"Turn around, and keep your eyes closed shut, For if the Gorgon, Medusa, does appear, and you see her, You would never be able to return upward." Thi… - Dante Alighieri

This the Master said; and he turned me around Himself, and not trusting my own hands, He covered my eyes with his own. For those of you who are educated, understand the hidden meaning Of the strange words that follow!

Turn around, and keep your eyes closed shut, For if the Gorgon, Medusa, does appear, and you see her, You would never be able to return upward.

Because the charity of my native place
Constrained me, gathered I the scattered leaves,
And gave them back to him, who now was hoarse.
Then came we to the confine, where disparted
The second round is from the third, and where
A horrible form of Justice is beheld.
Clearly to manifest these novel things,
I say that we arrived upon a plain,
Which from its bed rejecteth every plant;
The dolorous forest is a garland to it
All round about, as the sad moat to that;
There close upon the edge we stayed our feet.

taught me that the great secret of Dante’s masterpiece lay in the handling of the verse, which always moved forward even in the most intensely compressed of episodes.

There is no greater sorrow then to recall our times of joy in wretchedness.