33. Jousting With Greedy Plutus: INFERNO, Canto VII, Lines 1 - 35
Gustave Doré’s image of Plutus before the fourth circle of hell
We descend to the fourth level of hell and come to the "il gran nemico," the great enemy: Plutus.
But what makes him so great if he just babbles nonsense and is easily vanquished? And by Virgil? Who suddenly has a better grip on Christian theology.
INFERNO, Canto VI, begins with lots of fractures in the poetry! Is Dante in over his head?
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The segments of this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE:
[01:29] My English translation of INFERNO, Canto VII, lines 1 - 35. If you'd like to read along, find a deeper study guide, or drop a comment to continue the conversation with me about this passage, scroll down this page.
[04:27] The guardian of the next (fourth) level: Plutus. Or maybe it's Pluto. Or both. Whichever, he speaks nonsense. And he clucks like a chicken. Or maybe is a wolf. Or both. In any event, Virgil mentions vendetta, setting in motion a major thematic of COMEDY.
[14:10] The first simile of this canto--masts and sails falling apart--and some thoughts on the patterning of references as a basic notion of narrative structure.
[19:58] Thoughts about neologisms (words the poet makes up). Also, thoughts on how every edition of THE COMEDY does it disservice by starting out with a map before the text. And finally, thoughts about the redefinition of sin into two poles: hoarding and wasting.
My English translation of INFERNO, Canto VII, lines 1 - 35:
“Pape Satàn, pape Satàn aleppe!”
Plutus started in with a clucking voice.
And my well-heeled sage, who knew all things,
Said this to fortify me: “Don’t let your fear
Hurt you. No matter his power,
He won’t impede our way down this rock slab.”
He then turned to confront the puffy face,
And said, “Shut up, cursed wolf!
Let the rage inside you devour you!
“This trip to the depths is not without
A cause. It’s willed on high, where Michael
Made his vendetta against the prideful blitz.”
As sails, billowed in the wind, fall
Into a knotty mess when the mainmast gives way,
So that cruel beast fell to the ground.
In this way, we descended into the fourth pit,
Observing more of the sorrowful rim
That puts all the evil of the universe in a sack.
Ah, God’s justice! Who could stock
All this new torment and pain that I saw?
And why does our guilt so ruin us?
As a wave spilling over Charybdis
Crashes against another that it meets,
So these souls did in their frantic dance.
I saw more people here than at any point above,
On one side and another, with great screams,
Shoving heavy weights with their chests.
They smashed together, and as soon as that,
They turned around, pushing their loads and hollering,
“Why do you hold onto stuff?” and “Why do you throw it out?”
In this way, each one traverses the miserable circle
On either hand to the opposite point,
Hollering their shameful meter at each other,
Only to turn around when reaching that point
And follow the half-circle back around to the other jousting list.
FOR MORE STUDY
Correction:
I’m no longer sure I buy that lines 19 - 21 move from the poet to the pilgrim and back to the poet. I now think the whole tercet (three-line stanza) is in the voice of the poet. After all, the verb is in the past tense, as if the poet is looking back on these moments (although much of the pilgrim’s experience is narrated in the past tense, too). Maybe I’m hoisted with my own petard. The division between the poet and pilgrim is a convenient fiction for modern interpretation. It helps us see how the voices run in the poem: oh, here’s the experiential tale of the pilgrim; oh, here’s the poet waiting in the wings to offer us what it all means. In the end, the pilgrim/poet divide helps us with perhaps the most twisted knot in the poem: its uneven voicing. In the modern, consumer, neo-rational world, we value consistency . . . or we might say “smoothness.” Putting some lines into the experience of the pilgrim and some into the pen of the poem helps us maintain our prized fiction of smoothness. But COMEDY is a medieval poem. It’s distinctly uneven by modern standards (in more ways than just its voicing). Perhaps it’s good to jettison the pilgrim/poet divide occasionally and let the poem’s voicing be, well, bumpier.
Translation issues:
There’s a wild set of interlocking rhymes at the start of Canto VII that are impossible to render into English: “chioccia” (“clucking” or “raucous”—line 2), “noccia” (“be overwhelmed"—line 4), and “roccia” (“rocks”—line 6), interwoven with “abbia” (“might be”—line 5), “labbia” (probably “face” here—line 7), and “rabbia” (“rage,” as in “rabid”—line 9). Those “ia” sounds at the ends of the lines set up an almost singsong, lighthearted quality, despite the dire circumstances of the fourth circle. Perhaps we’re meant to think of this as almost comical, even silly stuff? (Hold that in your mind when you actually meet the people in this circle.)
