Danteās Hell: Storm and mud, winds and rain
We are reaching here the first part of Hell ā more precisely the Upper Hell, which is the set of Circles all above the city of Dis (more about the city of Dis later). Those that remain in Upper Hell are considered to be āincontinentā sinners. And no it is not incontinence in the modern, medical sense of the term. In Danteās Aristotle-influenced moral system, the concept of sin relies on human reason, aka the will and the consciousness of one being. As a result, Dante divides the āgraveā, serious, truly dark sins, the sins of āMaliceā, from the āexcusableā and āunderstandableā sins, the sins of Incontinence. The difference is that a sin of Malice is committed with the full intention of doing a sin, it is an act or a crime with the intent and will to do something evil, a sin committed with the full consciousness of it being a sin. But the āincontinent sinnersā? They are people who commit sins mostly because they lack any form of will, or refused to understand what they were doing or the consequences of their actions. The sins of Incontinence are all based on normal, regular, human desires, emotions and actions ā sexuality, food, money, anger ā but taken to extreme or manifested in a disorderly, chaotic, destructive way through oneās life. These sinners are those that committed sins and did evil not because they wanted to do evil, but rather because they couldnāt control their own passions and desires, and because they let desires control them rather than reason, they led a life dictated by emotion rather than reflection. And this is why these sinners are located in the āUpper Hellā, the one with the less gruesome and painful punishments.
Interestingly, in his Upper Hell, Dante takes back what seems to be the usual list of the seven deadly sins ā but he cuts three of them off (Pride, Envy and Sloth), exclusively focus on four of the deadly sins (Lust, Gluttony, Greed and Wrath ā well, technically Sloth is maybe included in too, Iāll talk about this topic later, when dealing with the Fifth Circle, it is a complex topic).
Ā VI) The Second Circle: Lust
Beyond Minos stands the Second Circle of Hell, the one where sinners guilty of acting out of lust are sent. Their punishment, in this place āwhere no light shinesā, is in short ā the āeternal stormā. A constant, gigantic storm/tornado/hurricane that never stops, and that constantly sweeps up in the air the shades that are the sinners, whirling them in its stormy blasts, shaking them and throwing them everywhere, up and down, left and right. We see here the principle of the ācontrapassoā being applied, as this gigantic hellish storm is actually a visual and material manifestation of the lust the sinners suffered from ā just like the winds, their appetites and passions drove them everywhere, leading them into a dissolute, violent, destructive life, without ever letting them rest or settle anywhere.
Now, you might be wondering why Dante would consider āLustā as the least grave of the deadly sins, especially when you recall that lust is the deadly sin of things such as rape. Well, it is because Danteās Lust isnāt the Catholic Lustā¦ You see, in the Catholic religion, the seven deadly sins should actually be called āvicesā (and it is an appellation that many people have pushed forward). Because unlike actual āsinsā, which are specific actions (like murder, theft, rape), the deadly sins (actually vices) are human flaws and mindsets that leads to committing these sins and to oneās soul being corrupted. The idea of people ācommittingā the seven deadly sins is a HUGE misconception, rather people act āout ofā the seven deadly sins. They are the mobile to the crime. But Dante here completely reinvents his own system, and not only takes a more āaction-focusedā approach, where for him sins such as Lust and Gluttony arenāt so much a human vice than a lifestyle and a set of actions, but also he completely reinvents the meaning of ālustā.
