Inferno, Canto 13

The Text of Canto 13 (Open PDF)

Summary

The Poets enter a pathless Wood. Here Harpies sit shrieking among the withered trees, which enclose the souls of Suicides. Pier delle Vigne tells Dante his story, and also explains how these shades come to be changed into trees and what will happen to their bodies at the Last Day.  The shades of two Profligates rush through the wood, pursued and torn by black hounds. Dante speaks to a bush containing the soul of a Florentine..

The Prepatory Lecture

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Questions for Reflection

• As we enter the macabre forest of those who committed violence against themselves, we find ourselves in a place that calls back to the dark wood of Inferno canto 1. How does the dark wood of the suicides retroactively interpret the spiritual and psychological state of Dante in that first canto?
• Notice the placement of ring of those violent against themselves between the rings of violence against others and violence against God and nature. What might the placement of this ring reveal about the embeddedness of ourselves between God and neighbor? What might this say about the theological problem of violence against the self?
• Why are the suicides denied a full resurrection of the body at the eschaton? What does this reveal about Dante’s understanding of the role of the body for personhood and human flourishing?
• According to Giuseppe Mazzotta, the circles of violence contain many images of distorted “doubling” (the hybrid mythical creatures, for example). With Pier Della Vigne we have a kind of “doubling” of Dante himself: Pier was a poet turned politician who was falsely accused by his political rivals and committed suicide while in prison. Why would Dante choose Pier as his main encounter in this ring of violence?
• In addition to suicide, the pilgrim also encounter the profligerates in this ring of violence against self. How is the vicious waste of resources violence against self? Is there any analogy between the two forms of violence shown in this canto?
• Pier’s haunting words, “Though just I became to myself most unjust” (13.72) perfectly sums up the nature of violence against the self, but what might these words tell us about the nature and character of all sin? Is all sin to some extent an act of violence against the self?

 Canto 13, © Jan Hearn

The Images

The Wood. This forms the Second Ring of the Circle of the Violent, and contains the souls of those who wantonly destroyed their own lives or their own goods, “turning to weeping what was meant for joy” (Canto xi. 45).

The Harpies.  Here again we have a mixture of brute and human, the Harpies had the bodies of birds, long claws, and the faces of women pale with hunger. When Aeneas and his companions came to the Islands of the Strophades, the Harpies swooped down upon their food, devouring and defiling it. They are the image of the “will to destruction”.

The Bleeding Trees. The sin of Suicide is, in an especial manner, an insult to the body; so, here, the shades are deprived of even the semblance of the human form. As they refused life, they remain fixed in a dead and withered sterility. They are the image of the self-hatred, which dries up the very sap of energy and makes life infertile.

The Profligates.  These are very different from the “Spendthrifts” of Canto VII, who were merely guilty of extravagance. The profligates here were men possessed by a depraved passion, who dissipated their goods for the sheer wanton lust of wreckage and disorder. They may be called the, image of “gambling-fever” - or, more generally, the itch to destroy civilization, order, and reputation.

Mark Vernon's Lecture