42. The Walls Of Dis, Virgil's Limits, and The Pilgrim's Folly: INFERNO, Canto VIII, Lines 64 - 96
The flaming minarets at the walls of Dis.
Our pilgrim, Dante and his guide, Virgil, have made it across Styx, leaving behind Filippo Argenti and the wrathful or sullen. Our main characters have now come to the iron walls of Dis, the city of hell, complete with its flaming minarets.
This is more than that a geopolitical barrier. It’s also a literary barrier. Aeneas got no farther than the walls of Dis in his descent into the afterlife. So here's the farthest point that Virgil's imagination could go.
Our poet, however, must go on. Does he rally his bravado? No, his folly bears in on him.
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The segments for this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE:
[01:23] My English translation of INFERNO: Canto VIII, lines 64 - 96. If you'd like to read along, continue the conversation with me through a comment, or even to find a deeper study guide for this episode, scroll down this page.
[04:00] Consider hell a two-part structure: 1) the moments outside of Dis and 2) the moments inside its walls. Those minarets of Dis may be the poet Dante's last brushstroke on a Virgilian landscape. From here on, we're going to where the AENEID doesn’t (or perhaps can’t).
[13:21] Our first true-to-life demons! It can't be a mistake that we encounter them on the walls of Dis, the farthest point Aeneas (and maybe the poet Virgil) reached.
[14:55] Here's Dante's folly: He's going beyond his mentor (or his poetic father), Virgil. This may well represent a writer's insecurity writ large.
[19:23] The first direct address to the reader in COMEDY, the moment in which the poet's folly bears in on him.
My English translation of INFERNO, Canto VIII, lines 64 - 96:
There we left him. I can say no more about him,
For my ears were bashed with such a sound of pain
That I had to open my eyes wide to see what lay ahead.
My good master said, “Now, my son,
Coming upon us is the city called Dis,
With its weighed-down citizens and great army.”
And I, “Master, I already make out
The minarets there, set into the ramparts.
Those minarets are as vermilion as if they’d just been taken out of the fire.”
And he to me, “The eternal fire
From inside makes them glow red,
Just as you see in this lower part of hell.”
We finally came to the deep moats,
The outer defenses of inconsolable ground.
The walls looked to me as if they were made of iron.
It was not until we had first made a big circle
That we came to a place where the boatman yelled,
“Get out! This is the entrance.”
At the gate I saw more than a thousand
Of those who had fallen from heaven, who belligerently
Cried out, “Who is this one, who, without death,
Nonetheless traverses the kingdom of the dead people.”
And my wise master made a signal
As if to say that he wanted to talk to them privately.
Then they all checked their disdain a bit
And said, “You, come by yourself—but send that one away,
The one who came into this realm so boldly—
Let him go back along his foolish path.
See if he knows how! For you’ll remain here,
You who escorted him through this gloomy country.”
Think, reader, how I got weak in the knees
At the sound of those cursed words.
I believed I’d never make it back [from there].
FOR MORE STUDY
References:
For more information about Dis, check out the relevant passages in Virgil’s AENEID: Book VI, Lines 127ff (in which “Dis” seems the Roman name for Pluto, the god of the underworld) and Book VI, Lines 541ff (in which “Dis” seems to be the name of the underworld’s deep realm where the Cumaean Sibyl and Aeneas cannot go). Virgil indicates buildings and rather vague architectural details of Dis. Dante, on the other hand, fills in the details with those fiery minarets (and more!). Virgil never names the place a “city” per se, more like a giant edifice with walls. But Dante’s Florentine, civic imagination seems to pull into high gear in this passage where we find what appears to be a medieval walled village, complete with moats (line 76) and iron walls (line 78).
The civic vision of hell is much older than Dante’s. Augustine makes reference to a “city of devils” (“civitas diaboli”—ENARRATIONES IN PSALMOS IX: 8). What’s more, it’s hard to read about “the city of Dis” without thinking of Augustine’s very own “City Of God.” Augustine even calls the Devil “the prince of that irreligious city” (CITY OF GOD, XVIII:51, emphasis added) And Dis makes other appearances in classical literature that Dante would know. in Ovid’s METAMORPHOSES, Book IV, the ever-angry Juno crosses Styx to find herself in the city of Dis and momentarily blocked by Cerberus.
