pirates, however, was their capacity to astonish. Nobody could believe, until it was too late, how heartless and greedy they were. --Breakfast of Champions
  
• New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become. --Breakfast of Champions
  
• Charm was a scheme for making strangers like and trust a person immediately, no matter what the charmer had in mind. --Breakfast of Champions
  
• I can have oodles of charm when I want to. --Breakfast of Champions
  
• Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to remedy anything. --Cat's Cradle
  
• Here's what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey. --Cold Turkey
  
• Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance. --Hocus Pocus
  
• During my three years in Vietnam, I certainly heard plenty of last words by dying American soldiers. Not one of them, however, ever had illusions that he had somehow accomplished something worthwhile in the process of making the Supreme Sacrifice. --Hocus Pocus
  
• Well, the telling of jokes is an art of its own, and it always rises from some emotional threat. The best jokes are dangerous, and dangerous because they are in some way truthful. --Interview, Mcsweeneys.net
  
• We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be. --Mother Night (He is speaking of the novel's tragic hero, Howard Campbell, an American playwright who moved to Germany, married a German, and eventually became a talk-radio guy who speaks hateful words about Jews while encrypting Nazi secrets to the Allies)
• Just because some of us can read and write and do a little math, that doesn't mean we deserve to conquer the Universe. --Hocus Pocus
  
• A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved. --The Sirens of Titan
  
• Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops. --Slaughterhouse Five
  
• All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is. Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I've said before, bugs in amber. --Slaughterhouse Five
  
• How nice--to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive. --Slaughterhouse Five
  
• And so it goes. --Slaughterhouse Five

Week of February 15, 2010--Have textbooks 1 & 2

Monday/Tuesday

Re-cap of Inferno 7-11. We will do cantos 13 and 15 in class. You will finish reading cantos 12 & 14 on your own.

We may have time to begin brainstorming your own Infernos.

Remember--reading quiz on entire Inferno through canto XV on Wednesday/ Thursday. Also, on Wednesday/Thursday, have your vocabulary books.

Wednesday/Thursday

Reading quiz. After you turn it in, begin doing vocabulary homework. After everyone has turned it in, we will go over it.

We will complete cantos 16 & 17 in class. Vocabulary will be due on Friday but you should have read through Canto 23 by next Monday/Tuesday.

Friday

Check vocabulary. Go over. For homework, make sure that you have read all the way through Canto 23. There may be a reading quiz on Monday/Tuesday.