Tag Archives: Inferno

” The Filthy image of Fraud”

A wood engraving of Geryon by Gustavo Doré.

Towards the end of canto 16, Dante notices a monster that rises from the depths of the water and this is Geryon. In Canto 17, Geryon is introduced as the monster, the “filthy image of fraud”. Geryon is a personification of fraud, (lines 10-15) “Its face was that of a just man, so kindly seemed its outer skin, and the rest of its torso was that of a serpent; it had two paws, hairy to the armpits; it had back and breast and both sides with knots and little wheels: …” He is described as a hideous beast that is used as the image of fraud. Dante uses a metaphor and compares him to a beaver because during medieval times the biologists thought that beavers caught fish by sticking their tails in the water and secreting some oily substance that the fish were fond of. Geryon is secreting “fraud” or in the words of Dante “Behold the one that makes the whole world stink!” (line 3) “Fraud makes all physical barriers and defenses (mountains, walls, and armor) useless”. It poisons the world with venom and humans do grow fond of fraud and end up committing it. People convince one another to commit fraud by promising that they will end up rich and live extravagantly and use deception for personal gain.

Geryon’s body represents the “chronological sequence of a fraudulent deal”.  Geryon’s initial appearance represents trust, the bright colors of his torso can confuse and by the end of the ordeal comes the sting which is either death or of loss. Geryon’s colorful torso is also related to the leopard’s painted skin that represents fraud.  In lines 25-27 Geryon is compared to a scorpion “In the emptiness all its tail was wriggling, twisting, upward the poisoned fork that armed it tip like a scorpion’s”.  Certain scorpions with rose tails symbolize a “double-edged sword” meaning that they can sting immensely or be pleasant. Both scorpions and Geryon have very venomous tails. In other words, Geryon can sting by deceiving someone with his honest face for his own personal interests or he can be somewhat helpful. In this canto, Geryon did help Virgil and Dante by taking them around the waterfall of the river Phlegethon down to the Circle of Fraud. Dante was struck with horror when Virgil requested a ride from the monster. As he climbed on Geryon he saw countless sinners suffering from above and was scared the entire time. Moreover, in Canto 3, Cerberus was introduced was a three-headed dog but is also “the great worm”; like Geryon they are both part snake. In Genesis 3, serpents are considered the first deceivers.

The Coding of “Violence Against Nature”

In Canto XV, Dante traverses the lowest part of the seventh circle of the Inferno, the subcircle of violence against nature. The term  of ‘voilence against nature’ is for the sin of sodomy, which is known as the, “unspeakable sin” by Carolyn Dinshaw throughout her book, Getting Medieval. This sin is coded as ‘unmentionable’ or the sin ‘against nature,’ as Dinshaw explains, is because agents of the church did not want to give people ideas as to what the sin is, but rather that any sin of the sexual nature falls under it (3-12). This codification of sodomy groups same sex interactions with those of premartial sex, beastiality, and any other form of sex without the intent of procreation. This grouping decenters the common notion of queer sex as being exclusively same sex in the Middle Ages, but also queers any form of sex outside of the sanctity of marriage, but even within this unoffical codification of sodomy there seems to be a heirarchy of sevarity, which is why same sex lovers are found in violence against nature rather than lust where adulterers can be found. Also note that men are the main inhabitants if not the only inhabtants of this subcircle. The reasoning for this is because it is an attack on God’s perfect image of what is ‘natural.’ For a man to give up his masculinity in the act of same sex interactions and is seen as a threat on the structures of the patriarchial societial structures sanctioned by those in power, may they be secular or clergy, who are given their authority by  God.

 

Works Cited:

Dinshaw, Carolyn. Getting Medieval: Sexualities and Communites, Pre- and Postmodern. Duke University Press (1999). Print.

Violence Against Themselves

 

Dante about to rip off a twig off of Pier della Vigna, Illustration by Gustavo Dorè

In Canto 13, Virgil and Dante enter the 7thcircle, Second ring: Violence against themselves. Dante had noticed all these black trees and black leaves surrounding them; it had been the homeland of the Harpies. Virgil then asks Dante to break off a part of branch and as soon as Dante does it the tree cries out.

