Transcript Kicking and Screaming: Thoughts on The Fountain

The Inferno:
Screaming as They Go:
Circles Four and Five
(The Hoarders and Wasters /
The Wrathful and Sullen)
Feraco
Myth to Science Fiction
7 November 2014
Canto VII: Data File
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Settings: The Fourth and Fifth Circles
Figures: Plutus, Fortune
Allusions: Styx
Punishable Sins: Hoarding and Wasting (Fourth
Circle), Wrath and Sullenness (Fifth Circle)
• Summary: After leaving the Third Circle, the Poets
encounter Plutus, who shouts an unintelligible
warning to Satan upon seeing them. Virgil silences
him by reminding him of God’s will, recalling the
poets’ escape from Charon and Minos. Dante sees
men fighting over great stones, and realizes that
these men grew obsessed with money – either their
ability to hoard it or waste it. None of them are even
recognizable, and the poets move toward Styx as
Virgil discusses Fortune’s purpose. When they
arrive, Dante witnesses a ferocious, unending
battle between the Wrathful; the Sullen lie beneath
the swamp’s surface, denied the light of day
forever.
Hoarding and Wasting
Also referred to as Avarice and Prodigality; just
as Dante elevated lust above gluttony, he chooses
to place financial avarice and prodigality below
consumption
Timothy 6:10 claims avarice is "the root of all
evils,” and Raffa asserts that “medieval Christian
thought viewed the sin as most offensive to the
spirit of love.”
At least with consumption, someone benefits
(temporarily); no one benefits from obsessive
miserliness, nor from money wasted rather than
invested or spent wisely.
Just as he compared man’s hunger for political
power with gluttony via Ciacco’s “prophecy,” Dante
explicitly blames avarice for the corruption
gripping his city.
Unlike his fairly sympathetic portrayals of
sinners in the first three circles (Homer, Francesca,
Ciacco), Dante merely scorns the sinners we find
here.
The Punishment
The Fourth Circle’s punishment is shared by
Hoarders and Wasters alike; both parties strain
against giant rocks, yelling angrily at one
another as they charge and collide repeatedly.
The rocks symbolize the mundane nature of
the things the sinners obsessed over; now that
obsession is just dead weight.
Also, Dante notes that he can’t recognize
any of them individually; the combination of
anger and empty greed has dimmed their
souls so greatly that there’s nothing much left
of them.
In order to drive home his view that Greed
destroys the light of God within a person, Dante
takes special care to note how many religious
officials – even popes! – appear here.
Plutus
It’s not clear what Plutus is exactly supposed to
be; some translators take Virgil’s “you wolf of Hell!”
statement literally and give him canine features, a
la Cerberus, while others claim he’s human.
Dante seems to be splitting the difference,
giving him speech while rendering him incapable
of delivering it in a fully human language.
His anger seems animalistic, hinting yet again
at our darker nature – a nature faith enables us to
supress.
Also, it’s not clear which god he’s supposed to
represent; Pluto was the Lord of the Underworld in
many myths, whereas Plutus was simply a God of
Wealth.
Dante seems to be fusing Pluto’s ability to rule
with Plutus’s traditional status, thus creating a
creature who hungers for both power and wealth –
“the great enemy,” as he’s called in Ciardi’s
translation.
Fortune
Dante believed that everything you did
came back to you in the end, particularly due
to divine influence; The Inferno’s system of
divinely-governed poetic justice makes this
perfectly clear.
However, what about what happens along
the way?
Dante elevates Fortune above the fray of the
mortal world, painting her as a distributor; just
as God distributes light and goodness
throughout creation, Fortune distributes
worldly goods.
She is, in many ways, impossible for mortals
to understand (think Gilgamesh’s divinities).
Fortune
Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy,
which Dante read following Beatrice’s death,
clearly inspires Dante’s use of Fortune,
although the former’s is more negative: He
believed you should ignore what Fortune
brings you, concentrating instead on what you
knew to be permanent and certain (divine love
and justice, for example).
Boethius illustrates this in Consolation by
showing himself as he’s gradually stripped of
everything – possessions, honor, freedom. (This
obviously would have more relevance for
Dante in the years after he first read the book!)
He eventually argues that the easiest way to
learn his lesson about Fortune is to experience
bad luck, for there is no better teacher that
only the immutable and permanent is
worthwhile.
Wrath and Sullenness
It’s interesting that both the Fourth and
Fifth Circles contain linked sins; that said,
they’re linked in different ways.
The Hoarders and Wasters have different
sins, but they sin according to the same
principle (their attitudes toward material
wealth are corrupt); this is why their
punishments are identical.
