Feraco Myth to Science Fiction 14 November 2012

1. The Inferno:Screaming as They Go: Circles Four and Five (The Hoarders and Wasters / The Wrathful and Sullen) Feraco Myth to Science Fiction 14 November 2012

2. Canto VII: Data File • Settings: The Fourth and Fifth Circles • Figures: Plutus, Fortune • Allusions: Styx • Punishable Sins: Hoarding and Wasting (Fourth Circle), Wrath and Sullenness (Fifth Circle) • Summary: After leaving the Third Circle, the Poets encounter Plutus, who shouts an unintelligible warning to Satan upon seeing them. Virgil silences him by reminding him of God’s will, recalling the poets’ escape from Charon and Minos. Dante sees men fighting over great stones, and realizes that these men grew obsessed with money – either their ability to hoard it or waste it. None of them are even recognizable, and the poets move toward Styx as Virgil discusses Fortune’s purpose. When they arrive, Dante witnesses a ferocious, unending battle between the Wrathful; the Sullen lie beneath the swamp’s surface, denied the light of day forever.

3. Hoarding and Wasting Also referred to as Avarice and Prodigality; just as Dante elevated lust above gluttony, he chooses to place financial avarice and prodigality below consumption Timothy 6:10 claims avarice is "the root of all evils,” and Raffa asserts that “medieval Christian thought viewed the sin as most offensive to the spirit of love.” At least with consumption, someone benefits (temporarily); no one benefits from obsessive miserliness, nor from money wasted rather than invested or spent wisely. Just as he compared man’s hunger for political power with gluttony via Ciacco’s “prophecy,” Dante explicitly blames avarice for the corruption gripping his city. Unlike his fairly sympathetic portrayals of sinners in the first three circles (Homer, Francesca, Ciacco), Dante merely scorns the sinners we find here.

4. The Punishment The Fourth Circle’s punishment is shared by Hoarders and Wasters alike; both parties strain against giant rocks, yelling angrily at one another as they charge and collide repeatedly. The rocks symbolize the mundane nature of the things the sinners obsessed over; now that obsession is just dead weight. Also, Dante notes that he can’t recognize any of them individually; the combination of anger and empty greed has dimmed their souls so greatly that there’s nothing much left of them. In order to drive home his view that Greed destroys the light of God within a person, Dante takes special care to note how many religious officials – even popes! – appear here.

5. Plutus It’s not clear what Plutus is exactly supposed to be; some translators take Virgil’s “you wolf of Hell!” statement literally and give him canine features, a la Cerberus, while others claim he’s human. Dante seems to be splitting the difference, giving him speech while rendering him incapable of delivering it in a fully human language. His anger seems animalistic, hinting yet again at our darker nature – a nature faith enables us to supress. Also, it’s not clear which god he’s supposed to represent; Pluto was the Lord of the Underworld in many myths, whereas Plutus was simply a God of Wealth. Dante seems to be fusing Pluto’s ability to rule with Plutus’s traditional status, thus creating a creature who hungers for both power and wealth – “the great enemy,” as he’s called in Ciardi’s translation.

6. Fortune Dante believed that everything you did came back to you in the end, particularly due to divine influence; The Inferno’s system of divinely-governed poetic justice makes this perfectly clear. However, what about what happens along the way? Dante elevates Fortune above the fray of the mortal world, painting her as a distributor; just as God distributes light and goodness throughout creation, Fortune distributes worldly goods. She is, in many ways, impossible for mortals to understand (think Gilgamesh’s divinities).

7. Fortune Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy, which Dante read following Beatrice’s death, clearly inspires Dante’s use of Fortune, although the former’s is more negative: He believed you should ignore what Fortune brings you, concentrating instead on what you knew to be permanent and certain (divine love and justice, for example). Boethius illustrates this in Consolation by showing himself as he’s gradually stripped of everything – possessions, honor, freedom. (This obviously would have more relevance for Dante in the years after he first read the book!) He eventually argues that the easiest way to learn his lesson about Fortune is to experience bad luck, for there is no better teacher that only the immutable and permanent is worthwhile.

8. Wrath and Sullenness It’s interesting that both the Fourth and Fifth Circles contain linked sins; that said, they’re linked in different ways. The Hoarders and Wasters have different sins, but they sin according to the same principle (their attitudes toward material wealth are corrupt); this is why their punishments are identical. The Wrathful and the Sullen, on the other hand, embody the same sin, but in different forms: anger that’s expressed immoderately (the Wrathful) and anger that’s harmfully repressed (the Sullen); this is why their punishments differ, even though they live in the same area.

