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September 8, 2009
Dante Blogging - Inferno Canto XIV
Canto XIV
Canto XIV brings us to the 3rd round of the 7th circle, the worst of the violent, the Violent against God. Dante divides them into three groups. This Canto concentrates on blasphemers, while the other two groups, sodomites and usurers, take up the next 3 canti.
Nevertheless, the schema for punishment across all 4 canti occurs here:
Some lay flat on their backs upon the ground,
and some were sitting huddled at the knees,
and others roved about continually
The greatest number were of those who ran;
the least, who took their tortures lying down--
but their tongues were the freest in their cries.
Esolen points out that the ones who are the worst are treated first - the blasphemers against God (and the gods?). Their punishment is to lie flat on their backs, where all they can do is writhe under the falling fire. The usurers squat, able at least to brush off new-fallen embers. The sodomites are able to run around, dodging the fire - which falls in an especially lovely metaphor.
Sovra tutto 'l sabbion, d'un cader lento,
piovean di foco dilatate falde,
come di neve in alpe sanza vento.
Over the desert, in a gentle fall,
there rained broad flakes of fire, as in the Alps
the snow comes falling on a windless day.
(14.28-30)
Gorgeous - but painful - and the damned spend all their time brushing the "fresh flakes from their skin" (14.42).
Dante meets here one of the few classical souls tormented for sin instead of serving as a trusty under the demonic administration. (Rather few demons, per se, seem to show up in Hell.) The interlocutor in Canto XIV is Capaneus, one of the Seven Against Thebes, struck dead by Zeus with a thunderbolt forged by Vulcan, Dante parading what he's learned from Statius, not Aeschylus (thanks, Prof. Esolen! I wondered briefly if it was Ovid and then looked in the back). Statius has got to be one of the lesser-read classics; I have an undergraduate degree in the field and never picked him up. He's going to come up again later - he's a lot more important to Dante (both the poet and the narrator) than anyone but Beatrice and Virgil.
Capaneus is a good example of the impenitent - the roaring sinner who doesn't even pretend he doesn't deserve his hellfire. He is still damning Zeus - though it is God's Justice doing the punishing. His blasphemy seems to be declaring his own manhood to be his god as much of his specific denunciation of the Olympian, though.
The Canto ends with one of those odd structural moments where I wonder what Dante is up to - and realize that I have more reading to do. Dante is wondering about the source for the four rivers of Hell (Acheron, Styx, Phlegethon, and Cocytus - analogues of the four rivers of Eden). Virgil's explanation goes off to the tears of the Old Man of Ida, a giant statue on the island of Crete who seems analogous to the giant idol in the Book of Daniel - in Nebuchadnezzar's dream. I see the parallel but I don't know that I understand why it shows up here - and I wonder where it comes from. Did Dante make this up? Esolen doesn't help with the last question.
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Posted by CrankyProfessor at September 8, 2009 1:04 PM