Hussaini 1

The Intentional Arc and Rationality in Depression

Syed Waliullah Hussaini

MA Philosophy, Durham University
Module: Phenomenology and the Sciences of the Mind

Abstract

In this paper, I take a phenomenological approach to address two key aspects of lived, depressive
experience: the intentional arc, and rationality. I claim that in cases of depression, these two aspects
reveal their contrasting yet intertwining nature. I argue that in depression, the intentional arc breaks
down, or goes limp. I explain this in terms of the loss of meaning, or the loss of rapport with things.
The losses in the intentional arc in depression are analyzed in terms of three facets: temporality,
intersubjectivity, and maximum grip. I make the case that because of this breakdown in the
intentional arc, rationality, in a sense, abnormally takes over the former’s function in depression.
This particular form of depressive rationality is described as excessive thinking which serves to
facilitate behaviors that otherwise occurred normally by virtue of the intentional arc’s functioning
prior to depression. In addition to this, another different, Heideggerian sense of thinking is
highlighted, which is thinking on one’s own being. I argue that this gradual process of thinking,
even if implicit, accompanies, or in a manner, facilitates the phase of getting out of depression and
a return to the meaningful relatedness with the world by way of finding one’s being, or essence, in
relation to the things in the world.

I declare this essay is 4768 words long

Michaelmas Term
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1. Introduction:

Depression is conventionally seen as both a response to life-events and associated with low

serotonin levels. These aspects are not always identified and consequently two paradigms of

treatment emerge: cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and medication. This dichotomy seems to

assume a mind-body dualism; depression is either viewed as a manifestation of cognitive

distortions or neurochemical imbalances in the body. Contrary to these two ways of understanding

depression, I argue that aspects of the illness cannot be held in isolation from the whole of lived

experience. Rather, understanding depression through the phenomenology of its lived experience

provides an avenue of analysis that is more holistic than the one presented solely by CBT or

medication, or the combination of the two.

To make sense of this effort, it would do well to understand in what way it is an exercise in

phenomenology. In contrast to approaches like cognitive psychology or pharmacology which

understand depressive illnesses in intellectualist or mechanistic terms, the approach here is

phenomenological, i.e. it places radical emphasis on lived experience itself, and proceeds from an

appreciation of our background relatedness with the world. This relatedness is understood by

Heidegger in terms of the human being, or Dasein, as essentially amidst things, as being-in-the-

world, or more specifically, as dwelling in the “totality of involvements” (Being and Time 121).

In a similar manner, Merleau-Ponty explains that the basic level of our perception resides in the

phenomenal field, which is understood in gestalt terms, as the meaningful whole of figure against

ground. The link between our phenomenal field and the ‘always already there’ objective world is

“is ceaselessly composed by our own way of projecting the world” (335).

In normal circumstances, the world and the entities in it, present opportunities for our skillful

coping by virtue of the meaning they present to us. In contrast, depression manifests as a loss of
 Hussaini 3

meaning. No longer is the world seen as a place that beckons one for skillful, meaningful coping.

The space for possibilities, which is exemplified by one’s agency within the world, becomes

warped and withered. The world and society are cast amid a sense of anxiety as objects requiring

hyper-rationalization. These structural changes in depression are explained in the present study by

way of distortions in the intentional arc. Subsequently, it is suggested that depressive rationality

fills this vacuum, and another form of thinking, which is thinking on one’s being, might in some

cases be seen as accompanying the phase of getting out of depression.

2. The Intentional Arc in Depression:

Traditionally, perception and action have been understood in terms of cognitive representations of

the external world, stimuli-responses and inner goals-motivations. However, Merleau-Ponty

recognizes a more innate dimension of perceiving and acting, which exists “prior to stimuli and

sensory contents… a kind of inner diaphragm which determines, infinitely more than they do what

our reflexes and perceptions will be able to aim at in the world, the area of our possible operations,

the scope of our life” (92). He states: “the life of consciousness – cognitive life, the life of desire

or perceptual life – is subtended by an ‘intentional arc’ which projects round about us our past, our

future, our human setting, our physical, ideological and moral situation” (157). The intentional arc

is thus the unity of our time, space, context, and accounts for the most basic level of our dealing

with the world and others. As a conceptual tool, the intentional arc provides a useful and realistic

way to understand bodily comportment in the world because it accounts not merely for cognitive

and conative processes, but also the nonconceptual immediacy of lived experience. Merleau-Ponty

borrows the term from Franz Fisher, a German psychologist who worked on schizophrenia.1

