29. Wide Awake With Cereberus: INFERNO, Canto VI, Lines 1 - 33
William Blake’s nightmarish but also comic vision of Dante’s Cerberus
Our pilgrim wakes up in the weather of the third circle of hell: hail, rain, and snow, making the ground a rancid swamp.
But wait, wakes up? How'd he get there?
In any event, he and Virgil soon come to the guard dog Cerberus. Virgil doesn't try his word spell this time. Instead, he does something wilder: he rewrites his own work, THE AENEID.
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The segments for this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE:
[00:30] My English translation INFERNO, Canto VI, lines 1 - 33. If you'd like to read along, find a more intense study guide, or even continue the conversation with me by dropping a comment on this episode, scroll down this page.
[03:27] A question about the mind/body split--which will play out in surprising ways in this canto, including questions about the body politic. And a last (for now) look at Francesca and Paolo.
[06:18] How exactly does our pilgrim descend a level?
[10:08] The third circle of hell. And the first references to Aristotle, who will come to dominate this canto.
[12:37] Cerberus, the three-headed dog from THE AENEID. Sort of.
[21:48] The canto's only simile--which is truly mid.
[25:10] Or are we running into the limits of writing by topos?
[28:35] Rereading the passage: INFERNO, Canto VI, lines 1 - 33.
My English translation of INFERNO, Canto VI: Lines 1 – 33:
When I came back to my mind, after it had shut down
Over the pity I’d felt for those two family members,
Which had thoroughly mixed me up with sadness,
New torments and new examples of the tormented
I see all around me, whichever way I move,
Or turn myself, or direct my sight.
I am in the third cicle, the one with the eternal,
Cursed, freezing, and leaden rain,
Which is never made new in either measure or quality.
Giant hailstones, fetid water, and snow
Fall down through the darkened air—
The ground that sucks it all up is rancid.
Cerberus, a horrid and cruel beast,
Barks from his three throats as a dog
Over the people who are submerged here.
His eyes are scarlet, his beard is oily and black,
His gut is swollen and his hands have talons.
He mauls, flays, and quarters the spirits.
The downpour makes them howl like dogs;
They toss and turn from one side to the other,
Trying to shield their profanely miserable selves.
When Cerberus, the tremendous worm, noticed us,
He unlatched his mouth and showed off his fangs—
No part of himself was held still.
At which point my leader extended his hands,
Grabbed some dirt, and threw full fists of it
Into the ravenous windpipes.
Just as a dog that lets it rip when it’s hungry
And quiets itself when it wolfs down its dinner,
Abandonning itself to chewing,
Just so those foul, ugly muzzles
Of that demon Cerberus were stilled, who otherwise is so loud
That those souls wish they were deaf.
FOR MORE STUDY
Two translation issues:
When the pilgrim regains consciousness, he identifies Francesca and Paolo as more than just lovers: “Al tornar de la mente, che si chiuse/ dinanzi a la pietà d’i due cognati . . .” (literally, “At the turning of the mind, that had closed itself/ inside at the sorrow of the two in-laws . . .”—lines 1 - 2). “Cognati” has given Dante scholars centuries of fodder. Under medieval ecclesiastical law, brother-in-law and sister-in-law are indeed “family”—so their love would be not only adulterous but incestuous. But we don’t know how familiar Dante was with the intricacies of canon law. Plus, the word seems louder than even that interpretation, especially since it rhymes with “tormentati” (“tormented ones”) at line 4. Perhaps the pilgrim’s disorientation causes him to “reinterpret” Francesca and Paolo, to remember them as more malevolent than they appear back in Canto V? Perhaps his mental return brings more clarity? (Does one need to absent a situation to understand it better?) Or is he now upping the stakes to make his wildly dramatic reaction to them more understandable?
