lenten series: Dante's Divine Comedy pt 4: Inferno VI-VIII

Having enjoyed the company of those in Limbo and souls of the lustful in the first circle, we now join Dante and Virgil as they proceed further down into circles III, IV and V of Hell.  In these three circles we will meet the gluttons, the "hoarders and spendthrifts" and then the wrathful.  Each type is given its own circle, as each has its own particular kind of vice.  At the same time, it is worth considering:  why does Dante connect these sins in order? 

First Dante and Virgil see those whose sin was gluttony.  I might add that their sin still is gluttony - the soul continues in the state it has chosen.  Here we can begin to see why this sin is "lower" than the lustful.  At least the lustful attempted some sort of "mutuality" in their lust.  In the circle of the gluttons, the sin becomes more selfish.  Gluttony is not concerned with the wants or desires of another.  It is the beginning of the self centered sins.

(will be back again shortly...the great thing about blogging at my favorite cafe is that you can get in a game of chess with one of the regulars and the readers will never know...)

At the entrance to the circle of the gluttons, Dante and Virgil encounter Cerberus, the three-headed dog of the underworld.

I am now in Third Circle: that of rain
One ceaseless, heavey, cold, accursed quench,
Whose law and nature vary never a grain;

Huge hailstones, sleet and snow, and turbid drench
Of water sluice down through the darkened air,
And the soaked earth gives off a putrid stench.

Cerberus, the cruel, misshapen monster, there
Bays in his triple gullet and doglike growls
Over the wallowing shades; his eyeballs glare

Canto VI, 7-15

Gluttony is a cold state, unlike the hot winds of lust.  It is fitting that here they find Cerberus  ever hungry with three mouths. As a side note,  Cerberus is also the name of one of the largest capital investment groups in the world (they just bought Chrysler).  It is in this Canto that Virgil tells Dante a very important thing about the state of souls after the resurrection of the body:

Go to, said he, hast thou forgot thy learning
Which hath it:  The more perfect, the more keen,
Whether for pleasure or for pain's discerning

Our contemporary world often sees the afterlife as somehow "less" than this life.  But Virgil reminds Dante that in the state of the resurrected body, our senses will be more keen, thus more able to delight in the New Jerusalem, the new heavens and the new earth.  Likewise, the condemned will be more adept for "pain's discerning".

Next we have the hoarders and spendthrifts - two seemingly opposite kinds of people who are now grouped together.  Their sins are, in Dante's view, the same in this:  they were so small of mind that "in the handling of their wealth to use/ No moderation - none in either kind". (VII.41).  Here we can see that Dante is drawing on the ancient virtue of moderation in all things, expressed in Aristotle's Ethics.  Here these two "opposites" are really one and the same:  they fail to be moderate in their use of worldly wealth. In this circle, the souls rail against each other.  They have moved from simple selfishness to opposition to others.  Here as well Virgil warns Dante against "Luck" or "fortune":

For all the gold that is beneath the moon,
Or ever was, could not avail to buy
Repose for one of these weary souls, not one

Canto VII.64-66

Just before we leave this Canto, we have to distinct displeasure of meeting up with the "sullen" - those who "took no joy in the pleasant air, no joy of the good sun, our hearts smouldered with a sulky smoke" (VII. 121).  These are souls who simply refused to accept the naturally given joys of God and creation.  They simply bubble in a black mud, refusing all joy and all delight.  "Bah Humbug" might be their anthem.

The river Styx appears to them next - they are progressing downward in the geography of the underworld.  Throughout literature we can see the natural symbol of rivers as places of transition from one state to another.  Think of the positive parallel of the "River Jordan", and then think of what it's opposite must mean.  They are coming to a new level of Hell - the City of Dis.  Here they see the wrathful, and they encounter fierce opposition from the fallen angels who guard the city.  Virgil is bewildered at their opposition, and they must wait  for divine assistance to gain entrance.  Sayers' note is, I think, quite helpful:  "Humanism is always apt to underestimate, and to be baffled by, the deliberate will to evil."

Just as the final vision of Christian community is a city - the New Jerusalem - so also in Hell there is portrayed a perverted kind of anti-city.  It is here that Dante begins to understand and know the truth about sin: 

...Amid the weeping and the woe,
Accursed spirit, do thou remain and rot!
I know thee, filthy as thou art, I know.

It is not merely any soul which Dante encounters in the story, but allegorically, it is the sins in his own soul.  Here for the first time he comes to the point where he recognizes the hatefulness of sin.  It is really sin in himself of which he says "I know".

view entire post series: Dante's Divine Comedy