1
Fischer, Franz. “Raum-Zeit-Struktur Und Denkstiimng in Der Sehizophrenie.” Aus Der Heil- Und Pflegeanstalt
Wiesloch, 24 Dec. 1929.
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Owing to its roots in psychopathology, the intentional arc is then Merleau-Ponty’s tool in

‘existential analysis’ which he observes “enable[s] us to glimpse a new mode of analysis… which

goes beyond the traditional alternatives of empiricism and rationalism, of explanation and

introspection” (157).

A crucial distinction is made in Merleau-Ponty’s conception of the human being’s relationship

with space as an ‘I can’, rather than a Cartesian ‘I think’. It is this ‘I can’ which encapsulates our

intentionality, and precisely this which reduces into an ‘I cannot’ in cases of depression. The pre-

cognitive experience of the world as meaningfully structured is thus lost when the intentional arc

breaks down in melancholic depression. From the onset of depression, experiential changes occur

in three unified but distinguishable modes of the intentional arc: temporality, intersubjectivity, and

maximum grip.

2.1 Temporality:

Depression has been regarded in phenomenological psychiatry as first and foremost a disorder of

lived time. Lived time, as Husserl understands it, is the passive and automatic synthesis of retention

(retaining what has just been experienced as it slips past), presentation (primal impression of the

now), and protention (indefinitely anticipating what is yet to come). In depression, the flow of this

synthesis becomes warped. The sense of retrospect becomes heightened, whereas anticipation for

the future is limited. It must be noted that past and future here must not be confused with retention

and protention themselves. They still function normally in depression, in so far as they are

conceived as flowing in a metaphysical sense, and if it were the case otherwise, the passing of time

itself would not be experienced. Instead, I claim that the nature of retention and protention changes

drastically.
 Hussaini 5

Retention becomes expanded in depression to hold in gaze not only what has just immediately

passed in conscious awareness, but also excessive regret and guilt regarding the past. Even distant

past memories come back to haunt the depressive in his present moment. Neuroscientific studies

on emotional memory similarly suggest that emotional cues may trigger recollection of traumatic

memories in affective disorders, and this recall of the event would loop back to a re-experiencing

of the emotion of that event, which then could trigger more intense recall in a continuous loop

(Dolcos et al.). Whereas these same instances had passed by automatically into memory prior to

depression, they now reappear immediately in the conscious purview of what is retained during

the present experience. This forces on the individual a sense of living in the past, wherein even the

memories of happiness are ignored or dismissed as illusory or unimportant. Instead, a fixed gaze

is held on to those memories which carry with them a sense of deep regret and guilt. The memories

themselves are not things to be recalled with some conscious effort; instead, they pervade the

experience of the present and constantly attack and oppress the individual. Thus, memories not

only reside in long-term memory as in normal circumstances but occupy the retentional mode of

inner time consciousness in cases of depression. This obviously places immense mental fatigue on

the depressed as they are detached from the smooth, automatic flow of time consciousness, and

instead are forced to carry inordinate amounts of emotionally painful and guilt-ridden past

experiences in their daily life.

In contrast to the expansion of the sense of past in retention, the anticipatory aspect of protention

becomes reduced by way of the possibilities that the future presents.2 The future is not an arena of

opportunities but is seen as the continuation of the dreadful march of objective time in which the

2
For a thorough overview of the qualitative literature on depression in phenomenological psychopathology, see:
Vogel, David H. V., et al. “Disturbed Experience of Time in Depression—Evidence from Content
Analysis.” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, vol. 12, 2018, doi:10.3389/fnhum.2018.00066.
 Hussaini 6

individual is impotent for any meaningful agency. There is no hope for change or relief because

the future does not welcome or invite anymore. The meaningfulness of time as the horizon of

possibilities is thus lost in depression and the future is instead seen as predetermined and inevitable

with only the subjective prospect of imminent death after a life of lost opportunities and failures.

This places drastic limitations on the protentional mode of time consciousness. In normal

conditions, we engender an openness to the likelihood of events happening, even if their

probability is low, so the horizon of possibilities is more or less expansive. In depression, however,

the horizon becomes limited, and the likelihood of lesser probable, and possibly fortuitous, events

is neglected in favor of a sharp focus on the present state as being reproduced continuously.3 Even

if hope is given by family members or friends, it is seen as superficial and empty. In the grips of

depression, there seems no reason to believe that things will change in the future.

