All language subtitles for Dante.Inferno.to.Paradise.S01E01.720p.WEBRip.x264-BAE

[Low rumbling]

♪

[Scratching]

♪

Man: Nel mezzo del cammin
di nostra vita

mi ritrovai
per una selva oscura,

ché la diritta via era smarrita.

♪

Midway upon the journey
of our life,

I found myself
within a forest dark,

For the straightforward pathway
had been lost.

Ah me! how hard a thing
it is to say.

What was this forest
savage, rough, and stern?

The very thought
of which renews the fear.

So bitter is it,
death is little more

But of the good to treat,
which there I found,

Speak will I
of the other things I saw there.

♪

Narrator: He had been
on the run for nearly 4 years,

moving almost constantly
from place to place

across the rough mountain
high country

above the Tuscan plains...

finding refuge when he could
with powerful families

sympathetic to his plight,
then moving on,

when sometime
in the spring of 1306,

he came to a remote castle

high in the mountains
of the Lunigiana,

a wild region far north and west
of his native city of Florence,

neutral territory that for years
had hosted refugees

from both sides of the savagely
warring factions

of his fiercely divided city.

How long he remained there
is unclear--

a year perhaps, maybe more--

but it was
almost certainly there

sometime in the winter of 1306

that the beleaguered,
41-year-old exiled poet

set to work on an epic poem
that he had been revolving

in his mind for some time,

a monumental work that
he would wrench from himself

under the worst
possible circumstances,

that would take him the rest
of his life to complete,

that would in the end make
his name one of the most famous

and universally recognized in
the history of world culture

and itself be acclaimed
as arguably

the greatest single work
of literature

ever created
in the Western world...

[Thunder]

the "Divine Comedy."

Man: The "Divine Comedy" begins
with a mid-life crisis.

A man of 35 years old
in the fiction of the work--

Dante, himself--
who at a certain point

wakes up, looks around, doesn't
recognize the landscape--

the physical landscape

and the moral landscape
around him--

and this is a moment
of fracture in his existence,

and it is a moment
of fracture which implies

naturally not only
his private life

but the life around him,
which makes no sense anymore.

Woman: Dante knows he's writing
something very different

and very special,
and the "Divine Comedy" is one

of these books that are
made every once in a while,

in human history.

Narrator: Nothing quite like it
had ever been written before.

Narrated in the first person
by Dante himself,

no poem of its kind had ever
started out

with such startling
and personal intensity

or brought individual
human experience

into such vivid and immediate
relationship

with forces far larger

or sought to encompass
in its vast embrace

the entire range
of human experience.

Chronicling
an extraordinary pilgrimage

through the 3 realms
of the afterlife--

Inferno, Purgatorio,
and Paradiso--

it will tell
of a harrowing journey,

of a descent into
the depths of Hell,

of a subsequent ascent
up through Purgatory,

and thence on to the farthest
and most sublime regions

of Paradise itself...

a heart-rending, intimate,
and transcendent journey

at once fantastic and real,
epic and personal,

soaringly allegorical
and inexpressibly vivid.

Man: This is a story that begins
badly in Hell,

then ends happily in Heaven.

Different man:
This is the journey

from exile to homeland.

This is the condition

of humankind exiled from God.

The experience
of a medieval reader

reading the poem would have
been shocking.

Man: We'll remember most,
stranger.

Gragnolati: People would have
not been expecting to find

that strong individuality...

[Man shouts]

in a poem that is also meant

to be a journey
towards salvation

and towards transcendence.

Dante was certainly aware
of doing something new.

Dante has made himself
the subject of his literature,

and so I think it's
inevitable that one would ask

"Who really was Dante?

What's really driving him?"

Narrator: The poem comes to us
across an immense gulf of time.

Written more than 700 years ago

by a proud, acutely sensitive,
and fiercely ambitious

self-taught poet
and sometimes politician

born in 1265,

begun by its beleaguered author
at his own moment

of harrowing loss
and dislocation.

Far from home,
on his own with no way back--

"a wanderer, almost a beggar,"
he wrote at the time.

Framed for a crime
he didn't commit in 1302

and exiled on pain of death
from the striving,

fiercely divided city
of his birth never to return.

Cachey: The whole project
of the poem emerges

from the wound of the exile

and his reputation
that has been ruined

by this unjust banishment
from his city.

He's alone. He's in danger.

He can be killed
by anybody out of Florence.

He's supposed to be
hanged or burned

if he goes back to Florence.

Narrator: Dante wrenched
his inimitable masterpiece

into existence at a moment
of supreme crisis and change,

not only for himself but
for the wider world generally

as the feudal structures
of the Middle Ages

began to give way

and a new modern world
loomed into view,

a world in which
every aspect of the moral,

political, social, religious,
and economic order

seemed to be changing
and breaking apart

and nowhere more so
than in Florence itself,

a city long possessed,
as Dante well knew,

by at once the loftiest
and the basest,

the most creative
and destructive

human instincts and impulses.

Woman: The poem emerges from
this moment of profound crisis.

There's a political crisis
at hand,

intense never-ending
conflict and fragmentation,

and Dante really believes
that we're close to end times.

There's the real urgency
of now, this moment,

in which we have to act now.

Man: Dante is faced
with corruption,

he's faced with sinning,

he's faced with violence
on the part

of human beings
against other human beings,

and his reaction is not
to accept that,

but it's actually to portray,
to depict it,

and to show there
is another way.

Man: The idea that one would
write a hundred cantos

essentially about one's
own spiritual journey,

turning one's personal life
into the model for all humanity,

it's an act of huge arrogance
and of huge ambition,

and at the same time,
Dante is trying to say

that this is possible
for everyone.

Pertile: After all, the purpose
of Dante's major work,

the "Comedy,"
is to change the world...

and the purpose
of showing the conditions

of the damned in "Inferno"
or the conditions

of the purging souls
in "Purgatory"

or even the conditions
of the blessed in "Paradise"

is for us, for human beings,

to reform ourselves
and our lives.

Dante means it.
Dante means what he writes.

It is not a game.

♪

Narrator: For Dante himself,
the experience of exile

and of crafting
the monumental poem

would transform him utterly,

exerting a powerfully
centrifugal,

ever-widening impact
on his life, on his work,

and on the vast posterity
of readers he was determined

the great poem would speak to.

Lombardi:
You think about the exile,

and you think about
all the hardships

of what happened to him,

the people that
he was exposed to

and the languages
and the stories.

All he has, his very life,
is consigned to this work,

and he's putting it,
in a way, on the line

of writing and reading,
and it's extraordinary.

Woman: He might have died
along the way.

As he says at the beginning
of "Paradiso" XXV,

"this poem that made me macro,"

that wore me out,
that consumed me,

and there is a way in which
you feel that that work--

he took it
to the end of his life,

and it was consuming.

Narrator: At the very heart
of Dante's extraordinary poem,

propelling it onward
from beginning to end

would be two powerful forces:

the violently bitter hatred,
factionalism,

corruption, and greed
of his native city,

which he longed to heal;

and his love for an ineffably
beautiful woman named Beatrice,

a Florentine girl
he had met in childhood,

who had died when she was 24,

whom he would write
passionately about all his life

and to whom he longed somehow
to find a way to return.

♪

Pertile: One of the reasons
why Dante writes

this magnificent poem
is to provide himself

with a passport
back to his home,

to his beloved home, Florence,

but the more he writes,

the bigger
the separation becomes,

the bigger the difference
becomes

between him and Florence.

Man: I don't think that
the poem would have had

its kind of power had
he managed to stay in Florence.

He also might not have
written it or not written it

in the same way if he were not
in exile from Florence.

In some ways, the poem
becomes the homeland

for him that the city is not.

He actually creates
in the poem his own home.

♪

[Bells tolling]

♪

Bruscagli: This is Florence.

This is the famous view
of Florence,

but Dante never saw
the city that we see today.

In order to imagine what
Dante would have seen,

you have to mentally
erase the dome

and the cathedral
and then the Palazzo Vecchio

and the Church of Santa Croce.

