The Dante Club -- a pure enjoyment of their scholarship

Just some miscellaneous quotes I like from what I read yesterday:

"... a return to a pure enjoyment of their scholarship." (pg. 185)
^ I'm a victim of this too... I forget, because of school I guess, and the forced knowledge of things like gen-ed requirements, that scholarship is something to be enjoyed.

these next two quotes are interesting perspectives on Dante and the Divina Commedia
"You are not after a Lucifer - that is not the culprit you describe. Lucifer is pure dumbness when Dante finally meets him in frozen Cocytus, sobbing and mute. You see, that is how Dante triumphs over Milton - we long for Lucifer to be astounding and clever so we may defeat him, but Dante makes it more difficult. No. You are after Dante - it is Dante who decides who should be punished and where they go, what torments they suffer. It is the poet who takes those measures, yet by making himself the journeyer, he tries to make us forget: We think he too is another innocent witness to God's work." (pg. 228)

"Dante is the first Christian poet, the first one whose whole system of thought is colored by a purely Christian theology. But the poem comes nearer to us than this. It is the real history of a brother man, of a tempted, purified, and at last triumphant human soul: it teaches the benign ministry of sorrow. His is the first keel that ever ventured into the silent sea of human consciousness to find a new world of poetry. He held heartbreak at bay for tewenty years, and would not let himself die until he had done his task." (ppg. 233)

"Believe that when I am once a man's friend I am always so - nor is it so very hard to bring me to it. And though a man may enjoy himself in being my enemy, he cannot make me his for longer than I wish." (pg. 233)
^ there was just something about this quote that stuck out to me...