Macbeth's Deed And Dante's Hope

Bromwich chooses Macbeth because it lets Shakespeare's plot and moral psychology lock together with unusual force. The lecture's first claim is simple and severe: character is fate Source trail 3:34 And the moral of the story is that judgment I think we're asked to make about the play, about Macbeth's ambition, goes with a sequence of actions that have that sort of interconnection that we look for. It is an imitati... , not because destiny floats above the person, but because the sequence of actions reveals what the person already is. Macbeth matters as a study in doing. The murder is not just one bad event. It becomes the bearer of Macbeth's fate Source trail 4:476:21 Incident coming to a sharp emphasis in the form of character. And what is incident but the illustration of character? I'm going to concentrate on the idea of action, the idea of a deed. And Shakespeare's sense in dealin...No contradiction there. But they're said in a very different tenor. The person who says what's done is done, or to use the more modern formulation, which is even more seemingly bland, it is what it is. When somebody say... because action discloses character and then keeps shaping it.

That is why Bromwich dwells on the shift from 'what's done is done' to ' what's done cannot be undone Source trail 4:476:21 Incident coming to a sharp emphasis in the form of character. And what is incident but the illustration of character? I'm going to concentrate on the idea of action, the idea of a deed. And Shakespeare's sense in dealin...No contradiction there. But they're said in a very different tenor. The person who says what's done is done, or to use the more modern formulation, which is even more seemingly bland, it is what it is. When somebody say... .' The two sentences look logically identical, but in his reading they name different moral worlds. The first tries to dismiss the past. The second recognizes that a deed keeps living inside the doer. From there Bromwich widens the claim beyond Macbeth. Ambition becomes a fantasy of separating agency from action, Source trail 18:1619:26 Tell her exactly what's up. Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest Chuck, till thou applaud the deed. One of the, I can only call it Shakespearean touches all through this play, is what a good team they are, how well sui...That's the fantasy nursed by Macbeth. And I want to suggest it's also a fantasy common to all ambition. Ambition in that sense, in that hard sense, is something as if outside you, that takes you over. And that's the fan... a wish to commit the deed without becoming the person the deed reveals. That fantasy fails, and Macbeth's famous nihilism is read not as Shakespeare's wisdom about life but as the exhausted speech of a man hollowed out by his own ambition.

Jiang's key move is not to summarize Bromwich but to test him. Source trail 24:2725:4026:5128:05 Thank you, David. Professor Bromwich, that was wonderful. So in this class, we tend to be imaginative. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to paint a scene where Dante is at the premiere of Macbeth, and Shakespeare com...and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, the example of course is the Oedipus Rex tragedy, where Oedipus, regardless of his character, regardless of what, what he does, he's bounded by... He stages a dinner between Dante and Shakespeare and gives Dante three complaints about Macbeth: is Shakespeare finally pessimistic about human freedom, does he believe in a divine order stronger than prophecy, and what does he think he is doing with women like Lady Macbeth? This is an excellent pressure test because it makes Macbeth answer to a poet of cosmic architecture rather than leaving it inside the looser world of dramatic observation.

Bromwich does not suddenly make Shakespeare into Dante. Instead he argues that Shakespeare stages belief, guilt, prophecy, and judgment without speaking as a doctrinal author. Macbeth tears the fabric of nature Source trail 36:17 um Orthodox Christian of its time uh in the beliefs that it reflects that is to say when you when you um you know when you rend nature when you um uh do something that tears the fabric of nature and pulls yourself away... and therefore offends both God and the world, but the judgments come from the characters and their actions rather than from an overt metaphysical system. Even prayer appears in Shakespeare under pressure: Claudius can pray, confess, and still fail to rise. Ambition knows what it has done, but knowledge does not guarantee redemption. Source trail 39:1541:28 Well, there is a there is a prayer I can think of right off and I'll just use it as an illustration. And that is Claudius, the uncle of Hamlet, who has murdered Hamlet's father. Is is overheard by the audience, not by H...All I was gonna say is, Lincoln says that that that's, that's his favorite speech in Shakespeare. That speech by Claudius. And it's just a passing thing. But it's a confession of just how damned he feels by what his amb...