The Florence of Dante
would have had

the emerging white octagon
of the baptistry

and a lot of towers,

a lot of, let's say,
medieval skyscrapers,

all together in a small space
around the baptistry.

♪

Ric Burns: Antonio,
when was the first time

you became conscious
of Dante?

Oh, I'm from Florence,

and I was conscious
of Dante

maybe at, uh,
elementary school.

Right.

Since I was born
basically. Yeah.

♪

Bruscagli: Dante
in a way invented Florence...

because he gave Florence

such a distinctive
and powerful identity

in good ways
and also in bad ways.

Still, long after he was exiled,

he said he hoped
that he'll be able to go

back to Florence
and to be crowned poet

in his baptistry
with the city admitting

the injustice
that was done to him.

Narrator: Dante's wish
was never to be fulfilled,

but Florence remains
as haunted by Dante

as Dante was by Florence
during his 56 years.

Bruscagli: Florence is
for Dante la città partita,

the city divided,

the city divided
between parties,

between factions,

a restless city without peace,
where everybody seems

to hate each other.

According to Dante
in the "Divine Comedy,"

there are 3 sparks--superbia,
invidia, e avarizia,

pride, envy, and greed.

These are the 3 sparks
that have inflamed the hearts

of the Florentines
and are tormenting the city,

which is destroying,
devouring itself in a way.

♪

Narrator: He was born
in the spring of 1265

sometime
in the last 3 weeks of May

while the sun was in Gemini,

if hints in the "Divine Comedy"
are to be believed,

into a modestly venerable family

in a neighborhood called
Porta San Piero,

one of the most ancient
districts in the very heart

of the proudly independent city
on the banks of the Arno.

He was christened later
that year

beneath the vaulting mosaics
of the great

Baptistry of St. John.

Bruscagli: For Dante, the city
that he knew and loved

rotated around the baptistry.

The life of every single citizen
of Florence started

in the baptistry,
which was supposed to be

the old Temple of Mars,
a physical link

to the Roman ancestry
of the city.

Narrator: His father
Alighiero was a businessman,

the son and grandson
of money lenders and traders.

His mother Bella died
when he was 10,

leaving Dante and his sister
with their father,

who soon remarried.

♪

Little is known
of his early education.

It is presumed he was
fundamentally self-taught,

making all the more astonishing
the formidable erudition

he acquired across a broad range
of subjects:

astronomy; geography;
Tuscan art and literature;

Provencal love poetry;

Latin writers like Cicero,
Ovid, and Virgil;

the philosophy of Aristotle,
Augustine, and Aquinas.

A precocity that was recognized
and warmly encouraged

by the leading public
intellectual of the day,

the much older Brunetto Latini.

Cachey:
Dante was an autodidact,

a self-taught intellectual.

He didn't have
a university degree,

and I think that
it's something that suggests

a vulnerable person,

a person who was awkward,
was not authorized

by education or by social class
to assume

the kind
of authoritative position

that he later presumes to
through his literary works.

Narrator: From an early age,
he was prone to fits of fainting

and to episodes
of fever and delirium

that would leave him
lifeless for a spell.

Profoundly sensitive
to the world around him,

he often had visions
and may have suffered

from a kind of epilepsy...

and he himself later took
these vulnerabilities

as a sign that he had been
endowed with special powers.

Webb: Dante had a tremendous
capacity for allowing

space for visions.

From early on, he felt
himself to be somebody

who was capable of accessing
other realities,

of a kind of openness
and indeed a vulnerability.

Was he suffering from
fainting or dizzy spells?

Was he an epileptic?

Nonetheless, he embraced
this as a kind of openness

to vision, to truth.

Narrator: Sometime before
he was 18, his father died,

leaving him a small inheritance

and with it the freedom
to pursue

his nascent literary ambitions.

Around the same time,
he was married

to a young woman
named Gemma Donati

to whom he had been betrothed
at a young age,

who would bring social
distinction

but little dowry to the marriage

and who in the years
to come would give birth

to 3 sons and a daughter.

6 years later in June 1289,

Dante himself now 24,

was one of the elite
Florentine cavalry

who, with 12,000 Guelph
soldiers, overwhelmed

a Ghibelline army
at the savagely bloody

Battle of Campaldino
outside Arezzo.

♪

Looking back,
the year 1289 would prove to be

a watershed in Dante's life.

Events would soon begin
to unfold

that in the years to come
would propel him outward

into the volatile,
dangerous political world

of Florence and beyond

and also inward
down into the depths

of his own memory
and imagination.

[Thunder, rain falling]

As that journey began,
almost everyone

he had ever known and everything
he had ever learned

and experienced
would come to find a place

in the pages of his writing

and none more so than the figure
of a radiant Florentine girl,

whose image would haunt
and illuminate

his imagination and inner life
until the day he died.

♪

He was only 9
when he first saw her

at a party in the house
of a neighboring nobleman

Folco Portinari
on the first of May

in the spring of 1274,

if Giovanni Boccaccio's account
is to be believed.

[Birds chirping]

Many years later
in an extraordinary

autobiographical work,
he returned

to the life-changing moment
of their first encounter.

Fazzini as Dante: 9 times
the heaven of the light

had returned to where it was
at my birth

when she first appeared
before my eyes--

she whom many called Beatrice.

Narrator: She appeared
at this feast to the eyes

of our Dante,
and although a mere boy,

he received her sweet image
to his heart

with such affection

that from that day forward
it never departed.

♪

Ben son--ben son Beatrice.

Woman: That initial meeting
was transformative.

He describes it as if it were
some kind of revelation.

He's not yet aware
of what it's a revelation of,

but he knows that
it's unlike anything else

he's ever experienced.

♪

Narrator: All through
his childhood

and on into adolescence,
he searched for her often

in the streets of Florence,
yearning for another glimpse.

In 1283 when they were both 18,
he saw her again

dressed not in crimson
this time but in white,

walking "between two gracious
women, older than she."

Nothing prepared him
for what happened

when she turned and acknowledged
him with a smile.

Salute a voi.

♪

Fazzini as Dante:
That was the first time

her words had reached my ears,

and I felt such bliss
that I withdrew,

as if drunk,
to the solitude of my room.

Whereupon a sweet sleep
came over me,

bringing with it
an astonishing vision.

I seemed to see a fiery cloud,

and in it a lordly figure,

frightening to behold--

but filled it seemed
with wondrous joy.

And of the words he spoke,
I understood but a few,

among them this:

"Ego dominus tuus"--

"I am your Lord."

In his arms, I thought
I saw a sleeping person.

Naked, but for
a crimson silken veil.

Whom, gazing upon, intently,
I saw was she

who earlier
had deigned to greet me.

In one hand, he seemed
to be holding something

that was burning--

and I thought I heard him
say these words:

"Vide cor tuum"--
"Behold your heart."

After a while, he awakened
the sleeping woman--

and strove to make her eat
the burning object

in his hands--

which she ate,
with doubt and fear.

Then his happiness turned
to bitter tears,

and weeping, he cradled
the woman in his arms,

and ascended into the sky.

At which point, the anguish
I felt was more

than my fragile sleep
could sustain,

and I woke.

♪

Narrator: The haunting vision
marked the beginning

of his career as a poet.

"Thinking over what had
happened to me," he wrote,

"I decided to compose
a sonnet and share it

"with several well-known
poets of my acquaintance,

"asking them to interpret
the vision

I had had in my sleep."

Bruscagli: And many poets
answered with other sonnets

and other poetic interpretations
of his vision...

and then he became truly
a great friend

of one of those poets,

his own primo amico
Guido Cavalcanti.

Narrator: Guido Cavalcanti,
an aristocratic,

supremely gifted lyricist
10 years Dante's senior,

would become not only
his closest friend and mentor

in the group,
but a proponent,

as Dante himself
would soon become,

of the dolce stil novo,
the "sweet new style"...

a rhapsodic new form
written not in Latin

but in the Florentine
vernacular,

the language of everyday life

with which they would
revolutionize

the tradition
of love poetry in Florence.

Bruscagli: There is a profound
democratic issue here at work.

Dante uses the vernacular
because this is the language

that everybody knows

and that everybody
can understand

and in particular opens
access to culture

and poetry and knowledge
to women.