The poet seems to be further working out hell’s landscape when he describes the fourth circle as a “lacca” (line 16). Dante will use this word twice more in COMEDY, both times to refer to a sloping declivity (at INFERNO, Canto XII, line 11 and at PURGATORIO, Canto VII, line 71). All three of the infernal circles above us seemed to be flat ground . . . well, at least the first (Limbo) and the third (the gluttonous). The lustful we’re out on the wind and perhaps the notion that the pilgrim and Virgil were up on some promontory gives us the idea that the lustful are suspended over a hollow or a decline. In any event, this is the first time we’ve looked down into a circle of the damned, as if they’re running around a ditch (almost for our amusement?).
Interpretive issues:
I brought up the archangel Michael in the episode, but maybe it’s crucial to see just what Virgil says: “vuolsi ne l’alto, là dove Michele/ fé la vendetta del superbo strupo” (literally, “it is willed in the heights, there where Michael/ made the vendetta about the proud muck”—lines 11 - 12). I translated “strupo” as “blitz” so you’d hear the cosmic war being waged, but Charles Singleton points out that “strupo” is actually closer to “filth” or perhaps “disgrace.” In any case, it’s a striking moment for Virgil to mention the archangel (probably thereby referencing The Apocalypse of Saint John or Revelation 12: 7 - 9), especially since the old poet couldn’t even name the figure who entered hell to pull out the redeemed Israelites after the crucifixion. How does Virgil suddenly know so much? Part of what we’re starting to experience is the uneven characterization of Virgil. He seems almost malevolent as he pushes the pilgrim toward Francesca, letting “libido” transmute into “amor” to no good ends. But here, he seems pretty orthodox in his Biblical theology. Is that because our poet hasn’t quite nailed down Virgil’s character? Is Virgil shifting from scene to scene to fit each one? Does the poet need different things out of Virgil at different points . . . and this shifting around goes against our modern notion of “smoothness” (see the Correction above)?
That line about the universe being a stuffed bag of evil (line 18) is actually an important callback to a line in the previous canto. At Canto VI, line 50, Ciacco claims that Florence’s “sack” overflows with envy. So we had a full sack with Florence, now a full sack with the universe. Dante is certainly expanding the range of evil! But it’s also crucial to see how he’s trying to link the poem into coherence (in this case, metaphoric coherence by using the imagery of “sacks”). Are there other ways Cantos VI and VII are linked?
There seems a reference to Ulysses buried in this passage, if we take the mention of Charybdis (the dreaded whirlpool) and pair it with the mention of deflating sails. But Dante doesn’t know Homer’s poetry. What Dante probably knows is the passage from THE AENEID where Aeneas skirts Scylla (the rocky outcrop) and Charybdis (Book III, lines 420 - 423), as well as two passages in Ovid’s METAMORPHOSES, one in which Jason runs afoul of the rocks and the whirlpool (Book VII, line 63) and one in which Aeneas does the same (Book XIII, line 730). However, the shipwreck theme will be powerfully connected to Ulysses later in INFERNO.
Rolling the weights around (at line 27) is probably a reference to the myth of Sisyphus, which Dante would know partly from THE AENEID (Book VI, line 608 - 611), but mostly from Ovid’s METAMORPHOSES (Book X, line 44). However, this reference to the stone rollers in Virgil’s poem is intriguing for us at this moment in Dante’s poem. When the problem of people (like the the unnamed Sisyphus) are seen rolling their rocks around, Aeneas and his guide are staring into nasty Tartarus, the deep pit that Aeneas is not permitted to enter. Aeneas must now turn aside from these torments to find the better spots in the lands of the dead. So we’re nearing the bottom of Virgil’s afterlife in THE AENEID. Yet we’re barely into Dante’s poem. If Dante is using Virgil as a source, something has to give for the poem to continue. What’s more, Sisyphus is done in by the incline. These damned souls are done in by each other. Keep that in mind when you find out exactly who they are.
One journaling prompt:
When have you ever discovered that the dragon has no fire? If our pilgrim expected to meet the great enemy and instead met some easily defeated, clucking monster who talks gibberish, he was set up to expect the worst and found an almost foolish guard to this fourth circle. In other words, the expected dragon had no fire. Has that ever happened to you? You expected the worst, only to find. . . . How did you react? What happened to your expectations? How did the realization make you feel?