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August 23, 2010
Danteblogging - Inferno Canto XXXIV
Inferno Canto XXXIV - the last canto
The pilgrimage takes 100 cantos -- and thus the Inferno is one canto longer than the other two canticles. The structure doesn't fall as neatly as 1 introductory canto and 33 in Hell - Dante and Virgil get to the gates of Hell at the start of Canto III.
Here in XXXIV we have the end of the descent into Hell and the beginning of the climb to Paradise - the pilgrims pass the center of the cosmos. But first they must past Satan's faces. What Dante sees from a distance are the turning arms of a giant windmill - the sails that are eventually revealed to be the fruitlessly beating wings of Satan, imprisoned in the ice. Again, language fails Dante when he neither dies nor lives as he see "The emperor of the reign of misery" (34.28). But he goes on - and language ceases to fail. Begins to work? And he describes the ludicrous parody of the Trinity that Satan has become - a three-headed monster chewing three of the worst sinners, traitors against their benefactors.
Once again I'm left a little puzzled -- Judas, sure. Brutus, sure, given the way Dante feels about Caesar and the Roman Empire. Cassius, fine, ditto.
But couldn't Dante have thought of a third traitor that belongs in the mouth of Satan? Imagination is failing me at the moment, but perhaps it is part of the relentlessly Mediterranean world-view that Dante can't think of anyone better than Jesus Christ or Julius Caesar.
After all this long journey the end comes remarkably quickly. Virgil says
But night is rising, and it's time to leave,
for Hell has nothing more for us to see. (34.68-9)
Then Dante climbs on Virgil's back and Virgil begins to mountaineer down Satan's hairy flanks into a crevasse. At a certain point they reverse and begin to climb up the legs. It was the center of the spherical cosmos -- Satan had fallen from heaven and stuck like a dart in the center of the world, "...the point/toward which all weight from every side is drawn" (34.110-1). The heart of the material universe, of matter, is Satan's selfishness.
The Inferno began with a middle aged man lost in a dark forest; it ends on another note.
E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle.
And we came out to see, once more, the stars. (34.139)
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Posted by CrankyProfessor at August 23, 2010 7:34 PM