Set Your Live Feet to the Dead
Dusts of Hell: The Seventh
Circle, Round Three)
(The Violent Against God, Nature, and Art)
Feraco
Myth to Science Fiction
6 December 2011
Canto XIV: Data File
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Setting: The Seventh Circle, Second and Third Rounds
Figures: Capaneus
Allusions: Old Man of Crete
Punishable Sin: Violence (here, largely Against God)
Summary: In a compassionate move, Dante gathers up the
branches and leaves the dogs broke off the bush and reattaches them before moving off. He and Virgil reach the
edge of the Wood and look out at a Plain of Burning Sand,
the terrain of the Seventh Circle’s Third Round (where we’ll
spend the next few Cantos). Fire rains down slowly from
above the plain, landing on the sinners being punished
there. The three groups, the Blasphemers (Violent Against
God), Sodomites (Violent Against Nature), and Usurers
(Violent Against Art), are punished in different ways, and
the Blasphemers are the first the poets encounter. One in
particular, Capaneus, still blasphemes God even as he lies
stretched out on the burning sand. The poets continue
walking along the edge of the Wood in order to avoid
burning themselves, eventually reaching a red rill (a kind of
river) that boils out of the wood and over the burning sand.
Virgil seizes the opportunity to discuss the four rivers of
Hell with Dante, and the Canto ends as the poets decide to
walk along the banks of the boiling rill across the Third
Round.
The Punishment
• The Blasphemers are stretched across the
burning plain on their backs (an allusion
to Capaneus, who you’ll study soon),
forced to lie under the falling flames
while being scorched by the sand below
• The Burning Plain of Sand represents
sterility (using the same technique that
T.S. Eliot used his The Waste Land), for
there’s no fertility/life without water, and
even the rain is made of fire
• Dante seems to be arguing that nothing
natural or positive results from any of
the violence featured here
Phlegethon
• The name means “river of fire,” and
it’s one of the four “rivers” of Hell
(including Acheron, Styx, and Cocytus,
which is currently frozen)
• This is the river of boiling blood that
we saw in the first round, discovering
here that it boils its way through the
Wood and out onto the Plain
• It gets shallower and deeper as it
curves depending on which sinner is
supposed to stand in it
• Virgil will eventually inform Dante
that this blood is the same stream as
before, as well as where it originally
comes from
Capaneus
• One of the giant warrior-kings who waged
war on the ancient city of Thebes, Capaneus
brought about his own demise during the
attack by daring the gods to protect the
citizens
• "Come now, Jupiter, and strive with all your
flames against me! Or are you braver at
frightening timid maidens with your
thunder, and razing the towers of your
father-in-law Cadmus?"
• Before he could even finish speaking, Zeus
(known as “Jupiter” to the Romans) slays
him with a thunderbolt, and he falls burning
from the walls until he lies outstretched on
his back (Dante’s inspiration)
Old Man of Crete
• Here’s an allusion to the different
Ages (from Golden to Iron) Edith
Hamilton mentioned during your
frosh Mythology unit
• The Old Man of Crete’s statue features
components made out of each Ageassociated substance: his head is gold,
his arms and chest are silver, his
midsection is made of brass, a foot is
made of clay (representing the Roman
Catholic Church), and the rest of him
is made of iron
• The statue is cracked, and tears flow
from the fissure; these tears form the
four rivers in Hell
Canto XV: Data File
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Setting: The Seventh Circle, Third Round
Figures: Ser Brunetto Latini
Punishable Sin: Violence (Against Nature)
Summary: The poets walk along the rill’s
banks, protected from the burning sand by
its powers. They come across a group of the
Violent Against Nature as it runs below them,
and one of the sinners calls out to Dante.
Dante recognizes him – Ser Brunetto Latini, a
writer who had mentored Dante even before
Guido entered his life – and is taken aback to
find him here. Latini talks about Dante with
pride, but warns him that his future in
Florence will contain a great deal of pain. The
Canto ends with Latini’s “time to speak”
expiring, and his punishment reactivates,
causing him to skitter across the burning
sand.
Violence Against Nature
• Raffa: “Dante's inclusion of sodomy-understood here as sexual relations
between males but not necessarily
homosexuality in terms of sexual
orientation--is consistent with strong
theological and legal declarations in
the Middle Ages condemning such
activities for being "contrary to
nature." In Dante's day, male-male
relations--often between a mature
man and an adolescent--were common
in Florence despite these
denunciations. Penalties could include
confiscation of property and even
capital punishment.”
