INFERNO, Episode 34. Structure, Fortune, And The Cracks In Dante's Poetry: Inferno, Canto VII, Lines 36 - 66

We have come to the first full-on anti-clerical passage in Dante’s COMEDY. It’s fitting it should be among the avaricious. And those prodigal with their money. Because who else has more in a world of stark scarcity than the church?

Medieval sermons against the greed of the clergy are almost cliché. But Dante doesn’t stand for cliché. Instead, he complicates the matter with Aristotle and Boethius, stepping outside of orthodoxy to find answers to what sin is.

In doing so, I think I see the poem starting to crack. Dante-the-poet will have to find a new way to voice and structure his work if COMEDY is to succeed. Join me for a slow exploration of this daunting passage of the greatest work of Western literature (so far!).

Here’s my English translation of INFERNO, Canto VII, Lines 36 - 66:

And I, feeling as if my heart had been run through, said,

“My master, please fill me in

On who these people are. And were these all clerics,

The tontured ones on our left?”

And he to me, “All here were so cross-eyed

In their minds back in their original lives

That no control governed their spending.

“They bellow out this stuff clearly

When they come to the two points of the circle

Where their contrary guilt divides them.

“These were clerics, who have no hairy caps

On their heads—and popes, even cardinals,

In whom avarice reached its highest achievement.”

And I, “Master, among these last sorts

I ought to clearly recognize some

Who were fouled with this sin.”

And he to me, “You’re collecting empty thoughts!

The lack of discernment that besmirched their lives

Has darkened their souls beyond recognition.

“They will come to their two collisions for eternity;

These will be resurrected from their tombs

With clenched fists—and these will rise with short hair.

“Inappropriately tossing stuff out and storing it up have taken all of them

Out of the beautiful world and set them to this scrapping—

I can’t offer a nicer word for it.

“Now you see, son, what buffonery

Comes to these because of Fortune’s goods,

So much so that humans fight each other over them.

“All the gold that’s below the moon,

Or ever could be, is not enough

To give rest to one of these worn-out souls.”