(this post accidentally got erased late at night and i was really mad and re wrote it in the morning)

Canto 28 opens up with dante in the Garden of Eden. Dante seems to be free now to go about with his free will as he wants. According to Digital Dante, the first word of the Italian translation is “Vago” which means “desirous.”  Translated into English, the first lines go as follows: “Now keen to search within, to search around that forest, dense, alive with green, divine, which tempered the new day before my eyes, without delay, I left behind the rise and took the plain advancing solely, slowly across the plain, advancing solely, slowly across the ground where every part was fragrant.” Here he is describing the garden and his newly realized freedom to roam about it. How beautiful it is and how alive he feels within it. Beatrice claims Dante to be a witness of the “Earthly Paradise” and to write down everything he sees. This Canto is much brighter and more positive than anything we have read so far. In canto 30, digital Dante points out that the Italian words “altrui” and “altrove” are both “powerful indicators of the seduction of the new.” These last canti are all geared towards the future which is something new to the comedy. Virgil is finally gone and Beatrice has arrived.

A few ideas i have had for the final paper pertaining to Dante’s Inferno and Purgatorio is to write about some of my favorite scenes in relation to the art that I saw at the MET. Another subject I could touch on is more of a personal one where I could explain how difficult it has been for me to understand the comedy as a whole but then towards the middle of the semester become more interested and actually enjoying the read.

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