Inferno Time Quotes Page 2
Citations follow this format: (Canto.Line). We used Allen Mandelbaum's translation.
| Quote #4 [Furies]: "Just let Medusa come; then we shall turn |
The pilgrims’ wait at the gates of Dis and the subsequent menace of Medusa are all threats of immobilization. The very act of waiting in the eternal space of Hell seems to stop time. In addition, Medusa endangers Dante by threatening to turn him to stone or, in other words, to paralyze him so that his body is frozen forever. The inability to move forward because of either the locked gates or the rigidity of a stone body renders time meaningless to Dante.
| Quote #5 [Virgil]: "Within this region is the cemetery |
By denying man’s immortal soul, the Epicureans condemn themselves to living purely in the present. Because they do not believe in the afterlife, they have no inhibitions to restrain them from indulging their basest pleasures at any time they please. They are trapped in the present time, just as after they die their souls are subjected to the eternal present of torment in Hell.
| Quote #6 [Dante]: "It seems, if I hear right, that you can see |
Heretics, for denying the immortality of the soul, are denied a linear, straightforward understanding of time. Having lived their lives only in the present moment (like the Epicureans), heretics are punished by being imprisoned in the future. They can see only in front of them, but not around them; they remain ignorant of their present state and must spend eternity without knowledge of their own time.