Because, as we see by the description of the various sinners damned in this circle, Dante fuses ālustā andā¦ āloveā. āThe Divine Comedyā is a romantic poem, all about Dante being guided and protected by the woman he loves, Beatrice, and continuing a travel through horrors just for her, and ultimately heralding God and Heaven as the Supreme Love. There is something deeply romantic in all of the Divine Comedy ā and as a result, Dante developed an interpretation of the deadly sins entirely centered around love. For example Greed is an excessive love for money, Gluttony an excessive love for food, etcā¦ And in Danteās conception, Lust is just an excessive or corrupted form of love. When we see the list of the ācrimesā of the sinners of the Second Circle, we have quite ālustfulā things (such as a queen that legalized incest, or those that lived in debauchery collecting lovers one after the other), but also lots of tragic love stories ā ranging from women who killed themselves out of a broken heart, to adulterers that acted out of a true, forbidden love instead of pure lustā¦ When Dante describes these souls as being āblinded by their appetitesā, he doesnāt only mean sexual appetite ā Dante also places in this circle the souls that were blinded or lost all reason out of love, excessive or destructive love becoming a sin itself ā but a minor one, equal to just not being able to control oneās own sexual desires, or living exclusively by sexual pleasures. (Also note that if rape isnāt in this circle, it is also probably because Dante has a whole other circle dedicated to the sins of āViolenceā ā and he does mention rape in the circle of Violence if I recall, so in Danteās mind, rape isnāt so much the ācorrupted love and excessive sexā of Lust, but more of a matter of violence inflicted against someone).
Again, we have here a very strong and clear divide from the Catholic teachings, as in the Christian religion the whole thing of ālustā is that it is āsex without loveā, living for the pleasures of the flesh without caring about anything that can come beyond it, be it safety, responsibility or, more importantly, love. In Christian teachings, love is not a sin and cannot be a sin because love is a virtue, and a divine thing, and one of the most beautiful things in the world ā on the contrary, it is sex that is a sin, to the point it was demonized and rejected for centuries, you couldnāt even enjoy having sex without being deemed a sinner. āLustā as a vice is thus, not a corrupted form of love in the Christian mindset, but a pure sexuality without any form of love (hence why rape is the supreme form of the vice of lust, as it just sex with no love). Fun fact/digression: it is because of this duality of love and sex that in the Middle-Ages, homoromantic relationships could be accepted or tolerated (not as romantic mind you, but the Christian culture recognized there could be between two person of the same sex a form of love stronger than friendship and just as strong and unbreakable as a brotherhood/sisterhood), while homosexual relationships were punished by the law (medieval Christians didnāt mind two guys loving each other a lot ā but they condemned heavily two guys having sex with each other, or more precisely fucking each other, aka the famous sin of āsodomyā, which isnāt about gay love but about gay sex).
This is all quite important to understand how Danteās work is non-Christian in MANY way, and also how Danteās very personal poetic-philosophical moral system somehow influenced popular culture enough that many people started to believe it was actual Christian teaching.
Ā VII) The Third Circle: Gluttony
The third circle of Hell is the one where the sinners of gluttony are sent ā unlike the Second Circle, we donāt have a big development on the sin of gluttony, which seems to be resumed to an excessive love of food and to people leading lives led by their stomach rather than by their brain. Only one sinner is named, and it is just someone who was nicknamed āPigā, and we donāt know more, soā¦ Yeah. (Note: in actual Catholic teaching the vice of gluttony is just as complex as the other deadly sins, with many more forms and variations beyond just āeating a lot and loving to itā, ranging from the selfishness of not sharing your food with those that need it to alcoholism, passing by the obsession for food leading one to lose huge sums on money on just one dish instead of just using this money for something that could be more usefulā¦ Of course weāre not here to talk about Christian religion, but I just want to point out that Dante oversimplified the vice/deadly sin here.
