Dante's Inferno, Episode 3: Lady of the Mind
Young Heretics
Spencer Klavan
4.9 • 4.5K Ratings
🗓️ 1 May 2026
⏱️ 62 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Where can I find a woman like...Dante's girl? On this episode of Young Heretics, we finally get the high-fallutin' invocation of the Muses we've come to expect from any epic poem. But it's not enough! Dante needs more woman than the Muses can be...more grace, more truth, more light. And it comes from on high--first from the Virgin Mary, then Sainty Lucy, then finally his beautiful, his famous, his beloved Beatrice. Today we introduce this central figure in the Comedy, inspiration of Dante's career and "lady of his mind." We'll talk about the Muses, memory, and the communion of saints. And hopefully by the end, we'll see how much courtly love meant to the poets of this age--and how much, perhaps, it can mean to us.
Check out my book, Light of the Mind, Light of the World: https://amzn.to/4tKWACP
Sign up for Hebrew, Greek, or Latin courses at the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/heretics/
Get the Anthony Esolen translation: https://amzn.to/4sgKLTj
Get the Dorothy L. Sayers translation: https://amzn.to/4djdh2s
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | One of the funny things about getting older is I truly did not realize how quickly pop songs would |
| 0:08.2 | disappear from the public memory. I'm teaching college kids now and these children know nothing |
| 0:15.4 | of the ancient magic. They don't know any pop songs that were like huge when I was a kid. They don't know Lincoln |
| 0:21.9 | Park. They don't know Backstreet Boys. They don't know Blink 182. It's like, what is the world |
| 0:26.7 | coming to? Oh, Tempora, oh, mores, oh, the ignorance of the youth. And I say to them, you know, |
| 0:35.6 | there's going to come a time when people are going to be like, |
| 0:39.0 | Taylor Swift, who? Oh, yeah, I remember her. And it's weird. It's weird to experience that when |
| 0:44.7 | things were so big. So I know I have a fair amount of younger listeners. And hey, guys, I'm really |
| 0:51.3 | glad you're here. I don't actually think that you're all ignorant buffoons, |
| 0:54.4 | but I'm very, very curious to know if younger listeners will have any idea what I mean |
| 1:00.9 | when I say that the entire question of this episode for Dante in the Inferno is, where can I find |
| 1:09.9 | a woman like that? |
| 1:15.6 | Okay, did you guess it right? |
| 1:17.6 | It's Jesse's Girl by, I confess, even I had to look this up. |
| 1:20.6 | It's by Rick Springfield. |
| 1:22.6 | You know, where can I find a woman like that? |
| 1:25.6 | It's Jesse's girl. |
| 1:31.2 | What does this have to do with our series on The Divine Comedy? |
| 1:35.8 | Well, we've met Dante's main man. |
| 1:38.7 | We've met Virgil, who's going to take him through hell. |
| 1:43.6 | And they've had this kind of back and forth about whether Dante is going to man on it, right? |
| 1:45.4 | And go where he has to go down into hell because we've discovered the only way out is through. But I said last time, |
... |
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