Because of such changes in the retentional and protentional structure, the primal impression of the

present is negated as meaningless and becomes a cause of ceaseless despair. The present fails to

be processed passively; every moment stands in sharp contrast to the next because attention does

not reside in the here and now but flows back and forth from the indelible past and the

predetermined future. In depressive experience, time thus loses its vitality and becomes reified in

its cold facticity.

As Merleau-Ponty notes:

The fusion of soul and body in the act, the sublimation of biological into personal existence,

and of the natural into the cultural world is made both possible and precarious by the

temporal structure of our experience. Every present grasps, by stages, through its horizon

3
By present state here I mean particularly the emotional experience of the ‘now’.
 Hussaini 7

of immediate past and near future, the totality of possible time; thus does it overcome the

dispersal of instants, and manage to endow our past itself with its definitive meaning, re-

integrating into personal existence even that past of all pasts which the stereotyped patterns

of our organic behaviour seem to suggest as being at the origin of our volitional being.

(Merleau-Ponty 2002 97 98; emphasis mine)

It is the “fusion of soul and body in the act” which characterizes the intentional arc’s temporal

dimension, and which separates as a result of melancholic depression.

2.2 Intersubjectivity:

The depressive psychopathology of time, in so far as it burdens from the past and limits the future,

reveals itself as sluggish retardation in relation to world- or intersubjective-time. Straus points out

that in melancholia, the movement of life in “ego-time” gets stuck, while “world-time” progresses

and passes by (Straus 1960). I claim similarly that disturbances in lived time in cases of depression

have the effect of desynchronization with the world and others. Depression then means a temporal

decoupling of the organism in relation to the environment, as well as of the individual to society

(Fuchs 2014). The former organic aspect can be addressed in terms of chronobiology: e.g. the

circadian rhythm, temperature periods, diurnal period of changes in hormonal levels. Even an

important level of social life is the synchronization with others, in terms of the rhythms of eating,

sleeping, excretion etc. that are shaped by socialization since birth (Fuchs 2010).

On a finer level, daily interactions with others are shaped by a “continuous fine-tuning of emotional

and bodily communication, a ‘resonance’” (Fuchs 2014). A basic sense is molded of one’s being

in accord with the others’ time, to live in the same time as others. Depression waylays this

accordance as the self is experienced as static compared to others’ dynamicity. This is designated
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by phenomenological psychiatry as the fundamental disturbance in depression, an “inhibition of

vital becoming” (Fuchs 2014). The world only holds promise for others, who by way of normal,

pre-reflective absorption can access it and act in it; the depressed individual however sees the

world only through the lens of a detached, hyperrational morbidity. This inhibition of oneself

compared to others arises after melancholia is first triggered by a situation of ‘remanence’, or

“lagging behind” (Tellenbach 1980). This is seen for example in the failure to cope with significant

transitions in life, or the felt backlog of one’s duties. Crucially on this last point, depression

burdens with the guilt of failure to carry out one’s duties effectively and responsibly. In contrast,

the power and abilities of others are exaggerated because of their smooth functioning. But

depression disallows access to this domain and thus forces a withdrawal from social relations and

obligations, because efforts to keep pace with events and duties have already been futile and have

only increased feelings of remanence.

2.3 Maximum Grip:

The discussion above has outlined the depressive retardation of inner time and feelings of

remanence in relation to the intersubjective world. However, the retardation of time manifests in

another dimension: the slowing-down of time experienced in terms of loss of appetite, drive,

interest, attention and libido, which implies a reduction of the conative-affective dynamics of inner

time (Fuchs 2010). The loss of conation is manifested in, among other things, psychomotor

retardation. It also expresses in the felt rigidness and materiality of the lived body, which normally

is not felt explicitly, but in depression makes itself known in the form of heaviness, tiredness,

anxiety, and oppression. The lived body thus becomes corporealized or reified (Fuchs 2010). Now

to clarify this point further, I take the discussion, which has so far focused on the temporal features
 Hussaini 9

of depression to its spatial aspects. I claim that the loss of conative drives manifests in the spatial

domain by disturbances in ‘maximum grip’.

