Stradano_Inferno_Canto_16

Giovanni Stradano, Canto 16, 1587.

This wintertime, we're recapping the Inferno. Read along!

At this signal in The Inferno, as Dante continues to exam, stretch, and deplete Virgil's patience, let the states imagine for a moment what Virgil might say given the opportunity to write a performance review for the pilgrim.

Performance Review

Pilgrim name: Dante Alighieri
Occupation: Poet/expert stalker/political commentator (fascist?)
Age: Roughly halfway through the journey of his life

Supervisor's notes:

Dante has done well on this divine quest so far, especially considering the fact that I establish him lost in a wood not long ago. When nosotros reached the end of this nigh recent department of Hell, Dante confessed that he'd intended to use a belt to fight off the leopard I saved him from—it's condom to say that he has fabricated considerable progress since he get-go came on.

I still worry about him, yet. He seems to heed to me nigh blindly—I'm fairly certain that if I told him to jump off a bridge, he might actually do it. He can't recollect for himself, and he'southward non exactly a self-starter; he has middle management written all over him. He'd make a great lifelong employee, though I recommend putting him through purgatory before sending him up high. He withal has a lot to acquire.

He is prone to compassion, and when we passed through the realm of the sodomites, I instructed him to treat the few sinners we would encounter with respect and kindness. This exercise came naturally to him, perhaps because the 3 sinners nosotros met were fellow Florentines and Guelphs. I'd like to see how he might have handled himself in a room full of Ghibellines. Not likewise well, I imagine.

Dante tin can be irritating, simply he has potent interpersonal skills—they almost make me wish I were a Florentine myself.  Whatsoever Florentine tin can recognize some other by his dress or by his accent. They're a loyal group, bound by a honey for i another and their city, and an arbitrary hatred for opposing political factions. When the three sinners asked if valor and courtesy even so existed in Florence, the pilgrim informed them quickly and poetically about the current state of their honey city.

I should too mention that Dante has a habit of using similes to describe situations, and he seems to be using them more and more. In one particular instance, he said the approaching sodomites were like "oiled and naked" wrestlers, which I felt was sort of unnecessary.  He as well has an unhealthy fascination with rivers. Every time we come to a body of water, he can't focus on anything else—only recently he stood and made an extended metaphor about a few different rivers, which, frankly, I thought was a bit of a stretch.

Dante admired all of the sinners, but the one who spoke to him, and with whom he seemed nigh appreciating, was a human named Jacopo Rusticucci, who blames his married woman for his damnation. It is still unclear whether Rusticucci turned to sodomy considering his wife denied him, or if he engaged in sodomy with his wife in an try to indulge her desire for anal play and ended upwardly in hell for trying to continue his bedroom live. Dante didn't press the matter: he but allowed the sinner to get on talking without getting to the, uh, bottom of it. He'south non a detail-oriented worker and gets distracted easily. He also leaps between states of extreme modesty and paroxysms of unrestrained arrogance. Here, for example, he allowed himself to become unnamed before his three fellow citizens, merely later he will address an imaginary reader, equally though somehow he'southward in the center of telling some epic story. Between these asides and the avalanche of similes, I'm beginning to worry that his literary aspirations might arrive the mode of his future performance.

At the fourth dimension I would non recommend him for a promotion, just I'm more than willing to train him until we reach the end of the Inferno. Possibly by then he volition think for himself and acquire to interrogate the sinners more efficiently. I besides recommend that he speak to Hour, as he'south in sore need of help for his feet. He scares and faints easily, and this task, of all jobs, is not for the faint of center.

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Alexander Aciman is the author of Twitterature. He has written for the New York Times, Tablet, the Wall Street Periodical, and TIME. Follow him on Twitter at @acimania.