9. The Punishment The Wrathful and the Sullen occupy the Styx’s swamp-waters together. The Wrathful are locked in an endless, desperate physical battle above the water, one in which every soul fights the others; they can only see and do hateful things. The Sullen lie beneath the water, gurgling out something approaching a hymn – a darkly ironic twist, considering that Dante believes they wasted the light of God within themselves by sulking (rather than celebrating their fortune in life). The water over their heads symbolizes the anger they internalized, using it to distance themselves from God.

10. Styx Styx was long used in mythology as Hell’s major river, although it turns up elsewhere as a marsh or swamp (Virgil did this in The Aeneid). As usual, Dante’s descriptions are more physically realistic than his predecessors’. Dante turns it into a swamp here in order to heighten the sense that we’re encountering corrupted morality; here, the swamp is the Fifth Circle. Like Acheron, Styx doubles as a border; it separates Upper Hell from Dis, the Walled City of Lower Hell.

11. Canto VIII: Data File • Settings: The Fifth Circle, Styx, and Dis • Figures: Phlegyas, Filippo Argenti, Rebellious Angels • Allusions: The Harrowing of Hell • Punishable Sins: Wrath and Sullenness (Fifth Circle); unofficially, the denial of God’s will also counts • Summary: As the poets watch great flames shoot up from towers on the other side of Styx, Phlegyas races across the marsh in order to shuttle them over to Dis. He’s angry to see a mortal in Hell (yet another Threshold Guardian!), but Virgil deals with him in the usual fashion. One member of the Wrathful, Filippo Argenti, approaches the poets, but he’s set upon and torn apart by his fellow sinners (to Dante’s delight). When the poets reach the gate of Dis, they’re denied entrance by the Rebellious Angels, and even Virgil can’t force his way past them; the Canto ends with the poets nervously awaiting divine intervention from a Messenger.

12. Phlegyas Just like the other figures we’ve encountered – Minos as the last vanguard of Reason, Cerberus as Gluttony personified, and Plutus as the representation of Financial Avarice – Phlegyas is associated with his realm’s sin (in this case, uncontrollable wrath). That said, he’s angry for a reason; not only is he the son of the old war god (Ares), but another god, Apollo, raped his daughter. The furious father burned Apollo’s temple to the ground, and was promptly slain by him. He was then cast down to Hell for showing contempt for the gods; this is where Virgil shows him in The Aeneid.

13. Filippo Argenti It’s not clear why Dante hates Filippo Argenti so deeply, and it’s a little unsettling to see the poet react so happily to the sight of a soul being torn to shreds. Virgil often has to rebuke Dante for showing compassion for the sinners he encounters (after all, he’s supposed to be recognizing and rejecting sin), so the elder man approves of Dante’s hate. We know little about him, save that he belonged to the Neri faction (which would have placed him at odds with Dante). Some critics suggest that Argenti had wronged Dante in the past somehow, proposing that Argenti’s brother took possession of Dante’s property after his exile, or that Filippo himself had slapped Dante during an argument. Boccaccio just shows him beating someone without cause in order to highlight his violent temper.

14. The Rebellious Angels The Rebellious Angels plummeted into Hell after choosing the wrong side in the great battle between God and Satan (this separates them from the Angels who chose no sides, who ended up in the Vestibule). All traces of their former beauty have been erased; now they’re simply hideous, transformed by their wrath and hatred into monsters. They lie in wait outside of Dis (the walled city of Lower Hell), trying to stop the poets from entering; it’s reminiscent of their failed resistance to Christ during the Harrowing of Hell.

15. The Resistance In theory, the Rebellious Angels don’t have the right to deny Dante and Virgil entrance to Dis; God’s will still reigns supreme here. However, these beings ended up where they are because they habitually resist God; it’s not like they haven’t done things like this before. What’s surprising is how troubled Virgil seems; the end of the Canto leaves readers worried and tense.

16. In Conclusion Circles Four and Five close out our experiences with the Sins of the She-Wolf, although we can (and will) lump the Heretics in with them. As we approach Dis, Dante’s travels through Hell slow markedly; there’s more time for conversation and encounters. None of these sins are “light” – but we’re about to get serious…