The notion of maximum grip in the philosophy of perception and action was first put forth by

Merleau-Ponty, and subsequently highlighted in Dreyfus’s reading of him as one of the two key

takeaways from Phenomenology of Perception along with the intentional arc. Dreyfus calls it

“maximal grip” and situates it as the locus of skill acquisition whereby reflectively learned

behaviors gradually take the shape of nonconceptual coping mechanisms. According to Dreyfus,

whereas the intentional arc characterizes “the tight connection between body and world”, maximal

grip is “the body’s tendency to refine its discriminations and to respond to solicitations in such a

way as to bring the current situation closer to the optimal gestalt” (Dreyfus 2002).

He frequently cites examples of ‘flow states’ to highlight the unreflective nature of bodily coping

as our primary mode of being-in-the-world. However, I will not here address the question of

whether Dreyfus’s stance on nonconceptual ‘absorbed coping’ or the non-mental nature of

intentionality is correct or flawed. Rather, his description of the automaticity of normal functioning

only serves here to contrast non-depressive and depressive lived experience. Though Dreyfus’s

examples of fighter jet pilots, chess grandmasters and other expert level actors prioritize instances

where maximal grip is working at its best, the notion is frequently used by Merleau-Ponty from

the background discussion of psychosomatic illnesses, which compel patients to get the best ‘grip’

with their bodies in relation to their environment. Maximum grip is also used to elicit

understanding of how perception and action are tied together, for e.g. manipulating the microscope

to view objects with maximum sharpness or clarity.

Now returning to the discussion at hand, I argue that the intentional arc in its mode of achieving

maximum grip relies on the conative-affective dynamic. In normal circumstances, the conative
 Hussaini 10

drive beckons us to act within the world to achieve instances of equilibrium or maximum grip. In

depression, disturbances in the conation are revealed in the affectional sense by the inability to feel

pleasure even as a result of action. When pleasure or even contentment cannot be accessed as a

result of comporting ourselves in specific ways, vital inhibition takes the reins of our experience.

The subpar coping which results from this may be seen as the inability to produce successful

behaviors. However, I argue that this thinking is flawed, because even when behaviors are changed

or actions are, in a sense, forcefully taken to reduce feelings of vital inhibition, relief still remains

elusive. This, I suggest, indicates a loss in receptivity towards feelings of contentment as opposed

to simply a loss in agency. This phenomenon seems to imply, in Heidegger’s words, “a loss of

rapport with things” (359).

Maximum grip in cases of depressive lived experience is thus a loss of attunement with the world.

This represents a breakdown of the intentional arc by way of the ‘loosening’ of maximum grip

with the surroundings. This loss of grip is also found when dealing with others. In normal

circumstances, our conversations are attuned with the gazes and bodily gestures of others; the

depressive gaze, however, remains frozen, as if looking vaguely in the distance, and bodily

gestures are only reciprocated awkwardly. Emotional discord is seen in the inability of the

depressed to empathize with others. Empathy cannot be found when one’s own lifelessness is

starkly contrasted with the dynamic life of others. The world of things and others thus closes off

as an inaccessible domain.

The discussion has so far shown how depression changes experiences of temporality,

intersubjectivity and maximum grip. Throughout this analysis, there has been an implicit sense

that normal functioning is characterized as habitual, smooth and flowing, whereas depression

expressly represents a collapse in this functioning. I now turn to an important part of the picture
 Hussaini 11

that is made visible in this analysis of depression, namely the predominance of a kind of rationality

that takes place as a result of depression’s disturbances of the intentional arc.

3. Rationality in Depression:

Depression, I have argued, evidences a breakdown of the intentional arc and this is shown in light

of the experiential changes in temporality, intersubjectivity and maximum grip. This serves to

provide one part of the picture of depressive functionality. I suggest that the other part is rationality

which, in a sense, fills up the vacuum created by losses in the intentional arc.

Incidentally, the degree of typical rationality found in depression has been the subject of much

recent debate in clinical psychology. It is evidenced in findings of “depressive realism” in

depressed patients who were found to be more accurate than their nondepressed counterparts in

judging contingencies between their responses and outcomes (Haaga & Beck 1995). However, my

thesis is not aimed at explicating depressive realism or judging its reliability (which is already a

matter of contention amongst psychologists). Rather, I deal here with depressive rationality; what

it is, how it results from disturbances in the intentional arc, and how it facilitates coping which had

thus far been taken up by the normal functioning of the intentional arc.

