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I don't think Dante is particularly bothered about depicting his friends and mentors in the torments of Hell. I've just gone past the bit where he encounters his old teacher, Brunetto Latini, among the sodomites.
Actually this episode brought to the forefront, for me, the way in which Dante illustrates his narrative with vignettes of contemporary Italy - so the tributary of the Phlegethon is likened to a hot spring river in Italy, a stream of which was diverted to go through the (separate) prostitutes' quarter. This is quite unsettling actually; you get these occasional glimpses of mediaeval Italian life and think 'oh, that's interesting/pretty etc.', and then realise that we're in Hell, and what exactly is Dante trying to say about his country and countrymen? (Not just the explicit references to Florence and Florentines and their decay/reprobation). I think in some cases perhaps they are just illustrative, or meant to reinforce the image in the reader's mind, but still... unsettling. E.g. this description of Ser Brunetto leaving Dante and Virgil to join his fellow sodomites (Canto XV):
Then he turned back, and he seemed like one of those
who run Verona's race across its fields
to win the green cloth prize, and he was like
the winner of the group, not the last one in.
When I first read it I thought it was a beautiful image; and then I read the accompanying note, which says: 'Ironically, the Pilgrim's last view of his elderly and dignified teacher is the sight of him, naked, racing off at top speed to catch up with his companions in sin.'
I also liked the descriptions of the ogling of the sodomites in this canto. And one thing I have finally noticed, duh, is that although some of the damned spirits bewail the evils of their situation, not one of them has expressed repentance of their sin but rather they continue to exhibit it in Hell. Obvious when you think about it, but I think it is taking me a while to get used to the worldview.
I have just finished Canto XVII - the descent on the back of Geryon. This I thought was the most arresting passage so far - the visual imagery is even more striking here than elsewhere.
I doubt if Phaethon feared more - that time
he dropped the sun-reins of his father's chariot
and burned the streak of sky we see today -
or if poor Icarus did - feeling his sides
unfeathering as the wax began to melt,
his father shouting: 'Wrong, your course is wrong' -
than I had when I felt myself in air
and saw on every side nothing but air;
only the beast I sat upon was there.'
And:
As the falcon on the wing for many hours,
having found now prey, and having seen no signal
(so that his falconer sighs: 'Oh, he falls already'),
descends, worn out, circling a hundred times
(instead of swooping down), settling at some distance
from his master, perched in anger and disdain,
so Geryon brought us down to the bottom
at the foot of the jagged cliff, almost against it,
and once he got our bodies off his back,
he shot off like a shaft shot from a bowstring. |
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