Summary of the cantos
The seventh circle carries out, ring by ring, the design Virgil traced in canto XI: violence against one's neighbor (the river of blood, in the previous canto), against oneself and one's own goods (XIII), against God (XIV), and against nature and art (XV to XVII). But the strongest thread of these five cantos is less the punishment than the request. Almost every damned soul who speaks asks Dante for something, and what it asks for is remembrance: the trunk the tradition calls Pier delle Vigne wants someone to comfort his memory of the blow of envy; the anonymous Florentine of the wood asks that the leaves be gathered around him; Brunetto Latini asks that his Tesoro be recommended; the three knights of Florence ask that people speak of them when Dante returns to see the stars. The usurers are the opposite of this, known only by the purse with the coat of arms. In four of the five cantos the subject is Florence, and the listener is a Florentine who, in the year of the journey, has not yet been exiled.
Canto XIII: The Wood of the Suicides
Summary of the canto
Before Nessus reaches the other bank, the two enter a wood with no path, of dark leaves, twisted branches, and poisonous thorns, where the Harpies make their nests, the ones who drove the Trojans from the Strophades with a prophecy of disaster. Virgil warns Dante that they are in the second ring and that he is going to see things that would strip the faith from his account. Dante hears laments from everywhere and sees no one, and Virgil tells him to break a twig from a thornbush, so that the thought may come undone.
Analysis
Dante picks a branch from a great thornbush, and the trunk cries out. Blackened with blood, it begins again:
ricominciò a dir: «Perché mi scerpi? / non hai tu spirto di pietade alcuno? / Uomini fummo, e or siam fatti sterpi: / ben dovrebb’ esser la tua man più pia, / se state fossimo anime di serpi».
, it began to speak again: "Why do you tear me? Do you have no spirit of pity at all? We were men, and now we have become stumps: your hand should be more merciful, even if we had been the souls of serpents."
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Canto XIV: Capaneus and the Old Man of Crete
Summary of the canto
Out of love for his homeland, Dante gathers the scattered leaves and gives them back to the trunk. They reach the plain of the third ring, arid sand that repels every plant, over which a slow rain of broad blades of fire falls, like snow in the Alps without wind; the naked souls weep beneath it, some lying on their backs, others sitting, and most numerous, walking without pause, shaking off the fresh embers from themselves. Dante asks Virgil who that great one is who seems not to care about the fire and lies disdainful and twisted; the condemned himself, realizing that he is being spoken of, shouts first:
Analysis
Canto XV: Brunetto Latini
Summary of the canto
The two walk on one of the hard banks, where the smoke of the stream shields them from the rain of fire, like the dikes of the Flemings against the sea. Far from the forest they meet a line of souls who look at them as one looks at someone under the new moon at night, and one of them seizes Dante by the hem of his garment and cries, what a marvel! Dante, looking at the scorched face, recognizes him despite the burn:
Analysis
Canto XVI: The Three Florentines and the Cord
Summary of the canto
Near the falls to the next circle, three shades break away together from a company that passes under the fire and come running, shouting that Dante should stop, he who by his dress seems to be from their depraved land. Dante sees the old and new wounds the fire has opened in them. Virgil tells him that courtesy is owed to these, and that, were it not for the fire, haste would suit Dante more than them. The three form a ring, like naked, oiled wrestlers studying their prey, each turning his face toward Dante, and one of them introduces the companions: Guido Guerra, grandson of the good Gualdrada, who did much with wisdom and with the sword, and Tegghiaio Aldobrandi, whose voice should have been pleasant in the world above. And he himself:
Analysis
Canto XVII: Geryon and the Usurers
Summary of the canto
Virgil signals to the beast to come to the edge: there it comes, the one with the pointed tail, which crosses mountains and breaks walls, the one that pollutes the whole world. Geryon, the filthy image of fraud, arrives with head and torso, but has not yet placed his tail on the bank:
Analysis
Reading of the Canto Block
Analysis