Some
random thoughts. Ice is the final state
for the worst sinners in Cocytus. Why
ice? Flame is the sign of the Holy
Spirit, and one burns with the love of God.
One is purged by fire in Purgatory.
The Holy Spirit descends at Pentecost as a breath of flame, but Satan in
Cocytus whips up the winds that freeze as a frigid breath. Ice freezes one into a final state,
preserving the final state of the heart.
In physics, cold is the absence of heat, not really its own
condition. Dante could not have known
that, but as it turns out evil is the absence of good, again not its own
condition. I think Dante would have been
happy to make the analogy.
Back
in Canto XXI, when the leader of the Malebranche blew a fart, I had said that
Hollander pointed out that the critic Gian Roberto Saroli said the fart and the
razzes by the other Malebranche were only musical notes in hell. Well isn't the horn blast in XXXI by Nimrod a
musical note? Maybe Saroli meant the
only musical notes in the Malebolge, not all of hell? I don't know.
It seems to me the horn is a musical note. It's not important.
The
incoherence of Nimrod's unartful speech accentuates the theme of building the
language and poetry that praises God.
Dante follows the belief that God created the beauty of language that
got degenerated into a babel of tongues, and Nimrod is supposed to have been
the legendary cause of it.
I'm
not sure it was clear in the last Canto, but a time scheme is provided. If you break through the hints, you can
deduce two 24 hour periods between when Dante starts his journey back in Canto
I and when he exits the underground of hell at the end of Canto XXXIV, but the
perception of time is greatly distorted.
It takes 24 hours to go through all of hell, which is the thirty-three
and a half cantos before they go into that crevice and 24 hours to walk through
the underground in the second half of the last canto to reach the purgatory
island. How can they have gone through
all of hell in 24 hours? Dante is just
as adept with time distortion as the modernist writers.
Dante's
hell is portrayed as a funnel of concentric, descending circles. But with all the ravenous eating that
happens, especially here in the lower reaches (tenth bolge where the sinners
rip into each other, Ugolino eating the brains of Ruggieri, Satan munching on
Judas, Brutus, and Cassius, perhaps one can look at hell as a digestive
tract. Eating is definitely a motif
here, and I think it's meant to be a parody of eating the body of Christ.
Such
mimic parody of sacred activities and ideas run throughout, as I have pointed
out with the three sinners in Satan’s mouth as parodies of the three crucified
at Golgotha. Such parodies run
throughout literature, but mostly in modern literature. I can't think of another literary work prior
to the modernist movement that relied on parodies of Christian theology. Can anyone think of any? Did Dante invent this? I like to think of such parodies as the
inverse of that which they parody.
Irene
was surprised that alongside Judas are two Romans from antiquity, Brutus and
Cassius. Yes, they are subordinate in
importance to Judas Iscariot. Remember
Judas is in the middle and the region of hell, Judecca, is named after him,
which is kind of odd since Brutus and Cassius died chronologically before Judas
and would have been in hell before him.
But despite being ancillary to Judas, their importance is still
paramount. Remember the three themes
that are overarching to the Comedia:
man's relationship to God, man's relationship to society, and building the
language that reflects the beauty of the Divine. Brutus and Cassius assassinated the just lord
of what would be the Roman Empire, and the Empire to Dante was the proper
arrangement of society. Ideally Dante
probably would have wanted an evil poet who betrayed someone to be placed in
one of Satan's mouths, and therefore represent each one of his overarching
themes. I guess there was no one, and so
he doubled up with two Romans.
That
Dante selected two Romans from antiquity is important for more reasons. Throughout the Inferno you kept seeing
characters from the classical world as well as those surely in
Christendom. Dante is knitting together
the two worlds as complementary and continuous.
The early days of Christianity struggled with how to understand their
classical roots, but ultimately they came to accept them. Dante clearly does, but this is over a
thousand years after the start of Christianity.
Personally I find the mythical characters incorporated rather hokey, one
of my minor criticisms. Though legendary
characters such as Ulysses might have been real in Dante's mind, surely he knew
the Minotaur wasn't real. Hell is the
only part of the Comedia he can use
pagan world persons, so he does maximize interspersing them. Remember one can only be saved if you're a
noble Jew or a Christian, so classical world persons do not figure much in
Purgatorio and Paradisio, though by hook and by crook Dante does sneak a few
in.
