Inferno, Canto 18 with Dr. Susan Felch

[Music] [Music] today we're dropping into lower hell into the eighth circle of the inferno in fact we are literally dropping into the malibu j a set of ten concentric rings that form this eighth circle of fraud in the previous canto dante the pilgrim and virgil have been circling downwards on the back of the monster garion who with his honest looking face but scorpion tail is the very emblem of fraud garion takes dante and virgil from the circle of violence to the less dramatic but more serious sins of fraud whereas violence is perpetrated by evil will or malice plus brute fraud is more deadly and more wicked because it requires both malice and a corrupted intellect fraud is a coldly calculated sin as they spiral downward on gerion's back dante sees a series of tin valleys descending onto a plane in the middle of which is the deep icy well that lies at the very center of the inferno the ten valleys are the malabulgias the evil pockets or ditches that compose if eighth circle of hell together they form a series of moats around an inverted castle circle eight we might say inverts the power and prestige of a medieval castle into an increasingly putrid funnel in fact as we shall see a bit later the castle becomes a latrine in kanto 18 we traverse the upper two of the ten evil pockets in the first ditch or pouch we encounter two lines of naked sinners moving quickly in opposite directions dante compares their harried procession to the pilgrims who crowded rome during the year of jubilee in 1300 when the authorities mandated two-way foot traffic on a narrow bridge to prevent congestion and collapse dante recognizes one of these sinners venedico caciamenico who sold his sister giso la labella to the marquis of este for a favor and so we learn that the two lines of men are pimps and seducers both pimps and seducers traffic in other people's bodies which makes their sin more serious than the sexual promiscuity or the adultery we saw in upper health they are not just sinning against themselves they are sinning against others the seducer who is named in this canto is jason the argonaut famous for winning the golden fleece and for marrying and then deserting medea who had helped him obtain the fleece in this canto however dante singles out another event in jason's life his seduction and abandonment of hypes a pile dante's condemnation of jason is economical and precise he seduced her dante says with words of love and loving looks and then he left her there with child and all alone such sin condemns him to such punishment and medea too gets her revenge on him pimping jisola bella and seducing hypes pile are not simply single horrific events they are rather calculated acts of fraud perpetrated by men but that have long-term consequences for the women consequences that these women must bear alone he left her there says dante with child and all alone pimping and seduction are acts of great injustice and dante has told us that wicked deeds always have social consequences in kanto 11 he introduced the circles of violence and fraud in this way every evil deed despised in heaven has as its end injustice each such end harms someone else through either force or fraud from the pimps and seducers we move on to the second of the evil pouches this ditch holds the flatterers whom we hear and smell before we actually see them now we could hear the shades in the next pouch whimpering making snorting grunting sounds and sounds of blows slapping with open palms from a steaming stench below the banks were coated with a slimy mole that stuck to them like glue disgusting to behold and worse to smell why these wet snorting sounds slapping hands and smelly slimy mold when dante finally is able to look down to the second evil pouch he sees souls in the ditch plunged into excrement that he says might well have been flushed from our latrines aha remember the toilet image i mentioned earlier here it is and dante is not squeamish about piling on the details i saw somebody's head so smirched with you could not tell if he were priest or layman in these lines dante is taking a familiar pot shot at the clergy one of whose distinguishing marks was to have the top of their heads shaved so as donte the pilgrim looks down at a flatterer with poo pile on top of his head he is unable to discern if he is a shaven cleric or an unshaven layman but the piled up poo is also a fitting contrappasso the flatterer's mind which is full of unseen excrement is now revealed for all to see dante tells it like it is flattery is so next time someone flatters you or you are tempted to flatter someone else hold this image in your head you are just about to plunge your head and your hands into a big bucket of poo when we look at these two bad pouches together we are able to discern more clearly exactly what makes pimping seducing and flattery so wicked in fact you may have been a bit surprised that flattery is lower in hell than pimping and seduction why might that be the case as we've already noticed dante's emphasis is not on the sexual aspects of pimping and seducing but rather on the perverse manipulation of sexuality benedicto and jason plan calculate and manipulate women to further their own agendas these are sins of the intellect and also sins of the tongue jason seduces with words of love words are insinuating weapons and just as the men's tongues lash their victims toward destruction so now the caretaker demons lash them in into an inexorable and unrelenting truck the contrappasso here is revealing seduction requires time a certain leisurely manipulation a calculated pace but these leisured manipulators are now whipped into a frantic pace with barely enough time to acknowledge dante's hurried greeting move on cries one of the deepens you pimp you can't cash in on women here in contrast to the hurried pimps and seducers the flatterers are mired down in their own stinking words dante the poet slows the pace of the kanto so that they and we the readers are forced not only to sit in the pile of poo but also to finger it to feel it over every part of our bodies flattery like pimping and seduction is a sin of intellectual fraud but it corrupts not just the body of another but also her or his intelligence flattery invades our minds and entices us to substitute a mirage for reality dante gives us a male and a female flatterer it might seem as if tyus's exaggeration at the end of the canto is not so very bad her lover says am i very worthy of your thanks and she replies very nay incredibly so incredibly so is just an exaggeration not an outright lie we might say but that is precisely its perverse nature it is close enough to reality to tempt us to substitute its mirage for the truth in fact the very insidiousness of flattery or exaggeration or shading the truth makes us more susceptible to bigger lies that is the danger of flattery for the one who receives it the danger to flatter errors however is even greater flattery cultivates the habit of not telling the truth and it is a form of untruthfulness that seeks to manipulate another person or gain advantage over them flattery corrupts the soul of the flatterer and flattery corrupts the soul of the one who receives it although canto 18 is full of disgusting images virgil wants dante the pilgrim to take a good look lean out a little more he says look hard down there pimping seduction and flattery are hidden sins but their ugliness is on full display in this canto look hard down there virgil says before he releases dante and us in the last line i think our eyes have had their fill of this [Music] you

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Length: 13min 29sec (809 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 18 2021