but only sighs, that tremble made the everlasting air
Inferno Canto IV; Limbo, hell's first circle
There, as it seemed to me from listening
Were lamentations none, but only sighs,
That tremble made the everlasting air.
And this arose from sorrow without torment,
Which the crowds had, that many were and great,
Of infants and of women and of men.
— Inferno, Canto IV
Yea, to such surging, swaying, sighing, swelling, shrinking,
Love lures life on.
— Lines to a Movement in Mozart’s E-Flat Symphony, Thomas Hardy
Limbo, the first circle of hell, is a wood thick not with trees but souls where you meet your favorite poets, long dead and influential in the murk, speaking in secret as you approach their castle from which a hemisphere of light emanates. Obscure, profound, nebulous, limbo’s form being eerie-near poetry. Here, not tortured lamentations but sighs. Without hope for salvation, these souls live on in desire, but sans eternal fire-ice damnation that we’ll soon come to.
Our pilgrim comes to, though still a little mesmerized. Remember, he fainted in the last episode? Wakes to a thunderclap, unglued…