The open-floor questions keep worrying the same knot from different sides. Was there some single biographical secret behind Shakespeare's vision? Would Dante put the dagger physically on the stage? What are the witches really? Bromwich repeatedly pushes the answer back toward human internality. Macbeth is already going where the dagger leads; Source trail 45:49 Ah, Dante might let you have, I mean, Dante is serious Catholic. Catholic are not against idolatry from objects. I think he might well have put the knife right there. And I think it's common but not universal to have th... the hallucination only gives external form to a murder he wants. The witches matter because belief gives them force. Source trail 48:54 years of conversing with the things on the other side was they didn't have very interesting things to say they they were like gossiping about the housekeeper in the basement and ordinary dreary stuff like that so there'... Shakespeare's world is worldly, social, and psychologically exact, but it is not flattened into mere reduction. Human beings project outward what they are already willing inwardly to become.

The workshop then becomes explicitly comparative. Source trail 54:3054:561:01:131:02:361:04:271:05:59 to different things um t.s elliott said you know dante and shakespeare divide the world between them there is no third um we we had a question uh back here yeah soexpand a little on shakespeare's conception of of fate um i think he i i may be confusing his views but i think that there is a there is a a moral order in the world and that's the um the the desire for it in the world... Bromwich says Dante gives form to the world in a way Shakespeare does not, while Shakespeare's dramas remain more plural and less architecturally totalized. The students sharpen that contrast in their own language: Shakespeare shows life as it is; Dante answers the metaphysical questions that life alone leaves hanging. But the best answer in the room refuses the rivalry. You need both. Shakespeare supplies friction, ambiguity, and the intimate workings of motive; Dante supplies the larger moral and spiritual horizon in which those workings can finally be judged.

Jiang's first move back in the teacher's chair is methodological. Source trail 1:07:331:08:381:09:30 glad to stay up late for this thank you thank you so much okay well that was professor bramwich and um again he was my mentor at yale i took three seminars with him um and as you can see we are very very different uh bu...So, but as you can see, even though he was my mentor at Yale, and we're still very good friends, he and I see the world very differently, and I think that's a very positive thing. Okay, so any questions or comments or c... You begin by emulating a strong guide, then you become your own person. That is how he describes his relation to Bromwich, and also how he defends the framework-driven pressure of the class. But the classroom has to police its own imagination. The previous day's speculation about Virgil as Lucifer or Beatrice making a deal to free him is ruled out not because imagination is bad, but because imagination has to answer to Dante's universe rather than float free of it.

The correction is sharp: God is not transactional. Lens point free-will-burden Love refuses contract in Jiang's free-will model: God cannot make heaven a reward for obedience, bargain away grace, or intervene so completely that the beloved becomes an object managed from outside. Source trail 1:10:55 important okay in dante's world god is not transactional maybe in our world maybe in the catholic church but god himself is not transactional he would never make a deal that's what the devil does okay all right so you a... The devil makes deals; God does not. That means Dante's cosmos cannot be reduced to a bookkeeping scheme where clever bargaining changes a soul's place. Jiang then enlarges the claim into a cosmology. Everything in the universe is a co-creation process. Source trail 1:10:551:11:58 important okay in dante's world god is not transactional maybe in our world maybe in the catholic church but god himself is not transactional he would never make a deal that's what the devil does okay all right so you a...then we just live in it whereas for dante no it's we all participate in the co -operation process so hell is there are some aspects of god in it but there are also aspects of our imagination in it and um poets because t... Hell includes divine structure, human imagination, and poetic intervention. It is therefore dynamic rather than static. Even reading matters, because each serious encounter with Inferno changes the reader's perception, Source trail 1:12:53 all right so that's something that's really important for us to appreciate about uh dante um maybe for shakespeare things are much more static but for dante things are much more dynamic okay it's a co -creation process... and that changing perception becomes part of the world the poem now inhabits.