Barolini: When Dante started
as a courtly love poet,

he wrote exquisite lyrics
in the vernacular

but lyrics in which women have
no agency and no voice.

In the way
the courtly lyric is set up,

it's a completely narcissistic
edifice in which

the male poet-lover explores
his own feelings.

The lady is entirely there
as a projection

of the male desire
and fears and concerns.

♪

Narrator: As his
engagement with the circle

of Florentine writers deepened,
Dante continued

to seek out the woman
of his dreams

in the streets of Florence.

One day in church
when acquaintances,

following the line
of his rapt gaze,

mistook the object
of his infatuation

for another woman,
Dante indulged their error

to conceal the true identity
of his great passion,

but when rumors about
his supposedly unseemly bearing

towards the other woman
reached Beatrice herself,

the next time they chanced
to meet she coolly

turned away and refused to
greet him ever again.

♪

The stinging rejection
rocked him to the core,

then propelled a profound shift

both in his understanding
of love and in his poetry.

Fazzini as Dante: So that...

Bruscagli: The mission will be
to celebrate

her immense value anyway.

"I will praise her in my poetry

even if she does not recognize
my own existence."

Narrator: If this new sense
of love now struck him

with the force of revelation,
it was one that would soon

be confronted with an even
more devastating challenge.

♪

In June 1290 at the age of 24,
Beatrice Portinari died

most likely
in a difficult childbirth.

Dante himself
had just turned 25.

♪

By then, he had spent
7 years composing sonnets

and canzone in her honor.

Except for a few formal
greetings in the street,

they had never even
spoken to each other.

Webb: For Dante, the loss
of Beatrice creates

this horrific crisis
in many different ways.

If poetry emerges because
of the encounter with Beatrice,

because of her presence,

what then do we do
when she is lost?

Narrator: Her death hurled
him into an abyss

of darkness and despair,

propelled him to spend
nearly 2 1/2 years

of intense spiritual
and philosophical introspection

and study at the end
of which he set to work

on an astonishingly original
literary composition.

Pulling his poems
to her out of his desk,

he carefully selected
and ordered them,

then linked them together
with passages

of prose narration,
transforming what had been

isolated, self-contained
lyric poems

into a unique
autobiographical narrative.

He called the new work
"La Vita Nuova," "The New Life."

In it, he told the story
of his love for her,

how he had longed for her
and looked for her

and written poems
and songs to her

and how in doing so
he had been transformed.

Giunta: "La Vita Nuova"
is a very new way

to talk about love.

Many poets in the 13th century
and before talk

about the lady they love
as an angel

that came from heaven
to give pleasure to the lover.

The poets used
this image just as a device,

but Dante really believes
in this comparison.

Webb: At the end
of the "Vita Nuova,"

he's beginning to think
of how to capture

in poetry the presence
of Beatrice.

How can poetry produce
the presence

of those who have been lost?

Narrator: Dante completed
the unusual new work

sometime around 1294,
4 years after Beatrice had died.

He ended the work
with an astonishingly

prophetic statement
of purpose and commitment.

If it be pleasing to Him
who is that

for which all things live,
and if my life is long enough,

I hope to say things about her

that have never been said
about any woman.

[Wind blowing]

♪

Bruscagli: For Dante, death is
not the end of everything.

Death is a passage
to another life,

to a superior form of existing,

where your identity
is clarified forever

for better or worse.

Dante sees our mortal life
within the perspective

of a passage which
will reveal the essence

of what you have been.

This is what it means
for Dante to go

through this terrible passage
of death,

which is also a passage
of revelation

and illumination
of your final identity.

♪

[Wind blowing]

Pertile: In 1295, Dante was 30.

He wasn't a kid anymore.

He wasn't--because he was a man,

and that is
when he became involved

in Florentine politics.

The way in which people
relate themselves

in a civic community became
absolutely important to him

in the second half of his life,

but if politics becomes
central to Dante,

Beatrice is still central,
as well.

These are the two
components that Dante manages

to bring together in the poem

because on the one hand
it is the story

of Dante's return to Beatrice.

On the other hand, it is
the story of Dante's discovery

of the way in which
people of this world live

as opposed to the way
in which they ought to live.

[People shouting]

Narrator: For years,
just beneath the surface

of the staunchly Guelph city,
tensions had been

on the rise along many
of the old fault lines

of clan, class, and power
that had troubled

the city for generations.

By 1295, a coalition
of merchants,

artisans, and guild members
determined to limit

the infighting among the city's
aristocratic factions

had succeeded in establishing
a new kind

of democratic government
in Florence,

vesting power in a rotating
group of 6 elected officials,

called priors,
requiring all to be

active members of one
of the city's main guilds

and barring members
of the nobility

from holding public office
at all.

That same year, Dante enrolled

in the Guild of the Apothecaries
and Physicians

explicitly to qualify
for political office.

Bruscagli: The dynamism
of the city of Florence,

which gives space and power
to classes

which were not powerful
until that point,

can be seen as a first seed
of some sort

of a democracy in Italy.

This is something that
appealed so much

to many Florentines
of the time, including Dante,

the idea that the power was
in the hands of the people

and not
of the local aristocrats.

Narrator:
But over the next 5 years,

the city would sink further
and further into an morass

of factionalism and infighting
accelerated

by the predatory ambitions
of the new pope in Rome,

who was determined to bring
Florence under his control.

Bruscagli: The pope was
Boniface--Boniface Ottavo--

and he had his own agenda,

a very strong theocratic agenda

of the papacy being
all powerful,

and this is this frame
of mind which Dante

hated more and more.

Narrator: And now the Guelph
party itself began to split

into two bitterly opposed
factions,

the White Guelphs and the Black.

Bruscagli: The Blacks were
in favor

of a very close alliance
with the pope,

and the Whites were more
cautious in letting

the pope be involved with
the local politics of the city.

[Swords clattering,
men shouting]

Narrator: Year after year,
the struggle

between the Black
and White Guelphs intensified.

[Horses neighing]

Bruscagli: Political life was
truly very violent.

So violent was the opposition

between the Whites
and the Blacks

that people were trying to
assassinate each other

in the streets of Florence.

♪

Webb: Dante sees himself being
increasingly swept up

in this absurd conflict
that is tearing

his city apart,
that he describes

as always deadly,
certainly cannibalistic,

this battle between the White
and the Black Guelphs

and the struggles for power
that swirl in

powers from outside
and powers from inside,

and these tiny clan quarrels
become exploded outwards

when other powers interfere
from beyond.

Narrator: In 1299,
the White Guelphs

had regained power,

and Dante's role
in city affairs rose higher,

culminating on June 13, 1300,
not long

after his 35th birthday,

when he was elected to
a two-month term

as one the city's
6 ruling priors

and two days later
entered office.

"All my woes and misfortunes,"
he later said,

"had their origin
and commencement

in my unlucky election
to the priorate."

The trouble began
almost immediately.

On June 23, a gang
of angry Black Guelph insurgents

assaulted a group
of civic leaders

on their way to mass outside
the baptistry

in a violent protest
that rapidly

spun out of control.

When Dante and the other
city leaders met the next day

to try to restore calm,
their solution would prove

for Dante
personally devastating.

To quell the chaos,
an equal number

of Black and White ringleaders
were banished from the city,

including,
among the exiled Whites,

Dante's great former friend
Guido Cavalcanti,

who in the wetlands surrounding
Sarzana contracted malaria

and was dead by August.

By then, the pope
had become so enraged

with the White faction
in Florence for thwarting

his ambitions that as summer
turned to fall

he reached a secret agreement
with the king of France

to send an army,
led by the king's own brother,

south to bring the unruly
Florentines to heel.

By the fall of 1301
with French forces

advancing on Tuscany,

an embassy of Florentine
political leaders,

Dante among them,
hastened south for Rome,

hoping to find a diplomatic
solution to the crisis...

but the time for
diplomatic solutions had passed.

[Horse neighs]

On All Soul's Eve
with 1,200 French horsemen

and a contingent of armed
Black Guelph exiles

close behind,
Charles of Valois arrived

outside the city gates
of Florence and asked

to be admitted
under the pretense of serving

as peacemaker,

a tense charade
that went on for 3 days...