And what is the punishment of the sinners, here? Rain. Not just any rain. A constant, eternal, unchanging, rain of heavy, dirty, cold water, mixed with thick hail and snow. A rain that makes the very ground a vast expanse of stinking mud, in which the gluttons lie forever, not standing up, āhowling like dogsā. This is the contrapasso principle applied. The gluttons sought comfort in the material world through excesses of food of various kind, and now they are surrounded by another form of materiality ā the materiality of snow and mud. The gluttons drowned in alcohol, and now they are beaten up by constant torrents of water. The gluttons spent their time eating and living by the basest functions of the body, and now are surrounded by things reminding them of the ānastyā side of the eating process ā slimy, dirty, stinking thingsā¦ And as the gluttons allowed their very life to be led by appetite and hunger, like animals, they are now howling like dogs, reduced to beasts unable to stand upā¦
If this wasnāt enough, thereās another torment and punishment here ā a being inhabiting the Third Circle. Cerberus. Yes, the Cerberus of Greek mythology ā but here reimagined as a demon of gluttony and spirit of hunger. Danteās Cerberus is described as a clawed and fanged beast, a three-headed mass of twitching muscles with a swollen belly, red eyes, and a greasy black beard. Cerberus spends its time ripping the sinners apart, āflaying and mangling themā, and to appease the creature which growls upon seeing the two protagonists, Virgil takes fistfuls of the mud on the ground and throws them in each of the creatureās mouth, which makes Cerberus busy as his hungry mind focuses now on devouring the slimy material. This passage is actually a reference to one of the greatest texts of Ancient Roman literature, the Aeneid, in which the holy seer/priestess/oracle known as the Sybil travels to the Roman Underworld and to avoid Cerberus killing them (since no mortal is allowed in the realm of the dead), she offers the beast three special honey cakes prepared in a sacred rite to appease the beast. Dante took back this image, but replaced the cakes with stinking slime, to better highly the irrational appetite and constant hunger of this frightening Cerberus, who is ready to eat anything, even filth. As a note, one famous thing with Danteās description of Cerberus is that, at one point, he calls it āthe great wormā. This expression has become very popular among imaginative interpretation and reinterpretations of Danteās Inferno, where Cerberus is given worm-like attributes. But originally it is not supposed to be a physical description, rather it is a common Biblical expression used to designate vile and repulsive evil beings ā for example later Dante uses āthe great wormā as a way to call Lucifer/the Devil, who clearly isnāt worm-like in Danteās invented Hell.
The interaction Dante has with the only sinner of Gluttony (Ciacco, aka āpig-guyā), leads to one very important fact that keeps returning throughout the poem: the dead actually have some sort of āprophetic abilityā which allows them to see into and know what will happen in the immediate future. This is an heritage of the Greco-Roman Underworld, since in both the Odyssey and the Aeneid the protagonists enter the Underworld and seek the dead because, being dead, they now exist outside of the constraint of the material world (including time) which gives them a lot of extra-knowledge and minor prophetic abilities. Dante likes to use this concept in order to sneak into his poem commentaries and opinions about events that happened right as he was writing his poem.
Before leaving for the next circle: remember my long talk about Judgement Day in the previous part? Well, this comes back here as Dante asks Virgil about the whole Judgement Day business, and Virgil delivers this universeās version of the Judgement Day! Now, according to āInfernoā (and Danteās Virgil), there is indeed a Judgement Day that will come at the end of all things. It is when the sinners of Hell will be delivered from their torment, and regain the world of the living by being given back a body ā all so they could be judged against, in front of God Himself, who will deliver a last sentence. An eternal sentence that this time will never stop. Dante (well, to be precise the fictional, unnamed Dante of the poem, that some like to call the Wanderer or the Pilgrim) then asks Virgil an interesting question: if people are still deemed bad and sentenced to torment upon Judgement Dayā¦ Will they end up just back in the same torments Hell already has? Or will they have a lesser pain? Or will they have even harsher punishments? What will be the difference of this second judgement? And Virgilās answerā¦ will probably seem very strange, very weird and very eldritch to those that are unfamiliar with Danteās personal philosophy (itself based on things such as the teachings of Aristotle and saint Thomas), but basically it goes: upon Judgement Day, humanity will reach perfection. They will be into a perfect state, having underwent a full mortal, living, material existence, then having a full spiritual afterlife, and now the spirit and the body reunited, ārefinedā by their various experiences while living and after-living. And the principle is that the closer a being gets to perfect, the more intensely they will feel things, be it pleasureā¦ or pain. So the torments and punishment delivered on the souls judged bad even at Judgement Day will be much, much greater ad much more painful than those they currently experiment in Hellā¦ but it will be a proof that they have reached a āperfectā state.
Yeah thatās quite alien to us today, but that was the kind of deep philosophical talk of the time.
