As the Moon Climbs

The elaborate and highly Christianized conception of hell as imagined by Dante Alighieri in the Inferno portion of the Divine Comedy borrows heavily from the earlier depiction crafted by Virgil in the Aeneid. It is presumably for this reason, among others, that Dante chooses Virgil to be the guide for his surrogate self through his creation. Some translators and critics have gone so far as to say that Dante’s version commits a kind of patricide upon Virgil’s version by virtue of its quantitative—and, arguably, qualitative—superiority (Mandelbaum ix). Value judgments aside, the two explorations of the afterlife, or one portion thereof in the case of Dante’s work, serve to illustrate the disparate views held by the Romans and Christians with regards to the physicality of death and the appurtenant moral or ethical concerns. For the most part, Virgil’s narrative is descriptive, while Dante’s is normative; Aeneas embarks on his journey to see his father, while Dante’s journey is one of both internal reflection and the representation of externally imposed moral guidelines.

Both Aeneas and Dante begin their journeys in a similar landscape: a dark, forested area that leads to a cave, which in turn takes the hero underground. Virgil describes the landscape as a “forest encircled by the black curves of Cocytus” (VI.183) and a “great wood” (VI.256). He also places the Sibyl, who will guide Aeneas through the underworld, in a system of caves with a hundred gates through which the winds blow. The underworld is also referred to as Aornos, the birdless place, because of its lifelessness and subterranean nature. All of this points to the Roman conception of death as a physically dark environment, in which one finds “things buried in the dark and deep of earth” (VI.355). There is no morality implicit in this fact; all who die go to the same place, generally speaking. Dante also finds himself in a “shadowed forest” (I.2) and “savage wilderness” (I.93), but his is more of an allegorical than a physical location. Dante’s forest represents the spiritual or moral confusion in which he finds himself, having “lost the path that does not stray” (I.3) in the middle of his life. He begins his journey on Good Friday, that day on which Jesus reportedly died, and thus Dante’s descent into the underworld follows in the footsteps of Jesus’ descent. Once again, there is the entrance into a cave, but this cave mirrors the one in which Jesus was interred. This is a much more figurative than literal representation, and reflects the Christian nature of his narrative as opposed to the more secular nature of Virgil’s.

Upon reaching the boundary that explicitly separates the living from the dead, both Aeneas and Dante encounter Charon and the souls of the dead waiting to cross the river Acheron. Charon is described in virtually identical terms by both Virgil and Dante: “white hairs lie thick, disheveled on his chin; his eyes are fires that stare” (VI.395) in the Aeneid and “an aged man his hair was white with years” (III.83) with “eyes like embers” (III.109) in the Inferno. However, the depictions differ in the manner in which Charon interacts with the dead souls, which in both instances are eager to cross over. In the Aeneid, Charon refuses to carry any dead souls that were not properly buried. The souls are consigned to wander aimlessly along the banks of the river for a hundred years before they will be allowed passage; this is presumably the amount of time it will take both for their bodies to decompose sufficiently, and for their memories on earth to be figuratively entombed by successive generations having no direct memory themselves of the deceased. This reflects the Roman emphasis on the importance of funereal rites and entombment, as well as the belief that death carried with it a kind of forgetfulness and fading for the dead, who are shades rather than tangible creatures.

Dante’s Charon, on the other hand, bluntly informs the dead:
Woe to you, corrupted souls!
Forget your hope of ever seeing Heaven:
I come to lead you to the other shore,
to the eternal dark, to fire and frost. (III.84-87)
Here, the emphasis is on the evil nature of the souls that are destined to spend eternity in hell. The souls themselves are, as Dante’s Virgil puts it, “eager for the river crossing because celestial justice spurs them on” (III.124-5); they know that they deserve the punishment that will be imposed upon them, and so they crave it. This highlights Dante’s argument, as writer, for the external and objective nature of the laws of morality as determined by God and explained by Virgil throughout the journey. Those who violate the laws will suffer consequences which are neither arbitrary nor subjective, and Dante intends them to serve as a warning for his readers. Additionally, both Virgil and Dante compare the souls of the dead to autumn leaves falling from trees, both to illustrate the enormous quantity of dead souls and their fragile, insubstantial nature, as well as to compare death with the onset of winter. Virgil goes further and compares the souls to birds fleeing winter, while Dante calls them “the evil seed of Adam” (III.115); this draws attention to the Roman vision of death as a natural, cyclical occurrence, and the Christian connection of all men to Adam, the progenitor.

