Dante Book II Canto IV Scene I

 

Chronicles of Dante’s

The Journey of Life Events of Man.

Part II of Tale One

Jimmy Loong

4/5/2021 to 13/5/21

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferno_(Dante)

 

Part Two

Introduction and Notes to the Tale.

Part Two took on from Canto XIV, and it occupied my mind much. I was also inactivated by real works except for some issues that have me concerned about but came to be resolved eventually. When I was in deep thoughts without a solution to my issues, I admitted I slipped into my tale here.

Two things I will confess in my writing here.

One, I do read a lot on the floating subject matter and in this write it was what was Dante’s Inferno all about. I had to do some serious reading and unlike my other tales, I could weave and meld the ends as I fancy. Here I have a plot line or rather more like a direction. My Dante here was in the 23^rd Century and even far ahead of us now. I did not want to re-write another Inferno and took on what could be described as my favorite line; Go bold into the new Frontier.

I guess I did that when I changed the characters here to others who may be more in line with current interest. When I was doing this in the later part of the tale, I felt more than bold to divert but kept to the main plot of the original tale.

And when I was writing, I had my mind plotting into the next part of the tale. I will be honest it will be different in approach.

Two, I am getting tired nowadays, health is an issue. No, I am not ready to join Dante or Aeneas or even Homer in Inferno. I do confess, the mind tires and my memory evade me at time. It could be my health or age but I will persist. Or maybe God has other plans for me. (pun intended here.)

In a comical approach, I was telling a friend that one day when I read these tales, I may smile for I can’t remember all of it but it was fun to know I wrote it.

I have decided to split the tale into three parts; one part will be with thirteen or fourteen canto passages, and each tale will be three sections. If I do complete the other two parts; Purgatory and Paradise, then it will be ninety-nine canto or nine parts in total to complete Inferno here.

Do enjoy the read as I did with the write.

 

Canto XIV

The Seventh Circle: Violence III

Scene 1

 

Since love for his native place, Florence constrained him then, Dante gathered up the scattered twigs and leaves. He laid it over the dismembered soul.

“How could one who had died and soul remains here, still be dismembered as if the slaughterhouse?” Dante asked himself.

“It’s not the works of Man here but of the creation of Hell. Spare him tears for he had to endure the pain here too.” Virgil looked at the tree. “I am sure there are others before him, and they all sought their shelter here. The Tree held a generous soul that once loved his Emperor and country, and thus now extends that to the fellows of Florence here.”

Dante looked to the tree and a drop of tears fell from his left eye.

“I shed my tear for you.” Dante then followed on with Virgil to walk into the forest there.

“Do you not despair on the sights that behold you?” Dante asked of Virgil. The other stopped in his tracks and looked at Dante.

“Does one feel the same when he had experienced it once before? I did tell you that I was in Hell before?” Virgil replied.

“You told me so. You came on an errand but you left soon after.” Dante recalled.

“I did leave but took the liberty to wander further. What we are to see may sadden you but don’t let yourself be immersed in it. Remember your journey here is to find Beatrice.”

“I am a living soul, and my emotions are intact. I have traveled perhaps half of Hell and seen many sins of the living. I had shed my tears and anger when it was needed, or at the time, brought on by my emotional bursts. I will be focusing on my task, for Beatrice still beats in my heart. And my heart does overrule my mind most times.”

“Spoken like a true Man. Come with haste to catch up with me. We got a lot of grounds to cover.” Virgil was in a buoyant mood then, and Dante followed close behind. Their walk was not long before he came to a new scene that saddens him then.

“What frightful land awaits now?” Dante bemoaned the trail that he took. He turned back and looked at the forest behind him. It was cut off as if there were two sides to the land; one of growth and the other barren of anything but scorching surface.

Dante said they had reached a barren plain, which from its bed remove every plant.

“There is the woeful wood is as a garland around it, as round the former is the dismal moat.” Dante sighed. “Have I not seen the last of the land of such?”

“Be brave, poet. We are in Hell. Now I will suggest we move along the edge of the moat.” Virgil told Dante. “I doubt you want to be in the moat.”

Dante walked there on its very edge with each step he took to be forward but his sight was everywhere. He felt with each step the soil was of dense and arid sand.

“Vengeance of God, how much by everyone thou oughtest to be feared, who readeth here what to these eyes of mine was manifest! Of naked souls I many flocks beheld, who all wept very sorely, while on each a different law appeared to be imposed.”

A few lay on the ground upon their backs; and some were seated cuddled up together, while others moved about continually. Most numerous were those that moved around, and least so those that under torment lay, but all the freer had their tongues to wail. Dante looking down to the ground ahead, he saw then gentle fall dilated flakes of fire, like flakes of snow that fall on the windless Alps.

“Alexander may have seen that in his conquest in the winter then.”

In the winter of 327/326 BC, Alexander the Great, the Emperor of Macedonia personally led a campaign against the Aspasioi of Kunar valleys, the Guraeans of the Guraeus valley, and the Assakenoi of the Swat and Buner valleys.

