Cantos X-XV

Cantos 10 - 15
Canto X


Usury is another concept that will come up in the next couple of cantos. Today, usury means lending money at exorbitant interest rates. The word has been used often in referring to the payday-lending industry and recent legislation.



In the Middle Ages, usury meant lending money at any interest rate. One was supposed to make one's living off of one's talents--talents like painting, shoe-making, building, copying manuscripts, etc. You were not supposed to make money from money. Part of this is a sign of Medieval anti-Semitism. You will see that in the canto.

Canto X--the Heretics


Who is Farinata degli Uberti? How does Dante know him?


How do these two treat each other?


Who is Cavalcante dei Cavalcanti? How does Dante know him? What does Dante say to upset Cavalcanti? How does he "fix" this later?


Note the many-leveled symbolism of this encounter, especially as it pertains to a rival poet.
Note all the gyre-imagery (pertains to Yeats' poem, "The Second Coming"). It is even in the dialog:


"'Supreme Virtue, who through the impious land/ wheel me at will down these dark gyres,' I said, / speak to me, for I wish to understand'" (4-6).


Note the reference to Epicurus and his followers--it is in the footnotes.


Note how Dante flatters the sinner in this realm: "'O Tuscan, who go on living through this lace/ speaking so decorously, may it please you pause/ a moment on your way, for by the grace/ of that high speech in which I hear your birth,/ I know you for a son of that noble city/ which perhaps I vexed too much in my time on earth'" (23-27).


Note the physical movement and the tone of admiration: "My eyes were fixed on him already. Erect, / he rose above the flame, great chest, great brow;/ he seemed to hold all Hell in disrespect" (34-36).

Virgil admonishes Dante to "'mind how you speak to him'" (39).

Note the following description and the use of pathos: "At this another shade rose gradually, / visible to the chin. It had raised itself,/ I think, upon its knees, and it looked around me / as if it expected to find through the black air / that blew around me, another traveler. / And weeping when it found no one there, turned back" (52-57).


Note Farinata's connection to the earth still--he blames his plight, in part, on "'edicts pronounced against my strain'" (84).


Farinata regrets the destruction of Florence, something he would not have done.


Know that sinners lack the knowledge of the present! "'We see asquint, like those whose twisted sight / can make out only the far-off,' he said, 'for the King of All still grants us that much light'" (100-102).

"'Except what others bring us / we have no news of those who are alive'" (104-105).
He mentions some sinners, but "'of the rest let us be dumb'" (120).

Great description:
"So saying, he bore left, turning his back / on the flaming walls, and we passed deeper yet / into the city of pain, along a track / which plunged down like a scar into a sink/ which sickened us already with its stink" (134-137).

Note how the above passage foreshadows or transitions into the next canto!

Canto XI--The Heretics




The footnotes talk about the harrowing of Hell. Note that.

Pope Anastasius (496-498)--the Great Schism




Lower Hell is based upon Aristotle's The Ethics and The Physics. It ends two ours before Holy Saturday.





Note the transition at the opening of the canto: "We came to the edge of an enormous sink / rimmed by a circle of great broken boulders" (1-2).





Know Plotinus (see footnotes).





Malice differs from sins of incontinence because it has to do with intent. Earlier, we had the sins of incontinence. They have more to do with our animal appetites.





Virgil: "'Malice is the sin most hated by God. / And the aim of malice is to injure others / whether by fraud or violence. But since fraud / is the vice of which man alone is capable / God loathes it most. Therefore, the fraudulent / are placed below, and their torment is more painful'" (22-27).





Violence "'sins in three persons, so is that circle formed / of three descending rounds of cruel torments. / Against God, self, and neighbor is violence shown'" (29-31).





"A man may lay violent hands upon his own / persons and substance; so in that second round / eternally in vain repentance moan/ the suicides and all who gamble away / and waste the good substance of their lives / and weep in that sweet time when they should be gay" (40-45).





Unlike the Medieval man, the Eenaissance man was supposed to love the world as part of God's creation. We are seeing some of that represented in the above passage.


"Violence may be offered the deity/ in the heart that blasphemes and refuses Him / and scorns the gifts of Nature, her beauty and her bounty" (46-48).





Note the descriptive nature of Dante's question to Virgil: "'But tell me: those who lie in the swamp's bowels, /those the wind blows about, those the rain beats, / and those who meet and clash with such mad howls--/ why are they not punished in the rust-red city / if God's wrath be upon them? And if it is not, / why must they grieve through all eternity?'" (70-75).





