SINCE NAPA SUMMERS ARE SO HOT, I'M IN DANTE'S HELL WHICH DOES FREEZE OVER

An Oxford scholar on William Blake who often has to consider Dante viz Blake is teaching 3 sessions at the local college, thus allowing me to get immersed in Dante's Purgatorio and Inferno this month. (I'd share the prof's name but it's on papers left in the car in the courtyard and I'd rather not go meet the mountain lion at this hour.) A wonderful synchronicity to have the chance to focus on Dante since the Purgatorio also rears its icey hell of a head in the manuscript I'm preparing to be next year's book.

And from that course's hand-out this afternoon, and of relevance to Moi's blog:

"To the extent that finite creatures are 'transparent' to pure form or Intellect, they are not other than the self-subsistent reality within which they arise (the Empyrean) and are not bound by space-time. Such creatures are immaterial and intelligent, nearly unqualified existence: they are angels."
--Christian Moevs, The Metaphysics of Dante's Comedy

It's fitting, as well, to be studying the Purgatorio while in wine country. Here, we know of "cave soils" -- as what sprung up to form Purgatorio's boulders when the devil plunged into earth...Sip. Tonight, the very local 2001 Chase zinfandel Hayne Vineyard.