The Divine Comedy And Dante Getting All The Torments All Scew Whiff.

"There ain't no grave that can hold my body down."
Johnny Cash.

I'm not trying to sound like a 'how- do- you- do' (if you know what I mean) in any way in this blog post but this is my latest interest.

A year or so ago I decided to buy a copy of the Divine Comedy from Oxford World Classics. I read the first few parts (each bit is called a Canto) of the Inferno and then read something else instead for whatever reason.

Anyway, it was a week ago that I looked at my book shelf and picked up the volume on a whim and started to read a canto or ten. After that first sitting I have started to grow a fascination with the work. After getting to grips with the life and times of Dante I began to understand what this Alighieri dude was all about.

Here is a small explanation of The Divine Comedy. It is written in the form of blank verse canto's and is a so called 'spiritual autobiography' of a man named Dante Alighieri. It goes into detail about Dante's inner workings in the form of going through a spiritual journey through the nine circles of hell which is in the first section called 'Inferno'... then through Purgatory in the second part which is called 'Purgatorio' and then lastly he goes up to heaven to see Paradise which he describes in the third section, Paradiso. Dante intends to travel through these three realms in order to be united with a woman called Beatrice who resides in Paradise.

... I'll not go to much into detail because the person reading this has no doubt been in contact with the Divine Comedy one way or another some time in their lives.

Dante was born in Florence in 1265 and basically was an important person politically and so forth.

As I read through Inferno Dante referred to being the lowest part of hell to be the worst part of it. In the last part of hell there was a frozen lake in which Satan was frozen in ice. For Dante the lowest part of hell was meant for betrayers... and what the punishment was was that they were frozen in ice like the Devil...

What the *cough* hell?

By the time of me reading this I had read through all of the other circles of hell that were not meant to be as harsh as the lowest part... and it was weird that Dante thought that the punishments for people on those circles were less than being  frozen in ice.

... I mean in these circles you had punishments like,

• Being hung upside down, being constantly burnt in a furnace.
• Have fire fall upon you as you try to run away from it... while being forced to step on hot sand.
• Being immersed in a lake of boiling blood. 

I don't feel that I need to say any more but if I was sent to hell and I heard about those punishments I would think that being trapped in a frozen lake was a blessing in disguise. What is most weird is that Dante thought that that was the *worst* punishment... I thought it was the most merciful actually.


I made up the basic dialogue below to emphasize my point...

Demon: You could be burnt for all eternity... immersed in lakes of boiling blood or constantly flayed with whips for all eternity.


Person: Oh crap that sounds bad.


Demon: And so your punishment will be the most severe because it shall be in the last part of hell...


Person: Crap!


Demon: You'll be put in a frozen lake.


Person: Oh thank goodness... I thought it was going to be an awful punishment.


Demon: What?!


Person: Uh... nothing.


Dante should get his facts straight.

Seriously though, it is something that everyone should try to read in their lives because it's pretty damn brilliant in so many ways.

Over and Out.
ED.

BEEEF Stock, The Festival To Change The World.

I am a member of a folk/ rock/ blues/whatever band as of quite recently. We had been practicing for a few weeks when I was told that we had our first gig. My first few questions were how, who booked us and where. I later found out that my fellow  members had gone down the DIY method and had ''booked'' a gig at the house of Sarah's, our singer/ guitarists house... to be the headlining band. We would play in the garden on a raised platform while people watched on as tents littered the grass.

It would seem that the gods looked favorably on our band because while I was walking back with fellow band mate and friend for a long time, Munchy, after our first band practice... we saw a rainbow in the sky... and while the below picture was taken we decided to take it as an omen of good fortune...

Weeks later it was decided that our band was called The Garden Party and that the festival that we had just thought up would called BEEEF Stock.

A banner was made of radiant beauty...

Now I know that there seems to be three E's in Beef. The extra E is for emphasis... but actually the real reason was that I accidentally made the F the last E and so had to create another F instead.

It turned out that on the day the garden in which BEEEF Stock would have been held was waterlogged because of the rain so instead we were able to relocate our festival to the Paget Arms in Loughborough town.

... and so we played our songs... for the first time ever... in front of an audience.

... and here is a picture of the performance in front of friends, acquaintances and the woman that may have watched behind the bar.

To celebrate our first gig as a band we ate some dried crickets that they were selling behind the bar... then got up on a table and recited a sonnet.

BEST... GIG... EVER.

Over and Out.
ED.