Here, Virgil rebukes him for not knowing the answer through reason--particularly, through Aristotle's Ethics. This was the only pagan philosopher permitted and his structures helped to shape the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic church.





Usury is mentioned. Dante asks why it is so bad and Virgil explains: "'Philosophy makes it plain by many reasons,' he answered me, 'to those who heed her teachings, / how all of Nature, --her laws, her fruits, her seasons,--springs from the Ultimate Intellect and its art: / and if you read your Physics with due care, / you will note, not many pages from the start , /that Art strives after her by imitation, / as the disciple imitates the master; / Art, as it were, the Grandchild of Creation./ By this, recalling the Old Testament / near the beginning of Genesis, you will see / that in the will of Providence, which was meant/ to labor and to prosper. But usurers, by seeking their increase in others ways, / scorn Nature in herself and her followers'" (97-111).





Note the transitional nature of the last line of the canto:
"'But come, for it is my wish now to go on:/ the wheel turns and the Wain lies over Caurus, the Fish are quivering low on the horizon, / and there beyond us runs the road we go/ down the dark scarp into the depths below'" (112-116).





Canto XII--Circle Seven: Round One--the Violent Against Neighbors

Dante and Virgil have to evade which mythological creature?


Below is the River of Blood-described in the previous canto: As they wallowed in blood during their lives, so they are immersed in the boiling blood forever, each according to the degree of his guilt, while fierce Centaurs patrol the banks, ready to shoot with their arrows any sinner who raises himself out of the boiling blood beyond the limits permitted him" (1190).


Know which famous sinners can be found here.





Who is Chiron and what does he do for the pair? What is Chiron's relationship to Achilles?


Note the transitional nature of the first line as well as its descriptive nature, which includes several metaphors.


"The scene that opened from the edge of the pit/ was mountainous, and such a desolation/ that every eye would shun the sight of it: / a ruin like the Slides of Mark near Trent/ on the bank of the Adige, the result of an earthquake/ or of some massive fault in the escarpment--/ for, from the point on the peak where the mountain split/ to the plain below, the rock is so badly shattered / a man on the top might make a rough stair of it" (1-9).





Pay attention to the footnotes about the wicked queen and the Minotaur. Know the story.





Know Nesus' story too, also in the footnotes.





Note the descriptive nature of the following passage: "We drew near those swift beasts. In a thoughtful pause / Chiron drew an arrow, and with its notch / he pushed his great beard back along his jaws. / And when he had thus uncovered the huge pouches/ of his lips, he said to his fellows: 'Have you noticed how the one who walks behind moves what he touches? That is not how the dead go'" (76-82).



Canto XIII--The Violent Against Themselves

This is one of the most poignant for me--the suicides. We know a lot more about issues like depression than they knew in Dante's time and that there is often a bio-chemical component that can now be treated. Even without that understanding, Dante's narrator is sympathetic. Know how the suicides are punished. It actually reminds me of the scene in "The Wizard of Oz," when Dorothy picks an apple from a tree.


Note the Unknown Florentine Suicide who appears at the end of the canto. His anonymity is part of his punishment. There is no remembering him. That is very sad. Now, for the canto and any interesting lines--and especially diction--take note.



I want you to do what Dante does--to bring a scene to life with words. Try reading the lines aloud. The rhythms of the language also contribute to the sensory perceptions. "Its foliage was not verdant, but nearly black. / The unhealthy branches, gnarled and warped and tangled, / bore poison thorns instead of fruit" (4-6).

Look at the description of the Harpies. Note the simplicity of the language. It is simple, but specific. Try to picture this. "Their wings are wide, their feet clawed, their huge bellies / covered with feathers, their necks and faces human. / They croak eternally in the unnatural trees" (13-15).

"I heard cries of lamentation rise and spill / on every hand, but saw no souls in pain / in all that waste; and, puzzled, I stood still. / I think perhaps he thought that I was thinking / those cries rose from among the twisted roots / through which the spirits of the damned were slinking / to hide from us" (22-28).