From there, the two heroes pass into the vestibules of their respective underworlds, Aeneas on Charon’s boat and Dante through mysterious means while he is unconscious. There, they both find Cerberus, who prevents the living from entering and the dead from leaving. In the Aeneid, the Sibyl throws a honey cake laced with sleeping drugs to Cerberus, and he eventually succumbs and falls asleep so that she and Aeneas can pass. This illustrates that the “living” inhabitants of the underworld, its gods and monsters, were as real and tangible to the Romans as Aeneas himself, and thus susceptible to things like drugs and sleep. They are literal creatures rather than mere symbolic representations of abstract concepts or natural processes. In the Inferno, by contrast, Virgil flings a handful of muck to Cerberus rather than a honey cake, and Cerberus is depicted “as a dog that barks with greedy hunger” (VI.28) who is then quiet when fed, “intent and straining hard to cram it in” (VI.30). It is notable that while Cerberus is at the vestibule of hell in the Aeneid, just on the other side of the Acheron, in Dante’s hell he is located in the third circle, watching over the gluttons. These sinners are punished by having all possible comforts denied to them, and as their overseer, Cerberus is also denied any comforts, left as hungry as his charges. Dante’s hell is completely devoid of any possible pleasures; there are no honey cakes there, not even for the inhabitants who supervise the sinners.

Aeneas subsequently encounters the weeping souls of infants and the falsely accused, both of whom are innocents who have no assigned place in the afterlife. The infants are the more significant of the two in that they illustrate the Roman conception of good and evil as being accumulated through deeds. Because they never had a chance to commit misdeeds, the infants are blank slates and have done nothing to merit either reward or punishment. Dante also encounters unbaptized infants in Limbo, the first circle of hell. It is outside the boundaries of the circles where punishments are meted out because, once again, the infants have done nothing to merit punishment. However, there are not simply infants, but unbaptized men and women as well; in the Christian view, all humans are born with the original sin of Adam and Eve marring their souls, and this sin can only be cleansed through baptism. Even though they themselves had been virtuous, these people still carried the original sin and thus were unable to ascend to heaven. This illustrates the sharpest dichotomy between the Roman and Christian views of morality: for the Romans, everyone went to the same place when they died, but only the evil were punished when th
ey arrived. By contrast, to the Christians, it was not sufficient simply to live a virtuous life; one also had to be baptized in order to achieve salvation.

Virgil next locates the suicides just inside the underworld: “although innocent, [they] took death by their own hands” (VI.574-5). They are surrounded by marshland and the river Styx, just beyond Minos, the “magistrate” who judges men. The Roman conception of suicide appears to be that it was tragic, because death to them is permanent and irrevocable, but it was not evil. Dante, on the other hand, places the suicides in the seventh circle of hell, which is reserved for those who commit crimes of violence. This emphasizes the Christian view of suicide as violence against one of God’s creations; the proscription “thou shalt not kill” includes the self as well as others. Virgil gives no special consideration to the physical manifestation of the suicides; they are as insubstantial and shadowy as the other spirits. Dante, however, specifically describes them as twisted trees: “No green leaves in that forest, only black: no branches straight and smooth, but knotted, gnarled; no fruits were there, but briers bearing poison” (XIII.3-6). This description is reminiscent of the forest outside the underworld through which Aeneas sought the golden bough that would permit him passage and return; however, Dante’s forest of suicides is not simply meant to recall the dark barrenness of death, but to render a punishment befitting the crime of suicide. Because they rejected their own forms in life, these spirits are bereft of those forms in death as punishment. Both groups of suicides are depicted as trying to escape the pain they suffered in life, but now Virgil’s dead crave it as superior to nothing, and Dante’s must endure it forever from the Harpies, who tear at the trees that they have become. While Virgil emphasizes innocence and regret, presenting the Roman view that death was terminal and a mere shadow of former life, Dante considers it pitiable but nonetheless a serious digression.