♪

[Owl hooting]

And then on the night
November 4, 1301,

the Black coup started.

[Clattering]

[Explosion]

For 6 days, chaos
and destruction raged

through the helpless city

on a scale unimaginable
even by the standards

Florence itself had set.

[Horse neighing]

"Every friend became a foe,"
a horrified eyewitness reported.

"Brother forsook brother,
son forsook father."

"All love, all humanity
was extinguished."

[People screaming]

♪

Before it was over,
more than 1,000 houses

had been burned or destroyed.

Bruscagli:
Dante was not in Florence.

He had been sent to Rome
as an ambassador,

and on his way back, he learned
about the violence in Florence.

His family survived,
but there is evidence

that his houses were sacked
and partially destroyed.

Narrator: When
the violence finally subsided,

the victorious Black Guelphs
unleashed a savage

legal vendetta against
the vanquished White faction.

In the end,
559 death sentences

had been meted out
and more than 600 people exiled.

Bruscagli: He was probably
in Siena when he learned

that he had been accused
of being a corrupt politician.

It was a farce of a trial,
and everybody knew it,

so he never showed up
in Florence for the trial

because he knew--he knew
exactly what would happen.

Narrator: In the spring
of 1302, Dante himself

was condemned to death
and sentenced to be burned

at the stake if he ever again
returned to the city.

♪

Bruscagli: When Cacciaguida,
Dante's ancestor,

tells him in the 17th canto
of "Paradise,"

"You'll leave behind you
everything

that you most tenderly loved,"

that means it's a rupture.

It's a trauma so deep
that the Dante of the exile

is a different person
than the Dante

who lived in Florence.

♪

Narrator: Exile came
as a staggering blow,

and if the first impact
was immediate

and life-changing,
it would take time

for the grim reality
of his situation

to fully sink in.

Webb: Being exiled in Dante's
time is something

we really can't comprehend
fully now.

People and their families
were incredibly rooted

into the fabric of the city.

You know, Knowing
where you were born,

you would know
where you would be married,

and you knew where you
would be buried, as well.

Bruscagli: The exile for Dante
meant humiliation and poverty.

Dante is very frank,
very explicit about that

in many writings
during his exile.

Fazzini as Dante: I have
wandered much like a beggar

through just about every place
our language is spoken.

A ship without sail or rudder,
borne to various harbors,

havens, and shores
by the dry wind

of grievous poverty.

[Thunder]

♪

Bruscagli: So he had to reinvent
himself and to become

more and more accustomed
to a totally different

political and social landscape
compared to Florence,

the courts and castles
of center north Italy

in an aristocratic atmosphere
where he was a uomo di corte--

could be a diplomat,

could be a companion
of the lord--

and offering in exchange what?

His intellectual brilliance.

Giunta: And it's like
this new situation makes him

understand that the world
is bigger than he thought,

and he has to deal

with different problems
and ideas.

Narrator: What two years
of wandering revealed to him

was a wider world riddled
with conflict and division,

lacking a common culture
of nobility and public virtue,

lacking even a common
language that might hold

its disparate peoples together.

Something in him was stirring.

Giunta: Before the exile,
before 1301,

Dante was--I wouldn't
say a footnote

in the history of literature,

but he was not the author
of a great work.

He was 35, and he had
written only

the "Vita Nuova" and some poems.

He goes into exile,
kicked out of Florence,

and in 15 or 20 years, he writes
all his stuff basically.

It's like the exile was
the spring that created

all this powerful creation.

♪

Narrator: Sometime in 1306

as his fugitive existence
continued,

he came to
a remote mountain citadel,

the Castello di Malaspina
in the Lunigiana,

where he came
under the protection

of a branch of the powerful
Malaspina family.

It was there,
in the winter of 1306,

that something that had been
incubating deep within him

for a long time now began
to rise up and take shape

in his imagination.

♪

It was the vision of a poem,
an epic poem,

a poem on a scale
and with an ambition

unlike anything
he had ever written before,

a poem that would reach back
to the greatest works

of literature ever created
but one that would

of necessity inaugurate
an entirely new chapter

in the history
of the poetic literature

and imagination of the West.

Bruscagli: Those months
at the Malaspina Castle,

this is the time when Dante
started the "Divine Comedy,"

where the urgency
of this new invention,

of this new poem
took over his life

and eclipsed and marginalized
all the other works

that he had imagined.

♪

Pertile: The poem is the result
of at least

15 years of writing,

and in those 15 years,
the poem grows.

The poem probably
was born as an apotheosis

or a homage to Beatrice,

but it developed
into something different,

into something new,

something that was
much more politically engaged,

much more engaged with
the history of Dante's time,

and I wonder whether
Dante himself knew

that he had this in him.

Narrator: The intensity
of Dante's vision

was almost overwhelming,

and as he wrote, the power
of his imaginings

often came to him
with such force,

it was as if they were happening

in the very room
he was writing in.

It was as if a door
in space and time were opening

before him and the poem
itself were the door,

one that would not only recount
but itself be a journey

into the underworld
and afterlife...

and from the very start,
the intimacy and immediacy

with which Dante drew
his invisible cohort of readers

into the strange
and mesmerizing dreamworld

of the poem would make
those readers secret sharers

in the life-altering
experience recounted...

[Whoosh]

as if we, too, had just passed
through an invisible doorway

into another realm
and also found ourselves lost

in a dark and inscrutable
landscape

with no sense of where we were

or how we had gotten there
and no way to get out.

[Booming]

[Crickets chirping]

♪

Fazzini as Dante: Midway upon
the journey of our life,

I found myself
within a forest dark,

For the straightforward
pathway had been lost.

♪

Ah me! how hard a thing
it is to say.

Adoyo: "The Commedia: begins
with Dante coming to

in the dark forest...

Fazzini as Dante: savage, rough.

and he doesn't know
how he ended up there.

He's lost,
completely disoriented,

he can't find his way.

♪

Narrator as Dante: I cannot well
repeat how there I entered,

So full was I of slumber
at the moment

In which I had abandoned
the true way--

But when I finally reached
the mountain's foot

there, at the termination
of that vale

which had with so much fear
undone my heart,

I lifted up my gaze,
and saw its back

Already dressed with rays
from that great sphere

Which guideth others
straight on every road.

Then was my fear
a little quieted.

Adoyo: There's a direction
he could follow

when he notices the sun rising
on the shoulders

of that hill in front of him,

that mountain which Dante
describes

as the source of every joy.

Narrator as Dante: And, resting
for a moment my tired limbs,

I once more started up
the forlorn slope,

My weight borne always
on the lower foot.

And here--almost
at the start of the ascent--

Appeared a panther--
light and very fast,

entirely covered
with a spotted pelt.

And never straying
from my line of sight,

He moved so to impede my way,

That I was several times
turned back again.

But hope was hardly able
to prevent

the fear I felt
when I beheld a lion.

He seemed as if against me
he was coming

With head uplifted,
and with ravenous hunger,

So that it seemed
the air was afraid of him;

And then a she-wolf showed
herself;

she seemed to carry every
craving in her leanness;

she had already
brought despair to many.

The very sight of her
so weighted me

with fearfulness that
I abandoned hope

of ever climbing
up that mountain slope.

♪

Bruscagli: The panther is lust,
the lion pride,

and the she-wolf greed,

and lust and pride in a way are
individual, private sins,

but the third one is
the real problem

because the third one,
the greed, is the beast

that mates
with all other animals,

that corrupts the world
so profoundly

that St. Paul himself
had said that cupiditas, greed,

was the root of all evil.

♪

Out of that sense
of despair that follows,

that despair that is dragging
him back to the dark forest

where "the sun is mute,"

suddenly out of that comes
this nondescript shade.

He's not quite sure who that is.

♪

Narrator as Dante: While I
retreated down to lower ground,

before my eyes there
suddenly appeared

one who seemed faint because
of the long silence.

♪

When I saw him
in that vast wilderness,

"Have pity on me,"

were the words I cried.

"Whatever you may be--

a shade, a man."