Look at this wonderful dialog and the diction. By the way, unless you are writing in verse, I want you to put different speakers in new paragraphs. At the end, note how Virgil apologizes for having to hurt the sinner and how he promises that Dante will talk about the sinner when he gets back on earth as a kind of compensation for the pain caused: "'If you break off a twig, what you will learn / will drive what you are thinking from your head.' / Puzzled, I raised my hand a bit and slowly / broke off a branchlet from an enormous thorn: / and the great trunk of it cried: ' Why do you break me?' / And after the blood had darkened all the bowl / of the wound, it cried again: 'Why do you tear me? / Is there no pity left in any soul? / Men we were, and now we are changed to sticks; / well might your hand have been more merciful were we no more than souls of lice and ticks.' / As a green branch with one end all aflame / will hiss and sputter sap out of the other / as the air escapes--so from that trunk there came / words and blood together, gout by gout. / Startled, I dropped the branch I was holding / and stood transfixed by fear, half turned about / to my Master, who replied: ' O wounded soul, / could he have believed before what he has seen / in my verses only, you would yet be whole, / for his hand would never have been raised against you. / But knowing this truth could never be believed / till it was seen, I urged him on to do / what grieves me now; and I beg to know your name, / that to make you some amends in the sweet world / when he returns, he may refresh your fame'" (29-54).

Pay attention to how the sinner blames others for his plight: "'Through every strife / I was so faithful to my glorious office / that for it I gave up both sleep and life./ That harlot, Envy, who on Caesar's face / keeps fixed forever her adulterous stare, / the common plague and vice of court and palace, / inflamed all minds against me. these inflamed / so inflamed him that all my happy honors / were changed to mourning. Then, unjustly blamed, my soul, in scorn, made me at last, though just, unjust to myself. By the roots of this tree / I swear to you that never in word or spirit / did I break faith to my lord and emperor / who was so worthy of honor in his merit./ If either of you return to the world, speak for me, / to vindicate in the memory of men / one who lies prostrate from the blows of Envy'" (61-78). Again, note the attitude toward suicide: "'Like the rest, we shall go for our husks on Judgment Day, / but not that we may wear them, for it is not just / that a man be given what he throws away'" (103-105).

Canto XIV--Circle Seven, Round Three--the Violent Against God [blasphemers], Nature [homosexuals], and Art [usury]

Know how they are punished.

Who is Capaneus?

"Enormous herds of naked souls I saw, / lamenting till their eyes were burned of tears; / they seemed condemned by an unequal law, / for some were stretched supine upon the ground, / some squatted with their arms about themselves, and others without pause roamed round and round" (16-21).




According to the footnotes, why did Rhea have to dupe Saturn?




What is the name of the frozen lake at the bottom of the Inferno?




Canto XV--Circle Seven: Round Three--The Violent Against Nature

This may be my favorite canto because it is a tribute to a beloved teacher. It conjures in my mind teachers and mentors who greatly influenced my own life. Ser Brunetto Latino is the main character here. He is here because he is supposedly a homosexual. In real life, there is no proof one way or the other whether Latino was a homosexual. He was married and had several children. He might have been gay, but it was against the law. Those found or even assumed guilty of homosexual acts were often hunted down, tortured, and then executed--publicly.


By the way, Dante is the one who places homosexuals in his Inferno. Some people still feel that way. I do not.

Nice simile: "They stared at us / as men at evening by the new moon's light / stare at one another when they pass by / on a dark road, pointing their eyebrows toward us / as an old tailor squints at his needle's eye" (17-21).

"And I, when he stretched out his arm to me, / searched his baked features closely, till at last / I traced his image from my memory / in spite of the burnt crust, and bending near / to put my face closer to his, at last / I answered: 'Ser Brunetto, are you here?'" (25-30).


"I did not dare descend to his own level/ but kept my head inclined, as one who walks / in reverence meditating good and evil" (43-45).

"And he: 'Follow your star, for if in all / of the sweet life I saw one truth shine clearly, / you cannot miss your glorious arrival. / And had I lived to do what I meant to do, / I would have cheered and seconded your work, / observing Heaven so well disposed toward you. / But that ungrateful and malignant stock / that came down from Fiesole of old / and still smacks of the mountain and the rock, / for your good works enemy. / And there is cause: the sweet fig is not meant / to bear its fruit beside the sorb tree. / Even the old adage calls them blind, / an envious, proud, and avaricious people: / see that you root their customs from your mind'" (55-69).


Look at how the narrator expresses his grief over Brunetto's plight: "'Ah, had I all my wish,' I answered then, ' you would not yet be banished from the world / in which you were a radiance among men, / for that sweet image, gentle and paternal, / you were to me in the world when hour by hour / you taught me how man makes himself eternal,* lives in my mind, and now strikes to my heart; / and while I live, the gratitude I owe it / will speak to men out of my life and art'" (79-87). *

This teacher taught Dante his art--poetry. When we create art, we create a kind of immortality--for ourselves and for the subjects of that art. Note too, that Dante offers Latino the same kind of immortality. Dante will tell the world about his beloved mentor. Latino does not have to ask to be remembered. Dante will make sure that this is so.