How Dante meets up with Virgil, and is guided by him down to the deepest circle of Hell. About the other two books, covering Purgatory and Paradise.
Koch
To the depths of Hell, to see the giant triple-headed Lucifer eating Judas Iscariot, Brutus and Cassius. Then as dawn draws near, back to the world above.
The horrific story of a count locked away to starve to death, who turned to cannibalism. How that came to be used falsely in Lavater’s physiognomy.
Barrators, who traded in public office and bribed courts, hypocrites whose clothes are weighted with lead, and thieves who are stuck in a pit of snakes.
On a barren, sandy plain, naked spirits suffer under showers of flakes of fire. Blasphemers lie flat on their backs, sodomites keep moving, and usurers crouch with purses strung from their necks.
Descending past the Minotaur of Crete, they reach a group of centaurs and travel on past famous killers, into a wood of thorn trees of those who committed suicide.
The three Furies appear on top of the gate to Dis, and try to turn Dante to stone using the face of Medusa. Once allowed in, they meet some of the heretics in their burning tombs.
First Dante and Virgil have to negotiate the three-headed monster dog Cerberus, guarding Hell, then the stinking mud containing gluttons.
Dante is wandering lost in a dark wood, his way out obstructed by wild animals. He asks a man to help, only to discover he’s the ghost of Virgil and they’re on their way to Hell.
How expression of pain became stereotyped in narrative paintings from Caravaggio to Böcklin, a very early Rembrandt and the anguish of a ewe on the death of her lamb.
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