Misere de mei,

qualque tu sei--

Ombra, or omo certo.

Not man;

♪

I was once man...

I was born
though late sub-Julio

and lived in Rome
under the good Augustus

in the season of the false
and lying gods.

I was a poet...

and sang the righteous son
of Anchises,

who had come from Troy

when flames destroyed
the pride of Ilium.

♪

But why do you return
to wretchedness?

Why not climb up
the mountain of delight,

the origin and cause
of every joy?

[Crickets chirping]

Narrator: The figure standing
before him, Dante realized

with a shock,
was the long-dead spirit

of one of the greatest poets
who had ever lived--

the towering Roman poet,
Virgil.

The literary forebear
Dante revered most.

The poet who, long before,

in the last decades
before the birth of Christ,

had sung--as Homer
himself had sung--

of the fall of Troy.

Of the desperate flight west
of the Trojan prince, Aeneas.

Of the remaking of a new world

from the broken pieces
of the old.

And of the founding
of Rome.

Stunned, Dante now implored
the great poet

to help him find his way.

♪

You see the beast

that made me turn aside;

help me, O famous sage,

to stand against her,

for she has made my blood

and pulses shudder.

♪

It is another path
that you must take

if you would leave
this savage wilderness;

the beast that is
the cause of your outcry

allows no man to pass
along her track...

but blocks him even
to the point of death;

her nature is so squalid,

so malicious

that she can
never sate her greedy will.

When she has fed,

she's hungrier than ever.

Therefore,

I think and judge it best
for you to follow me,

and I will guide you
from this place--

[Distant wolf howling]

through an eternal place,

where you will hear
the howls of desperation--

and see the ancient spirits

in their pain...

[Wolves growling]

as each of them laments

his second death;

[Distant howling continues]

and you will see
the souls of those

who are content
within the flame,

[Wolves growling]

for they hope to reach--
whenever that may be--

the blessed people.

♪

If you would then ascend
as high as these,

another soul more worthy
than I am will guide you;

I'll leave you in her care

when I depart.

♪

Bruscagli: Virgil doesn't come
as a help for Dante

in order to defeat the lupa--

in order to defeat
the beast.

Virgil says,
"This is not the way.

"You have to go another way.

"Inferno,
Purgatorio, Paradiso.

"You have to go through
all the sins

"and failures and triumphs
of humanity

"in order to, at the end
of the journey,

"to find yourself again
and to reconstruct

"the integrity
of your personality,

"and to, in the end,

to find God."

[Crickets chirping]

Webb: Now, Virgil's got
to get Dante moving, right?

The problem is that

Dante's terrified.
Mm-hmm.

And this is the moment
when he starts saying,

"Maybe I can't do this,
I'm not worthy,

"I'm not Aeneas,
I'm not Paul.

What right do I have
to do this?"

Bruscagli:
And Virgil says,

"Somebody called me
to come here and help you,"

and that somebody
is Beatrice.

Webb: And so Virgil
tells the story

of what Beatrice said
to get Dante going.

♪

Fraser as Beatrice:
O anima cortese mantoana,

di cui la fama ancor
nel mondo dura,

e durerà
quanto 'l mondo lontana.

♪

Oh, spirit
of the courteous Mantuan,

whose fame is still a presence

in the world and shall endure

as long as the world lasts,

my friend who has not been

a friend of fortune,
is hindered

in his path along
that lonely hillside.

He has been turned
aside by terror.

From all that I have heard

from him in Heaven, he is

I fear already so astray,

that I have come to help him

much too late.

Go now,

with all your persuasive word,

with all that is required
to see that he escapes.

Bring help to him

that I may be consoled.

For I am Beatrice,

who send you on.

I come from where I most long
to return.

Love prompted me--

that love which makes me speak.

♪

Webb: "Love prompted me"
in the Italian

is "amor me mosse."

It's literally
"love moved me,"

so "Love moved me
and love makes me speak."

So, the implication
for Dante is,

"Look, Beatrice
was moved by love.

You, too, have to get over
your state of being stuck."

And so,
this whole discourse here--

Beatrice's via Virgil--

is about how love
prompts us to move

and how Dante should
take this as a kind of

a modeling of how
to do the same.

And then it's at this point,
it turns to Dante

and it's his turn
to take that first step

towards the thing
he fears the most.

♪

Bruscagli: You don't go
into a retreat.

You forget about yourself.

You accept the challenge
of the world.

You relate it to any sort
of human experience,

and that friction
will save you.

That confrontation
will reveal what you are

and what you should be.

It's actually opening up
to the world that you

save yourself, and you find
a path of salvation.

[Distant crows cawing]

Narrator: Emboldened by Virgil's
account of Beatrice's love

and concern for his well-being,
Dante and his phantom guide

now entered a steep
and savage path

that led downwards towards
a hidden opening

in the dark ravine.

[Thunder]

They had arrived
at the Gates of Hell.

Carved into the rock above
the menacing entrance,

barely legible in the gloom,

was a fearsome inscription.

[Thunder]

Narrator as Dante:
Through me

the way into
the suffering city,

through me

the way to the eternal pain,

through me the way

that runs among the lost.

Abandon all hope--

you who enter here.

♪

[Distant people screaming]

♪

Bruscagli: Inferno is
a timeless place.

Nothing changes.

People don't move around.

There is not even
the physical possibility

of realizing
the passing of time

because it's a place
of absolute darkness

and absolute,
total desperation.

[Distant screaming continues]

Narrator: In the dark
and turbid air,

they could just make out
the dismal forms

of a vast multitude
of anguished souls

circling endlessly.

They were the defeated shades
of the uncommitted,

Virgil explained
to his terrified companion,

those who had lived
without praise or disgrace

or conviction of any kind,
and who were now barred alike

from Heaven
and the depths of Hell.

Beyond these miserable shades,

an even larger horde of souls

pressed against the bank
of a great river--

the river Acheron.

[Boat creaking]

Narrator as Dante: And here,
advancing toward us in a boat,

an aged man--his hair was
white with years--

was shouting:

"Woe to you,

"corrupted souls!

"Forget your hope

"of ever seeing Heaven:

"I come to lead you

"to the other shore,

"to the eternal dark,

"to fire and frost.

"And you

"approaching there,

"you living soul,

"keep well away from these--

they are the dead."

♪

Narrator: As the boat
approached the far shore,

the wind began to howl,

the sky turned blood red...

[Thunder]

and Dante fell into a stupor.

♪

[Thunder continues]

♪

The heavy sleep into which
Dante had fallen

was broken by an immense peal
of thunder.

[Thunder]

Dante and Virgil were standing
on the brink

of an enormous abyss--
and from the dark,

mist-filled valley below rose
a great, sighing lament.

♪

They had come
to the first Circle of Hell--

a melancholy place
called Limbo--

whose occupants,
Virgil explained,

were guilty of no sin
of their own.

♪

The sad cohort
languishing there

included not only
unbaptized infants,

but many non-Christian
and classical figures

of great distinction:

poets, philosophers,

soldiers, and kings;

men and women,
like Virgil himself,

whose only misfortune,
Virgil explained,

was to have lived outside
the kingdom of God--

either before the coming
of Christ

or beyond the reach
of his teachings.

"From no other evil we now
are lost," Virgil said,

"and punished just with this;

we have no hope, and yet
we live in longing."

Bruscagli: This is
the place, after all,

to which Virgil
himself belongs.

Virgil is a pagan,

a poet,

somebody who belongs
to Hell--to Limbo,

a place not
of actual suffering,

but of sighs--

a melancholic place.

Virgil is cut off
from Paradise,

he will never go
to Paradise.

Limbo is so remarkable
because, in the history

of the Catholic idea of Limbo,

no one ever did what Dante did.

What he does in Limbo

is he takes a place

that in the Catholic
imaginary should be,

at this point, only
for unbaptized infants,

and he puts in it adult
Greek and Latin pagans--

Aristotle, for instance--

because he just loves
classical culture.

♪

One of the major drives
of the "Commedia" itself is

this urge
to make people present

to us who are gone.

