lenten series: Dante's Divine Comedy pt 6: the Circle of the Violent
Carrying on past the heretics, Dante and Virgil encounter the rest of the inhabitants of the circle of the Violent, or in Aristotle’s terms, the Bestial. The violent are classified according to their “victims”: violence against neighbour, violence against oneself (the suicides), and the violent against “God”. This section of the Inferno:
…Holds violent men; but as threefold may be
Their victims, in three rings they are dispersed
God, self and neighbour – against all these three
Force may be used; either to injure them,
Or theirs, as I shall show convincingly.
While we may easily understand the first two, how does one commit violence against God? Virgil continues:
Those men do violence to God, who curse
And in their hearts deny Him, or defame
His bounty and His Natural Universe.
In Canto XII they are greeted by the Minotaur and some Centaurs – proud and haughty and, well, a physical example of the combination of human and animal natures. Half man and half beast. One can choose to let the “animal nature” have the upper hand over the rational and human nature. The results are seen in the physical images of the creatures from Classical mythology. As a side note, I would be curious to know exactly what Dante would make of the Sphinx…but that is for another series. Here they also meet the political tyrants - those who used force and violence against their neighbours.
In Canto XIII they meet the suicides – those who have committed violence against themselves. Because they rejected the life of the physical body, they are deprived of human form in this circle. They become the famous “bleeding trees”, an image which Dante borrowed from his companion Virgil (see Aeneid 3.22-68). We see as well the “profligates” – those who wantonly allowed the destruction of their personal property. Such property was, by Roman law, and extension of one’s own person, and so it was seen as a form of violence against the self.
got to go for a few minutes...
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