The Punishment
• The Violent Against Nature run in
wandering packs across the Burning
Plain of Sand, usually in circles
– The burning sand represents the same
sterility that it did before, as does the fire
– The endless circles are meant to symbolize
the broken cycle of nature – a life cycle
that doubles back on itself due to a lack of
reproduction
– The wandering behavior results from
having lost God’s guidance
Ser Brunetto Latini
• One of Dante’s most painful encounters in
Hell occurs here, as he barely recognizes his
old mentor and friend under the damage
that’s been done to him on the Burning Plain
– If Virgil doesn’t want him to show much compassion
for the sinners, he holds back here
• His work, The Little Treasure, actually hints
at Dante’s future work: a first-person
narrator discovers he’ll have to live in exile
(the Ghibellines having expelled the Guelfs
at this point), and is so upset that he “lost
the great highway” and went into a “strange
wood” before heading for a mountain and
journeying through strange realms
Ser Brunetto Latini (Cont’d)
• Brunetto wasn’t as strong a writer as Dante
would become, but he promoted the idea –
perhaps more than anyone before Dante, and
certain since Cicero – that eloquence only
benefits society when blended with wisdom
– The Inferno isn’t worthwhile if there aren’t any
ideas at the center of its intricate structure
• There’s not actually any evidence to explain
why Latini’s in this Round; he was married
with several children
– Many commentators have tried assigning a
substitute sin to Latini, or theorized that his sin
was a symbolic form of Violence Against Nature (a
pursuit of immortality for the body, for example)
Canto XVI: Data File
• Setting: The Seventh Circle, Third Round
• Figures: Jacopo Rusticucci, Guido Guerra,
Tegghiaio Aldobrandi
• Punishable Sin: Violence (Against Nature,
although Art is also hinted at)
• Summary: The poets draw nearer to the Great
Cliff, which hosts a waterfall that leads down to
the Eighth Circle. Before they can reach it, they
encounter another band of the Violent Against
Nature; three souls break away from the group
this time to approach them. They ask Dante for
news of Florence’s current condition (being
damned, they can only see the future clearly),
and he rages against the climate in his city. After
the three return to their group, the poets reach
the Cliff. Virgil pulls out a cord and tosses it over
the edge of the cliff, and something huge begins
flying towards them from below.
Jacopo / Guido / Tegghiaio
• We’ve heard of the first and third before, as
they were portrayed in Ciacco’s final speech
in Canto III as men who wanted to do good
things and ended up in Hell’s depths anyway
– Oddly, Virgil demands that Dante teach them with great
respect despite their sin – a reversal from his earlier
behavior
– Each of the three – Jacopo, Guido, and Tegghiaio – lived in
Florence, and Dante admired their political sensibilities
before they passed on
• Guido had helped drive the Ghibellines out of
Florence during the final battle in 1266
• Tegghiaio tried giving the Guelfs military
advice, yet was (foolishly) ignored during
their defeat in 1260
• Jacopo was a colleague of Tegghiaio’s, having
risen from a low class to an influential
position
Studying Politics
• “O Florence! Your sudden wealth and
your upstart / Rabble, dissolute and
overweening, / Already set you
weeping in your heart!”
• This doesn’t conclude our political
discussion so much as it reinforces the
dark words Dante’s heard from Ciacco,
Farinato, and Latini
• There’s a weird sense of dramatic
irony here: not only do we know what’s
going to happen to Dante, but so does
Dante.
– It’s only “Dante” that’s unaware of his
impending downfall
Canto XVII: Data File
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Setting: The Seventh Circle, Third Round
Figures: Geryon
Allusions: Phaethon, Daedalus, Icarus
Punishable Sin: Violence (Against Art)
Summary: The monster from below arrives at the
cliff: Geryon, the Monster of Fraud. Virgil
negotiates with the beast for safe passage down
the cliff, and sends Dante to look at the Violent
Against Art. These sinners crouch at the edge of
the Burning Plain, separated from the shades of
their fellow beings. Each of them wears a large
money-purse around his neck that bears the
coat-of-arms of his family. After seeing them, he
quickly turns back and heads for Virgil. The elder
poet already sits atop Geryon, and convinces
Dante to climb on; the two make a terrifying
flight down into the Eighth Circle on the beast’s
back.
