Literature Humanities 07-08

"Let Pleasure Be Your Guide"

As we mentioned in class, Virgil's final words to Dante are as beautiful as they are surprising:

"I've brought you here through intellect and art;
from now on, let pleasure be your guide;
you're past the steep and narrow paths
.....
Await no further word or sign from me:
your will is free, erect, and whole--to act
against that will would be to err: therefore
I crown and miter you over yourself"
(Purgatory XVII.130-133, 139-142).

From here, Beatrice will be Dante-pilgrim's guide. This would seem to be a contradiction with the idea that Dante is now "king" of himself, except for the fact that his new guide is, truth be told, Dante's own creation. The real Beatrice Dante knew only slightly; she was as much a creation of his boyhood fantasy (as he as much admits in Paradiso XXX.41-2) as person of flesh and blood.

If we might reasonably think of Beatrice as a projection of Dante's own longing (and maybe even Virgil too), several things trouble me: How can Dante create a "Third Testament" based by and large on astral projections of his interior being? At what point does poetic ambition turn into theological megalomania?
Much like Dante's encounter with the singular Divine at the end of Paradiso, I am somewhat struck dumb by Dante's creative audacity--I'm not sure what to make of it. Part of me admires it beyond telling; part of me sees the willingness to recast the universe based on one's subjective experience as monumentally dangerous. How do you react to Dante's presumption?

-Jeff

Dante.....Today?

One of the interesting things about Dante?s Inferno is that the tale is a work of fiction. Yet, people have taken Dante's depiction of Hell as a valid description to what Hell is supposed to look like, what actions occur, who is already in there, etc., forgetting that the Hell described in the book is subjected to Dante (the author) and his feelings. His decisions about the severity of each circle of hell was made in conjunction with the dealings during the 13th-14th centuries (for examples the fraudulent priests were on the lower circle of hell to indicate Dante's anger towards them). He decided that the people in his hell would suffer various types of punishments from the astrologers, diviners, and magicians all 'appeared contorted between the chin and the where the chest begins; they had their faces twisted toward their haunches and found it necessary to walk backward, because they couldn't see in front of them' (Canto XX, lines 11-15) to the sowers of dissension and scandal being split where '[their] bowels hung between [their] legs, one saw his bowels and the miserable sack that makes of what we swallow excrement?'(Canto XXXVIII, lines 25-27). If Dante was alive now and wanted to rewrite the Inferno, how do you think it would be structured in light of our society? Would anything be different/same? What would the punishments be?

Or if you wrote your own version of the Inferno how would you structure it, who would potentially be there and how does it compare to Dante's Hell? This doesn't have to be as long and lengthy as Dante's version.

-Sierra

Pride is Number One

Dante's regard for the sin of pride in *Purgatorio* intrigues me greatly. Out of the seven terraces on the mountain (or at least the ones we read of), Dante Author seems to apply the greatest and most detailed descriptions to the First Terrace, the terrace for pride. Carved on the terrace path are stories of prideful people and their punishments. The stories include those of Satan, Nimrod, Arachne, and the city of Troy. (I find it fascinating that stories not of the Christian faith, such as that of Arachne and Troy, are depicted in this Christian domain.) Furthermore, Dante Pilgrim spends a disproportionate amount of time and effort interacting with those in the terrace. While Dante simply walks around and observes the individuals in the other terraces, Dante actually converses deeply with the prideful individuals and walks bent over (as if he had a weighty burden to bear like those currently working to purge their sin). Due to the amount of detail in the effigies adorning the First Terrace and Dante Pilgrim's actions among the prideful in Purgatory, Dante seems to be more concerned with pride than any other sin of which he may be guilty. When Dante leaves the First Terrace, the angel erases the P from his forehead which had represented the sin of pride. This seems to suggest that Dante is somehow cleansed of his pride. Doesn't Dante seem a bit prideful in presuming he is purged of his sin or at least now less prideful than others? Other characters that we have come across in Lit Hum have also been guilty of pride. In *The Iliad*, Achilles' pride is hurt, causing him to withdraw from the war on Troy. In *The Odyssey*, Odysseus is prideful when he calls back to Polyphemos and informs him of the identity of his attacker. In fact, pride seems to affect every story in one way or another. With all this in mind, consider the following questions. 1. Why is pride widely regarded as the most serious of the seven deadly sins? 2. Do you believe that Dante is more concerned about another sin than he is about pride? If so, why does Dante Author describe this terrace and Dante Pilgrim's actions here in such detail? 3. Are human beings naturally prideful? Is being prideful somehow encoded in the way humans function? If so, should humans really be responsible for their pride? 4. Why are pagan stories like those of Arachne and Troy depicted in this Christian realm? Thanks for reading! - Jennifer

General Inconsistencies/WTF

So first I was wrong about the Styx being the river of blood, the Styx and Acheron are both rivers of water in Hell, nothing particularaly bizarre about them, Cocytus is the frozen river, and Phlegethon is one of blood that is on fire. Secondly, Ulysses account of his death is contradictory to what Homer prophesied for Ulysses. Homer-"he is to go inland carrying an oar until someone asks him why is he carrying such an odd shaped winnow fan" Dante-"We sailed and sunk" And now onto the discussion. Zach & Jeff touched on this earlier in class but I wanted to elaborate on it a little more. So there are two types of torture as far as I can tell, there is the constant and the intermittent. The constant, i.e. the lustful, are always being punished incessantly. The ones subject to the intermittent, i.e. Brunetto Latini in Canto XV lines 37-39:"O son, whoever of this flock stops but a moment, stays a hundred years and cannot shield himself when the fire strikes." So the worst thing he feels given he always moves is fatigue, and this also introduces the element of choice into Hell, which shouldn't be there, otherwise they'd just walk/swim out. Also the fact that he chooses to stop and speak to Dante/Virgil and only leaves when he "sees new smoke emerging from the sandy bed." (XV, 117) and as he leaves Dante remarks that he seems the "winner". 1) If the pain is constant, eventually the spirits would become immune to it. 2) They fact that Latini is willing to suffer a hundred years of fire and brimstone falling from the heavens to speak to Dante for but 2 pages makes me think that the torture isn't so bad, and by Canto XV we're pretty far down the rabbit hole, so I don't think it should be taken so lightly. 3) How is there a winner in hell? It enters relativity into the equation, which just messes with the idea of the eternity of Hell. -Tyler