Evening under Lamplight Podcast

Long John Silver and Captain Smollett take a break between chapters of Treasure Island, and discuss the nature of life (or is it all just a fabrication by some "Author"?) and the morality of playing your part well.

We eavesdrop on a conversation, which turns into a blast against current-day Italian wickedness, with Dante getting a few words in here and there. Dante is coming to the end of his stay on the region where Envy is healed, and is ready to head to the next level.

Dante and Virgil arrive at the place where repentent souls cleanse themselves of the sin of envy, that sin that wants to see everyone else hurt so it can feel safe - safe, but still miserable. But the soul Dante meets proves herself well on the way to healing, graceful and self-aware.

To finish his healing of pride, Dante is shown a series of carvings on the ground depicting the self-destructive nature of pride. Then an angel approaches, wishing him well, showing him the staircase to the next level up, and officially wiping off the stain of pride - though Dante doesn't quite understand at first what's just been done to him.

An eerie fairy tale about a fisherman who is "bitter poor in goods and bitter ugly in countenance", who is met by the ghostly figure of his future son, seeks advice and a gift from his dead ancestors on the "little isle of sheep", and fishes for a wife in the marketplace with his "shoe of a horse, and it rusty".

Here's another three-part drama, involving a priest, a virtuous person, and a Viking rover. Whose faith is most loyal - the priest's faith, based on a book, the virtuous person's, based on a slogan, or the rover's, based not on words but on action?

Our first encounter with the suffering souls in Purgatory, with confessions of pride, and the admission that fame is so short-lived that it's hardly worth making a fuss about, and a wonderful story about how a cruel, proud man made one astounding act of humility that lifted his soul straight to this place.

Two short fables in one podcast this time, both addressing in typical sardonic fashion the problem of making too much of our guilty feelings.

We're at the first terrace of Purgatory, and before we really get to see much of the souls suffering for pride, we first move along a gallery of carvings in the rock face, illustrating famous, and perhaps challenging, examples of humility.

It's night; Dante has a dream. And he wakes up in a strange new place - just the place he wants to be, the Gate through which he'll begin his real journey up the mountain. But there's a ritual he must undergo before crossing the threshold.