One of the last landscapes that Aeneas explores before he reaches the goal of his quest, his father, is the Fields of Mourning. Here, “concealed by secret paths, are those whom bitter love consumed with brutal waste” (VI.583-4); here Virgil places Dido, despite the fact that she committed suicide. Dante also notably places Dido among those who committed crimes of passion rather than suicide. Virgil sets these spirits inside a myrtle grove; that tree is sacred to Venus, symbolizing love. Once again, there is a dark forest, this time representative of the love that was itself darkened by rejection and death and has led to continued pain in the afterlife. Dante, on the other hand, places those who commit crimes of passion into an unending tempest, buffeted about by winds as they were moved in life by their uncontrollable lust. To Dante’s Christian perspective, lust is a crime of incontinence, in which the person is unable to contain his or her baser impulses. It is distinguished from love, which is the purer expression and greatly desirable while lust is to be avoided. In particular, Dante notes that adulterous love is sinful by singling out Paolo and Francesca; Virgil instead reunites Dido with her dead husband Sychaeus, choosing to honor her original vow rather than subject her to any punishment for breaking it. This indicates a broader conception of what is permissible morally in that realm to the Romans, and a more narrow definition of what is sinful in the case of the Christian perspective.

Finally, Aeneas comes to the pathway that leads either to Tartarus, for the evil spirits, or to Elysium, for the good. This is the first clear indication that those who are evil or good in life will find some kind of appropriate justice in the afterlife, rather than merely being flung together. However, given the previous fates of other spirits in the poem, these ideas were apparently just becoming or had recently become popular in Virgil’s time. Tartarus is described as having a giant gateway, potentially analogous to the portal into hell in the very beginning of the Inferno, as well as a tower of iron in which the sinners were imprisoned, judged and whipped. Specific people here have specific punishments, such as Tityos, who has his liver and intestines continuously eaten by a vulture only to grow back and be eaten again. There is no clear indication of contrapasso, the punishments being tailored to fit the crime, as Dante does with his construction of hell. This again points to Virgil’s work as descriptive rather than normative; unlike Dante, he is not seeking to provide a template for proscribing particular behaviors. The only inkling of contrapasso in Virgil’s work is the table at which the gluttons sit, unable to eat lest the Harpies attack them. It is, however, very different from Dante’s depiction of gluttons, who fall under the province of incontinence, and as previously described are deprived of all the creature comforts of their lives and pelted eternally with cold rain. Although the manifestations are dissimilar, it is clear that both the Romans of Virgil’s time and the Christians of Dante’s time find overindulgence to be condemnable.

Further exploration of the underworld in the Aeneid is more personal, with Aeneas being reunited with his father in the everlasting summer of the Elysian Fields. Dante continues his enumeration of sins and their consequent punishments, going into much greater detail than Virgil. The farther into hell Dante the character explores, the more detached he becomes, and the less sympathetic towards the sinners as they suffer their punishments. This reflects the Christian notion that certain sins are easier to commit than others, namely the sins of incontinence, which merely require passivity or lack of restraint rather than active malfeasance. Virgil’s underworld has only the most nascent construction of a hierarchy of sin as evidenced by some spirits having their own unique landscape and others being specifically punished for objectively immoral behavior. As discussed, his afterlife is intended more as a portion of Aeneas’ complete heroic journey, whereas for Dante, the afterlife is the entire journey, a kind of pilgrimage to instruct the reader in proper moral behavior rather than simply to illuminate the land of the dead for the sake of entertainment or intellectual stimulation. Dante lost his way and must find it again, for his own sake and that of his sinful readers, while Aeneas knows exactly where he is going and why, and needs no such assistance.

Since one of my three readers has complained about my lack of updates, I present to you my most recent paper on a subject near and dear to my heart: crying men. I am not sure whether this is the exact version that I turned in but it is close enough. I will also post my paper on Virgil and Dante’s underworld landscapes once that is finished, but for now, I hope this will tide you all over until the novel-writing madness is over.

“Why do you weep and grieve”:
Kleos, Nostos and Threnos in The Odyssey

In almost all of the first twelve books of The Odyssey, there is at least one instance in which a character, usually a male, is overcome with emotion and expresses his pain by weeping. Telemachus cries, Menelaus cries, Pisistratus cries; even the great Odysseus himself, when first encountered in the epic, is depicted on the shore of Calypso’s island “wrenching his heart with sobs and groans and anguish” (V.174). At first glance, there appear to be various reasons for these outbursts: injustice, concern, despair, and so forth. However, upon closer examination, there are two primary concepts underlying each incident: kleos, renown or glory from accomplishing great deeds, sometimes through death; and nostos, homecoming, often specifically referring to the return of Greek heroes to their homes after war. When the characters of the epic are denied these two goals, the result is threnos–lamentation, an external expression of grief. The two characters who best embody the threnos associated with denial of kleos and nostos are Telemachus and Odysseus, both of whom frequently weep prior to the achievement of their ultimate objectives.

