[lbo-talk] List question

[Carrol Cox]

Well, it's been quite a while since I red Dante (or read any commentary). I
won't argue the case vigorously. If there are more in the circle (or seem to
be) than all the dead, that "all" implicitly sums up all three states,
whether he has seen them yet or not. But yes,  your point about this is his
first sight of a large group seems an important one.

I like the association of "silent majority" with the dead -- though some of
the dead speak loudly:

My father's own father he waded that river,
They stole all the money he made in his life...

Carrol

-----Original Message-----
From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org]
On Behalf Of Michael Smith
Sent: Friday, December 03, 2010 11:25 PM
To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] List question

On Fri, 3 Dec 2010 22:20:33 -0600
"Carrol Cox" <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:


> Eliot was 'quoting' Dante: I had not known death had undone so may.
> The line is in the Canto which deals with the ante-room of hell,
> where all those who were unwilling to act, hence were neither good or
> bad, but weren't worth damning.  The line is rather curious: there
> are more people in this anteroom (it seems to Dante) than there were
> in Hell proper, Purgatory, and Heaven combined. 

This reading surprises me a bit. At the point where Dante makes this 
observation, he hasn't yet seen the rest of Hell, much less Purgatory 
and Paradise. This is in fact the first large group of the dead 
he has seen, apart from the Staten Island Ferry queue for Charon's 
services. I always read this passage -- 

... sì lunga tratta
di gente, ch'i' non averei creduto
che morte tanta n'avesse disfatta 

-- as an expression of his surprise at the 
topos-koinos -- which was always true, until perhaps quite recently -- 
that the dead are much more numerous than the living: the maiores 
in both senses of the word. (That's one of the reasons why Nixon's, or 
rather Safire's phrase, "silent majority", always struck me as funny; 
it sounded like he was referring to the dead). 

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