Inferno Vii: The Circle Of Capitalists

"Pape Satàn, pape Satàn aleppe!"

If these words e'er meant anything inward whatsoever language, or were otherwise intelligible to the contemporaries of Dante Alighieri, that important is lost. What’s left to us is the firstly of a curse, or a demonic incantation, which is apace cutting brusque past times Dante’s guide, Virgil.

Taci, maladetto lupo! consuma dentro te con la tua rabbia.

But who is this ‘accursed wolf’ whom Virgil hopes volition locomote ‘consumed inwardly past times its ain rage’? The example past times Gustavo Dorè looks zilch similar a wolf, nor similar the fiera crudele – ‘cruel wild beast’ – of the solely other business that mentions its appearance.

Dorè’s Plutus is a demon amongst human semblance. Perhaps he’s Plutus or Ploutos, the Greek as well as Roman god of wealth as well as agricultural bounty, boy of Iaison as well as Demetra; or else he’s Pluto, the god of the underworld that bears his before moniker (Hades), as well as from which nosotros larn the sometimes planet past times the same name. Or perchance both, because inward medieval times the 2 were routinely mixed up.

Wealth as well as death, whether married past times poesy or past times historical accident, oversee the 7th canto of the Inferno. Or, to a greater extent than precisely, the quaternary circle of Hell, because for the firstly fourth dimension Dante breaks the symmetry of 1 circle per canto. The quaternary as well as 5th are both here.

First he as well as Virgil encounter, on a giant ridge that encircles the whole perimeter of hell every bit it continues to narrow towards the bottom, the throng of the greedy as well as the prodigal. The poet calls them gente più ch’altrove troppa, people who, to a greater extent than than elsewhere, are besides numerous. But besides numerous for what? In excess of what? This claim would appear to pause a dominion of Hell alluded to in the 5th canto, whereby each circle is smaller than the 1 that precedes it, as well as is occupied past times a smaller release of souls guilty of a greater crime. This violation, then, is probable a outcome of the poet’s ain psychological judgment rather than an actual fact. There shouldn’t locomote so many people here, so many spirits damned past times a sin so grave.

And what do they do? What is their contrappasso?

The greedy as well as the squanderers are 2 faces of the same money (as it were), as well as serve 2 halves of the same punishment. Each is condemned to force a boulder amongst their chests along the arc of the ridge. When they accomplish the goal of the one-half circle, they crash into the other group, who are pushing boulders inward the opposite direction. As if inward a correspond of route rage, they exclaim to 1 some other perché tieni? perché burli? ‘Why do you lot keep?’ ‘Why do you lot squander thus?’ Then they plough just about as well as start pushing their boulders inward the opposite direction, along some other semi-circle. And so forth. The virtually famous example is, of course, Dorè’s.

But I am also reminded of the perpetual circle of Dr Seuss’ Star-on, Star-off machines inward The Sneetches, overseen past times the greedy Sylvester McMonkey McBean.

The greedy inward this circle are all members of the clergy, every bit signalled past times their tonsure. ‘Clerics, popes as well as cardinals’ in cui usa avarizia il suo soperchio – inward whom avarice exercises its excess (implied: every bit everyone knows). And when Dante observes that he ought to locomote able to recognise at to the lowest degree some of them, Virgil explains that la sconoscente vita che i fé sozzi, advert ogne conoscenza or li fa bruni: the unknowing (ignorant) behavior that sullied them inward life, darkens them to cognition inward expiry – ie, conceals their appearance, makes them unrecognisable. Thus nosotros are spared a catalogue of Dante’s contemporaries which powerfulness accept created the exiled poet or the courts that gave him sanctuary some political bothers. (Although he was non 1 to describe punches inward this surface area every bit nosotros shall take in after on.)

The greedy are greedy, the important is pretty much unchanged. But the squanderers are marked past times greed every bit well. Perhaps they collectively stand upward for the mercantile/banking cast that was flourishing inward Florence inward Dante’s lifetime, along amongst early on forms of conspicuous consumption non past times aristocrats or priests, every bit was customary, but regular citizens.

We are at the dawn of capitalism, as well as medieval Florence is 1 of its nervus centres, servicing every bit it does the Papal state amongst a make of fiscal services (lending, changing, insurance) every bit good every bit amongst increasingly sophisticated goods. Dante has no regard for this soul corporation as well as its attendant soul fortunes. This deeply Christian man, this medieval man, has no ideological solid soil from which to regard capitalist wealth creation every bit a agency of social or cloth progress. Therefore he merely sees no futurity inward it, other than the rattling bleak metaphysical outcome of an eternity spent pushing boulders inward Hell.

There is some other circle inward this canto, hosting 2 quite split upward groups of souls, known to the chronicles every bit the wrathful as well as the sullen (for Dante rarely names the sinners or the sins using the short-hand of his commentators). Both alive inward the murky waters of the Styx, the mythological river which is reduced hither to a shallow marsh. But the 2 groups are quite alien to each other. The wrathful stand upward exterior the water, fighting incessantly as well as for no reason; the sullen – which nosotros powerfulness telephone band the clinically depressed, for whom Dante as well as his fourth dimension had no pity – dwell underneath the surface, weighed downward past times their inwardly directed anger. Their sin consists inward purpose inward a failure to deed (linking them amongst the indifferent of Hell’s vestibule) as well as partly inward failing to appreciate the glory of creation as well as the gift of life, representing the opposite vice to the hedonism of the greedy. They desire to talk, lamenting how they roamed sadly ne l'aere dolce che dal sol s'allegra, inward the ‘sweet air which past times the Sun is gladdened’ (per Longfellow), but H2O pushes the words dorsum downward their throats.

Enough. In this heroic verse form without danger of adversaries, Dante as well as Virgil accept come upward to the pes of a tower, whereby the canto ends.

Previously: Inferno I, II, III, IV, V, VI.