The Theme in the Work
The Inferno is a classification of sin set in space: each circle, each round, each ditch is a kind of fault, and the punishment repeats the fault from within. The poem does not let the reader guess the criterion. When Virgil sets it out, in canto XI of the Inferno, the lesson is simple and harsh: of all the malice that Heaven hates, the end is injustice, and every injustice afflicts another with force or with fraud; since fraud is the evil proper to man, it displeases God more, and so the fraudulent lie below and greater pain assails them.
D’ogne malizia, ch’odio in cielo acquista, / ingiuria è ’l fine, ed ogne fin cotale / o con forza o con frode altrui contrista. / Ma perché frode è de l’uom proprio male, / più spiace a Dio; e però stan di sotto / li frodolenti, e più dolor li assale., of every malice that earns hatred in heaven, the end is injustice, and every such end afflicts another either by force or by fraud. But because fraud is man's own evil, it displeases God more; and for this reason the fraudulent lie below, and greater pain assails them.
Sin, in this reckoning, is not measured by the blood spilled; it is measured by the use of intelligence against the trust of others. Earlier the poem had already shown the lightest rung, that of those who sin, overcome by a desire that reason itself condemns, and it defines it through the voice of the narrator before the storm of the second circle:
Intesi ch’a così fatto tormento / enno dannati i peccator carnali, / che la ragion sommettono al talento, I understood that the carnal sinners, who subject reason to desire, are condemned to such great torment.
Virgil completes, in canto XI of the Inferno, with a lesson from Aristotle's Ethics that Dante should remember: incontinence, malice, and mad bestiality are the three dispositions that Heaven does not want, and incontinence offends God less and draws less blame, because the incontinent sins against what he knows, while the malicious man chooses evil.
Non ti rimembra di quelle parole / con le quai la tua Etica pertratta / le tre disposizion che ’l ciel non vole, / incontenenza, malizia e la matta / bestialitade? e come incontenenza / men Dio offende e men biasimo accatta?, do you not remember those words with which your Ethics treats the three dispositions that Heaven does not want, incontinence, malice, and mad bestiality? And how does incontinence offend God less and draw less blame?
What the poem adds to the classification is the question of the relation between sin and the person. Francesca attributes her fall to Love, Pier delle Vigne to the disdain and envy of the court, Guido da Montefeltro to the pope who absolved him before the crime, Ulysses to a thirst for knowing the world that no affection overcomes, and each of these voices places the sin outside the act: in what moves him, in whoever asks him, in that to which he did not resist. The Inferno answers each with the punishment that repeats the fault, and the scene in which this becomes clearest is the one where the devil reminds Guido that contradiction does not allow one to repent and will at the same time. There are also, at the edges of the system, cases the map does not explain: the ignavi of canto III of the Inferno, who were neither rebels nor faithful, rejected by Heaven and by the deep hell, and the souls of Limbo, of canto IV of the Inferno, who did not sin but did not receive baptism. The Inferno therefore has a place for those who sinned, a vestibule for those who did not choose, and a circle for those who were deprived of the gate, and the criterion that serves one does not serve the other.
Who Embodies It
Francesca da Rimini is the sin of desire told by the one who suffers it, and the voice of Love as subject is the way the poem shows the shifting of responsibility. Guido da Montefeltro is the fraud of counsel, applied by one who describes himself through shrewdness. Lucifer, at bottom, is the rebellion against the creator, which the poem deduces from the state in which it sees him.
Amor, ch’al cor gentil ratto s’apprende, / prese costui de la bella persona / che mi fu tolta; e ’l modo ancor m’offende. / Amor, ch’a nullo amato amar perdona, / mi prese del costui piacer sì forte, / che, come vedi, ancor non m’abbandona, Love, which swiftly seizes the gentle heart, seized this one through the lovely person who was taken from me, and the manner still offends me. Love, which pardons no beloved from loving, seized me so strongly with his pleasure that, as you see, it still does not abandon me.
Where It Appears
- canto III: The ignavi, who lived without infamy and without praise, stay in the vestibule, rejected by heaven and by the deep hell, and the poem bids Dante look and pass on.
- canto IV: Virgil explains that the souls of Limbo did not sin but, without baptism or born before Christianity, did not worship God as is due, and so they live in desire without hope.
- canto V: Dante understands that the lustful are carnal sinners, who subject reason to desire, and sees Francesca attribute to Love what happened to her.
- canto VI: Ciacco, a Florentine, is punished for gluttony under an eternal rain and asks Dante to remind the living of him when he returns to the world.
- canto VII: The hoarders and the spendthrifts roll weights with their chests and accuse one another, and Virgil sums up their fault in two verbs, to give badly and to hold back badly.
- canto X: Virgil shows that the heretics lie in open tombs, which will be closed only when the bodies return from the valley of Jehoshaphat at the end of time.
- canto XI: Virgil divides the abyss into violence and fraud, with fraud below, and refers incontinence to Aristotle's Ethics.
- canto XIII: Pier delle Vigne tells that the soul that tears itself from its own body becomes a tree, and that the bodies of the suicides will hang from the thornbushes.
- canto XVII: Geryon shows fraud with the face of a just man and the body of a serpent, and the usurers, seated beside him, are known only by their purses.
- canto XIX: Dante accuses the simoniac popes of making gold and silver into a god, and Virgil approves the outburst with an embrace.
- canto XXVI: Ulysses and Diomedes burn in one flame for the ruse of the horse, of Achilles, and of the Palladium, and the hero's voyage is left without an explicit sentence.
- canto XXX: Sinon and Master Adam trade blows and accusations, each saying the other's sin is greater, and Virgil nearly loses patience with Dante.
- canto XXXII: Camiscion de' Pazzi waits for Carlino, whose greater betrayal will make him seem less guilty, and Bocca refuses to say his name even when Dante tears out his hair.
- canto XXXIV: Lucifer chews Judas, Brutus, and Cassius in his three mouths, and Judas, with his head inside, suffers the greatest punishment.
Where the Readings Diverge
The map that Virgil draws in canto XI of the Inferno is clear, but it leaves out the heretics of the preceding canto, and the text sustains three answers: they fit under violence against God, or under fraud, or under a third thing that Virgil kept silent. The poem does not decide, and the reader must choose between an order that explains almost everything and the silence of the one who set it out.
Between Aristotle's classification and Dante's gesture before Argenti, the Inferno shows that the measure of sin and the measure of what the pilgrim feels can diverge. Dante's delight in Argenti's punishment, which Virgil approves, is of the same kind of impulse that the Styx punishes in those whom wrath has overcome, and the poem leaves the parallel without comment.