"The most eloquent Dante critic of the twentieth century, Erich Auerbach, says in his 1946 book “Mimesis” that the portrait of the Florentine nobleman Farinata degli Uberti in the Inferno is so powerful psychologically that it makes Farinata’s placement in the Comedy’s theological scheme (as an example of heresy) unimportant: “The image of man eclipses the image of God.” So here again is the duality, with no mystery about which side we should prefer. In Farinata and the other great storytellers of the Comedy, Auerbach goes on, “the fullness of life . . . is so rich and so strong that its manifestations force their way into the listener’s soul independently of any interpretation.”"