The Wrathful and the Sullen, on the other
hand, embody the same sin, but in different
forms: anger that’s expressed immoderately
(the Wrathful) and anger that’s harmfully
repressed (the Sullen); this is why their
punishments differ, even though they live in
the same area.
The Punishment
The Wrathful and the Sullen occupy the
Styx’s swamp-waters together.
The Wrathful are locked in an endless,
desperate physical battle above the water, one
in which every soul fights the others; they can
only see and do hateful things.
The Sullen lie beneath the water, gurgling
out something approaching a hymn – a darkly
ironic twist, considering that Dante believes
they wasted the light of God within themselves
by sulking (rather than celebrating their
fortune in life).
The water over their heads symbolizes the
anger they internalized, using it to distance
themselves from God.
Styx
Styx was long used in mythology as
Hell’s major river, although it turns up
elsewhere as a marsh or swamp (Virgil
did this in The Aeneid).
As usual, Dante’s descriptions are
more physically realistic than his
predecessors’.
Dante turns it into a swamp here in
order to heighten the sense that we’re
encountering corrupted morality; here,
the swamp is the Fifth Circle.
Like Acheron, Styx doubles as a
border; it separates Upper Hell from Dis,
the Walled City of Lower Hell.
Canto VIII: Data File
• Settings: The Fifth Circle, Styx, and Dis
• Figures: Phlegyas, Filippo Argenti, Rebellious
Angels
• Allusions: The Harrowing of Hell
• Punishable Sins: Wrath and Sullenness (Fifth
Circle); unofficially, the denial of God’s will also
counts
• Summary: As the poets watch great flames shoot up
from towers on the other side of Styx, Phlegyas
races across the marsh in order to shuttle them
over to Dis. He’s angry to see a mortal in Hell (yet
another Threshold Guardian!), but Virgil deals with
him in the usual fashion. One member of the
Wrathful, Filippo Argenti, approaches the poets, but
he’s set upon and torn apart by his fellow sinners
(to Dante’s delight). When the poets reach the gate
of Dis, they’re denied entrance by the Rebellious
Angels, and even Virgil can’t force his way past
them; the Canto ends with the poets nervously
awaiting divine intervention from a Messenger.
Phlegyas
Just like the other figures we’ve
encountered – Minos as the last vanguard of
Reason, Cerberus as Gluttony personified, and
Plutus as the representation of Financial
Avarice – Phlegyas is associated with his
realm’s sin (in this case, uncontrollable
wrath).
That said, he’s angry for a reason; not only
is he the son of the old war god (Ares), but
another god, Apollo, raped his daughter.
The furious father burned Apollo’s temple
to the ground, and was promptly slain by him.
He was then cast down to Hell for showing
contempt for the gods; this is where Virgil
shows him in The Aeneid.
Filippo Argenti
It’s not clear why Dante hates Filippo Argenti so
deeply, and it’s a little unsettling to see the poet
react so happily to the sight of a soul being torn to
shreds.
Virgil often has to rebuke Dante for showing
compassion for the sinners he encounters (after all,
he’s supposed to be recognizing and rejecting sin),
so the elder man approves of Dante’s hate.
We know little about him, save that he belonged
to the Neri faction (which would have placed him at
odds with Dante).
Some critics suggest that Argenti had wronged
Dante in the past somehow, proposing that
Argenti’s brother took possession of Dante’s
property after his exile, or that Filippo himself had
slapped Dante during an argument.
Boccaccio just shows him beating someone
without cause in order to highlight his violent
temper.
The Rebellious Angels
The Rebellious Angels plummeted
into Hell after choosing the wrong side
in the great battle between God and
Satan (this separates them from the
Angels who chose no sides, who ended
up in the Vestibule).
All traces of their former beauty have
been erased; now they’re simply
hideous, transformed by their wrath
and hatred into monsters.
They lie in wait outside of Dis (the
walled city of Lower Hell), trying to stop
the poets from entering; it’s reminiscent
of their failed resistance to Christ
during the Harrowing of Hell.
The Resistance
In theory, the Rebellious Angels
don’t have the right to deny Dante
and Virgil entrance to Dis; God’s will
still reigns supreme here.
However, these beings ended up
where they are because they
habitually resist God; it’s not like they
haven’t done things like this before.
What’s surprising is how troubled
Virgil seems; the end of the Canto
leaves readers worried and tense.
In Conclusion
Circles Four and Five close out
our experiences with the Sins of the
She-Wolf, although we can (and
will) lump the Heretics in with
them.
As we approach Dis, Dante’s
travels through Hell slow
markedly; there’s more time for
conversation and encounters.
None of these sins are “light” –
but we’re about to get serious…