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Explore the themes of hypocrisy, theft, and deceit in Dante's Inferno, focusing on the characters and their actions. Discover the connections to Greek mythology and the philosophical allegories within the text.
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The hypocrites • Jovial Friars (“Knights of St. Mary”), a group meant to promote civic peace. • Catalano (Guelph): recognizes Dante for his Tuscan dialect • Loderingo (Ghibelline). • Caiphas: High priest under Pontius Pilate (John 18:13).
My favorite simile: the “villanello” • “In that party of the young year when the sun begins to warm its locks beneath Aquarius and nights grow shorter, equaling the days, When hoarfrost mimes the image of his white sister upon the ground – but not for long, because the pen he uses is not sharp --
The “villanello” • “[…] the farmer who is short of fodder rises and looks and sees the fields all white, at which he slaps his thigh, turns back into the house, and here and there complains like some poor wretch who doesn’t know what can be done, and then goes out again and gathers up new hope
The “villanello” • on seeing that the world has changed its face in so few hours, and he takes his staff and hurries out his flock of sheep to pasture.” (Inf.24.1-15)
Inferno 24: VanniFucci “And I have told you this to make you grieve.” 24.151
“I am not Ovid” • Arethusa: “Cold sweat poured down my imprisoned limbs, and dark drops trickled from my whole body. Wherever I moved my foot, a pool gathered, and moisture dripped from my hair, and faster than I can now tell the tale I turned to liquid.” (Metamorphoses, book V, 572) • Cadmus: http://poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/Metamorph4.htm
Do we return home, or do we continue on the quest for knowledge? • Nostos: Neoplatonic commentators interpreted Ulysses’s journey away from and back to Ithaca as a philosophical allegory, in which the soul returns to its place of origin after a descent into materiality. (i.e., James Joyce’s Ulysses) • Dante breaks with this tradition. His Ulysses never returns home, but continues on the quest for “worth and knowledge” (26.120), to satisfy the desire he had “to gain experience of the world / and of the vices and the worth of men” (26.98-99).
Dante as Ulysses • This is Dante’s own dilemma: overreaching. • “It grieved me then and now grieves me again when I direct my mind to what I saw; and more than usual, I curb my talent, that it not run where virtue does not guide; so that, if my kind star or something better has given me that gift, I not abuse it.” (26.19-24)
The Eighth Pouch / The Eighth Bolgia: The Fraudulent Counselors
“I was a man of arms, and then I was one who wore the cord”Inferno 27.67 Guido daMontefeltro, is a former Ghibelline-turned-Franciscan friar who is offered “absolution” by Boniface VIII for giving advice on how to destroy Boniface’s enemies (the Colonna family). A demon and St. Francis argue over the ownership of Guido’s soul.
The Relationship of Speech to Time and Identity • “the helpless words that, from the first, had found no path or exit from the flame, / transformed into the language of the fire” (Inf.27.13-15) • “O you to whom I turn my voice, / who only now were talking Lombard, saying, / ‘Now you may leave – I’ll not provoke more speech,’ though I have come perhaps a little late, / may it not trouble you to stop and speak / with me; see how I stay – and I am burning!” (19-24) • “’You speak; he is Italian.’” (33) • “my silence seemed a worst offense than speech” (107) • Words such as “words,” “speech,” “language,” “tongue,” “voice,” speak” appear numerous times throughout this canto.
The Place of Speech in Time:Logic and Sequence • “… had not the Highest Priest – may he be damned! – made me fall back into my former sins” (70-71) • “Since you cleanse me of the sin / that I must now fall into, Father, know: / long promises and very brief fulfillments / will bring a victory to your high throne.” (108-111) • “One can’t absolve a man who’s not repented, / and no one can repent and will at once; / the law of contradiction won’t allow it.” (118-120)
Figure of Speech: Hyperbole Who, even with untrammeled words and many attempts at telling, ever could recount in full the blood and wounds that I now saw? Each tongue that tried would certainly fall short because the shallowness of both our speech and intellect cannot contain so much. (Inf. 28.1-6)
Mohammed and Alì • In the Middle Ages, some Christians believed that Mohammed wanted to ascend to the papal throne, but because this ambition was never fulfilled, created a new sect. • Mohammed established Islam in the early 7th century at Mecca. Alì married Fatima (Mohammed’s daughter), and later disagreements over Alì succession led to the division into the Sunni and Shi’ite sects. • Despite the brutality of this depiction of Muhammed, the Islamic world was a vital part of Medieval Mediterranean culture (Avicenna, Averröes, Salahdin, who are located in Limbo).
Bertran de Born: “Thus you observe in me the contrapasso” (Inf.28.142)
The Tenth Pouch: The Falsifiers (Inf. 29-30) • Falsifiers of Metals (Alchemists): plagued by scabs • Counterfeiters of Others’ Persons (Impersonators): Madness • Counterfeiters of Coins: Dropsy • Falsifiers of Words (Liars): Fever
The Descent into the Self • The pervasiveness of the myth of Narcissus in the Inferno conveys the significance of this journey to the bottom of hell as a journey into the self. • The myth of Narcissus is recounted by Ovid in Book Two of Metamorphoses. He rejects the love of others and falls in love with himself while looking at his reflection in a pool (which he mistakes for another person). • In Met. II, Tiresias tells Narcissus that he will grow old only if he does not gain knowledge of himself.
The Language of the Myth of Narcissus • “the lake of my heart felt terror present” (Inf. 1.21) • “’Why are you staring so insistently? / Why does your vision linger there below / among the lost and mutilated shadows?’” (Inf. 29.4-6) • “few words would be sufficient invitation / to have you lick the mirror of Narcissus” (Inf. 30.128-9) • “I was intent on listening to them / when this was what my master said: ‘If you / insist on looking more, I’ll quarrel with you!’” (30.131-132)
From the “lake of the heart” to Lake Cocytus • “beneath my feet, a lake that, frozen fast, / had lost the look of water and seemed glass” (32.23-24) • “’Why do you keep on staring so at us?’” (32.54) • “and I saw, reflected in four faces, my own gaze” (33.56-7)
The Ninth Circle: the Treacherous • 9.1: Caïna: Traitors to Kin – CamiscionedeiPazzi(Inf.32) • 9.2: Antenora: Traitors to Homeland or Political Party – BoccadegliAbati, Ugolino(Inf.32-33) • 9.3: Ptolomea: Traitors against Guest – FraAlberigo, BrancaDoria(Inf.33) • 9.4: Judecca: Traitors against their Benefactors – Lucifer, Judas, Brutus, Cassius (Inf. 34)
Antaeus, Inf. 31 “Just as the Garisenda seems when seen / beneath the leaning side, when clouds run past / and it hangs down as if about to crash, / so did Antaeus seem to me as I / watched him bend over me – a moment when / I’d have preferred to take some other road.” (31.136-141)
