32. Virgil Gets The Apocalypse Wrong: INFERNO, Canto VI, Lines 94 - 115
A French medieval manuscript illumination of the Last Judgment from the BL Royal Manuscript Collection
Ciacco has fallen back into the muck, never to be seen again--at least not until the last judgment.
As our pilgrim and Virgil make their way through a mash-up of souls and muck, they talk about the future--maybe prompted by Ciacco's Florentine prophecy.
In fact, they talk about the bodily resurrection--because what else would you discuss among the gluttons?
Meanwhile, Virgil misinterprets the apocalypse. What else would you expect from a damned guide?
Consider support this work with a one-time gift or a small monthly stipend:
The segments for this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE:
[01:25] My English translation of INFERNO, Canto VI, lines 94 - 115. If you want to see this translation, find a more intense study guide, or drop a comment to continue the conversation about this episode, scroll down this page.
[03:03] Virgil's view of the apocalypse, after Ciacco tells the future. Whereas Ciacco offers a correct vision of Florence, Virgil gets the second coming of Christ wrong.
[07:10] Aristotle! And as part of the apocalypse. Aristotle has been running under this canto since the start.
[09:19] Virgil and our pilgrim, Dante, walk on into a mixed bag of souls and muck, a mash-up at odds with the Last Judgment but not at odds with his current political moment.
[20:03] The last lines of Canto VI and the road's bend, the first time we see that our pilgrim has to walk around a circle before he and Virgil can descend.
My English translation of INFERNO, Canto VI, Lines 94 – 115:
And my leader [Virgil] to me, “He’s not going to wake any more,
Not until the sound of the angelic trumpets
When the baleful power will come.
Each will again find his or her miserable tomb,
Will be reclothed in flesh and form,
And will hear that which resounds throughout eternity.”
So we made our way through the foul mash-up
Of shades and rain, with slow steps,
Touching a little on the life to come.
So I said, “Master, will these torments
Get bigger after the grand judgment,
Or get smaller, or stay as they are?”
And he to me, “Go back to your science,
Which claims that when something gets closer to perfection,
It feels more well-being and also more pain.
“Although these wretched people
Will never come to true perfection,
They will get closer to it than in their present existence.”
We continued on in the road’s bend,
Speaking of more things that I won’t repeat.
Then we came to the place where the road descends—
There we came upon Plutus, the great enemy.
FOR MORE STUDY
Clarification:
Although I stated that Aristotle’s ethical mean involved moderation, mine was an overly simplified look at a quite complex problem—probably fitting for these passages on gluttony, but certainly not for what lies ahead of us in INFERNO. That concept of moderation is what needs further refining. For an Aristotelian mean, you need to set up some sort of utter opposition or polarity. For gluttony, you might say that one end is “eating to excess” and the other is “not eating to excess.” Or to put it crassly, pigging out and starving yourself. Or perhaps Dr. Nowzaradan’s patients and anorexics. The mean would then be the point at which you eat to maintain a healthy body weight. And of course, there would be points all along the spectrum to include those who eat excessively for pleasure but only moderately harm their bodies, or those who diet quite a bit to maintain a false body image without actually harming themselves. The problem for this ethical strategy in Christianity perhaps finds its most pressing contradiction when it comes to lust. What’s the polarity? Sexual obsession v. abstinence? But abstinence is a doctrine upheld by both Jesus and the church. How could you find a mean with human sexuality, if the poles are supposed to be contortions that match the furthest limits of the behavior?
Two translation issues:
The twice-named “enemy” in the passage is found at lines 96 and 115. In the first passage, Virgil refers to Christ’s second coming as the arrival of “la nimica podesta.” In the second, the narrator (presumably the poet, Dante) refers to Plutus as “il gran nemico.” You can see how the two words are linked: “nimica” (an adjective) and “nemico” (a noun). It’s also important to see how Virgil refers to Christ: a “podesta.” That is, the very political position that Dante had held in Florence. Christ is “the enemy mayor” or “the oppositional warlord.” Given that Ciacco has just spoken about the forest party (the white Guelphs) and the “others” (the black Guelphs) in Florence, Virgil seems to be speaking a particularly political language, as if he’s “of the other party.” That’s not a theological way to understand the apocalypse. There are no true opposing forces. The side with Christ always wins in Christian theology. It seems as if Virgil has subtly overstated his position.