One important aspect of kleos is that it is, in a way, hereditary; it is the duty of the son to carry on and increase the reputation built by the father. As such, it is natural that Telemachus is concerned with the fate of his father. If Odysseus died in battle, then Telemachus would be able to benefit from his father’s kleos; however, if Odysseus perished in some less honorable and noteworthy way, then his kleos would be lost to his son. When Telemachus is first introduced, he sits among the suitors, wishing that Odysseus would return “and regain his pride of place and rule his own domains” (I.137). Subsequently, when he is inspired to call for an assembly to air his grievances, he bursts into tears after admitting that “we have no man like Odysseus in command / to drive this curse from the house” (II.63-4). Telemachus himself is still “a boy inept at battle” (II.66) and without knowledge of his father’s fate, he is unable to control the suitors by invoking Odysseus’ reputation and honor. Thus, his father’s inability to achieve nostos leads to his own lack of kleos, and subsequently to his public threnos. Notably, the crowd does not react with scorn or derision, but instead with pity and silence; it is unclear whether they are surprised or ashamed by what Telemachus states.

Primarily to find news of his father, but also to begin the establishment of his own kleos, Telemachus leaves home and travels first to Nestor’s court, then to that of Menelaus and the recovered Helen. It is in the latter place that he weeps at the king’s description of Odysseus and his accomplishments at Troy; “Tears streamed down his cheeks / and wet the ground when he heard his father’s name” (IV.128-9). He grieves for his lost father, who has been unable to return home. Soon enough, Pisistratus, Menelaus and Helen all join in the weeping for lost Odysseus and others like him who were unable to achieve nostos. Only by drugging their wine can they stop the threnos incited by their memories, allowing Telemachus to question Menelaus about his father’s whereabouts, and Menelaus to answer without being interrupted by grief. Thus does Telemachus complete his own minor epic and, having acquired some small renown of his own by journeying abroad and making contact with Odysseus’ comrades-in-arms, achieves his own nostos armed with information about his father.

As Telemachus’ tale draws to a close for the time being, Odysseus’ begins. When Odysseus first enters the story in book V, as previously stated, he is shown “weeping, his eyes never dry, his sweet life flowing away / with the tears he wept for his foiled journey home” (V.168-9). The last portion of the line is crucial: he cries because he has been prevented from returning to Ithaca and accomplishing his nostos, his homecoming, instead remaining stuck on Calypso’s island for seven years. When he is finally offered the chance to leave, he is also asked why he wants to go rather than stay and be granted immortality. Odysseus replies, “I long–I pine, all my days–/ to travel home and see the dawn of my return” (V.242-3). While Calypso offers him eternal life, it would be a life of obscurity, devoid of the kleos, the glory that he earned while fighting in the Trojan War. Only by achieving nostos can he simultaneously recover kleos; only by returning to his people can he regain his identity as father, king and decorated war hero. Until the opportunity to pursue those goals is given to him, all he can do is grieve.

In book VIII, at the Phaeacian court, Odysseus is brought to tears twice while listening to the bard Demodocus’ songs about his exploits and those of his comrades. First, he cries at the tale of his argument with Achilles, and later at the story of his own entrance into Troy and the victory that he orchestrated. After this second story, “great Odysseus melted into tears… as a woman weeps, her arms flung around her darling husband, / a man who fell in battle” (VIII.588-9). Ironically, he is compared to the wife of a defeated soldier, when on the contrary, Odysseus himself has earned kleos by surviving and being victorious over his enemies. However, as discussed, it is only when he finally returns home that his kleos will be truly restored, and so he is not yet free of the heartbreak that he expresses by weeping. This outward display of emotion does not go unnoticed, and King Alcinous finally encourages him to not only divulge who he is, but also why he continues to “weep and grieve so sorely” (VIII.647) at the bard’s songs. While he is not yet home, it is at the end of book VIII and the beginning of book IX, so close to achieving his nostos, that he finally begins to recover his identity as well by revealing his name to the Phaeacians.

Although the second half of The Odyssey contains numerous instances in which the characters weep, they are motivated not by the denial of kleos and nostos but by their accomplishment. For example, Eumaeus cries when Telemachus returns home, Odysseus and Telemachus weep when they are reunited, and Eurycleia cries when she recognizes Odysseus while washing his feet. The tears of the first twelve books of The Odyssey are tears of sorrow and loss, while those of the last twelve books are primarily those of recognition and joy. The characters who were gone have their homecoming, and the renown and glory that were earned are rightfully acknowledged. Threnos is no longer required, as kleos and nostos have been achieved, leaving Odysseus to await his return to the sea and Telemachus to prepare himself for the eventual assumption of his father’s legacy.

