Dante's Inferno - Canto XXVI
Dante shows here his political and poetical skills.
If his fault is a natural one, why is Ulysses not with the pagans (in limbo)? It's a natural transgression.
It's the 2nd time to people are condemned together, Francesco and Paulo, Ulysses and Diomedes and one other. They were together in life and in death. And only one speaks for the other.
Dante decided that Ulysses did not return to Ithaca - there are many things that hint at this.
Dante realises the limitations of trying to articulate the mystery of hell, and the limitations of language itself. (Canto 4)
In other times through the work one will notice that Dante has to walk a fine line between praising himself as it were, as the poet who has absorbed the lessons of antiquity and has perfected them as faith perfects reason, he has to walk a balance between that truth as he sees it and the paradoxical reality that none the less he achieves it he falls short of it. In the 9th circle of hell he says if you speak to me I will make your name famous for all eternity, appealing to the narcissism of the souls and also making apparent his power through language. Dante struggles with being successful and being humble.
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