"Not only did Alexander slaughter the entire population of Massaga, but also did he reduce its buildings to rubble," Dante recalled his reading of the conquest in India’s torrid regions, as they fell, and his troops trample on the soil, because the flames, and ever without resting was the dance there seen by Dante, the wretched hands, that kept, now here, now there, slapping away each latest burning flake.

“There that conquerest all, except the stubborn devils who came out against us at the entrance of the gate, who is that great one who seems not to mind the fire, but lies there scornful and awry, so that the rain seems not to ripen him?”

“Did you speak of Capaneus?” Virgil asked Dante. “He who was at war with the Seven Kings Against Thebes. He earned the wrath of Zeus when he defied the other in the name.”

“As these souls here, who defied God to be banished here.” Dante looked at the lost souls there. “I knew of Capaneus. He was one of the seven Kings who Thebes was besieged; he held and seems to hold his God in disdain, and little seems to prize him; his spitefulness fitted as adornment on his breast. He may have lain here forever. I read that Capaneus once said; as I was in life, so am I now in death. In other words: I am unchanged, Hell has not altered me.”

“Dis your concerns, Dante. The sinner who did not repent of his sins while alive, who did not find a way to change while still on earth, is fixed for eternity with his sins. This is Hell: to be stuck with oneself.” Virgil said to Dante.

“Now follow me, and see that thou meanwhile set not thy feet upon the burning sand, but to the thicket keep them ever close.” Virgil usually moved on without impunity for those he had seen.

In silence, Dante and Virgil went on and came to where out of the land a little stream spirits forth, where ruddy color makes Dante shudder still. He recalled the hot spring he was to visit when younger; bubbly water with sulfur contents. Its bottom and both sides had turned to stone, as also had the embankments on each side.

“We can cross here,” Virgil said to Dante but the other was standing there looking at the sights that had left them.

“Of all the other things which I have shown thee since first we entered through the outer gate, whose threshold unto no one is denied, nothing has ever by thine eyes been seen as notable as is this present brook, which deadens o’er itself all little flames.” Dante recited the words than of the ancient poet for which he was named. Virgil stared at the poet and stood there waiting.

“Amid the sea, there lies a wasted land,” Dante muttered. “Whose name is Crete, under the king the world of old was pure. There is a mountain there, which, happy once with waters and green leaves, was Ida called; ’t is now abandoned like a thing outworn. Whilom as the trusty cradle for her son Rhea selected it, and when he wept, to hide him better, caused a shouting there.” Dante looked at Virgil. “Those were the ancient poem words.

“Within that mountain stands a great Old Man, who holds his shoulders toward Damiata turned, and who, as at his mirror, looks at Rome. His head is formed of finest gold, his arms and breast are of the purest silver, then, as far as to his loins, he’s made of brass; all chosen iron is he down from there, save that baked clay his right foot is, and straighter, he stands on that, than on the other foot.”

“It was Saint Francis who had traveled to Damiata in Egypt after the Crusade War, he was received by the Sultan Malik al-Kamil and his troops. He discussed their faith and soon he was invited as a friend to the land.”

“It goes to show that the Old man held a message. The careful separation of the temporal and spiritual realms are necessary for the fulfillment of human potential.” Adapted from (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/275009240_The_Old_Man_of_Crete#:~:text=The%20Old%20Man%20of%20Crete%2C%20which%20appears%20in%20Inferno%20XIV,done%20little%20to%20illuminate%20it.)

“What is with you now, Dante? Another bout of madness?” Virgil asked.

“Each of these parts, except the golden one, is broken by a cleft, whence trickle tears, which, when collected, perforate that cave. From rock to rock they course into this vale; then Acheron with Styx and Phlegethon they form, and through this narrow duct descend as far as where one goes no further down; they form Cocytus there; and what that pool is like, thou. Let it be seen; hence here it is not told.” Dante continued on his rambling.

“Thou know that the place is round, and though a long way thou hast has gone already, e’er to the left descending toward the bottom, through the whole circle thou hast not yet gone; wherefore, if aught that’s new appear to us, it should not bring amazement to thy face.” Dante looked at Virgil. “I am reciting an old poem on Hell. These souls remained here for they were a part of the living worldly attributes that caused them to be here. Those attributes are sins. If we have none of that, they won’t be here. They represent the decadence in human history.”

“Hell was not created by God. We created Hell for ourselves here.” Dante sighed. Then he spoke to Virgil to move on. “It’s now time for us to leave the land; see that thou follow me; the banks, which are not burned, afford a path; and up above them every flame is quenched.” Dante took forth on the walk.

“Did you mock me just now, Dante? I have been here before you, and may even remain here like them.” Virgil asked but the other had moved on ignoring the question.

In Dante’s mind, he had seen the sins there made to be suffered by the sinners. These three groups of sinners; the guilty of the three kinds of violence against God. Those who lie flat on their backs, directly pelted by the raining fire, are the blasphemers, the violent against God in His person. Violence against God in His possessions, we remember, can take two different forms: violence against nature (God’s daughter) is sodomy, and violence against human art (nature’s daughter, God’s granddaughter) is usury. Those who move about continually are the sodomites.  (Adapted from https://digitaldante.columbia.edu/dante/divine-comedy/inferno/inferno-14/)