I have read Beowulf before, as have many of my fellow students, but it is always a delightful experience and I never get tired of it. On the heels of a couple of waffling, womanizing or downright didactic heroes, it is refreshing to come back to an unabashed braggart and all-around ass-kicking dude. Consider this exchange, presented in summary form below:

Unferth: You aren’t so tough! You swam a race against that guy Breca and lost.

Beowulf: Oh sure, I lost, but only because I stopped to kill like nine sea monsters along the way. Also, didn’t you kill your own brothers, you douchebag? Now get in the kitchen and get me some mead!

Audience: Ooooh, he got told!

But of course there is more to Beowulf than violence and mead: there is also an incredibly pervasive Christian subtext, which almost doesn’t deserve the “sub” prefix because it is so flagrant. At the same time, there is no doubt that this poem is about a guy that kills things because he is awesome, and eventually gets killed by a thing when he is too old to continue being awesome. It is like this Christian rock album that I really enjoyed until someone told me it was a Christian rock album, and then I felt a bit awkward because I am an atheist. Or perhaps it is like one of the Christian parties they would have on my college campus occasionally; I would go for the free food, and if there happened to be a guy talking about Jesus in the background, so be it.

This is the first (and possibly only) Old English epic around, and it differs pretty significantly from the Greek and Roman epics. It doesn’t have an invocation to the muse, for one, and not just because it’s a Christian epic; even Milton invokes the muse in Paradise Lost, as does Dante in his Divine Comedy. It also lacks the same structure as the previous epics; it isn’t divided into books, and it doesn’t have a singular focal quest that the hero has to complete, such as getting home or getting the golden fleece or founding a city.

Finally, and perhaps least obvious in translation, it wasn’t written in dactyllic hexameter. The Old English poetic meter wasn’t based on having a certain number of stressed and unstressed syllables per line; instead, as far as I understand it, each line was divided into two parts with two stressed syllables each, and no limit to the number of unstressed syllables. There was also emphasis on consonance, with at least one word on each side sharing some consonant sound, usually the first letter (alliteration ahoy!).

Although it has a lot of qualities that point to it being an oral poem–epithets, lengthy internal digressions, that pervasive drumbeat of a meter–it was obviously written down or we wouldn’t still have it today, and some argue that it was exclusively a written work. The new theory at the moment is that a monk did it, which would explain why it has such a strong Christian message, and perhaps more importantly, how it ended up written down at all given the literacy rates at the time. I find this image intensely amusing; a little guy with a shaved head, wearing an itchy brown robe, alternating his time between tending a little garden and writing about an epic hero of old beating the snot out of demons.

Ah, Brother Anonymous, we hardly knew ye.

First, I’d like to note that National Novel Writing Month has officially begun, and so I probably won’t be updating very often since I’ll be too busy trying to write 1,667 words of a novel every day. Apologies to my enormous audience. I’m sure you’ll persevere.

Second, let’s talk about Lucretius. I’ve read the first book of his so-called epic about the nature of things, and I am not finding it to be very epic at all. Interesting, thought-provoking, enjoyable, but not epic.

It has been posited that this qualifies as an epic because it conforms to some epic conventions. It is written in dactylic hexameter, which was the accepted metrical scheme for epic poems. It contains an invocation to the muse, in this case Venus, who is not really a muse but is a goddess so it still counts. It sort of includes a journey to the underworld. But there is one teeny tiny problem:

It has no hero.

The professor argues that the epic hero in this case is the idea of naturalism, or materialism or whatever you want to call it. The antagonist is supernaturalism or spiritualism. These are ideas, not people, and so to call them heroes or antiheroes is a bit of a stretch. So far, I’m not buying it.

It’s a great poem, though, and it’s amazing to realize that some of the Greeks (and through them the Romans) had figured out that matter was made up of tiny particles that couldn’t be seen with the naked eye. Also that these particles combined to form the myriad organic and inorganic things that make up the world. Once again, my elementary education fails me, because for some reason I thought scientists had come up with this stuff in the last century or two. Obviously it wasn’t as sophisticated or thoroughly examined in the days before microscopes, but the idea was nonetheless there.

We’ll see how the rest of the poem pans out, and then on to next week’s epic: your favorite Old English poem and mine, the one, the only, Beowulf. I already have a copy but this may be an ideal opportunity to snag the Seamus Heaney version, which is quite excellent. Decisions, decisions.