1 Cari Dantisti: Thus far we have been moving slowly, with just two cantos for a class session. Starting October 14, we take on more. Fasten your safety belt. The format of the Alumni College is seminar rather than lecture, which means that I am not meant to dominate the scene but rather to facilitate discussion. That said, each week I want to make sure to give you what I can ahead of time to enrich our time together. Hence the prompt and the attachments I am including with this email or my suggestion that from time to time you investigate (https://digitaldante.columbia.edu/) Professor Barolini’s canto by canto commentary or video lectures. One of the things Dante teachers must accept is that there are limits to what we can do with the text, whether studied twice a week over a year, as has been my custom, or in our eight-week, once a week format. It’s impossible to cover everything or go into depth as fully as the text warrants. Therefore, I’ll try to suggest the big picture and then choose places to focus. On October 14th, I’ve chosen to look at two episodes where Dante Pilgrim “loses” it. Francesca (INF 5) is one of the most beloved characters in the entire poem, which doesn’t mean that she is not problematic. (We are in hell and Dante is all empathy!) To many readers, INF 8 and Filippo Argenti are disturbing because of the hatred and violence between them. (Dante is all rage where wrath is being punished, which Virgil celebrates.) These are important episodes. I think I know what is going on in INF 5, but am not sure about INF 8. No doubt, you have different kinds of time at your disposal and different levels of interest. Feel free only to read the INFERNO text carefully as well as my weekly prompt. The rest is by way of well-intentioned extra, meant to be a blessing not a bane. Peter 2 Alumni Prompt INF 5-9 Yale Alumni College October 14, 2020 INFERNO 5-9, Love, Rage, and a Helpless Virgil Once we leave behind the gracious, luminous precincts of Limbo, we enter into the atmosphere of hell proper: dark, noisy, wretched, and urban. Punished at first entry are sins of the appetite (cantos 5-8), which are judged less grievous than those which follow within the City of Dis, the sins of the will and intellect. In cantos 10-17 we find various sins of violence. Then, on the back of the winged monster Geryon, we descend into the sink hole of Malebolge (18-31) with its exploration of the “clever” sins of fraud. Finally, another descent leads to the frozen bottom level of Cocytus (32-24), where we get sins of treachery, the betrayal of deep human bonds. (The diagram on p. xvi of the Durling edition will give you the lay of the infernal land; the maps on pp. xiii and xiv the Italian reference points invoked throughout the journey.) As the Pilgrim follows in Virgil’s footsteps he moves ever downward, across circles that are gradually diminishing in circumference. His movement is from bad to worse to worst, from expanse to contraction. A rationale of sins punished in Hell is given at length in INF. 11 once Virgil and Dante are inside the City of Dis. The intellectual territory here is an amalgam of Cicero and Aristotle, with some Christian outlier categories thrown in for good measure (i.e., the virtuous unbaptized in canto 4, heretics in 10). What we will see along the way is the law of contrapasso (INF 28.142) whereby the punishment of the damned more or less obviously fits or expresses their sin. What they were on earth they “get” forever in the afterlife. In our reading for today we find clustered sins of incontinence: lust (canto 5), gluttony (6), avarice-prodigality (7), and wrath (8). The lustful are swept along in a never-ending storm of desire, the gluttons wallow in filth, the wrathful attack one another in a muddy swamp, and so on. Our discussion foci on 10/14 will be Dante’s meeting with Francesca in INF 5 and his altercation with Filippo Argenti in INF 8. In both cases note the passive or active role Virgil plays in the encounter, the wildly different emotional reactions of the Pilgrim to each, and what we can discern of the Poet’s intention for us as readers. INFERNO 5 rewards careful attention in part because it is so intensely literary, allusive to other texts and so self-consciously rhetorical. One might well ask what lust has to do with it when highfalutin AMOR, AMOR, AMOR sweeps us up and along. To assist your appreciation of the canto’s rich complexity I am sending you two documents along with this prompt. “Texts in Context” is a brief anthology of texts that are “in the air” of the canto; “The Art of Reading