Inferno · Canto VII ·
Inferno VII — Plutus Collapses
Reading Divine Comedy · canto 7 of 100 · Inferno, Canto VII
Before reading
This is the fourth circle and the beginning of the fifth, two punishments in a single canto, joined by the great central excursion on Fortune that is the canto's actual subject. Of the three sins surveyed here, the one that gets the most ink is the one not under punishment at all — the goddess (or angel) who governs worldly wealth. The structure is the Commedia's usual method: the spectacle is the occasion, the doctrine is the point.
Where the canto sits
The fourth circle is the second of the incontinence circles after the carnal and the gluttonous — sins still of appetite, but now of appetite for things. Avarice and prodigality are paired here as a single sin with two faces — hoarding and squandering — because both treat money as if it were a final good rather than an instrument. The fifth circle, which the canto enters at its midpoint, is the swamp of the wrathful. Together the two circles complete the upper half of incontinence; canto VIII will carry the pilgrim across the Styx to the walls of Dis, where the architecture of Hell changes entirely.
What it helps to know
The figure at the threshold is Plutus, the classical god of wealth. Dante runs together two figures the Greeks kept separate — Plutos, the personification of riches, and Plouton, another name for Hades — and makes of the conflation a snarling beast. He speaks one line of garbled, possibly Hebrew-flavoured, possibly demonic gibberish that no commentator has ever definitively cracked. Treat the line as it is: a noise. Virgil silences him with a phrase whose mode you have not yet seen — not the formula of canto III, not the mud of canto VI, but a direct theological speech-act.
The punishment of the fourth circle is a brutal physical comedy: two semicircles of souls rolling great weights at each other with their chests, meeting at the centre with a crash and a shouted accusation, then turning and rolling back. Why hoardest? why squanderest? The hoarders shout the second; the squanderers shout the first. They never meet again until the next half-rotation.
The Florentine context of the avarice critique is sharp. Dante is writing about a city famously rich, in a century when Italian banking and Florentine commerce were transforming European economic life. The canto's special venom is for the clergy among the avaricious — clerks those were who no hairy covering have on the head, and Popes and Cardinals — a specific attack on the wealth of the Church. The papal Curia of Boniface VIII is being indicted.
Fortune in the canto is not the capricious blindfolded woman of medieval iconography. She is, in Virgil's exposition, an angel — a divine intelligence assigned by God to govern the distribution of worldly goods, exactly as the seven planetary intelligences govern the spheres. The doctrine is bold. Dante is taking a pagan goddess and theologising her into a Christian celestial hierarchy.
The fifth circle is the river Styx turned into a swamp. In its black water the wrathful tear at each other on the surface; beneath the water, less visibly, the sullen — those who refused even the active fury of anger — gurgle a hymn through their throats because with unbroken words they cannot say it.
What to read for
Notice that the avaricious and the prodigal are not given names. Among them are popes and cardinals, all unrecognisable. The canto's argument is that money makes the soul unrecognisable — the undiscerning life which made them sordid now makes them unto all discernment dim. Hoarding and squandering both erase the self.
Notice the central excursion. Half the canto is Virgil's speech on Fortune. Read it slowly. It is one of the Commedia's sustained doctrinal passages, and it is doing something subtle — defending divine providence by making one of paganism's most arbitrary deities into one of God's most diligent servants.
Listen for the sullen at the close. Their hymn is gurgled through black water; they cannot get the words out. The choice of hymn for what they are saying is one of the canto's most precise small ironies.
From here on: illustrations and analysis. The three images below are scenes from the canto, and after them comes the close reading — famous lines quoted in full, paradoxes explained, political and theological freight unpacked. If you have not yet read the canto, stop here — read it, then come back.
After reading
What the canto did
The canto is structurally unusual: two circles in one canto, with a long doctrinal excursion sitting at the join. The fourth circle is the avaricious and the prodigal, who roll great weights at each other in two semicircles and crash. The fifth circle is the marsh of the Styx, where the wrathful tear at each other on the surface and the sullen gurgle a hymn beneath. Between the two, Virgil pauses to explain who, theologically speaking, Fortune is. The doctrinal excursion is the longest sustained piece of teaching the Inferno has yet given, and it is doing something audacious — taking a pagan goddess of arbitrary chance and converting her, on the page, into an angelic intelligence within God's hierarchy. The canto wants the reader to see that the sin punished here is not the possession of wealth as such. It is the misunderstanding of what wealth is. Hoarding and squandering are both forms of mistaking the instrument for the end. The Curia is named explicitly. The poem is keeping no secrets about who, in Dante's Florence, it intends to indict.
Plutus and the third method of silencing
Plutus opens the canto with one line of unintelligible noise — Pape Satan, Pape Satan, aleppe — that has resisted seven hundred years of commentary. Commentators have read it as garbled Hebrew, demonic invocation, a parody of liturgical Latin, or simply the Commedia's most precise picture of evil as syntactic collapse. Take it as a noise. Virgil silences him not with the formula of Acheron and Minos, and not with the mud of Cerberus, but with a direct theological imperative: Be silent, thou accursed wolf; consume within thyself with thine own rage. Not causeless is this journey to the abyss. The phrase accursed wolf is the poem's first explicit identification of avarice with the she-wolf of canto I — the prophecy of the Greyhound is being filled in. Plutus collapses as the sails inflated by the wind together fall involved when snaps the mast. The simile is precise: a mast snaps and the structure that held the wind collapses inward. Avarice held up by avarice.
