The Massachusetts Medievalist on Inferno, Cantos 7-9
The Massachusetts Medievalist wants to focus on Sloth this week, as we enter the "lazy days of summer" and we might wonder why Sloth, often defined as laziness, is considered an official Deadly Sin. Yes, pride and envy and anger and lust all sound pretty bad, but why is daydreaming on the back porch and looking at the sky on a summer afternoon considered a Deadly Sin? (You may suspect I have some personal investment in that question, and you are correct in that suspicion.)
Gustave Dore, Crossing the Styx, 1861 (from www.worldofdante.org, with thanks to Cordelia Miller for info about this great context site)
In this week's reading, Dante and Virgil pass through Greed in Canto 7 and introduce us to some of the dark humor that appears throughout Inferno - I'm always amused by the hoarders and wasters repeatedly crashing into each other, sort of the Three Stooges of the upper levels of Hell. Still in Canto 7, we come to the Fifth Circle, wherein reside the odd pair of Anger and Sloth in a mud river/marshy area. The souls of those who committed the sin of Anger are "all naked and muddy -- with looks / Of Fury, striking each other" (7.97-98), doomed to an eternity of physical assault; we get more interaction with Anger at the beginning of Canto 8.
As Canto 7 ends, however, Virgil says that we must "know also, that under the water are found / Others, whose sighing makes the bubbles come / That pock the surface everywhere you look" (7.102-104). For these sinners, eternal Hell is that "Lodged in the slime, they say: 'Once we were grim / and sullen in the sweet air above…Inside us, we bore acedia's dismal smoke" (7.105-108).
Pinksy intriguingly translates Italian accidiosa here as English acedia instead of sloth. Acedia is indeed in the Oxford English Dictionary as an English word, although the majestic OED prefers the spelling of accidie. I think Pinsky wants us to move away from our modern understanding of sloth as plain old laziness and think about Sloth as a form of sullen anger and despair that create inaction. In medieval Christian theology, acedia (also the Latin form) was a sin of lack of faith in the ultimate goodness and justice of God. So having a sunny reverie on the back porch is not the sin of Sloth (whew), but sullen, inactive torpor definitely is.
A final point this week, about a famous and important simile in Canto 9. Recall that last week I pointed out the comparison of the whirling souls to a flock of sparrows (5.37); Dante continues to use images from our natural world to help us understand his supernatural one. How do devils and damned souls react when a gigantic angel strides into Hell with the keys to the City of Dis?
…..As frogs are quick
To Vanish through water and hunch on bottom sand
As soon as they see their enemy the snake,
So I saw more than a thousand souls of the ruined
Flee before one who strode across the Styx……. (9.67-71)
This comparison is interesting in a number of ways; think for a minute about how this angel very strangely becomes analogous to the snake (frogs:snake // souls:angel) in the simile. The reference to the snake, of course, makes us think about the Garden of Eden, Satan in the form of the serpent, and original sin. Dante refracts those ideas through this snake, however, since the angel (snake) is an agent of the power of God. What seemed like a straightforward comparison becomes infinitely complex as Dante forces us to think about the ways that power, protection, and predators interact in the (super)natural world.
Please go back to previous post(s) to engage with the good thinking shared by reading group members! I am enjoying all your insights--
Items to think about for discussion this week:
Everything I didn't get to mention! The episode of the different types of Greed (7), the anti-Islamic reference to mosques (8.67), Dante's fear when Virgil leaves him alone for a few minutes at the end of Canto 8, the unspeaking angel who appears and unlocks Dis (9.73ff), etc. What were you thinking about as you dove into this week's cantos?
Took the quiz and ended up in Dis! Funnily enough I wanted to discuss the events that take place outside the gates in Cantos 8 and 9.
I appreciate the explanation of how "sloth" applies to Inferno. What I am wondering, is if Dante's hesitation at the gates of Dis represents some sort of temptation towards sloth? When Virgil mentions he will leave Dante momentarily to speak with the rebel angels, rather than be left alone, Dante suggests the two turn back. The rebel angels also try to convince Dante to retrace his steps. Does this scenario qualify as despair resulting in action? When the unspeaking angel arrives and unlocks the gates, he chastises the rebels for hindering the will of God: "How dare you demonstrate such insolence, / Dare kick against the unalterable will / Of him whose purpose is immutable?" (IX.82-84). If Dante's journey is willed by God, is hesitation or inaction towards this goal a form of sloth? I may be going out on a limb here, but I am just trying to see how sloth factors into Dante's journey.
I have a particular interest in the fifth level (at the risk of being weird, I took a personality test, and it said that the fifth circle of Hell is the one that I'm going to after I die). There are ways that the convergence of wrath and sloth make sense from a modern perspective that Dante couldn't have understood well enough to be overly deliberate about while he was writing. There are chemical imbalances in the brain that extreme anger and extreme sullenness are both symptoms of. Having a lot of personal experience with such imbalances, it makes a lot of sense to me that someone could notice a correlation between the two. How or why Dante was able to make that correlation may never be entirely clear, but thinking about it has gotten me curious to look more into the specifics of what attitudes towards mental health were like during his time.
Something that I've always noticed seems to separate the seven deadly sins from other categories of potential human shortcomings is their basis in innocuous behaviors and instincts. There are versions of all of them that are circumstantially appropriate and in many cases even innate to our species. I've always been caught between two understandings of the seven deadly sins. Is the idea that they're all distorted versions of feelings that aren't inherently harmful, and the reason they're so dangerous is because you can't always tell when you've crossed a line with them? Or was it just that the church was using the near universality of hunger, sexual attraction, pride in one's accomplishments, desire for a better quality of life, etc. to ensure that no one could ever think themself free of the threat of damnation?
( also if anyone's interested: http://www.4degreez.com/misc/dante-inferno-test.mv )