Asked how Macbeth and Lady Macbeth can still show conscience if Dante says a damned soul is already taken, Jiang refuses the crude map. Source trail 1:13:231:14:111:15:381:16:33 uh yes i remember yesterday when we read about when someone does a really bad sin their soul is immediately taken down that's right um it i just want to work out a bit of a problem i have where in macbeth the fact that...question and this is how i i would reconcile this okay i would say that what's really important to understand is that your soul exists in infinite dimensions so your soul exists at in hell purgatory and having the same... The soul exists in infinite dimensions at once. Action intensifies one dimension rather than teleporting the whole being into a single finished slot. That is why remorse, madness, demonic action, repentance, and relation to others can all still matter. Dante inherits an underworld from the classical tradition, but he also reworks it through changing religious consciousness. Hell is not a frozen museum piece that survives untouched from Virgil into Christianity.

This lets Jiang state his own position cleanly. He does not believe in a permanently sealed hell so much as in hellish dimensions generated by the soul's lowest states. Eternal damnation exists only as a choice to keep choosing it. Source trail 1:17:25 really right um yeah what i believe is that we exist in infinite dimensions and um you can describe the some of these dimensions as hellish right they're just low dimensions uh where your lowest lowest emotions are base... Virgil speaks in absolutes: you are here, you cannot leave, limbo is final. Dante is the opposite pressure. Everything evolves. Everything changes. The most compressed version of that contrast is one of the source's best lines: hell is mechanical, whereas heaven is organic. Source trail 1:18:26 to virgil whereas for dante there's nothing absolute in the world okay everything is evolving everything is changing it's dynamic depending on how you feel yes yeah everything's organic yes right so uh the difference be... Mechanical worlds repeat themselves. Organic worlds can grow.

Once hell is no longer absolute, the question becomes what can actually move people out of it. Jiang's answer is not empire, law, or conquest. A new emperor can stabilize the world for a while and then die, leaving the old problem intact. Poetry is stronger because it expands consciousness. Source trail 1:19:52 and that's why for dante the hope of the world is poetry right because okay you bring in a new emperor and he conquers the world and he establishes peace for 20 years where you're back to the same situation after he die... Dante writes against Virgil not to cancel him but to answer him, to reopen possibility where Roman grandeur and tragic absolutism leave the soul enclosed. That is why Jiang calls poetry the hope of the world. Source trail 1:19:52 and that's why for dante the hope of the world is poetry right because okay you bring in a new emperor and he conquers the world and he establishes peace for 20 years where you're back to the same situation after he die...

The first Purgatory question sharpens that hope into a practical distinction. Limbo can feel easier because it is comfortable, static, and resigned, like a pleasant retirement community. Purgatory is harder because it demands effort, song, curiosity, and ascent. But that hardship is a sign of life, not punishment in the infernal sense. The souls there still want transformation, and Jiang's blunt assurance is that once you enter Purgatory, you will succeed. Source trail 1:23:26 the way everyone is successful like once you enter purgatory you will succeed right because Difficulty without despair is better than comfort without hope.

From there Jiang radicalizes the free-will claim. Annihilation is described as choosing not to live, and the slavery exchange pushes the same logic into deliberately uncomfortable territory. Free will is God's gift, so a life built only around preserving the body by surrendering freedom becomes, in his Dantean language, a form of non-life. The point is not a sociological account of slavery. The point is that survival alone is not the highest good. If death looks like the worst possible thing, then faith has already collapsed, because the soul exists for more than getting by. It exists to protect its freedom, inspire others, and co-create the universe. Source trail 1:28:24 somewhat content with how you are is that sinful um yeah i mean what this is again is a lack of faith right it's lack of understanding of who you are you are here to live the best life possible you're here to be an insp...

The ante-Purgatory readings make the social and theological consequences explicit. Fame, celebrity, and wealth do not help the dead very much; family, neighbors, and community do, because they are the ones who pray with actual love. Buonconte's last appeal to Mary, the angelic contest over his soul, and the violently slain who still enter Purgatory all press the same point: God is not mechanical. Jiang reads these cantos as a world where mercy and justice are both real, where prayer links the living and the dead, and where Dante refuses to let violent history exhaust the soul's possibilities. Source trail 1:56:121:56:311:57:311:58:181:59:44 there's no start okay how can i like give me some personal advice okay yes yes if people pray forokay that's what donna's saying here it's revolutionary right you mean as famous you want you can have a trillion dollars you can be a massive celebrity it doesn't matter okay what matters is your family what matters ar...