What the contrapasso of the fourth circle says
The avaricious and the prodigal do not lie still; they push. They push great weights against the chests of those approaching from the opposite direction. They meet, they crash, they shout their accusation — why hoardest? why squanderest? — and they turn and roll back. The clash is the punishment. Two halves of the same sin meet at the centre of the circle and recognise each other only as opposite, never as the same. The semicircles never break and never join; the souls are condemned to dispute the wrong question forever. And the punishment denies them faces: the undiscerning life which made them sordid now makes them unto all discernment dim. Among them, Virgil notes specifically, are clerks who no hairy covering have on the head, and Popes and Cardinals. The shaved head — the clerical tonsure — is the only mark by which the damned can be identified at all. The unnamed Pope is one of the Commedia's sharpest small political moves.
What Fortune is, in this poem
Pagan Fortune is blind, capricious, arbitrary. Christian Fortune, in most medieval treatments, is a temptation or a problem to be philosophically dissolved. Dante's Fortune in this canto is neither. She is an angel — one of the celestial intelligences God has set over the spheres of being. As the angels of the planetary spheres distribute light and motion across the cosmos, this angelic intelligence distributes wealth across the world. She works that every part to every part may shine; she moves goods from nation to nation, family to family, by laws that to mortals look arbitrary but are in fact divine. Necessity constrains her to be swift. The redistribution is constant because the apparent arbitrariness is built into her function. She turns her sphere, and blissful she rejoices. She is happy in her work. The doctrine is bold and consoling at once: nothing of the world's wealth is yours forever, and that is a divine fact, not a human one. The avaricious and the prodigal in the circle below are punished, on this reading, for having tried to override an angel.
The marsh and the hymn that cannot be spoken
The Styx is no longer a river. Dante turns it into a swamp — a thick black water in which the wrathful tear each other on the surface and the sullen lie submerged beneath. The two postures are theologically paired. Wrath is anger as action; sullenness is anger as refusal. The sullen, Virgil explains, were those who in the bright air of life refused to take part — sullen we were in the sweet air, which by the sun is gladdened, bearing within ourselves the sluggish reek — and now, in the dark water, they continue their refusal as a hymn they cannot finish: this hymn do they keep gurgling in their throats, for with unbroken words they cannot say it. The choice of hymn is one of the canto's most precise small ironies. A hymn is the prayer the soul most owes God; this hymn is the prayer the soul has spent eternity refusing to complete. The contrapasso here is not physical. It is liturgical.
Famous and meaningful passages
Plutus's noise.
Papë Satàn, Papë Satàn, Aleppë! Thus Plutus with his clucking voice began (Inf. VII.1–2)
The most famously untranslatable line in the Commedia. Take the noise as the point.
The silencing.
Be silent, thou accursed wolf; Consume within thyself with thine own rage. Not causeless is this journey to the abyss. (Inf. VII.8–9)
Accursed wolf: the she-wolf of canto I named at last as the sin she always was — avarice. Consume within thyself with thine own rage — Virgil's most direct silencing in the poem.
The collapse.
Even as the sails inflated by the wind Together fall involved when snaps the mast, So fell the cruel monster to the earth. (Inf. VII.13–15)
The image is exact: the structure that held the air inward collapses inward when its centre fails.
The collision.
Rolling weights forward by main-force of chest. They clashed together, and then at that point Each one turned backward, rolling retrograde (Inf. VII.25–27)
The whole punishment as motion. Two halves of one sin meet and refuse each other.
The clerics named.
Clerks those were who no hairy covering Have on the head, and Popes and Cardinals, In whom doth avarice practise its excess. (Inf. VII.37–39)
The tonsure as the only identifying mark. Popes and Cardinals without names.
The diagnosis.
The undiscerning life which made them sordid Now makes them unto all discernment dim. (Inf. VII.49–50)
The canto's sharpest small line. Wealth-blindness makes the soul itself unrecognisable.
Fortune as angel.
The heavens created, and gave who should guide them, That every part to every part may shine (Inf. VII.73–74)
The cosmological argument: as planetary intelligences distribute light, Fortune distributes goods. Both are divinely ordered offices.
Fortune at work.
She turns her sphere, and blissful she rejoices. (Inf. VII.96)
The pagan goddess made into an angelic intelligence who is happy in her work.
The styx.
Near to a fount that boils, and pours itself Along a gully that runs out of it. (Inf. VII.101–102)
The river introduced as a small geological detail before it widens into a swamp.
The hymn of the sullen.
Fixed in the mire they say, We sullen were In the sweet air, which by the sun is gladdened, Bearing within ourselves the sluggish reek; Now we are sullen in this sable mire. This hymn do they keep gurgling in their throats, For with unbroken words they cannot say it. (Inf. VII.121–126)
The contrapasso as liturgy. The sin that refused song in life cannot complete song in death.
The next threshold.
Unto the foot of a tower we came at last. (Inf. VII.130)
The canto closes with the tower that opens canto VIII. The architecture of Hell hands the reader on.
What to watch for
Watch the she-wolf become avarice. The prophecy of the Greyhound in canto I will turn out, increasingly, to have meant the destruction of cupidity in all its forms — political, ecclesial, personal.
Watch the next gatekeeper at Dis. The tower of canto VII signals a different kind of obstacle. The walls of Dis are the architectural boundary between the upper Hell of incontinence and the lower Hell of malice. Virgil will not be able to talk his way through them.
Watch the structure of Fortune's defence. The argument here is that worldly goods are distributed by divine office. Paradiso will return to the cosmology of celestial intelligences and ratify what is sketched here in passing.
This post is part of Reading Divine Comedy, a slow daily companion to Dante's Commedia in the Longfellow translation — read one canto at a time, with a short orientation before and a close reading after. From Inferno I to Paradiso XXXIII.