23: Minos, The Connoisseur Of Sin: INFERNO, Canto V, Lines 1 - 24
Michelangelo’s Minos on the back wall Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel.
We've walked to the second circle of hell. The winds of lust are howling! But first we must meet, not the lustful themselves, but instead a connoisseur of sin: Minos, hell’s judge, jury, and executioner.
As we walk across the known universe, we expect to find things that puzzle us. It’s a trek into the unknown, after all. But here, as so often, a big part of the puzzle is Virgil. Is he as good a guide as he pretends to be?
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The segments of this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE:
[00:54] My English translation of INFERNO, Canto V, Lines 1 - 24. If you'd like to read along, find a study guide for a deeper understanding of the passage, or start a conversation with me by dropping a comment to this episode, scroll down this page.
[02:47] The descent from the first circle to the second, plus some thoughts on the geography of hell.
[04:48] Minos, a figure out mythology and into Virgil's AENEID.
[07:32] Minos is the gatekeeper to hell but he's not a demon from Christian tradition. He's our second mythic figure (after Charon).
[11:26] Questions about determinism and answers about grace (or, at least, about a sacrament: confession).
[16:19] The judgment itself, signaled by Minos’s tail--except this judgment brings up more questions about Limbo.
[19:48] Lots about Virgil: Minos' warning, Virgil's spell that works again, and the strangeness of Virgil himself, the embodiment of the ambivalence of Limbo, leading the pilgrim across the universe.
My English translation of INFERNO, Canto V, Lines 1 - 24:
So I went down from the first circle
And into the second, which rounds a smaller space
But has more pain to goad the cries.
Horrid Minos stands there, snarling.
He quizzes each sinner at the entrance,
Judging and sentencing them by wrapping himself up.
I mean that when the bad-born soul
Comes before him, it confesses everything
And that cognoscente of sin
Decides what its place in hell should be
By wrapping his tail around himself as many times
As the number of circles down it has to go.
They crowd him but go one at a time
To their judgment. They tell, they hear,
And they are hurled down.
“You there who comes to our hostelry of sorrow,”
Minos said when he saw me,
Setting aside the pursuit of his official duties,
“Beware how you get in and whom you trust.
Don’t kid yourself about the portal’s easy entrance!”
And my guide to him, “Why do you holler so much?
“Don’t get in the way of his destined journey.
This is willed where what is willed
Is what is done. Don’t question us anymore.”
FOR MORE STUDY
Two translation issues:
Does Minos’s tail flick back and forth or does it wrap him? The problem lies with line 6: “giudica e manda secondo ch’avvinghia” (literally, “judges and provides sentence that he coils”). Coils how? And coils what? His tail? In the air or around himself? Although we can see how Michelangelo interpreted the line, it’s cryptic. Dante’s explanation may be foreshortened because of the rhythm and rhyme he uses to construct his poem. But the interpretive problem isn’t solved by its restatement at line 11. There, at least we know the “what”: his tail. It “girds” Minos, which could mean it literally does so (like armor) or metaphorically does so (like St. Paul’s notion of girding yourself with righteousness—it fends off the damned). In the end, I prefer the literal “wrapping around,” about as Michelangelo saw it; but these translation questions remain open even today. (You might also ask how a tail can hold onto and throw an incorporeal shade over the edge, a much deeper question.)
When Minos sneers at the pilgrim Dante in line 20, he says, “Non t’inganni l’ampiezza de l’intrare” (literally, “don’t be fooled by the wideness of the entrance”). First off, there’s the question of the entrance. Which one? The gate with the “Abandon hope” inscription or the entrance here to the second circle of hell? Secondly, I translated “ampiezza” as “ease,” thereby giving the phrase a metaphorical twist, sort of like “we have ample space for your visit” (that is, your visit will be easy.) But “ampiezza” could be a literal description: a big space in front of Minos before the second circle. Either way, “ease” or “width,” it’s colored by the reflexive verb, “t’inganni” (“don’t make yourself ignorant” or more literally, “don’t en-ignorant yourself”). In other words, don’t trust yourself when it comes to either your eyes (the literal sense of “l’ampiezza”) or your experience (the metaphoric sense). No matter how you can solve the interpretive knot, it’s still a warning.
Three interpretive issues:
In my interpretation, our poet expresses much ambivalence when it comes to Limbo: his love of the classical world, his attraction to learning of all sorts. But he may try to back off that waffling at the start of Canto V with this clear declaration: “In this way, I descended from the first circle down into the second.” For me, that sentence leaves no doubt that Limbo is in hell. In fact, it seems almost too clarifying, as if the poet knows that he’s pushed the limits (Islamic thinkers with their slow, gray eyes, sitting around and discussing philosophy?) and he now needs to rectify the matter. This opening line of the canto may even seem cruel, especially with Virgil right there alongside the pilgrim. In other words, Dante left that place with one of the damned in tow. Do you find the line carries this much subtext? Is it more just an explanation of the plot? Or is there an even deeper allegory here, something about leaving behind what can be known for what can’t, while you still have one of those great thinkers with you?
The sentence that begins at line 7 is a bit strange, in that the poet seems to back up and explain things: “Dico che quando l’anima mal nata/ li vien dinanzi . . .” (literally, “I say that when the spirit bad born/ him comes in front of”). “Dico” is a rare moment in which the poet has to restate something because it wasn’t clear the first time around. But the clarification makes a bigger mess: “bad born spirit.” (I made a lot out of this in the episode.) The tough question for theology is whether evil is ontological (a part of who you are) or ethical (a judgment on what you do). Here, Dante seems to come down on the ontological side. And that’s certainly the orthodox side for Christianity in his day. But it won’t always be so in COMEDY. Already, Dante has begun to shift the game away from evil-as-who-you-are with the neutrals. (By the time we get up in PURGATORIO, the ontological explanation for evil will have left the game entirely.) But here, is Dante using a shorthand just to get the reader to what’s important: Here’s how you get damned to whatever circle is yours? Or is he still somewhat in doubt about how far outside the norms of Christian theology he should step after Limbo? So he steps momentarily into the orthodoxy of the fall and original sin—except he does so with Minos, a classical figure, far removed from Christian theology. (If we’re generous, we call this move “complex irony”; if we’re less than generous, we call it “a gaffe.”)
In the episode, I said that Limbo must have hordes of the damned passing through or around or at least near the castle with its moat, fountain, and green lawn. But there may be a way out of this riddle over a steady stream of traffic through an otherwise serene place. If we go back to the end of Canto IV, Virgil leads Dante away from Limbo “per altra via” (“by another way”—line 149). Was there another path all along? If so, Limbo is even more of a side quest than we first imagined!
One journaling prompt:
What makes you refuse the gifts of grace? What could you do in your life to make you more open to accepting grace when you find it?