3.1 Depressive Rationality:

The type of rationality experienced in depression is of course not in the conventional sense of

reasoning logically or sensibly; that requires, in the least, some concentration which is hard to

come by in depression. Nor is depressive rationality wholly identical with instrumental rationality,

as the latter is reasoning through means to achieve valuable ends; because ends, in the ethical and

personal sense, are not meaningful anymore in depression. In this sense, depressive rationality is

seen as irrational because it contributes nothing to the meaningful progress towards goals.
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Nonetheless, there is a degree of instrumentality at work because it facilitates coping behaviors,

such as dealing with social situations.

So, what then is the sort of rationality found in depression? I suggest that it can be viewed only in

light of the vacuum created by the loss in the intentional arc. When one’s activity does not flow

automatically to comport oneself and navigate the world, it relies on excessive rationalization to

do so. The depressed finds himself overthinking about trivial things that are not considered

reflectively in normal circumstances, for e.g. how to engage in conversations without seeming

awkward, how to reflect others’ bodily gestures adequately, how to decrease feelings of shame by

doing this or that to appear normal in front of others etc. Moreover, this sort of overthinking must

take place in a mind which is already full of toxic thoughts and indelible guilt, so the rationality is

not always effective in reaching the end of normal appearance. The horror one faces is articulated

in this way by William Styron:

The sufferer from depression has no such option [of being treated like an invalid in a

medical setting] and therefore finds himself, like a walking casualty of war, thrust into the

most intolerable social and family situations. There he must, despite the anguish devouring

his brain, present a face approximating the one that is associated with ordinary events and

companionship. He must try to utter small talk, and be responsive to questions, and

knowingly nod and frown and, God help him, even smile. But it is a fierce trial attempting

to speak a few simple words. (Styron 2001)

In normal circumstances, dealing with social situations is absent of guilt-ridden anxiety and

despair, and thus flows naturally. In addition to this social aspect, there is also conscious reflection

on getting out of bed, walking with one’s heavy ‘corporeal’ body etc. But this is rumination and

cannot be deemed as a form of rationality per se. It must be noted that all this must be facilitated
 Hussaini 13

by a mind that is already a victim of overstrain by toxic thoughts about oneself. I suggest that these

toxic thoughts might characterize the lowest pits of the illness, but they are a part of another form

of thinking, which is thinking about one’s own being. From the onset of depression, this thinking

is negative, guilt-ridden and counterproductive. However, as the phases of the illness proceed, the

general act of thinking on one’s being becomes an essential one, in so far as it accompanies the

‘getting out of’ depression.

3.2 Thinking on one’s being:

In the section on temporality, I discussed how distortions in inner time consciousness are the

hallmark of depression. Whereas the limitation of the horizon of possibilities foreshortens one’s

sense of the future, feelings of remanence and guilt disproportionately expand one’s retainment,

of the painful feelings of one’s past. I suggest now that this distortion of inner time forces the

depressed to think on their own being in a way, and centers attention primarily on the self and its

identity from a negative standpoint. Heidegger states that what calls on us to think is the most-

thought provoking thing (Heidegger 2008). Thinking here is not in the typical sense of techne, or

“a process of reflection in service to doing and making”, but for Heidegger it is thinking about

Being, or thinking about the truth of Being (218). This modern, technological age is the age of

unthinking, according to Heidegger, because it has neglected thinking on the most-thought

provoking thing, i.e. Being itself. Though this effort is at the core an ontological one, I believe that

it has significance in the personal realm, in terms of thinking about one’s own being. Of course,

this must follow from thinking by oneself on Being. But Heidegger himself notes that this effort

cannot be taken up by everyone, and this neglect does not make them any less human. Nonetheless,

in our unthinking age, we act more and think less. I suggest that through its absence of any action

as such, depression forces thinking on our self. This is forced, however, not as positive thinking,
 Hussaini 14

but as morbid despair as the illness triggers. Nonetheless, this existential thinking gradually takes

the form of an authentic gaze on one’s own being as one reaches the phase of getting out of

depression. This is not to suggest that depression is necessary for this thinking; rather, that

depressive lived experience calls or commands for this in a manner.

