The imagination of lust in Inferno 5

 
Amor, ch’al cor gentil ratto s’apprende,
    prese costui de la bella persona
    che mi fu tolta; e ’l modo ancor m’offende.
Amor, ch’a nullo amato amar perdona,
    mi prese del costui piacer sì forte,
    che, come vedi, ancor non m’abbandona.
Amor condusse noi ad una morte.
    Caina attende chi a vita ci spense».
    Queste parole da lor ci fuor porte.

Love, which quickly kindles in noble hearts,        100
    Seized him for that fair body which from me
    Was torn—what grief the manner still imparts!
Love, which makes each loved one pay love’s fee,
    So seized me with the beauty of my friend
    That yet it does not leave me, as you see.
Love led us both to one death in the end.
    Caïna waits for him who quenched our lives above.”
    Thus did these words from them to us descend.*

In Inferno 5, Francesca speaks of Amor as if ironclad rules - like those of courtly love - applied at all times. That is, Amor is not merely a human experience, but it has the force of law, of science, of a system. Her fate is the inevitable result of an inescapable logic before which one -- especially one of the refined sort -- helpless.


The crowds of lovers Dante sees as he enters the circle of Lust are compared to starlings driven by a hurricane:

That hellish tempest roars incessantly;
    It grasps and draws the spirits in its train,
    Spinning and thrashing souls in agony.

As these victims of Love are carried past the ruina - the place where the structure of Limbo was broken by the advent of Christ, they curse:

Each time that they whirl past the ruined terrain,
    Loud shrieks and moans and lamentations spill
    From them—it’s there they curse God’s might in vain.

Quando giungon davanti a la ruina,
    quivi le strida, il compianto, il lamento;
    bestemmian quivi la virtù divina.

Now it's one thing to be "carried away" by an overpowering force; it's another to choose, at a certain moment, to curse divine power. Yes, it's a repetitive process - they utter their imprecations every time they pass the ruina - but to curse requires an act of speech, a decision, a judgment and act of will, quite unlike what it takes for a human body to be propelled by cyclonic winds.

What's more, they are cursing the evidence of a power greater than the forces of nature - a power that liberated certain souls from nature and endless desire, in fact from death. These lovers are cursing the traces of a Love strong enough to break the ultimate rule, the final law, a Love that might have saved them had they not bowed to an ideology that defines mortals as the slaves and playthings of inescapable Love.

One can easily multiply examples of this, irony, this comical disjunction. Essentially the ideology of inescapable Love relies on a model of mechanics. All is determined by measurable forces that cause predictable effects. The very first lines of the canto summon a mathematical relation:

From the first circle I thus went below
    Into the second, which girds a smaller round
   And so much greater grief that stings to woe.

This might well be the most uninspired opening of any canto in the poem - so obviously so that it's best to assume it was deliberate. Numbering, inverse proportionality, going from up to down, it's a dull way to introduce the realm of love and lust. It's mechanical, and the mechanicality gets cruder right away as we encounter the judge:

There horrid Minos makes a snarling sound,
    Examines the offenders that come in,
    Then dooms and sends them as his tail is wound.
I mean, the soul of evil origin,
    Approaching him, confesses all its past;
    And that discerner of the grades of sin
Determines where in Hell it should be classed,          10
    Then wraps his tail around himself to show
    How many circles down he wants it cast.

As a parody of confession, the scene is rich enough - instead of leading to absolution, the Confessor listens, gets an interesting sort of erection, which in turn produces a number indicating where the soul is to be thrown.

Dante and Virgil have just left some of the greatest judges and minds of all time - supple intellects who would have listened, judged with nuance, and invoked insightful reason in the service of justice. But no such luck after Limbo: every soul beyond this point - including Francesca - got treated to the same robotic reflex, the same absence of meditation, the same catapult.

Canto 5 is rich in exempla of a sort of Hobbesian world in which desire simply rules. There is no stopping it, as the souls there know - because for them, desire demands instant capitulation. There is no suspension of cause and effect that would allow understanding, will, and resolve to enter in.

The imagination of Lust will be turned on its head on the Mount of Purgatory -- no time to get into that here. But it's worth a quick look. Compare the lovers buffeted by the whirlwind of Inferno 5 with the newborn soul described in Purgatorio 25 -- the Terrace, not by chance, of the Lustful who are regaining their freedom.

We find a circling there, but one not driven by any natural force outside itself. Statius describes for Dante the new soul, which has just been breathed joyously into life:

                      . . . un alma sola,
che vive e sente e se in se rigira.            74-75

                                 . . . a single soul
that lives and feels and itself revolves upon itself.

However one ultimately chooses to see this model of the psyche, it is not going to be found in Hobbes. Comedy in Dante derives in part from the ironies it finds and probes within the fallen world. As the voyage progresses, it springs more from the delights that come with leaving that world behind.

*All tranlations from Inferno are from an unpublished version by Peter D'Epiro. Purgatorio is from John D. Sinclair's prose edition.

The Thebaid

It's not easy to find even a synopsis of Statius' Thebaid. The epic, in 12 books (same as the Aeneid), tells the story of the Seven Against Thebes (link will bring up something of a summary). The story has its roots in Aeschylus and Sophocles, but is filled to overflowing with Statius' baroque Latin style.

The main plot of the Thebaid derives from Oedipus' curse on his two sons, Eteocles and Polynices, who, after he blinded himself, pushed him aside in order to pursue their own ambitions. The sons initially agreed to share the rule of Thebes by alternating one-year reigns. But Eteocles, the younger, soon broke faith.

Polynices went to Argos to ask help from its kings, Adrastus I and Amphiaraus. The latter had the celebrated and unusual dual gifts of prophecy and kingliness. On his way back from Argos, Polynices encountered his frail father on the road. The son sought his father's blessing, but received his curse:

This curse I leave you as my last bequest: Never to win by arms your native land, nor return to Argos, but by a kinman's hand to die and slay.

A minor aside: In this scene (from Oedipus at Colonus) with Polynices, Oedipus resembles the way the seer Teiresias had seemed to the pre-blind Oedipus. In Oedipus the King, there is much made of the difference between the kind of prophetic instinct, if that is the word, of the blind Teiresias and the rationative intelligence of Oedipus:

"Come, tell me, where have you proved yourself a seer? Why, when the Sphinx was here, did you say nothing to free the people? Yet the riddle, at least, was not for the first comer to read: there was need of a seer's help, and you were discovered not to have this art, either from birds, or known from some god. But rather I, Oedipus the ignorant, stopped her, having attained the answer through my wit alone, untaught by birds." (Oedipus the King.)

"How terrible it is to have wisdom when it does not benefit those who have it" - Teiresias. (Oedipus the King)

The story of the Seven against Thebes is the endgame of the duel of knowledge and power, fate and freedom, begun with the prophecy given to Laius and Jocasta, the parents of Oedipus. There is no exit, no glimmer of a way out.

Eteocles and Polynices slay one another at Thebes

Of all the poets who could have been cast in the role of "resurrected Christian convert," no one would seem a less promising candidate than Statius. It is a measure of the assurance of Dante as the poet of the era of promise beyond the classical world that he springs (literally) this surprise on Dante the Pilgrim, on Virgil, and on us in Canto 21.