The Inferno: Since It Came to Good (The Dark Wood of Error)

1. The Inferno:Since It Came to Good (The Dark Wood of Error) Feraco Myth to Science Fiction 1 November 2012

2. Cantos I and II: Data File • Settings: The Dark Wood, the True Way, Mount Joy • Figures: The Leopard, Lion, and She-Wolf (Three Beasts); Virgil; Beatrice • Allusions: The Greyhound, The Aeneid, Three Blessed Women, Aeneas, and Paul • What Happens: Dante tries to move beyond confusion, but is defeated by his sins. Divine intervention sends him on a different course after some convincing.

3. Lost in the Wood At this point, Dante is thirty-five, suffering from a literal midlife crisis. It’s not clear whether he’s lost his morals, or whether his confusion also lies in his exile from Florence. Raffa says the source of his disorientation could be “spiritual, physical, psychological, moral, political – [it’s] difficult to determine at this point.” In any case, his life isn’t unfolding the way he thought it would at this stage.

4. The True Way For Dante, this refers to the correct method of living one’s life in accordance with divine principles. One who adheres to the True Way eventually earns rewards, both in the present and in the afterlife. In medieval thought, abandonment of the “straight way” usually symbolized alienation from God.

5. The Dark Wood I The opposite of the True Way, the Dark Wood represents the muddled confusion that all too many people experience as they go through life. Sometimes things don’t go as expected, and our views shift without our noticing; you may remember the Kierkegaard quote we referenced a few times in Gilgamesh and Searching for a Former Clarity, and it holds here as well. In other instances, we’re aware of the sacrifices and compromises we make…but we make them so frequently, and prioritize so infrequently, that we lose sight of our larger purpose.

6. The Dark Wood II In still other cases, we never bother to formulate or identify that larger purpose. Some simply hope they’ll be fine as long as they just keep on keeping on. Others remain crippled by fear, reasoning that the man who never plans or dreams can’t have any of those dreams crushed. (Looked at the classes you’ll actually need to take for your major?) And others simply don’t care – wandering through life under a cloak of apathy, destined to die without ever having lived. (Dante sent those guys to Hell.)

7. The Dark Wood III At any rate, the Dark Wood is different for everyone, simply because different factors cause individuals to wander astray. But the default condition of human beings seems to be one that encourages us to veer into that Wood, and to keep thrashing and crashing once we get there. One of the biggest questions in The Inferno – in The Divine Comedy – deals with this very thing: why do we lose sight of the good? Why do we lose sight of ourselves? Even Dante, having finally recognized that he’s lost his way, sets out to return to the Wood once he encounters the Three Beasts; after all, it’s easier to return to the misery of his old ways than to keep forging ahead, to banish the internal obstacles and inner demons that led him off course in the first place.

8. Selva Oscura While it’s clear that the Wood symbolizes confusion and loss, we ask ourselves: why a “wood”? Why a forest? Raffa proposes that Virgil’s use of the forest as the underworld’s entrance in The Aeneid inspires it. There’s also a lot of medieval literary tradition to look at; knights were always getting lost in forests in legends. From a religious standpoint, Augustine had linked sin to a “region of unlikeness” in his work. And from a lit-crit perspective, Dante’s also used the forest as a symbol for adolescent confusion in Il Convivo. Finally, there’s Plato’s idea of “chaotic matter” – unformed, unnamed, unknowable, the universe before God ordered it – which Dante’s readers would have recognized.

9. The Mount of Joy When Dante tries returning to his True Way, he sees a little hill with sunlight shining on it and, overjoyed by the sight, rushes forward. Mount Joy symbolizes salvation for Dante; it represents the pinnacle of human existence, and the final destination of a life well-lived. Dante also uses the path as a counterexample to the degeneration of his city: To leave the path and lose one’s way is to waste the divine gift, and to live a meaningless life in the process. Here, as in many other places, Dante’s symbols stand for multiple antecedents

10. The Three Beasts Dante encounters three animals while attempting to climb the Mount of Joy: first the Leopard, then the Lion, and finally the She-Wolf. Each animal personifies some moral weakness that prevents people from reaching their full potential – that bar the way to Mount Joy.

11. The Leopard It’s the first Beast Dante encounters on the True Way, and its associated sins are the last ones he “recognizes” on his journey through Hell. In some texts, the Leopard represents Avarice and Immoderate Desire; in Ciardi’s translation, it represents Fraud / Betrayal / Malice. This refers to man’s tendency to allow passion, negativity and dishonesty to corrupt him over the years, until his true nature becomes camouflaged – unknowable, much like the matter untouched by God.

