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.
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.
Great analysis of that moment - you've made it make more sense to me now. It's definitely a test of some sort, and connecting it to Sloth makes sense "geographically" as well. I felt a lot of empathy for Dante at that moment - I wouldn't want to be left alone in Hell either, even for a moment, even if Virgil says he'll be right back. And I would probably feel a little sullen and angry while he was gone.....
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?
thanks for the quiz link! Yes, everyone needs to take that quiz (I was going to suggest it once we finished, but now works as well -- you can plan ahead to read even more closely in "your" circle....).
More seriously -- Jamie has raised the really important question of how we are to mix modern psychotherapy and premodern literature. The question is no longer whether (that's a 20thc question), but how those two bodies of knowledge can usefully come together. So in Inferno, sloth is a sin, a sin committed by human beings who are then damned to lurk sullenly under the mud. But clinical depression is a medical diagnosis that can share a lot of the characteristics of Dante's accidiosa, and people suffering from clinical depression are not sinners but patients.
I don't have an answer to Jamie's important question, but I hope I have broadly presented it.
I love these insights that you've made here. It is so interesting to look at this through the modern lens knowing that during Dante's time, they knew very little about what we know about mental health today. Thus, it is even more interesting to me that Dante would group these two together, even with his presumably sparse knowledge on the subject. This makes me wonder the state of Dante's own mental health - perhaps he has some personal experience with these emotions even if he didn't understand the science behind it.
Lots of amazing comments, here! I have been far behind on my reading but I am catching up!
Something that really stood out to me during these Cantos, particularly cantos 7, is how the souls seem to make up the environment of hell as opposed to simply being victims of it. For example, he notes the "sighing makes these bubbles come/that pock the surface everywhere you look". In addition, the souls in the "wrath" part of hell are punishing each other "with looks/ of fury, striking each other". This got me thinking about the old question of the tree in the forest. Would hell exist if there were no souls to fill it?
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.
Great analysis of that moment - you've made it make more sense to me now. It's definitely a test of some sort, and connecting it to Sloth makes sense "geographically" as well. I felt a lot of empathy for Dante at that moment - I wouldn't want to be left alone in Hell either, even for a moment, even if Virgil says he'll be right back. And I would probably feel a little sullen and angry while he was gone.....
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 )
thanks for the quiz link! Yes, everyone needs to take that quiz (I was going to suggest it once we finished, but now works as well -- you can plan ahead to read even more closely in "your" circle....).
More seriously -- Jamie has raised the really important question of how we are to mix modern psychotherapy and premodern literature. The question is no longer whether (that's a 20thc question), but how those two bodies of knowledge can usefully come together. So in Inferno, sloth is a sin, a sin committed by human beings who are then damned to lurk sullenly under the mud. But clinical depression is a medical diagnosis that can share a lot of the characteristics of Dante's accidiosa, and people suffering from clinical depression are not sinners but patients.
I don't have an answer to Jamie's important question, but I hope I have broadly presented it.
Jamie,
I love these insights that you've made here. It is so interesting to look at this through the modern lens knowing that during Dante's time, they knew very little about what we know about mental health today. Thus, it is even more interesting to me that Dante would group these two together, even with his presumably sparse knowledge on the subject. This makes me wonder the state of Dante's own mental health - perhaps he has some personal experience with these emotions even if he didn't understand the science behind it.
Lots of amazing comments, here! I have been far behind on my reading but I am catching up!
Something that really stood out to me during these Cantos, particularly cantos 7, is how the souls seem to make up the environment of hell as opposed to simply being victims of it. For example, he notes the "sighing makes these bubbles come/that pock the surface everywhere you look". In addition, the souls in the "wrath" part of hell are punishing each other "with looks/ of fury, striking each other". This got me thinking about the old question of the tree in the forest. Would hell exist if there were no souls to fill it?