There’s a great rhyme sequence about the last judgment in the passage: “tromba” (“trumpets”—line 95), “tomba” (“tomb”—line 97), and “rimbomba” (“resounds” or “echoes”—line 99). Those three words about sum things up . . . and in a very musical style. Trumpets, tomb, and echoes into eternity: the Christian notion of the end of all things.
Four interpretive issues:
As I said, this is one of the two shortest cantos in COMEDY (the other in INFERNO, XI, the same length). Is there anything we can make of that? Is there something here that Dante is truncating? Or is the material here just not as fluid as that with the poets in Limbo or Francesca on the winds?
Note the emphasis on the corporeality of the last judgment. When the trumpets sound, “ciascun rivederà la trista tomba” (literally, “each one will refind the sad tomb”—line 96). These shades will have to climb up out of hell and find whatever is left of their rotting, corporeal existence to reunite with it for the required bodily resurrection. But what of those burned up in pogroms? What of those washed away in the rains on battlefields? What of those drawn and quartered?
There’s an interesting and perhaps ironic quibble that involves Aristotle’s philosophy when Dante and Virgil walk on, talking about last things. The text claims the two walked “per sozza mistura/ de l’ombra e de la pioggia” (literally, “through a filthy mixture/ of the shades and the rain”—lines 100 - 101). If the material of the physical world is quantifiable (that is, it can be measured, weighed, etc.), and likewise the shades are made from the immaterial, non-quantifiable force that animates the body, how can physical rain and ghostly souls mix into much of anything? Can the physical and the immaterial form an amalgam, other than in the living human body? At this point, we might ask if the rain is real. Is our pilgrim wet? Does he feel the hail? There’s no evidence. Later in COMEDY, the pilgrim will indeed feel the physicality of afterlife. He’ll also have to guard himself against fiery rain, hot pitch, and slippery ice. He’ll eventually even have to step into some flames. But here, the pilgrim doesn’t seem to interact with his environment, although it mixes with the shades around him. If you accept my interpretation, our poet is figuring out how hell and the afterlife work as he writes INFERNO, so we shouldn’t be surprised at some discrepancies. But there are perhaps other ways to look at this complex problem.
Beyond the questions of function and quality (“regola e “qualitá”—”rules and “attributes”—line 9), as well as those of experiential existence (lines 106 - 108), another abstruse Aristotelian point comes up when Virgil is talking about the perfection of the resurrected. He claims that everyone gets closer to the “qua” (the “what”—line 111). The “qua” is a key (and difficult) concept for both the Greek philosopher and his scholastic theological followers in Dante’s day. Robert Durling translates this elliptical line as “on that side [of the resurrection] they can expect to have more being than on this [side].” Frankly, the “whatness” (or being) of something troubled philosophy for millennia. Is there something essential (usually inside) that makes that thing itself? In other words, what makes a book a book? What makes you a person? What makes you you? If there an inherent “whatness” in a thing that makes us identify it as that thing? And if so, where does that “whatness” come from? To bring it back to this passage, Virgil says that in the resurrection, everyone will get closer to their essence: what they truly are, who they truly are. (The scientific revolution and rationalism dispensed with these sorts of worries for a while, although they’re back in full force with the rise of modern information theory, game theory, and post-Freudian concepts of the self.) We could quibble and say that Virgil is getting things wrong again, just as he did with the notion of Christ as the “baleful mayor” (line 96). The damned don’t get more “whatness.” In fact, Ciacco seems to lose it when he falls back into the muck. But since Virgil and Aristotle play on the same team, as it were, we should probably (?) accept his reasoning here at face value and question what is the whatness that’s coming closer to perfection in the resurrection.