And I think, in this way,
what Dante is seeking

to do is to make those
who have passed on,

to make those who have died,
present to us and to think

about understanding them
as present.

In some ways, we might think
about it as the creation

of a transmortal community,

and the "Commedia" as a whole
can similarly be seen

as a way of imagining how
to capture in poetry

the presence of all of those
who have died

and yet remain part
of our community.

♪

Narrator: Descending
to the second Circle of Hell,

they encountered
the monstrous creature, Minos--

the fearful judge of the dead--

who examined each new soul
as it arrived

and assigned it
with his serpentine tail

to its eternal
Circle in Hell.

[Minos grunting]

Cachey: The tail of Minos
wraps around itself

to indicate where the sinners
will be condemned in Hell.

Minos' tail has the same kind
of spiral shape

of Dante's
invented space of Hell.

Kind of a parody
of the confessor, right?

The sinners come before him,
they confess their sins.

Of course, there's no way
to get out, no ticket out.

There's no penance you
can take, no 3 "Hail Marys"

and 4 "Our Fathers" you can say
at that point.

[Thunder]

Bruscagli: As Dante and Virgil
enter the second Circle of Hell,

the Circle of the Lustful...

[Thunderclap]

looking up,
Dante sees damned souls

being submitted
to a physical torture.

They are being punished
according to a general rule

of Hell
Dante calls contrapasso.

Contrapasso is a sort
of ironic symmetry

between the sin
and the punishment.

In this case, the lustful
are really battered around,

tortured by
this eternal hurricane

and which smashes them
against the wall of the abyss.

And so, the tempest of love
now is materialized

in the actual punishment
of those lustful souls.

[Thunder]

Looking up, Dante notices

a particular, separate group
of people

flying high in the middle
of this hurricane

and asks, "Virgilio,
who are those people?"

Virgil explains these are
people who were

actually killed because
of their sexual transgression.

[Distant, sinister laughter]

Narrator:
Among these slaughtered souls,

Dante's gaze is drawn
to two in particular:

the only spirits
in the maelstrom

still locked
in a passionate embrace.

It was the doomed lovers
Paolo and Francesca.

Lombardi:
An Italian critic once said,

and I entirely agree with him,
that Francesca is

the first woman
to appear real

and alive on the stage
of literature.

[Thunder]

She's an extraordinary figure.

She's--she's so full,

and she has elicited

so many different judgments

on herself.

Barolini: If you look
at Dante's trajectory as a poet,

he really changes

in a profound way.

By the time he reaches
the "Commedia,"

women are moral agents--

humans having a moral self,

having a moral trajectory,

capable of erring,
capable of not erring,

full--and Francesca is
an extraordinary example.

♪

Narrator: A contemporary
of Dante's from Ravenna,

Francesca da Rimini was
a beautiful young noblewoman,

who, trapped
in an arranged marriage,

had fallen passionately
in love

with her husband's
younger brother Paolo,

whom Dante himself
may have met.

The adulterous lovers were
eventually discovered

by Francesca's husband
Gianciotto,

Paolo's older brother,
who brutally

murdered them both
sometime around 1285.

♪

Fazzini as Dante:
O battered souls,

if One does not forbid it,
speak with us.

[Thunder]

♪

Bruscagli: As Paolo
and Francesca approach,

by divine grace,

the hurricane calms down.

♪

And in that moment
of calm,

Francesca can start
her account.

♪

Francesca:
O living being,

gracious and benign,

who through
the darkened air have come

to visit our souls
that stained the world

with blood...

you have pitied
our atrocious state.

♪

Whatever pleases you
to hear and speak

will please us, too, to hear
and speak with you,

now, while the wind
is silent,

in this place.

♪

Lombardi: And then Francesca
starts telling the tale

of how she fell in love
and she says, "Although

it pains me greatly,
I will tell you."

♪

Love that can quickly
seize the gentle heart,

took hold of him

because of my fair body.

How that was done
still wounds me.

Love that releases
no beloved from loving,

took hold of me so strongly
through his beauty that,

as you see...

it has not left me yet.

♪

Love led the two of us

unto one death.

♪

Narrator: When Dante asks how
they had come to recognize

their passion for each other,
she explains that it had been

while reading the tale
of Lancelot and Guinevere,

a courtly love poem of the kind
Dante himself had once written.

[Birds chirping]

Francesca: One day,

to pass the time away,

we read of Lancelot,

how love had overcome him.

[Sniffles]
We were alone,

and we suspected nothing.

And time and time again,
that reading led our eyes

to meet and made
our faces pale,

and yet one point
alone defeated us.

When we had read

how the desired smile
was kissed by one

who was so true a lover,

this one...

who never shall
be parted from me,

while all his body
trembled...

kissed my mouth.

♪

That day, we read

no more.

♪

Fazzini as Dante: And while one
said these words to me,

and the other wept,
so that because of pity,

I fainted,

as if I had met my death,

and then I fell

as a dead body falls.

♪

Lombardi: Dante falls,

and you are left,
I find,

with yourself
for a moment.

But you also realize
one thing--

Dante identifies himself

with Francesca,

and that you are
witnessing

the power
of love literature.

♪

Ledda:
The force of literature,

love literature,

made Francesca take
this decision, this choice.

For this reason,
Dante is so moved

because, as implicated
very strongly,

he also could fall
like Francesca in the same way

because literature is
a dangerous thing

when you take it too literally,

as Francesca does.

♪

Barolini: Dante is interested
in how our desire moves us,

how, as we go down
the path of life,

we're making choices.

He does believe, if you make
the wrong choice, you're going

to pay a consequence that's
going to be eternal.

But desire is not, per se, bad;
desire is the motor.

You're going nowhere
without it.

It's what you do with it,
and Francesca mishandled it.

Lombardi: This is
the beginning of this long

and very nuanced conversation
on love

and desire that Dante has

throughout his poem
that starts here.

Francesca, sadly,

we leave her in Hell.

[Wind howling]

♪

[Thunder]

[Rain falling]

♪

Narrator as Dante:
I am in the third Circle,

filled with cold, unending,

heavy, and accursed rain;

its measure and its kind
are never changed.

Gross hailstones,

water gray with filth,

and snow come
streaking down

across the shadowed air;

the earth, as it receives
that shower,

stinks.

♪

Over the souls
of those submerged

beneath that mess,
is an outlandish,

vicious beast,

his 3 throats barking,
doglike:

Cerberus.

His eyes are blood red;

greasy, black, his beard;

his belly bulges,

and his hands are claws,

his talons tear

and flay and rend
the shades.

Bruscagli: The third Circle
of Hell is the circle

of the gluttons,
and gluttons are treated

like pigs
in this Circle of Hell.

They lay down

under a disgusting rain,

and they roll in mud

like, literally, pigs.

But it's not
that these people

are totally deprived
of their humanity.

[Grunting]

[Distant people screaming]

[Spits]

♪

O, you

who are conducted
through this Hell...

[Distant screaming continues]

recall me,

if you can;

♪

The name

you citizens gave me

was...

Ciacco;

♪

and for the damning sin

of gluttony,

as you can see...

[Grunts, pants]

I languish in the rain.

Bruscagli: The person
that Dante meets here

in the Circle of the Gluttons
is Ciacco.

Ciacco was a glutton, OK,
but Ciacco is also

the person who explains
to Dante

the moral corruption
of Florence, so he speaks

with dignity
about what was going on

in their city.

Narrator: As one of the dead,
Ciacco has knowledge

of what the future holds
and is thus able to tell Dante

of the horrific violence
that will soon take place

between the warring factions
in Florence,

the greed and corruption
of whose unjust leaders

has long since caused
the city to descend

into a hell
of warring appetites.

♪

After long controversy,

they'll come to blood;

the uncouth party
will chase the other out

with much offense.

But then,

within 3 suns,

they too must fall;

at which the other party
will prevail...

♪

Two men are just,

but no one listens
to them.

[Chuckles]

Three sparks that set
on fire every heart

are envy,

pride,

and avariciousness.

[Chuckles]

[Coughs]

[Sniffles]

[Spits]

[Sighs]

Bruscagli: The "Divine Comedy"
is full of predictions

and prophecies
about the future.