Four translation issues:
Although I translated the word meschite as “minarets” (line 70), it’s probably best translated as “mosques.” However, Dante would most likely recognize the minaret as the most prominent feature of a mosque and a minaret looks more like the tower at the corners of a medieval walled town. My translation to “minaret” is not unwarranted, but certainly debatable.
Virgil seems to acknowledge that they’ve passed a barrier in terms of the landscape of hell. He says they’ve come “in questo basso inferno” (literally, “in this low hell”). The word choice would seem to imply that there’s then a “higher” hell.
The demons’ response to the pilgrim Dante is a little more blunt than I rendered it: “pruovi, se sa” (literally, “let him prove it, if he knows”—line 92). Their blunt, rude manner of speech shows well their “gran disdegno” (“great disdain”—line 88).
The direct address to the reader (ll. 94 - 96) is a bit harsh in its musical tonality in the Florentine: “Pense, lettor, se io mi sconfortai/ nel suon de le parole maladette,/ che non credetti ritornarci mai” (literally, “Think, reader, if I was weakened/ at the sound of those horrible words,/ for I didn’t believe I’d return here.”). “Sconfortai,” “credetti ritornarci,” even the faltering stress on the first syllable of “maladette”—these discordant words may indicate the pilgrim’s (or the poet’s?) dismay. After all, the “here” (the “ci” off the back of the verb) is a reference back to Italy, the land of the living. We have a quick glance back at the poet Dante, shivering at his desk.
Four interpretive issues:
Hell is real estate. First, a country estate out in Limbo, beyond the walls of Dis. Then a walled city (la città—line 68). As we’ll see, this city extends all the way down to the bottom of hell with infernal, public “parks” (well, thickets of gnarled trees and burning sands!), as well as ruins aplenty, more moats, and even sewage ditches. Does this geography of hell make Lust, Gluttony, Avarice/Prodigality, and Anger/Sullenness its suburbs? (In Dante’s day, the territory controlled by a town or city but outside its walls was known as the contado—about like a suburb now: distinctly connected but without many city services, with its own bureaucrats and its own enforcement mechanisms, a bit more “wild west” than life inside the walls.) What do we make of those sinners who live outside of the geopolitical center of hell?
How do these demons, our first real ones in INFERNO, show a marker between the parts of hell itself? We have seen angels before in INFERNO, but among the neutrals; and we were specifically told they were not “fallen”: li angeli che non furon ribelli,/ né fur fideli a Dio, ma per sé fuoro” (literally, “the angels who were not rebellious, nor were faithful to God, but were for themselves”—INFERNO, Canto III, lines 38 - 39, emphasis added). These at Dis are definitely da ciel piovuti (literally, “from heaven fallen—line 83). Are we then passing into a more Christian part of the underworld? Certainly the sin we’re about to encounter in those walls—heresy—is a distinctly Christian sin in Dante’s day (and a pressing concern for the church). How do these demons differ from Charon, Minos, Cerberus, Plutus, and Phlegyas? At best, clucking Plutus was ridiculous. Minos and Cerberus seemed more terrifying, but neither compares to the threat here: “Go home by yourself, living man.” (Imagine talking Phlegyas into taking you back across Styx the other way!) And while we’re at it, if the demons are here, where’s their leader? Isn’t that Satan? (As we’ll see, probably not!)
I’ve already said that the next sin encountered is heresy. These demons threaten to keep Virgil here in Dis. Do they believe Virgil is guilty of heresy for taking a living man this far down into hell? There were plenty of non-canonical, New Testament-like books about descents to the afterlife, such as The Apocalypse of Peter (c. 2nd century CE) and The Apocalypse of Paul (c. 4th century CE). The church was invested in developing a rigorous orthodoxy in Dante’s day, a rather firm line that put such Christian works outside of the acceptable limits. Might that line include COMEDY as well?
Notice the incantatory nature of Dante’s address to the reader in lines 93 - 96. It almost sounds like a prayer. Without telling you too much of the plot, there’s some strange magic brewing in the lines ahead of us: wands, witches, and more. We seem to be passing into an almost folkloric landscape, even at the forbidding walls of Dis. How might hell also be connected to a folkloric, fairy-tale realm?
One journaling prompt:
How does it feel when you’re left alone with a big project? How do you keep the self-doubts at arm’s length? Or do you embrace them and make them part of the energy to carry you forward? What would it look like to do that?