The
Roman world was also important because it was through the Roman Empire that God
spread Christianity. If God had given
Constantine a sign to conquer, then the integration of Christianity with the
Roman Empire was divinely sanctioned. So
Brutus' and Cassius' assassination was an attempt to thwart the will of God that
would have established the best of secular government possible. To Dante, the Roman secular government was a
check on the clergy and set up a rational organization of society. If you look at the trend in the severity of
sins - in increase of severity: sins of appetite, sins of heresy, sins of
violence, the Malebolge which are sins of undermining society, sins of
treachery - they represent a trend toward the greater dissolution of
community. The tenth bolge, that for
counterfeiters where now it's not demons exacting punishment but other sinners
on each other, shows Dante's view that the undermining of community is the
greatest sin because it creates cynicism and doubts to its legitimacy. Dante stresses, therefore, that the community
takes precedence over the individual.
Finally
one last trend we see culminate in the last cantos is Dante's loss of pity for
those in hell. Remember at the beginning
he had such compassion for Francesca and Ciacco in those early circles, but his
sense of pity seems to attenuate as the journey progresses, and finally in
these last cantos he is hardened and willing to exact justice himself. He feels nothing for the suffering and the
slapstick violence of those in the tenth bolge, no compassion or even
contrition for the face he accidently (or divinely guided) kicks, no compassion
for the traitor Bocca - indeed he tries to pull out his hair - no compassion,
except for the children, for Ugolino's tragic story, and no compassion for Fra
Alberigo, even reneging on a promise to him.
One can say that this loss of compassion for those in hell is the lesson
that Dante the pilgrim learns as he goes on his journey. Today we might be taken aback by that. There are those today that pray for those in
hell, and personally I think Christians should have compassion for all, even
those undergoing eternal punishment. But
here's Dante's view. Those in hell have
come to God's divine justice, and to hope otherwise is to work against God's
will.
One
other point I forgot to make. As I said
in my summary, being inverted while traveling out of hell is his imaginative
understanding of what it means to pass from the northern hemisphere to the
southern. Notice when he passes what I
think is the midpoint of Satan, he crossed the equator. When the pilgrims come to the outside world
again, they find themselves on the shores of an island, which they will
discover when the sun comes out that it’s the island of purgatory. Dante’s geology is interesting and will be
further explained in the Purgatorio.
I’ve never completely understood it, but the critics say it makes
sense. Notice though, Dante in the early
1300’s knows the earth is round. Don’t
let people tell you that it was only with Columbus that people realized the
earth was not flat. It was known before
hand. The one thing Dante seems to get
wrong I think is that he believes there is a 12 hour time difference between
the northern and southern hemisphere.
Time differences work across longitudinal lines, not latitudinal
lines. There would be no time difference
if Dante had just traveled due south on the same longitudinal line.
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Since
the Ugolino scene, spanning Cantos XXXII and XXXIII, is so famous I should
examine it in some detail. The pilgrims
have just left the traitorous Bocca behind when they stumble onto two souls
locked together.
We had left him behind
when I took note
of two souls so frozen
in a single hole
the head of one served
as the other's hat. (XXXII. l. 124-6)
Describing
Ugolino as Ruggieri’s cap is I think meant to be funny, though we will see it’s
dark, ghastly humor. The top man is
gnawing on the brain of the bottom man, and Dante gets rather specific:
As a famished man will
bite into his bread,
the one above had set
his teeth into the other
just where the brain's
stem leaves the spinal cord. (127-129)
Apparently
Ugolino’s mouth is right at the base of the skull, just above the neck. And Dante asks him, 'O you, who by so bestial
a sign/show loathing for the one whom you devour,/tell me why’ (133-5). The “bestial” significance is clearly
emphasized and shows how when community breaks down man returns to a savage
state. It is also meant to recall the
three beasts that were chasing Dante at the beginning of the Inferno in Canto
I. If one of the beasts had caught
Dante, would he be in Ruggieri’s position?
We were never told what was the cause of Dante’s midlife crises. Was it something as sinful as Ruggieri? Probably not, nonetheless there is a
parallel. Side note: isn’t it stunning
that a bishop, a man of religion, would be as cunning and viscious as Ruggieri?
With
skillful use of suspense, Dante holds off Ugolino’s response until the next
canto.
