Month: October 2016

Dante is the protagonist in “Dante’s Inferno” who undergoes a journey through various circles of hell.  Virgil plays the role of a guide to Dante.  He guides Dante through the circles of hell, but as Dante plunges further through his journey with Virgil, it becomes evident that the idea of Virgil being Dante’s mentor diminishes.  At first, Dante follows and trusts all of Virgil’s orders and knowledge, but later on the two become independent.  There was an instance where Virgil had to cover Dante’s eyes for him in order to protect him from Medusa.  Vigil had to cover Dante’s own eyes because Virgil was losing his trust in Dante, and was afraid he wouldn’t close his own eyes unless Virgil did it for him.  This instance shows how their relationship Dante trusting Virgil was later destroyed.

Both coming from almost the same period of time with only a hundred years difference they were very similar in their perception of love and freedom. Every reader would feel skeptical about their approach to love through their poems, considering their religious beliefs but Rumi and Hafez approach love in such a way between the personal and divine. Their way of expressing and describing love never exceeds the limits of what’s considered proper so all their poems are filled with comparisons and metaphors. Rumi seems to be more open minded in expressing love, maybe because his love life with Shams, Hafez on the other side was more a religious person than a poet so his lines towards love came with more delicacy.

What is the role of love in the Commedia?

Love is a strong word and sometimes love must be sought out through the stages of hell which is exactly what Dante went through, literally. Dante was in search of his lover, Beatrice and in hopes of finding her, he had to go through each stage of hell in which he believed she would be in. Being that he had gone through each stage of hell, one worse than the last, he did not give up and kept striving and going. Along with that, Beatrice remained loving Dante praying for his well-being and hoping for him to get to her in one piece. Love clearly plays an important factor being that it shows the true strength of love that kept Dante motivated as he went through each stage of hell literally to find who he believes to be his one true love.

It seems as though Virgil plays the role of a mentor to Dante. Dante wants to escape this place where he feels trapped. He feels as if there is no way to get out. Virgil offered himself, and Dante took this as solace and a hope for guidance. He feels that Virgil can offer something that he feels the culture around him and he has lost, which is culture and virtues like poetry.

I will compare both Guido Guinizzelli and William Shakespeare view on love with such supremacy to the other forms of love. Love is described in Guinizzelli’s poem ,as the very thing  that”repairs to the noble heart.” It is defined by Shakespeare in Sonnets 116 as one that “does not alters when it alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove.” In other words these poets are educating their audiences that love is unselfish, it is morally good and it’s highest above friendship, lust and sexual love.. I believe it’s Pragma or longstanding love. I have found this line of illustration by Guinizzelli to be breath taking the way how it is described, “Sun beats against the mud the livelong day mud it remains. Sun does not lose its ray.” Love is like that sunshine that continues to remain bright. Moreover,  so to the point  as in the Shakespeare poem, love never quits. Whatever life may throws, when the going gets though love repairs, it restores. Love knows no defeat! Love is born to win!.

“Heart, in his beauty’s garden” by Khatun and “Plant friendship’s tree” by Hafez both use the imagery of gardens and plant life to talk about relationships. Hafez discusses relations with friends more and how it can be just as pleasureful as being in love with a significant other. He uses the example of a tree to suggest friendship should grow like a tree. Khatun compares divine love to gardening. He uses metaphor to say that the roses (beauty) of his lover are gone and he is left with only thorns (pain).

The Christian theology in the Divine Comedy is the whole concept of heaven, hell, and purgatory. He also places people like Plato and Socrates in Limbo because they did not believe in God/ were never baptized. He alludes to Classical mythology by including the River Styx and Acheron. He also places people like Helen, Achilles, Dido and Paris in the Inferno. He also includes Minos in the second circles of Hell. I think Dante included both because he had a great respected for the two cultures. I also thought maybe he himself was referencing his journey with his faith.

In Dante’s The Divine Comedy, Dante demonstrates love as the primary force in the organization and structure of Hell and Purgatory. Throughout the different stages of Hell in the Inferno, many of the sinners committed an act of love that is considered disgraceful. In the Second Circle of Hell, for example, Francesca de Rimini falls in love with her brother-in-law Paolo. Francesca and Paolo’s forbidden love is considered a sin as they both now are to be tormented in the underworld for all eternity. A love for wealth, pride, and power can also result in many souls committing sins, such as in one of the terraces in the mountain of Purgatory or treachery in the Ninth Circle of Hell. In addition, if it wasn’t for Beatrice’s love for Dante, Dante wouldn’t have had the guidance and support Virgil offers him throughout his journey in Hell. Similarly, Dante’s love for Beatrice motivates him to eventually arrive at the Earthly Paradise to reunite with her.

Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare is about love, a good and true love. The love the author describes is a perfect state between two people, that everyone dreams about, because it is strong and constant. The line number five ” O no! it is an ever-foxed mark” means that true and perfect love is never-changing. Even when something bad happens, it won’t influence this love, because it is unchangeable. In the last couplet, Shakespeare questions himself about whether his view on this perfect love is correct. He says that if not, he would have to renounce all his previous work about love.

Consider whether Hafez’s praise of worldly pleasures (e.g. eroticism, drinking, celebration) complicate his apparent asceticism or if it can somehow be reconciled with it.

According to Hafez, worldly pleasures do not refrain an individual from reconciling with the apparent asceticism. He appears to highlight the importance of relationship with God and worldly pleasures that may lead to one’s own self discovery. Hafez’s unique poetry explicitly demonstrated that it is possible to be connected with God while one is under the influence of alcohol. His views on religion and worldly pleasures constantly have been criticized by others because religious ecstasy and reconciliation with God is only supposed to obtained by following certain norms. Hafez also discussed the humanly love  vs. divine love in his poems, “Plant friendship’s tree” and “Thanks be to God” (Vol B 363-365) and through these  poems, Hafez conveyed that worldly pleasures do not complicate the appearant asceticism.