14. Sometimes, You Get The Hell You Want: INFERNO, Canto III, Lines 22 - 69
Utter chaos!
Our pilgrim and his guide walk beyond hell's entrance to encounter . . . well, the sort of hell we thought we were going to get. Maybe not the wasps. But the rest of it? The chaos and pain, the darkness and the filth? Yep, that hell.
We've come to the place of the angels and humans who never made a choice. And maybe weren’t ever really alive. And so maybe aren’t really dead.
The hellish imagery may be SOP, but this passage is the wild west of theology.
The segments for this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE:
[02:17] My English translation of INFERNO, Canto III, Lines 22 - 69
[05:12] A little pep talk from me to spur you on in reading the COMEDY.
[08:41] "I began to weep"--the pilgrim's first response to hell. After Virgil's smile?
[13:48] A first glance at the damned--and a first glance at the expansive nature of Dante's imagination: He can make up celestial beings that exist nowhere else in Christianity.
[18:02] What is the nature of sin? Is it an act of the will? Or a state of being? Our poet seems to be choosing "choice." Problem is, the church doesn't.
[20:34] A little bit of existential reality from this medieval poet.
[23:00] Who is the shade who made "the great refusal"?
[28:22] One final problem: Maybe not giving us adequate clues to solve the matter of who made "the great refusal" shows us our pilgrim's cowardice. Maybe he's trying to remain neutral.
[30:20] We got the hell we wanted. We got it out of the way. Now the poet's imagination can be fully engaged.
My English translation of Inferno, Canto III, Lines 22 – 69:
Here sighs, cries, and high-pitched wailing
Resonated so loudly in the air without stars
That I began to weep.
Diverse languages, horrible accents,
Words of woe, cries of anger,
Voices shrill and throaty, and the sound of hands smacking
Swirled together in storm
Through the stinking, timeless air,
Like sand spins in a hurricane.
Misconceptions so shrouded my head
That I said, “Master, what do I hear?
And who are these people so conquered by pain?”
And he to me, “This is the miserable state
Of the sorrowful spirits who lived
By avoiding both disgrace and praise.
“Mingled among them is the bad band
Of angels who neither rebelled against God,
Nor were loyal to him, but were for themselves alone.
“Heaven rejects them to maintain its beauty,
And deep hell will not accept them
For fear that those down below might have have something to gloat about.”
And I: “Master, what so pains them
That it makes them lament so loudly?”
And his response: “I will be quite brief.
“Those here have no hope of death,
And their blind life is so low
That they are envious of every other state.
“The world above does not permit them to be known;
Mercy and justice disdain them.
Let’s not talk about them. Look and let’s go.”
So I looked again and saw a banner
Whirling around the perimeter so fast
That it didn’t seem able to come to rest.
A long train of people followed
Behind the banner, so many
That I had not thought death had undone so many.
Some of them I recognized;
I even picked out the shade of that coward
Who made the great refusal.
I instantly knew with full certainty
That these were the sorry lot who displeased
Both God and his enemies.
These wretches, who were never really alive,
Were naked and stung all over
By swarms of flies and wasps.
Their faces were streaked with blood,
Which mixed with their tears and streamed down
To be sopped up at their feet by disgusting worms.
FOR MORE STUDY
One translation issue:
The question about the not-fallen angels turns on a translation issue. We can see it at lines 38 - 39: “de li angeli che non furon ribelli/ né fur fedeli a Dio, ma per sé fuoro” (literally, “some of the angels who were not rebellious nor were faithful to God but for themselves were”). That sounds like they made a choice! “Per sé,” for themselves! But it may not be a choice here. In Dante’s world, there isn’t really a choice for individuation, for your own desires disconnected from anything else. For Dante, desire seems to need a goal. And look how the poet worked out those verbs: “furon . . . fur . . . fuoro.” They’re all forms of “were” . . . except the last one doesn’t have a predicate adjective. It seems more of a statement of being unto itself, not of being “in some way.” Is that also part of the problem?
Five interpretive issues:
At least one Dante scholar remains dissatisfied with this scene. Natalino Sapegno believes Dante has confused cowardice (“viltade”—line 60) with mediocrity—thus, Dante has begun his poem by making a hash out of morality. And one reason this mix-up is so troubling is because the pilgrim himself has already been accused of cowardice twice (at INFERNO, Canto II, line 45, and Canto II, line 122). Cowardice is a failure to straighten the spine. But these souls seem namby-pamby, a step beyond just the weak-willed pilgrim who didn’t think he could make this astral journey. Do you think Sapegno’s criticism is valid? Do you think there’s a reason for this scene? We’re not even in hell proper yet. Where are we?
Why is it important to describe these souls as “naked” (line 65)? Naked on a battlefield?
Lines 56 - 57: “ch’i non averei creduto/ che morte tanta n’avesse disfatta” (literally, “that I not could have believed/ that death all of them had undone”). I stressed the melancholy vibe of these lines. But it’s important to remember that they’re poetry, too . . . and include a metaphor: “disfatta” (that is, “undone,” “unmade,” “unfastened”). Does death “unmake” a person? Isn’t there a soul that goes on after death? Is it somehow “unmade” or “unconstructed” once it loses its body?
What about this guy who made “‘l gran rifiuto” (the grand refusal”)? Centuries of scholars and readers have not come to a satisfactory answer for who he is. (I lean toward Pontius Pilate but I’m not convinced). Could this also be a dramatized moment when the pilgrim’s will fails and he doesn’t do what he needs to do? Or is this the poet’s failure? (Am I really going to write a poem that puts known figures in hell, even popes?) Is the poet not yet up to the task of naming names? Or is this a moment when the poet behind the scenes is dramatizing a weird refusal in his pilgrim, as if his pilgrim has been infected by this antechamber of hell?
Finally, the curious question of life and death. First, we have line 46: “Questi non hanno speranza di morte” (literally, “These no have hope of death”). Then we get the other side of the equation at line 64: “Questi sciaurate, che mai non fur vivi . . .” (literally, “These low-lifes, who nevertheless not were alive . . .”). It’s almost as if Dante has doubled down, first saying they’re not dead, then saying, well, they were never alive either. Do you need a functioning will to be alive? That can’t be true, can it? Later on, in PURGATORIO XXV, we’ll find out that plants are not only alive but also have souls! However, Dante the poet may not have things worked out quite that far at this point in the poem. Is our world filled who are not really alive?
One journaling prompt:
Have you ever hesitated so much or were so afraid that you reached a spot where you just refused to make up your mind? What happened? Were you eventually forced to make up your mind? Or is not making up your mind an on-going “decision” for you?