Now, it must be clarified that what I am suggesting is not a progressive picture of depression which

sees the illness as something positive. On the contrary, in the depths of the illness, no form of

thinking about one’s being can take a positive dimension. The lowest points are permeated by

negative thinking about one’s characteristics and one’s actions in the past. And in especially severe

phases of melancholic depression, the faith in deliverance vanishes along with any idea of futurity.

Though it could be said, albeit with the utmost carefulness, that consciously facing up to the guilt

about one’s past and one’s being may prove to be an absolving and enriching effort. This is in no

way an absolute description of all cases of depression; the illness manifests in different ways and

has different effects on different people. And this existential thinking might not be a necessary

condition for relief from depression. But in so far as it involves a “coming to grips” with one’s

own being, it can prove beneficial. As Styron notes:

For those who have dwelt in depression's dark wood, and known its inexplicable agony,

their return from the abyss is not unlike the ascent of the poet, trudging upward and upward

out of hell's black depths and at last emerging into what he saw as “the shining world”.

There, whoever has been restored to health has almost always been restored to the capacity

for serenity and joy, and this may be indemnity enough for having endured the despair

beyond despair. (Styron 2001)

The “ascent of the poet, trudging upward and upward”, I suggest has to do with thinking about

one’s own being, and finding it anew, revitalized and rejuvenated. What may occur in this thinking
 Hussaini 15

is a replacement of past modes of thought and background assumptions by a new sense of one’s

own being in relation to the world. This does not happen instantaneously and is only a gradual

effort of trudging through the illness. Whereas the fall into depression can be viewed as a specific

time, the coming out is not readily visible in retrospect as a ‘moment in time’. So, how can we

conceive of thinking on one’s own being in depression? I recourse to Heidegger’s locating of

thinking in relation to dwelling. Wohnen (dwelling) is to stay or reside, to be content and dwell at

peace. It’s etymology is related to words that mean “to grow accustomed to, or feel at home in, a

place”; and it is also tied to the word for ‘delight’ in German. To dwell signifies the way in which

“we human beings are on the earth” (Heidegger 2008). He writes:

Even when mortals turn “inward,” taking stock of themselves, they do not leave behind

their belonging [to the fourfold]. When, as we say, we come to our senses and reflect on

ourselves, we come back to ourselves from things without ever abandoning our stay among

things. Indeed, the loss of rapport with things that occurs in states of depression would be

wholly impossible if even such a state were not still what it is as a human state: that is, a

staying with things. Only if this stay already characterizes human being can the things

among which we are also fail to speak to us, fail to concern us any longer. (359; emphasis

in original)

We dwell only in relation to the things in our surroundings, and our moods. So, the thinking that

is called towards Being is not one of ratiocination, but a product of our dwelling amidst things.

Heidegger notes that “what we call feeling or mood… is more reasonable —that is, more

intelligently perceptive—because more open to Being than all that reason which, having

meanwhile become ratio, was misinterpreted as being rational” (151). I suggest that if states of

depression imply a “loss of rapport with things”, then this very rapport must be cultivated as a
 Hussaini 16

result of thinking on our own being and seeing wherein its essence lies in relation to our dwelling

amidst things. The ‘mood’ of depression forces this thinking on one’s self, and if the lowest pits

of the abyss can be traversed, this thinking provides for our gradual ascent out of depression, when

we “think for the sake of dwelling” (Heidegger 2008).

To think is to confine yourself to a

single thought that one day stands

still like a star in the world's sky4

E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle

And so we emerged, to see—once more—the stars5

4. Conclusion:

I have provided here a description of depressive lived experience in terms of losses in the

intentional arc, which normally facilitates our dealings with the world prior to depression. The

body’s lost implicit ability produces a ‘Cartesian’ effect of mind on body by over-rationalization,

in the form of self-observation and self-governance. In addition to this depressive rationality, the

depressed individual is called towards thinking on one’s being, which initially and in depression’s

lowest point is always negative but accompanies the journey out of depression as it places for

oneself wherein one’s essence dwells amidst things.

4
Heidegger, Martin. “The Thinker as Poet.” Poetry, Language, Thought, translated by Albert Hofstadter, Harper
Perennial Modern Thought, 2013.
5
Alighieri, Dante. “Inferno 34.” Digital Dante, Columbia University, digitaldante.columbia.edu/dante/divine-
comedy/inferno/inferno-34/. 34.139
 Hussaini 17

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