If time were a river, people could not step into the same one twice.
For the river flowing from Mount Purgatory into hell, the frozen lake at hell's lowest level was its destination. But if the water could not evaporate and kept flowing like this, then even if hell were vast, it would sooner or later be filled with water.
When water evaporated, it formed vapor invisible to the human eye. The white smoke produced when water boiled was not water vapor, but a kind of mist. When water vapor met cold air, it condensed like clouds.
Dante had the same question. Though he had just witnessed a terrifying sight, he asked Virgil, "Where is the ice?"
Virgil told him, "Do you think we're still on that side?"
From Dante's perspective, Lucifer was planted upside down. He thought he had not yet left the abyss.
Suppose someone stood on a mirror and looked down. They too would find that their reflection was "upside down."
But Dante's situation was not the Mirror World. The Lucifer he saw had his head pointed downward and his legs upward, like someone standing inverted upon a mirror, their heads facing one another.
Of course, no one would "stand" like that. From this perspective, he was indeed planted upside down.
The original text used travagliato, a word meaning "confused" or "perplexed," and the annotators of the Divine Comedy had many differing interpretations of it.
The Ouroboros was a circle that constantly devoured itself while simultaneously creating itself.
There was another image: the two-headed snake. Like the Runespoor, its heads shared one body, but unlike the Runespoor, they did not share one tail. In Ancient Greece, this creature carried the meaning of "proceeding in two directions."
There was a type of jade ornament called a huang, modeled