Inferno: Canto VII

Hey it's been a little while, hasn't it? Spring Break for me was last week and, while I'd love to indulge you with tales of legendary adventures in exotic locales, most of my vacation was spent on comfortable furniture at home. It's a good thing we aren't covering the Slothful today, isn't it?

The seventh Canto extends through the fourth and beginning of the fifth circle. In the fourth circle of Hell, we get to experience the torment of the Greedy or Avaricious as they spend their days rolling giant boulders at one another. The great many souls number among them the thrifty and the hoarders alike as, Virgil explains to Dante, none of them showed intelligence when it came to money:

And he to me: "All of them were asquint
  In intellect in the first life, so much
  That there with measure they no spending made.


Clearly enough their voices bark it forth,
  Whene'er they reach the two points of the circle,
  Where sunders them the opposite defect.


Clerks those were who no hairy covering
  Have on the head, and Popes and Cardinals,
  In whom doth Avarice practice its excess."

Even Popes and Cardinals (especially Popes and Cardinals) are not immune to sin in Dante's world. Indeed much schism among Christian faiths has been due to disagreement over the wealth of the Church and its clergy.

But that's not all, folks!

The fifth circle begins partway through the Canto at the iconic river Styx where reside the Wrathful. Actually, Styx is described as little more than a stinking marsh, where angry souls are fixed to stew and seethe their hatred away. They roil and tear at each other; biting, kicking, ripping at hair and limbs. Hell's mosh pit if there ever was one.

And I, who stood intent upon beholding,
  Saw people mud-besprent in that lagoon,
  All of them naked and with angry look.


They smote each other not alone with hands,
  But with the head and with the breast and feet,
  Tearing each other piecemeal with their teeth.

So Styx is the subject this time and I have to say that I took some more artistic liberties but I'm otherwise pleased with the outcome. Though the thought of rage-soaked souls wrestling in mud for eternity is amusing, I felt that a more appropriate representation of that hatred would be a tumultuous ocean. The damned are twisted in rage and hatred for their neighbors. Like the Lustful, they are constantly in motion - bandied about aimlessly in their blind aggression. The noble duo instead of walking along dry banks must charter a boat piloted by yet another demon. A damned and violent soul, in the form of a massive wave, attempts to overtake the travelers, only to be held at bay by the Divine Authority of Virgil's guidance. Dante huddles at Virgil's feet because he is a wuss.