heavy metal cloaks
inferno: what pain is this that it can glitter?
way after hell’s vestibule, ambivalent angels, limbo, lust, gluttony, avarice, misers, after even boiling mud: the 23rd canto starts slow, thick and silent in the lower hell, about 2/3 of the way through Inferno.
Virgil and Dante move among the souls, as usual, like minor friars bent upon a journey as the shades, lost in their mourning, fatigue-wasted and weary, creak and creak as they walk at a snail’s pace. they’ve got a curiously alchemical wardrobe down here: orange-gold long glimmering cloaks that weigh on them. glittering on the outside, bone-heavy and lead on the inside: “o cloak of everlasting weariness!” ….