Violent Against Art
• Dante defines art as the crafts we draw
from nature – our industry, whether it be
practical or creative
• To work hard and honestly while producing
something is therefore to live in
accordance with Nature, and Dante defines
Art/Industry as Nature’s child – which
makes it God’s grandchild
• The Usurers (The Violent Against Art)
weren’t people who burned paintings or
suppressed expression
• Rather, they simply tried to make money
without working for it by charging people
exorbitant interest rates
Violent Against Art (Cont’d)
• This doesn’t seem like that big of a deal
today – have you tried finding a student loan?
– but it was a huge deal in Florence
• Raffa: Based on Biblical passages – fallen
man must live “by the sweat of his brow”
(Genesis 3:19), Jesus' appeal to his followers
to “lend, expecting nothing in return” (Luke
6:35) – medieval theologians considered the
lending of money at interest to be sinful.
Thomas Aquinas, based on Aristotle,
considered usury…to be contrary to nature
because ‘it is in accordance with nature that
money should increase from natural goods
and not from money iMtself.’”
The Punishment
• The sinners are forced to stare with tear-filled
eyes at their purses forever
• They aren’t supposed to look at anything else
because their entire existence revolved around
chasing money-purses – similar to how the
Avaricious and Prodigal push their stones,
although at least those sinners were dealing
badly with their own money (whereas the
Usurers occupy a weird place between the
Avaricious and the Thieves)
• The crest on the purse that clearly identifies
each sinner with his family indicates that they
have brought dishonor to their families, quite
possibly with their families’ permission
• Dante implies that these powerful families
built their wealth on these illicit foundations,
and are therefore undeserving of their
influential positions in society
Geryon
• In classic myth, Geryon was a cruel king
who was slain by Hercules
– Virgil chose to describe him as a “three-bodied
shade” in The Aeneid, and Dante appears to
have taken that quite literally
• The creature is a crazy mash-up of beast
and human, with a man’s head and honest
face atop a huge, beastly body covered
with pretty and intricate reptilian scales.
He also has fur-covered legs and paws,
with a huge, coiling scorpion’s tail
finishing off his body.
• Geryon’s meant to be a creature of Fraud
(hence the honest face and pretty scales
masking the scorpion’s tail)
Geryon (Cont’d)
• His scales are meant to recall the colorful
patterns on a leopard’s hide – a sign of his
realm (he’s a quasi-Threshold Guardian for
the Eighth Circle, which houses the Sins of
the Leopard)
– Dante mentions in Canto XVI that he actually tried
using the cord Virgil tosses over the edge of the
Great Cliff to catch the Leopard when it blocked his
path, but that it was too quick for him; here, Virgil
uses it to tempt the great beast of Fraud out of
hiding
• Geryon can also be associated with “the sort
of factual truth so wondrous that it appears
to be false”
– Some have suggested that Geryon is meant to recall
the incredible journeys of The Divine Comedy itself;
after all, is this truth, or fiction?
Phaethon
• Dante is (somewhat realistically) completely
terrified by his flight through Hell’s air
• He alludes to two earlier stories of mortals
taking flight by unnatural means (this is
centuries before the airplane, obviously)
with terrible consequences
• The first is Phaethon, a figure from Ovid’s
Metamorphosis who sought to confirm that
he was the son of Apollo by seizing the sunchariot’s reins (against his father’s advice)
• He proved unable to control the horses, and
they scorched the sky as they tore through
the atmosphere
• Forced to choose between saving the world
and sparing Apollo’s son, Jupiter slew
Phaethon with a thunderbolt
Daedalus and Icarus
• The second story – an equally tragic one, and also
from Ovid’s Metamorphosis – involves Daedalus,
an inventor we encountered earlier in the story
of the Minotaur
• Daedalus and his son, Icarus, were imprisoned in
a tall tower on the edge of the island of Crete. In
order to escape, Daedalus collected the feathers
of birds that flew into the tower and bound them
with wax and thread into wings
• He built a pair for himself and a pair for Icarus,
warning the boy that the wax would melt if he
flew too close to the sun
• But Icarus, overcome with joy, ignores his
father’s advice (just as Phaethon did) and
streaks into the sky; his wax melts, and the boy
plummeted to his death in the sea before his
father can reach him
• Daedalus is forced to soar on towards land,
mourning his son all the way
In Conclusion
• The final allusions to Phaethon and
Icarus serve as indicators that the
hardest part of Dante’s journey lies
ahead, and that there’s a danger in
getting too close to the heat
• Fascinatingly, Dante continues to
regard many of the Circle’s denizens
with either sympathy or pity, and
Virgil no longer seems to mind – not at
all what one would expect from
someone traveling through the land of
Violence
• Fraud and Betrayal are up next…