“Then I stretched out my hand a little way and from a great thornbush snapped off a branch,
at which its trunk cried out: “Why do you tear me?” And then, when it had grown more dark with blood, it asked again: “Why do you break me off? Are you without all sentiment of pity?” (Inferno 31-36)

When reading through this canto you immediately picture entering a dark place, filled with tall black trees filled with black leaves bleeding black blood everywhere. Along with seeing this you hear the loud moans of something sounding like humans, almost like loud cries. With all of this dark and gloomy imagery, the reader can sense the feelings of loneliness, disparity, and melancholy as described in canto 13. When reading through these two terzinas, I thought to myself how sad it was to be stuck inside a tree for the rest of your life for the sin you committed. Since, committing suicide was one of the biggest sins, they received a very harsh punishment. They are punished to feel as inhumane as possible; they’re stuck inside trees with no voice whatsoever. They even get tortured when harpies eat their leaves. Moreover, the tree that talked to Dante was Pier della Vigna, who was the private counselor to Emperor Frederick the Third. Pier goes on to explain that he and the rest of the forest used to be men and they deserve greater mercy by men like Dante. Pier was stuck in the 7thcircle because he had committed suicide after hearing nasty rumors about himself and the Emperor. After Dante hears his story, Pier asks Dante if he could clear his reputation in the living world by clarifying that he never betrayed Emperor Frederick the Third. Lastly, Dante’s use of imagery was very effective throughout this canto because you were vividly able to picture the forest in your mind. It makes it more pleasurable to read because you start to imagine everything in your head making easier to follow.

The Deceitful Are Punished


In canto 11 of Inferno Dante and Virgil reach the edge of a cliff in which lower parts of hell are visible to  Dante and Virgil. Dante can already smell that horrible smell that is rising from down below. The two poets take pause during continuing their journey and see a vault with these words written on it: “of a great tomb, on which I made out this,inscribed: ‘I hold Pope Anastasius enticed to leave the true path by Photinus.’” (Digital Dante, note to lines 7-9, canto 11).  The imagery of the vault shows how Dante believes that Pope Anastasius accepted the heresy of Acacius patriarch of Constantinople. Acadius believed that Christ possessed only a human nature and denied that Christ had a  divine power. Therefore, Pope Anastasius is punished by God—because a pope is supposed to be God’s follower and supposed to believe in God’s power, for God was placed on earth by his father to show humans he was the survivor and the only Christ but Pope Anastasius rejects God hence breaking the promise/ trust he has with God. Therefore, popes who are also humans are capable of doing corrupt things; although Popes are mostly devoted to God and are a symbol of purity, Popes can be still choose evilness because they are capable of straying away from God and are capable of straying away from the path of goodness because they are mortal and humane. This quote relates to the overall theme of this canto because while Dante and Virgil are waiting, Virgil explains the different section of hell. Looking down into hell, Virgil says that there are three circles of hell within the cliffs and the circles that commit more monstrous deeds, receive more serious punishments deeper in hell. Fraud is the most damned sin because it is the opposite of love. Fraud breaks the promise of love because fraud destroys faith/ trust. Therefore, Pope Anastasius receives the worst punishment because he committed a sinful crime such as turning away from God, the connection he has with God is now broken. God no longer trusts him, hence Pope Anastasius broke the love between him and God because the pope was deceitful towards God not believing in God for whom he really was and denying God’s divinity. Furthermore, Virgil says that those who commit wrongdoings against heaven end up getting punished, these punishers go to the lowest parts of Hell. Therefore, Francesca and Paolo weren’t placed in the lowest part of hell because their intimacy and love for one another was stronger than the actual punishment itself.

Evil as Contagion in Canto XI

Before decending into the lower divisions of the Inferno, Dante and Virgil’s “descent will have to be delayed, so that [their] sense can become a little accustomed to the evil smell; and then [they] can disregard it” (Inferno XI: x-xii). This passage indicates two medieval concepts, the concept of Hell as an assult of the human senses and the concept of smell idiosyncratic  of contagion. The imagery through out Inferno up until this point has emphasized the exess of the senses being overstymulated by foulness, from deafening noise, hidious oders, to scenes of unspeakable violence to the human physicality. This is the notion that Hell is a display of corporial punishment on the soul for its sins when it once had a true physical form in life. The sense of smell in particular in Hell takes on a whole new layer beyond the notion of over stymulation. Smell in the Middle Ages was considered one of the main ways in which contagion is spread, which is why in the years of the plague the infamous image of plague doctor mask was prominant, because it was believed that smells took longer to travel in these masks and in the beak of the mask there would be sweet smelling herbs to block the foul smell of contagion. When looking at this opening passage in the Inferno (ad just Inferno as a whole) the sense of smell is brought to the center of the delay that Dante and Virgil must edure before their decent. This is because they do not want to be assulted and consequently corrupted by the contagion of evil. Evil, in the Middle Ages, was treated like a disease, which is why evil or unsavory people are usually portrayed as having a form of contagious  illness like leprasy or pox and in Dante’s Comedy this notion of evil as contagion, as displayed in this passage in Canto XI, is salient.