Dante - Inferno Canto III
Have you ever been reading and wondered to yourself what does that Amontillado in the cask taste like?
I bet it tastes like Red Amber, like Chanterelles fried in butter, like motes of light on a summer morning. Soft and smooth and essential.
Not worth being sealed behind a wall for, but still, and so.
Well, and a Literature thing.
Every year for the last few years, I like to read one of the books of the Commedia leading up to Easter.
This year, I’ll be reading Inferno.
Not because my life in any way resembles, “and like one who rejoices in his gains and when the time comes that makes him a loser has all his thoughts turned to sadness and lamentation,” because really, it pretty much doesn’t.
Although for some reason this time around, “O lady of virtue, through whom alone the human kind surpasses everything with the smallest circle of the heavens, so grateful to me is thy command that my obedience, were it given already, is late; there is no need for more than to declare they will to me.” Strikes me. Not sure why. Hmm…
Really, given that the theme of the last few months has been trying to break out of patterns of behavior that I just don’ t like and in some cases seeing new patterns I don’t like, Inferno is a perfect choice. I know the Romantics like it, but it’s all about people who having in a dreamlike way wandered from their true path, repeat the same errors over and over. Wallowing in the torturous results.
It’s all terribly metaphoric, therefore, I love it.
Inferno, Canto III (I’m further than this, but well...this was already written).
Through me the way into the woeful city, Through me, Through me.
Everyone always focuses on “Abandon All Hope all Ye Who Enter Here,” but what I love is “And Primal Love.” Even here in hell, far from light and hope, abandoned, there is the and of “and primal love.” Original. Essential. From the beginning. Not the cultivated love of artly courts, but that first beating pulse of the heart. Pushing love through the sinews and enabling that first startled breath to catch. When the earth was formless and empty, with darkness over the surface of the deep. Primal Love lingering like unseen smoke. Smelled and tasted and felt for eyes that couldn’t yet focus and blink.
Not to get into a discussion of evolution, which other than dinosaurs, I find interesting in the same way as reading Marxist histories, all protagonist-less tides and the evolution of the fork, or maybe it was just that one Marxist history. Simultaneously really interesting and intensely boring. Quite a feat. But the poetry of Genesis’ formless voids - with breath as this vital primal, primary force - quite seduces me into poetic reverie. And inchoate ramblings apparently.
And so, Inferno Canto III.
“Divine Power Made Me and Supreme Wisdom and Primal Love.” Power. Strength or force. The ability to act. Wisdom. The ability to take knowledge and experience and apply them with prudence and insight. Love. Sanskrit has 99 words for it, so I’m not sure I’m up to a quip of a definition for the purpose of this essay.
Although, seriously, how much do I love Virgil here, “And when he had laid his hand on mine with cheerful looks that gave me comfort.” The experienced guide on the journey of descent. Giving advice and comfort where needed. A kindly human face in the midst of all this dark and drear and eternal primal divine.
Divine. Supreme. Primal. And in this case enduring eternally. And thus we get to the part about abandoning hope, because, well, Justice moved the gateway’s maker. And so to the Woeful City. Eternal Pain. Lost people.
“The wretched souls of those who lived without disgrace and without praise.” In this canto, we meet people who couldn’t be bothered to get off the couch, pick a side and decide. And now they must follow whatever banner leads them.
“After I had recognized some of them, I saw and knew the shade of him who from cowardice made the great refusal.” Because books relate through spidery tangents, in our handwritten marginalia, we have an arrow pointing to “refused his tests, tests are a gift.” which is of course a Bujold quote. The idea that the things that test us, are not curses, but gifts. The important thing being to accept the gift and do something. Anything. Not be wretches “who never were alive.” Certainly, a fundamental principal of my life. Energy being nothing if not applied.
Although, since we immediately go to wretches waiting on the shore of the Acheron to go into hell, well, Justice moved and all that, not all actions are useful ones.
“As in autumn the leaves drop off one after the other till the branch sees all its spoils on the ground so the wicked seed of Adam fling themselves from that shore one by one at the signal, as a falcon at its recall. Thus they depart over the dark water, and before they have landed on the other side a fresh crowd collects again on this.”
I don’t have much to say about this, other than to clap in admiration for a true master of metaphor. Weaving images of some autumnal wood full of swirling leaves and falling falcons that can never know spring. Fresh cursing leaves continually gathering to go to the distant shore.
And then the overwhelm of the experience washes in sweat and terror and a red flash. Dante faints. It’s just so cute.
Should I call Dante cute?
Well, perhaps while I’m drinking the Amontillado. Want a glass? There’s plenty in the cask.
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