He raised his mouth
from his atrocious meal,
that sinner, and wiped
it on the hair
of the very head he had
been ravaging.
Then he began: 'You ask
me to revive
the desperate grief
that racks my heart
even in thought, before
I tell it.
'But if my words shall
be the seeds that bear
infamous fruit to the
traitor I am gnawing,
then you will see me
speak and weep together. (XXXIII.l. 1-9)
Hollander
points out that Ugolino’s first words 'You ask me to revive/the desperate grief
that racks my heart’ echo Aeneas’ words in The Aeneid when he is asked to tell
the story of the fall of Troy and his escape from the burning city. It is a memory most painful as he had
witnessed the slaughter of his friends and relatives. Ugolino too is dealing with a painful
memory. It’s interesting to contrast
that Aeneas heroically saves his father and children at his horrific moment
while Ugolino indirectly causes his children’s deaths. Memory will be an important theme in Purgatorio
in that we are presented with the problem of how do sinners who repent clean
away a sinful memory, since memory is almost a reliving of that sin. Ugolino’s punishment, and actually all the
sinners in hell, includes the eternal memory of their sin.
Dante
takes it for granted that his reader knows the Ugolino/Ruggieri story, which I
outlined in my summary for this canto.
The two had colluded on a series of betrayals with ultimately Ruggieri
betraying Ugolino by locking him and his children in a tower and starving them
to death. Ugolino’s story focuses on the
starvation inside the tower. First,
before food was withheld, he tells how he had a premonition of his future, ‘when,
in a dreadful dream,/the veil was rent, and I foresaw the future’ (26-7). “The veil was rent” connects with the
Christ’s crucifixion, the veil in the temple being split (Matt 27:51). His dream is of a lord (standing for
Ruggieri) hunting a wolf and wolfcubs (Ugolino and his children) with hounds,
and the hounds ripping at the wolf’s flesh.
Ugolino
next turns to Dante and realizes Dante is unmoved by the story.
'You are cruel indeed,
thinking what my heart
foretold, if you remain
untouched by grief,
and if you weep not,
what can make you weep? (40-2)
He
is looking for pity it seems, and when he doesn’t receive any he ups the ante
on his story. He tells of when he wakes
and at the hour he would normally have been fed, instead of food he heard the
nailing shut of the door. His reaction
was of being stunned: 'I was so turned to stone inside I did not weep’
(49). How should we take that? A heart of stone tends to imply a lack of
compassion. He doesn’t weep but his
children weep. They don’t have a heart
of stone. Ugolino says that he gnawed
his hands in sorrow, while the children thought he did it out of hunger. Should we believe him? Many of the souls encountered in Inferno have
not been completely straight with the truth.
The children offer themselves for food.
He doesn’t offer himself as food for them. Is there a selfish motive here for not
telling the full truth? I suspect so.
Ugolino
goes on to tell on how one by one his children died in front of him. And he concludes his story, the bodies of his
children in front of him, with enigmatic line, “Then fasting had more power
than grief” (75). Are we to read it as
because of his grief he was able to fast from eating his children, or the
hunger from not having eaten overwhelmed his grief and he ate his children to
survive as long as possible? Hollander
goes on to explain both readings have at various times been in vogue, and that
the historical evidence probably, though not conclusively, showed he did not
eat his children. However, this is a
work of fiction, and Dante has at times altered history for his use. But it’s unclear if Dante even knew the
reality; tales have a way acclimating barnacles. Look at the very next lines.
Having said this, with
maddened eyes he seized
that wretched skull
again between his teeth
and clenched them on
the bone just like a dog. (76-8)
Ugolino
seized with rage returns to gnawing on Ruggieri. The memory of gnawing on his children is what
I think overwhelms him. And the
cannibalism on Ruggieri becomes poetic justice as eternal punishment. And the feeding upon other human beings is an
ongoing motif in these latter cantos.
Why would Dante not go as far with it as possible? I believe Ugolino did eat the bodies of his
children, until he too died.
With
that I conclude this survey of Dante’s Inferno. I hope you got something out of it. The book club will be taking up Purgatorio in a few months, probably
around June. Currently we are reading G.
K. Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man. I should have a few posts on that, but come
and join the Catholic Thought Book Club at Goodreads. It’s free and filled with good discussion.
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