♪

Dante, in the narration
of the "Divine Comedy,"

which is set
in the year 1300,

has not been exiled
from Florence yet,

but Dante the writer
knows very well

that this has happened.

This play between Dante
the author, the writer,

and Dante the protagonist,
allows Dante a trick

in his narration--
allows Dante

to predict the future,

and that creates a tension
in the narrative

because it is a narrative
which is infused

with anxiety
about the future.

♪

Narrator: And so, they made
their way down

to the fourth Circle--
the circle of greed.

[Distant people screaming]

There,
pushing immense stones

in anger and bitter pain,

the souls of the greedy.

Spendthrifts and hoarders
surged about the circle

in great opposing tides
of woe.

♪

In the next Circle down--
the fifth,

the circle of the wrathful--
on the festering banks

of another putrid river,
the river Styx,

naked souls,

faces contorted with rage
in the slime

along the shore, snarled
fiercely at each other

and battered each other
with their hands and heads.

♪

As they were ferried
across the turbid river,

Dante recognized,
wallowing in the slime,

an arrogant,
foul-tempered nobleman

named Filippo Argenti,

who had once slapped Dante
in the streets of Florence,

and whose family had evicted
his wife and children

after he was exiled,
who now,

as Dante looked on
in grim satisfaction,

was set upon by a horde
of angry sinners

and then started to rip
himself apart

with his own teeth.
[Argenti snarling]

Giunta:
Dante was often very harsh

with Florence and Florentines.
[Dante whispering indistinctly]

Giunta: He's got a wonderful
imagination, and the way

he punishes his enemies
is a part

of the pleasure of reading
the "Inferno"

because he's quite
imaginative in hate.

He was very good--
I will say A-plus--in hate.

♪

Narrator: Ahead now,
on the far shore

of the river Styx, loomed
the menacing iron walls

and towers
of the City of Dis,

named for the ancient Roman god
of the underworld,

beyond whose gates lay

the hideous tiers
and trenches

of lower Hell.

Webb: When Dante talks
about the entrance

into the Gate of Dis,
which takes us then

into lower Hell,
he's going places

that Virgil himself
had never gone,

and that's where Dante gets
into uncharted terrain

and where much of this
becomes Dante's own creation.

♪

Narrator: As they made their way
inside the gates,

they saw an endless vista
of flaming, open tombs,

with great sighs of pain
and anguish

arising from within.

They were in the sixth
Circle of Hell now--

the circle of heretics--

and within the fiery,
open tombs, Virgil explained,

lay atheists
and unbelievers--

all those who believed
the soul dies with the body.

♪

Bruscagli: The irony
for unbelievers--

who, during life, had thought
everything ended

with the grave--
is to awake after death

to find their graves
transformed

into endless
torture chambers.

And because an atheist,
in their lives,

were obsessed
with earthly matters,

they are condemned
to their earthly obsessions

forever.

Barolini: What Dante really
gives us in the "Inferno"

is the idea that we are
our own consequence.

We are our own Hell,

and later, in the poem,

he actually has someone say,

"As I was when I was alive,

so am I now that I am dead."

♪

Adoyo: We have to go 11 cantos
into the "Commedia"

before we get any sort
of orientation

of where we're going.

We just seem to be
descending unknowingly

into a deeper
and deeper abyss,

but now we have just crossed
the threshold

into the City of Dis proper,
and Virgil now gives us

that picture and we get
an elucidation,

an intellectual elucidation,
of where we're going.

Narrator: The rings of pain
and suffering through which

they have been descending,
Virgil explained,

were themselves ordered
into 3 great divisions

of increasing severity:

the first and shallowest circles

reserved for those who have

committed sins of incontinence;

a second, deeper set
of circles

for those who have committed
sins of violence;

and the deepest yet
reserved for those

who have committed
sins of fraud.

Adoyo: Overlaying
the physical organization

of Hell is

the ethical categorization

of who is found where.

The sins at the very,
very entrance

of Inferno, the ones
that are on the surface,

that are farthest
from the center of Hell,

are categorized
as sins of incontinence--

ungoverned appetite,
unmitigated desire

and impulses, where one

allows oneself to be
swept away.

You just let yourself go
with the carnal desire

or the pleasure of consumption
or the pleasure

of acquisition
or the pleasure of just

prodigality in the form
of being able to just spend,

spend, spend, but these are
simply sins of appetite.

They're not, by their nature,
meant to harm another.

♪

The next level is
sins of violence,

which is necessarily visited
upon another.

And yet, here, Dante still
does not correlate it

with the desire
to exploit or betray.

It is brute violence,

brute violence
against another,

brute violence against self,

brute violence against
the divine.

But the third--
the deepest, the gravest--

category of sin is fraud;

fraud when one exercises
their intellect, which is

the greatest gift, rooted
together with free will the soul

is endowed with, when one
exercises their intellect

to undermine the well-being
of another

in their self-interest.

And how is fraud perpetrated?

Through the word.

You tell somebody
one thing that you know

not to be true,
with the understanding

that the other person
will believe you,

so you have their trust
and you violate that trust

by communicating to them

a big lie, essentially.

It points back to how it is

that the word,
how it is that language,

is so potent

an instrument both of creation
and destruction,

an instrument of nurturing

and malice.

♪

As creative as words can be,
as creative and generative

and nurturing
as language can be,

so can it be destructive.

[Flames crackling]

♪

Narrator: Arriving now at
the edge of a steep precipice,

Dante and Virgil came
to a halt.

They had come
to the eighth Circle,

a region of Hell called
the Malebolge,

the evil pits, comprised

of 10 stony craters
or chasms,

each the infernal abode
of a different kind of traitor

to the truth:

panderers and seducers,

flatterers,
corrupt politicians

and priests,
magicians and soothsayers,

hypocrites, thieves,
and fraudulent counselors.

Here, Virgil and Dante
encountered

the great Greek hero,
Ulysses, whose craftiness

and guile and cunningness
in devising the Trojan Horse

had brought about
the fall of Troy.

Adoyo:
Dante is giving us

the incandescence
of Ulysses' intelligence

and the corruption
of how he uses

that intelligence to defraud,
without any kind

of ethical inhibitions
about what the consequences

of his actions might be.

♪

Narrator: As Dante stood
transfixed,

Ulysses himself
began to speak,

recounting how an unquenchable
thirst for knowledge

had propelled him
to his doom.

♪

Ulysses: When I sailed away
from Circe,

who'd beguiled me to stay

more than a year there,

near Gaeta,

neither my fondness
for my son,

nor the pity
for my old father,

nor the love I owed
Penelope,

which would have
gladdened her,

was able to defeat in me

the longing I had

to gain experience
of the world.

Therefore,

I set out on the open sea

with but one ship
and that small company

of those who never
had deserted me.

♪

"Brothers," I said,

"O you, who having crossed

"a hundred thousand dangers,

"reach the west,

"you must not deny
experience

"of that which lies
beyond the sun

"and of the world
that is unpeopled.

"You were not made to live
your lives as brutes,

"but to be followers
of worth

and knowledge."

♪

I spurred my comrades

with this brief address
to meet the journey

with such eagerness that I could
hardly have held them back;

5 times

the light beneath the moon
had been rekindled...

when there,

before us,

rose a mountain,

dark because of distance,

and it seemed to me

the highest mountain
I had ever seen.

[Thunder]

And out of that new land,

a whirlwind rose and hammered

at our ship against her bow.

Three times it turned her round

with all the waters;
and at the fourth,

it lifted up the stern

so that the prow
plunged deep...

[Ship creaks]

as pleased an Other...

♪

[Whispering]
until the sea closed again

over us.

♪

Pertile: Think of how many
different ways there are

of looking at some
of Dante's major characters.

Look at Ulysses--

a hero of knowledge,

a symbol of human yearning

for discoveries on the one hand,

on the other, a con artist,

so it makes it
impossible for us

to make up our minds

about these people.

♪

Perhaps the word "genius"
applies to Dante

in the most real sense
of the word,

but a genius aware,
however,

of the danger
of his own genius,

aware of the danger
of his own intelligence.