12. The Leopard II The choice of the Leopard here is probably inspired by the Bible’s Jeremiah 5:6: “Wherefore a lion out of the wood hath slain them, a wolf in the evening hath spoiled them, a leopard watcheth for their cities: every one that shall go out thence shall be taken, because their transgressions are multiplied, their rebellions strengthened.” The passage refers to the impending punishment of people who refuse to repent for their wrongdoings. Also important, as we mentioned before, is the leopard’s camouflaged hide, symbolizing sin’s ability to cloak itself.

13. The Lion The Lion is a somewhat simpler figure, with origins identical to those of the Leopard (i.e., based on the Jeremiah passage). Unlike the Leopard and the She-Wolf, the Lion’s associated sins are consistently translated: Violence and Ambition. It’s standing in for man’s self-destructive urges – pride, short-sightedness, cruelty, etc. We see his “circle” when Dante reaches the seventh circle, which is dedicated to sins of violence. Unlike the previous six realms, which were each unified within themselves, the seventh circle has three “rounds,” or different areas. This suggests a complex response to the Lion’s sins, because while all variations of the preceding wrongdoings received largely identical punishments, God seems to have seen fit to differentiate between the “badness” of various transgressions of this nature.

14. The She-Wolf Finally, the She-Wolf represents “Incontinence,” which serves not only as shorthand for a number of weaknesses – most importantly, the inability to control oneself – but almost as a “root sin.” From this essential flaw – your inability to make yourself stable, content, and good when the chips are down – virtually everything sinful and wicked stems. Alternately, the She-Wolf is said to represent avarice, which is a very pretty word for a very rotten affliction: an all-encompassing hunger that consumes everything and everyone in its path, with its bearer doomed to never know satisfaction and never consider consequences.

15. The She-Wolf II While the She-Wolf also takes her origins from the Jeremiah passage, Dante’s use of a wolf would have had special resonance for Italian readers. The country’s traditions descended from the Roman Empire, and the founders of Rome – the brothers Romulus and Remus – were supposedly nursed and raised in the wild by a She-Wolf. As a result, the She-Wolf became associated with the city. To see one so corrupted and ravening here is to remind readers of the perverse turn Florence has taken as it’s moved into the “modern age.” This isn’t a cry against the social changes McAllister mentions, though: it’s a direct response to the terrible political machinations that led directly to his exile.

16. The Greyhound Finally, Dante includes a prophecy in which a Greyhound that feeds on good will destroy the She-Wolf (which sustains itself on man’s evils). It’s not clear who the Greyhound represents. Ciardi suggests Cangrande della Scala, a patron Dante proved particularly fond of (he supported the poet during his exile), and someone Dante fervently hoped would eventually rise to power in the city; Raffa suggests Dante kept the prophecy intentionally vague.

17. Virgil Seen here as Dante’s archetypical mentor, Virgil was a Roman poet who lived shortly before Christ’s birth. He’s responsible for some of the greatest literature in history, including one of my favorite works, The Aeneid (which Dante repeatedly references). In one of his other works (Eclogues), Virgil foretells the coming of a “wonderchild” – something medieval Christian audiences hailed as a prophecy of Christ’s birth.

18. Virgil II Virgil is one of the Virtuous Pagans in this tale, yet he’s also a conduit for divine guidance. Without him, Dante doesn’t stand a chance of getting through Hell. Virgil’s presence as guide is therefore neither coincidental nor superfluous; indeed, he’s almost as important to the narrative as Dante himself.

19. Aeneas and Paul Dante mentions both men as a way of proving via contrast that he’s unfit to journey into the afterlife. Raffa: “The apostle Paul claims in the Bible to have been transported to the ‘third heaven’ (2 Corinthians 12:2), and Aeneas visits the underworld in book 6 of Virgil's Aeneid.” These two otherworldly travelers are also associated with Rome, seat of both the empire and the church. More Raffa: “Dante, contrary to Augustine and others, believed the Roman empire in fact prepared the way for Christianity, with Rome as the divinely chosen home of the Papacy.”

20. Three Blessed Women Mary is the Virgin Mary, who symbolizes God’s compassion for Dante’s plight here. Saint Lucia, or Lucy of Syracuse, was a martyr who medieval Christians associated with vision / sight (the perspective Dante should gain from his journey). Finally, Beatrice embodies Divine Love; we already know why Dante chose her. You may remember an Italian quote I used in With Love We Will Survive: “I’ son Beatrice che ti faccio andare…” I am Beatrice, who makes you go.

21. In order to finish today off, I’d like you to consider each of the previously mentioned elements from The Inferno’s first canto • In your Houses, try to think of analogues from your own life • Who has serves as your Virgils? • Which Beasts have threatened – or still threaten – your happiness?