Inferno: Canto 7 -- Circles 4 & 5

In the same way as the gluttonous and ravenous Cerberus guarded the circle of the gluttonous and ravenous, Plutus, the great miser, guards the circle of the hoarders and wasters (the avaricious and prodigal).*

Dante, however, is able to command a certain measure of authority over these mythological beasts not only because he is on a heaven-sent errand and can invoke the authority of that mission whenever it suits him to do so, but also because reason, in its proper use and sphere, has dominion over the immoderation of passions. If we've learned anything from our meeting with what Aristotle represents (we'll actually get to read part of the Nicomachaen Ethics when we reach the Paradiso), human reason should be able to maintain a happy medium between excesses, something called the Golden Mean. It is nothing for Virgil to make Charon do his bidding and to brush aside Cerberus and Plutus with such ease. It won't be until later, in fact, when Virgil is confronted by the perversion of reason that his powers to negotiate with the infernal guardians will sometimes fail him.

Once past Plutus, we find that there's actually a lot going for this Canto -- the hoarders and wasters are described but they are so engaged in their madness that Dante cannot speak to them, and they are so disfigured by their sin that Dante cannot even recognize them. Their attack on each other in the clashing of rocks against between the two sides indicates to us pilgrims that our funnel is getting smaller. If in the circle of the carnal, people looked too much outward toward another person and in the circle of the gluttons, people looked too much inward, then in this circle they not only looked inward but refused to look outward. Hoarders do not share their wealth with those they are called to love by the bounds of consanguinity and wasters do not preserve their wealth for those they are called to protect. It is only natural that two such opposing groups would spend an eternity attacking each other -- one to tighten the purse strings, and the other to loosen it. The wasters are the unrepetent prodigal son -- the one who takes over his or her inheritance and loses it without producing any meaningful value. The hoarders are the rich man who denied Lazarus -- the one who enters into an inheritance and knows nothing beyond increasing its meaninglessness since it isn't being fed back into the living reality of the community of which the person is a part.

Unable to speak to anyone, Virgil responds to a question of Dante's concerning Dame Fortune, who has been given a place in heaven in order to bring about changes in the status quo on earth -- these kinds of changes are media of exchange, like money, and the issue is discussed here while Dante is in the circle that best suits the topic. Those who are changed by chance and fortune either lose or gain depending upon her whim. That Dame Fortune is a pagan concept that has been welcomed into the eschatological vision is indicative of the idea that Dante has Catholicized antiquity and moved the functionaries of antiquity from the proper spheres of a pagan system into the proper spheres of a Catholic system. In doing this, Dante Christianizes paganism; he does not paganize Christianity.

On their way into the next circle, that of the wrathful and the sullen, they are able to see those consumed with wrath and sullenness (other sins that Plutus has represented for us -- one in his fit and the other in his fall though Phlegyas, the ferryman over Styx, will also represent these). If hoarding is failing to provide and wasting is failing to protect, then wrath is the lashing out at those who would otherwise be the provided for and be protected. Just as wrath is an excessive turning outward, sullenness is an excessive turning inward, literally stewing in one's anger as the dead stew in the marsh.

All the bestial sins of upper hell have now been revealed to us though we will still have to deal with the wrathful and sullen on our way to the city that lies across Styx. We find that these sins have been of addictive behavior and immoderation. Like interest in a bank, we will find them compounded as we descend from reason and passion into an abuse of both.

*[It is entirely a point of speculation on my part because I cannot find any scholarship to affirm this, but I'm developing the idea that Charon represents sexual passion and misdirected love since all beasts of hell guard the thing they represent. If that's the case, it would explain the swoon Dante experiences at his meeting with Charon in relation to the swoon he has after speaking with Francesca.]

S.