Inferno: Canto 18 -- Circle 8, Bolgia 1 and 2

2005-01-26T13:56:00.000-08:00

Malebolge is called such because it is a place with ten infernal pits -- these bad pits include sinners guilty of simple fraud, and they are positioned in such a way, down a sloping amphitheatre, that they bear the weight (in inverse proportion to the way a dome will distribute that of its ceiling) of all the sins of violence and incontinence. In the second circle, for instance, we're told by Francesca that the author of the story of Lancelot and Guinevere was a pander; while she is made to suffer completely the pain of her guilt, the one who led her into it will suffer both his and hers in this first bolgia. Likewise, the one who created the 13th century equivalent of the McDonald's fast food billboard will also be lashed by demons here for the gluttony into which he led Ciacco.

Fraud, then, is a worse sin than either of the upper divisions because its aim is inherently antisocial and destructive of life, liberty, and happiness. It is the foundation upon which the upper sins are built and is itself mounted atop treachery, or the compound fraud we'll find below it. Dante also treats fraud at length, devoting 14 of his 34 cantos to it, which means we'll be among these sinners for two weeks, or 1/7th of the entire course.

What is of interest here is that with the transmogrification of Geryon from mythical beast into a monster of Dante's own invention, we enter a new kind of representation of sin. Sins entirely against human reason (as opposed to sins against appropriate human passion and sins in which passion and reason war against one another) are punished by Christian demons rather than mythical beasts (though at the bottom of this amphitheatre, we'll find one final set of mythical beings, but these will be giants, fully human in shape and appearance), for demons are the only appropriate guardians to perversions uniquely Christian in their articulation. With the first set of demons, then, we get the prototype for all future representations of infernal spirits -- horns on their heads, which Ciardi speculates results from representations of culkoldry, and lashes in their hands.

In Bolgia One, we find panderers and seducers -- those who pimped out women or seduced them to satisfy their own malicious purposes. Naturally, they are dealt with here and not in the second circle because above the punishment is for infernal love and passion while here the punishment is for infernal abuse of sexuality. Note, though, before you pass on, that of the ten bolgias of fraud, that which deals with unnatural seduction bears the least punishment.

The poets take note of Jason of the Argonauts and cross into the second bolgia, filled with flatterers who wade through a river of processed food (note how I avoid using Dante's 'shit'), the noteworthy being Thais.

S.