INFERNO 5” suggests ways I have come to analyze the episode – things to notice and to look for. I’ll allude to this material in a recap rather than presenting it outright. Keep close watch on the Pilgrim. He swoons with pity for Francesca’s eternal lot but then three cantos later rages violently against a Florentine contemporary, Filippo Argenti. In both cases he loses control of his emotions, fainting at Francesca’s story and vilifying his fellow Florentine with gusto. Note the contrast in mood and style between these two meetings, and in particular note Virgil’s biblical (!) accolade for the Pilgrim’s fury in a place where anger is being punished. (Is the poet losing control here?) 3 We see Virgil lose control at the end of canto 8 and beginning of 9. Until this point, he has been the all-purpose master and guide: knowledgeable, wise, authoritative, in charge. Suddenly, impotent before the locked gate of the City of Dis, he is unable to gain entry thanks to the machinations of demons and furies who turn his ghostly face a whiter shade of pale (8.82—120). The Pilgrim is terrified to hear the paragon of eloquence – praised by Beatrice for his efficacious “parola ornata” (2.67) – now sputtering in “parola tronca” (9.14), and hoping for someone else to come to the rescue. That happens when a messenger from heaven arrives on the scene. With merely a wave of his little wand (“vergetta,” 9. 88) he sends the demons scattering as the barricaded doors of Dis open up. The passage is difficult to understand. Who is the mysterious Medusa (8.52ff), who with a glance threatens to arrive and prevent the Pilgrim from going further? Why is Virgil blocked at this moment in the descent, and to what end this crisis in Virgilian authority? “O you who have sound intellects, gaze on the teaching that is hidden beneath the veil of the strange verses” (9. 61-63). What do you find there? To help you navigate this sweep of cantos, I have a “cheat sheet” for you: “Alumni: INF 5-9. I hope it keeps you oriented in this welter of text. 4 Alumni INF 5-9 INFERNO 5-9 How to keep track of the poem when reading five cantos at a time? Start with spot recall: what character, image, situation, gesture, event comes immediately to mind? (A) Upper hell. Three different appetitive sins displayed, punished; lust (5) gluttony (6), avarice/prodigality (7), anger expressed, repressed (8). Further down, sins involving the will, the intellect, the ‘higher capacities’. We travel through cities: from Dis (10-17), descend Malebolgia( 18- 31), drop to Cocytus (32-34). Hell’s funnel shape, going down, getting smaller (B) Four different atmospheres or landscapes: (5) unrelenting storm (6) ‘frozen rain,’ muck & merda, into which the damned are submerged, dissolving: indigestion (7) level surface on which weights or boulders being rolled toward one another, colliding, then retreating and starting it up all over again, futility (8) muddy swamp on the edge of a towered, mosque-like city, in which swamp the damned either tear at one another or gurgle beneath the surface in ‘passive aggression’ (9) Tartarus-like city of Dis rising from swamp, whose gate is shut tight, whose ramparts are platforms for the Furies and “more than a thousand demons” (C) Classical Guardian-Demons to carry on the relevance of the ancient world to poem: (5). Minos the judge, (6) Cerberus, (7) Plutus, (8) Phlegyas; (9)Erinys or Furies [Medusa] (D) Different kinds of drama: (5) intimate conversation with Francesca, emotional reaction to her (6) friendly conversation with Ciacco (8) fight w/ Filippo (8), Demons, furies before Dis (8), Dante’s fear, V’s upset, before the locked gates (8-9) (9) Possibility of Medusa/The Gorgon/ petrification; spectacular angelic arrival (E) Different kinds of Information: 5 (5) * distinct kinds of carnal sinners * Virgil’s Dido * medieval love literature (6) *Florentine politics & first veiled prophecy of D’s future *Surprises re. who is where in afterlife *First prophecy of the second coming of Christ as judge *Post-resurrection “perfection” of afterlife condition, for worse and for better, once souls reunited with body (7) *Predominance of clergy in avarice/prodigality *Revelation that much-reviled Fortuna is not a demon but an angel, who keeps stirring the pot, disrupting and distributing privilege along with deprivation (9) * V’s recollected version of what happened once before, before Beatrice’s recruitment: a witch, Erichtho, bids V not long after his death -- around the same time as the Harrowing of Hell – to descend to Giudecca and release a soul from very bottom of Inferno.