There, again,

you have the complexity
of this author

who is able to identify
with the damned,

and yet aims to reach
and wants to reach Heaven

and wants the good
of everyone.

[Quill scrawling]

♪

Bruscagli: Towards the end
of his journey,

Dante finds a lake of ice,

so Inferno at its deepest,

at its darkest,

is ice cold.

And the people
who are punished,

immersed in this ice,
are the traitors;

people who reciprocated
the love

that they received
from their friends,

from their relatives,
from their fellow citizens,

with hatred and treason.

And this is the worst sin,

according to Dante.

♪

Narrator: The first
of the 4 foul precincts

of the ninth and final
Circle of Hell,

called Caina, was reserved
for those who have betrayed

their own kin,
their own family,

named for Cain, who had
slaughtered his own brother.

Beyond that, amongst
even worse betrayers,

Dante saw something of
unutterable horror in the ice.

♪

It was Count Ugolino,

a notorious
and nefarious politician

without scruples,
violent and coldblooded,

locked in ice
and forever gnawing

on the head of his arch enemy,
the Archbishop Ruggiero,

a man just as bad
as Ugolino himself.

♪

And yet even here,
near the very bottom of Hell,

even this horrific figure
could not be reduced to the sum

of his terrible sins,
but remained a man

who was once a human being,

a father, who had starved
to death watching

his own sons die in the same
cruel and terrible way.

♪

Ugolino: I looked
into the faces of my sons.

Out of my grief,
I bit at both my hands,

and they, who thought I'd
done that out of hunger,

immediately rose
and told me, "Father,

"it will be far less painful

"if you ate of us;

"for you clothed us
in this sad flesh.

It is for you
to strip it off."

♪

After we had reached
the fourth day,

Gaddo implored me: "Father,
why do you not help me?"

And there he died.

And just as you see me,

I saw my sons falling

one by one,

between the fifth day
and the sixth;

at which, now blind,

I started groping
over each,

and after they were dead,
I called them for two days...

then fasting

had more force than grief.

♪

Bruscagli: Dante knows
that the humanity

of the characters
that he encounters in Hell

is larger than their evil.

And so, so many times,
he can relate

to the humanity
of these people--

not against their sin,

not because he thinks that they
didn't deserve to be there,

but because they
cannot be reduced

just to the horror
of their sins.

♪

Narrator:
Dante and Virgil moved on,

moving inward and down,
ever deeper,

nearer and nearer
to the center of Hell,

where the souls were even
more deeply covered in ice.

[Thunder]

The anguished shades
of those who have betrayed

their own guests,
their faces up,

frozen tears blinding them
in agony.

[Thunder]

♪

And then at last,
they were approaching

the very pit of Hell
itself--Judecca--

and the souls of those who'd
betrayed their own benefactors;

piteous figures completely
immersed in the ice,

sometimes many feet deep.

♪

[Thunder]

And in the distance now,

Dante and Virgil
could just make out

a towering shape,
shrouded in fog.

Here, at the very bottom
of the world,

they've come at last
to Lucifer himself.

A Lucifer, a Satan,

unlike anything anyone
had ever imagined

before or since.

Narrator as Dante: O reader,
do not ask of me how

I grew faint and frozen then--

I cannot write it:
all words would fall

far short of what it was.

I did not die,

and I was not alive;

think for yourself,
if you have any wit,

what I became, deprived
of life and death.

The emperor
of the despondent kingdom

towered from the ice,

up from mid-chest.

If he was once as handsome
as he now is ugly

and, despite that, raised
his brows against his Maker,

one can understand how
every sorrow has its source

in him.

I marveled when I saw
that, on his head,

he had 3 faces:

one in front,

blood red;
and then another two

that, just above the midpoint
of each shoulder,

joined the first;

and at the crown,
all 3 were reattached;

the right looked
somewhat yellow,

somewhat white;

the left in its appearance
was like those who come

from where the Nile,
descending, flows.

♪

Adoyo: Dante's Lucifer--

this grossly deformed,

bat-winged,
immobile creature--

is completely impotent

to free himself

from the frozen prison
in which he's locked.

This is the coldest place;
there's no life, there's

no heat, there's no--nothing,
and so, every time

he flaps his wings,
every draft that he creates

only makes the waters colder

and freezes them even harder.

Bruscagli:
Lucifer doesn't even react

to the presence
of Virgil and Dante.

There is no exchange.
He's so impossible

to reach
in the absolute negativity

of his hatred
and his ugliness

that there is no possible
relation with him.

Narrator as Dante:
He wept out of 6 eyes;

and down 3 chins,
tears gushed together

with a bloody froth.

Within each mouth--
he used it like a grinder--

with gnashing teeth,
he tore to bits a sinner,

so that he brought much pain
to three at once.

The forward sinner found
that biting nothing

when matched against
the clawing,

for at times,
his back was stripped

completely of its hide.

Bruscagli: Lucifer is tormenting

the 3 worst sinners of all time:

Cassius and Brutus--
the traitors of Caesar--

and Judas, the traitor
of Jesus Christ.

Narrator as Dante:
"That soul up there

who has to suffer most,"

my master said:

"Judas Iscariot--

"his head inside,
he jerks his legs without.

"Of those two others,
with their heads beneath,

"the one who hangs
from that black snout

"is Brutus--

"see how he writhes
and does not say a word!

"That other,
who seems so robust,

is Cassius."

"But night is come again,

"and it is time for us
to leave;

we have seen everything."

♪

Webb: In the end,
we come to realize

there's no principle of evil
in Dante's Hell.

It's not that there
are forces of evil

that draw us to do
evil things.

It's the decisions we make
that lead us away from the good.

♪

For Dante, it's about
the good, it's about love.

As you get farther away
from those things, what you

end up with--simply the lack
of love, the lack of good,

and that's what we see
epitomized in Lucifer.

♪

Narrator: And with that,
the journey through Inferno

now came to an end.

♪

Bruscagli: The way Dante
and Virgil exit Inferno

is they actually climb down

in this space between
the body of Lucifer

and the ice, grabbing
the hairs

of Lucifer's body.

Webb: There's this tricky shift
on the way out of Hell,

where Virgil grabs Dante

and climbs down
Lucifer's body

and then turns around
and climbs up.

Bruscagli: And Dante doesn't
understand what's going on.

The fact is that they arrived
at the center of the earth,

and now they have to climb up
in order to exit Inferno.

♪

Narrator: Slipping through
a crevice in a rock,

Virgil placed Dante
on a ledge by Satan's feet

and bade him continue
their upward journey

towards the other side
of the world, where,

a little before dawn,
they finally saw a gleam

of light at the end
of the dark, rocky tunnel.

♪

Bruscagli:
And through there,

Virgil and Dante
are able to leave

the realm of evil

and re-emerge on the shore

of the mountain of Purgatory

on the other hemisphere.

♪

Narrator: It was on
the morning of Easter Sunday,

April 10, 1300,
when they emerged

once more to see the stars.

They had come out at last
on the other side of the world,

at the foot
of Mount Purgatory,

the great mountain that had
risen where Lucifer,

in his catastrophic fall,
had pierced the earth.

♪

And even as Virgil and Dante
were physically disentangling

themselves from the timeless,
unchanging entropy

and absolute negation
of Hell,

so Dante himself was beginning
to disentangle himself

from the grip Florence had
continued to hold over him--

even in exile.

Sometime in 1307 or 1308,

as he neared the end
of "Inferno"--

the first, dark canticle
of his poem--he left

the benevolent protection
of the Count of Malaspina,

and with the only extant
manuscript

of the completed cantos
in a rucksack on his back,

made his way east toward
Casentino, where, at Poppi,

near Arezzo, by the battlefield
of Campaldino,

where he had fought
nearly two decades earlier,

he hoped to find protection
under another local lord,

and where, by 1309,

with Hell behind him,
he would set to work

on the next great canticle
of his poem: "Purgatorio."

Time had begun again.

My sins were ghastly

♪

Webb: Dante manages to convey

all of the range
of human experience.

You are not on the Earth
as you believe.

Pertile:
He acknowledges the existence

of this Paradiso
beyond space and beyond time.

♪

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♪