The problem with Cerberus being a dog without being fully a dog begins with a strange word in line 14: “con tre gole caninamente latra” (literally, “with three gullets dogly barks”). Caninamente? An adverb? So is he a dog? Or does he just act “dogly”? He does have “la barba” (“the beard”—line 16) and “mani” (“hands”—line 17), which may indicate he’s some human-dog hybird. When we get down to that simple and single simile in the canto (lines 28 - 30), that’s the closest he comes to being a dog. He eats like a dog. Yet that description, as vivid as it is, is still metaphoric discourse, not a statement of essence. We can also say that the damned in this circle act “come cani” (“like dogs”—line 19). So they’re also human-dog hybrids?
Five interpretive issues:
Maybe our poet just doesn’t yet know how to get the pilgrim down each level of hell. Or maybe he hasn’t yet imagined the full architecture of hell. The pilgrim faints in front of Charon and comes to himself in Limbo; he faints with Francesca and comes to himself in the third circle. True, he does go by “another path” between Limbo and Minos, but a path isn’t a descent. Perhaps the concept of the descent isn’t fully realized yet. When the pilgrim first peers down into hell, he sees an abyss; that’s hardly the conical structure we now know. Later, hell will have bridges and escarpments, scree-filled declines and waterfalls. But right the poet perhaps hasn’t come to a full understanding of what’s ahead. My thesis is that COMEDY is a poem in process—not that it’s unfinished but that given the expense of ink, quill, and parchment, and given that rewriting is an expensive and time-consuming task, especially for a poet on the run, COMEDY is a poem that’s being developed as it goes forward. Dante learns to write COMEDY as he writes COMEDY. He may not have a full understanding of hell’s geography yet.
The lucidity of the language at line 7 is arresting: “Io son al terzo cerchio . . .” (literally “I am at the third circle . . .”). The first six lines are a crazy jumble of clauses, especially lines 4 - 6. Why the sudden burst of clarity, especially since the text returns to a jumble of phrases, adjectives, and clauses almost immediately (lines 8 - 12). Is the “io” (“I”) the clarifying force? If so, what does that say for a theological poem?
Our poet feels free to change THE AENEID . . . sort of. If you remember the passage I read from AENEID VI, Cerberus has snakes on or around him in the underworld. In COMEDY, there’s an echo of that: He’s called “il gran vermo” (“the great worm”—line 22). Given that medieval iconography associated worms with snakes, we might see a recasting of that classical imagery into this text. He doesn’t hang around with snakes; he’s a worm in and of himself. Why does our poet feel free to rewrite his master’s work? And why does he make his version of Virgil complicit in that rewriting, throwing gobs of muck instead of a honey cake into the beast’s mouths?
Christopher Kleinhenz has pushed that worm-snake problem further. In a 1975 article, he posited that Virgil’s muck is a reference back to the fall sequence in the book of Genesis. God curses the snake to crawl on the ground and eat its dust (Genesis 3:14). In like manner, this worm is forced to eat the muck off the ground. Accepting Kleinhenz’ interpretive framework for the moment, think about this whole sequence (and the scenes ahead) as some inversion of the Garden of Eden. After all, Adam and Eve could be said to have committed gluttony when they took a bite out from the forbidden fruit. And if we look at the judgments of God about the future of humanity after the first couple’s fall, we should also watch out for notions of future judgments on humanity in this canto. What’s more, Adam is cursed to work the ground by the sweat of his brow—and this circle of hell is the one place Adam could never till the ground. Or at least, nothing would come from that labor here. (Plus, the sinner we’re about to meet could never be said to live by the sweat of his brow. He’s about as lazy as it gets!)
One final point about the torture here. The gluttonous turn themselves this way and that to offer new, apparently unclawed bits to Cerberus’ torment. Perhaps the claw marks heal over time? In any event, their body is their defense. Rather than have the dog-like demon rake open wounds, they turn their bulk away from him . . . which is an intriguing statement about gluttony: the body as some sort of defense. Perhaps that’s Dante’s acute assessment of one of the underlying motivations for gluttony: to make it your body so large that it wards off any harm.
One journaling prompt:
When you descend a level, enter a new phase of your life, or find yourself in a new place altogether, what is that you notice first? We can see how our pilgrim reacts? What catches your attention? What dangers do you first look for?