Day 15: Dante and Brunetto

There is a telling stanza in this canto that brings the reader back to the beginning.  Dante exclaims while walking through the realm of sodomites that he is quite removed from the forest of the suicides.  It was translated as "by now we were so distant from the wood that I should not have made it out where it was-not even if i turned around to look" This may just be Dante situating the reader geographically, but i think there may be more.  The language in Italian, while obviously different, still carries familiar echoes.  It also doesn't seem like much of a coincidence that this line is spoken at almost the exact center of Inferno.  So halfway through the 1st leg of a journey that he begins halfway through his life, Dante stops to inform his reader just how far he has come.  The obscurity of the dark forest of suicides stands merely as a metaphor for the larger distance both Dante and the readers have taken.  We are very, very far from Kansas at this point.  Maybe many less invested and adventurous readers have abandoned the journey.  But those of us who stuck around are given pause to possibly reflect before resuming the descent.
The picture above.  Well, it's one of the famous Dore illustrations he did for the longfellow translation of the Divine Comedy.  It shows the pivotal meeting between Dante and his guardian/teacher/mentor Brunetto Latini.  Despite his damnation, Dante speaks of him with great affection, praising him for his "kind paternital image" and speaks of his eternal gratitude to Latini for teaching him to be a better poet and man.  There is such tenderness in Dante's words that commentators have asked the obvious modern question of whether the relationship between Dante and Latini was deeper than a chaste mentor/protege relationship.  I am not one to speculate on these matters, although it does change the readers perception if one entertains this (and not just for this canto, but the epic in general, especially given the specificity of the dark forest motiff reoccurance in this specific canto).  But it is, regardless of the larger implications, a very sweet moment between teacher and student, and considering how deep into the torments of Inferno we are, I'll take it.

Day 14: The defiant ones

Well, as is evident, my frequency in updating this blog has lessened as of late.  This is an all too common occurance for me.  I begin with great gusto, only to peter out into obsolescence (i usually give up when I forget my password to access it). But I am trying to right the ship.  I choose to be defiant over my own waning creative impulses. 
This canto is another demonstration of Dante's masterful command of creating a terrifying visual enactment of sin.  We are still among the violent sinners.  We are, technically at the boundary between the second and third rings in the violent sphere.  The scenery is typically frightening.  Dante the poet surveys a land on the edge of the suicide forest, divided by the fiery river of blood.  Dante and Virgil descend into an open field.  The ground is composed of sand, populated by countless souls in a variety of poses of dispair.  They are a mishmash, some wallowing flat on the ground, others hunched in fetal positions.  Some were static, while others seemed to possessed to be in constant motion.  Interestingly, the largest group, the walkers, were silent, while those who stand or sit stationary chatter incessantly.  Oh, and by the way, is raining scorching embers, and these souls are unable to quench the burning.  This has to be one of the more striking visual representations of what modern day fundamentalist christians imagine when speaking of the hellfire of the eternally damned.  Dante, noticeably shaken by the wretched scene, sees one soul, a giant among men, defiant against the constant torment of the burning embers.  It is Capaneus, the giant wrrior king who was one of the Seven Against Thebes.  According to legend, Capaneus stood before the wall of Thebes and proclaimed that not even Zeus could stop him from ascending the wall.  Of course, as he is climbing the wall, Zeus strikes him dead with a thunderbolt. (on a side note, defiance was a trait in his household, as his wife Evadne threw herself on his funeral pyre, to demonstrate her love, rather than to live on without him)
Capaneus noticed that Dante had inquired about him to Virgil and spoke up, delviering a pretty badass little speech.  He haughtily proclaimed "That which I was in life, I am in death. Though Jove wear out the smith form whom he took, in wrath...and casts his shafts at me with all his force, not even then would he have happy vengeance."  This is one tough hombre.  He stands here, for all eternity, egging Lucifer and God on.  'Give me your best shot.  I can take it.'  While Virgil tries half heartedly to chastise Capaneus that because of this defiance he is punished all the more, there is almost a tone of respect about him.  Virgil says to Dante that Capaneus wears his defiance over God like a ornaments on his chest.
From here our guides carry on, seeing other characters throughout history that have committed violence against God.  But this image of Capanaeus strikes me as a poignant moment, much like one we will witness with Cato in Purgatory.  For Dante the former warrior, there is a hint of sympathy for people like Capaneus.  Even though he is in Inferno, he deals with his torment on his own terms.  Capaneus, like Dante, is defiant.   

Day 13: Harpies and Forests

So we are still amongst those who have sinned violently, but these are the sinners who defile themselves through suicide.  Dante and Virgil, with Nessus guiding them away from the blood river find themselves among a dark forest.  Sounds familiar doesn't it.  I was reading the notes from Hollander's Inferno translation, which has some very insightful analysis.  I'm not sure why it never occurred to me to connect the dark forest from Canto 1, with this dark forest.  Sometimes we need someone with much more knowlege than ourselves to see the forest through the trees (sorry, the bad joke was just screaming out).  Is Dante trying to tell us something about how bad his state of mind was when he began this journey?  Before we jump to that, let me explain a little about this particular dark forest. 
Perched throughout these trees are the harpies.  The harpies play a fairly memorable role in Virgil's Aenid. Aeneas and his crew land on the small island of Strophades.  Once landed they proceed to begin slaughtering the abundant livestock on the island, and prepare them for a feast.  These animals, however, have protectors on the island in the form of the harpies.  Virgil descibes them as having heads of women and bodies of birds, and twice while Aeneas and his crew are trying to eat do they swarm in and attack them and, in a move any city dwellar dealing with pigeons can relate to, defectate all over the feast.  The harpies in Canto 13 feed upon the leaves of the trees in the grove.  What is horrific, and what Dante finds out by accident when he breaks off a thorn of a tree, is that these trees actually entomb the souls of suicides. When the thorn breaks off, a rivulet of blood trickles down and Dante is forced into a conversation with the soul inhabitting that tree.  So then the harpies are actually consuming parts of the soul trees, which echoes the animalistic nature consuming the the human nature in Canto 12.
But back to Dante and the dark woods.  The question that Hollander poses is a fascinating one.  Is Dante suicidal when he is having his mid-life crises?  It would be hard to imagine that it is an act that he would pursue beyond having the impulse.  In fact, i'd argue it was pretty amazing that Dante would even admidt to having such thoughts.  In medieval Europe, suicide was considered one of the gravest sins.  Now this wasn't always the case.  In ancient greece and during Caesar's time in Rome, the act of defiant suicide was a form of heroism.  One would rather end one's life than be subserviant to a ruler or cause, and this would be a form of honor.  Dante knows this and holds Cato, the most famous of the Roman suicides, with respect and gives him an honored place in the afterlife (he acts as the guide to souls entering purgatorio.  kind of like Charon in Inferno).  But clearly during Dante's time, suicide is a one way ticket to hell, with no chance of escape.  Also interesting in his commentary, Hollander posits that trees hold a special place in the sacrificial imagery of Christianity.  After all, a cross is nothing but a tree.  So would Dante consider his own martyrdom the ultimate act of sacrifice?  It is a bit nebulous as far as what exactly Dante the poet's role is compared to Dante the protagonist.  It sure does seem to me that Dante's use of forests both in the beginning and here is not coincidence.