When the class returns to the terrace of pride, Jiang uses the burdened penitents to force the central question again: if the suffering looks so similar, why is this not just hell by another name? The answer he finally gives is that free will changes the meaning of pain from the inside. People in hell experience suffering as punishment and closed fate. People in Purgatory experience the same ordeal as chosen discipline, the opportunity to become better, and therefore the possibility of paradise. The outer burden may look similar; the inner attitude is completely different. Source trail 4:08:364:09:414:13:174:14:08 Okay, so again, these are people with pride and so they're given weights and they have to move very slowly on this terrace and they they're being burdened by these weights and this is meant to relieve them of their prid...They are receiving this punishment in the hope that one day they will reach paradise and then they know that they did something wrong and they're kind of like punishing themselves physically, but then they still have ho...

That distinction then opens into a theory of art. Dante looks down at the carved images of pride and begins to cry. Jiang treats that reaction as the key to tragedy itself. Catharsis is purgation, but the purgation begins in empathy: you cry because another spark of life is in pain and your own spark connects to it. Tragedy therefore does not merely entertain grief. It trains perception, deepens community, and makes virtue imaginable by teaching people to feel the wound they might otherwise inflict on others. Source trail 4:23:524:28:144:30:044:34:194:35:04 Line 10. Now I was on my way, and willingly I followed in my teacher's steps, and we together showed what speed we could command. He said to me, look downward, for the way will offer you some solace if you pay attention...No. What is he literally doing right now? What is he doing right now as he's watching this artwork? As he's watching this, as he's looking at this artwork, how is he feeling? What is he doing? Yes? I'd say grieving. He'...

Dante does not stay in tears forever. The angel wipes away another P from his forehead, song replaces savage lamentation, and the climb becomes lighter. Jiang lingers on that physicality because it makes moral change almost tactile. Purgation is not abstract acquittal. It is a long reformation of desire in which weight is gradually removed, movement becomes easier, and the soul discovers that ascent can feel like music rather than force. Source trail 4:36:094:36:554:37:084:38:204:38:32 Line 85. I was so used to his insistent warnings against the loss of time concerning that his words to me could hardly be obscured. That handsome creature came toward us. His clothes were white, and in his aspect he see...to clarify, the angel strikes Donnie on the forehead to wipe him of a pee, do you understand? So, each time he clears a terrace, a pee is wiped off, a peccata, sin is wiped off, okay? Keep on going. As on

The final canto discussion turns envy into a social theory. Guido del Duca asks why human beings set their hearts on goods that cannot really be shared. Jiang immediately translates the line into a modern diagnosis: materialism traps people inside a zero-sum imagination where every gain implies another person's loss. Courtesy collapses, love decays, and civic life becomes a competition over finite trophies whose meaning depends on exclusion. Source trail 4:52:324:53:554:54:244:54:56 Know, therefore, that I was Guido del Duca. My blood was so afire with envy that when I had seen a man becoming happy, the lividness in me was plain to see. From what I've sown, this is the straw I reap. O humankind, wh...Okay, sorry, we'll stop. We're running out of time. But I'll ask you one more question, and then we'll end today. What does it mean to say why do you set your hearts there where our sharing cannot have a part? Someone i...

The answer is not moralism but a different ontology of value. The students call it a win-win world, making the cake bigger instead of fighting over slices, and Jiang pushes that image toward practice: help people, do not wear them down, and let love circulate rather than hoarding advantage. His closing formula is the cleanest answer the lecture gives to envy, scarcity, and modern competition alike. Generosity breaks the zero-sum game because love is not a finite resource. It expands as it is shared. That is why the class ends not with a literary footnote but with a demand for personal transformation. Source trail 4:55:364:55:484:56:074:56:224:57:29 Try to co -create something instead. Making the cake bigger instead of cutting off the cake. What is a win -win scenario for humanity?The solution to which we once were urged by courtesy and love where hearts now host perversity. So love, I would say. Yeah.