Dante's Divine Comedy

Canto XVII – Third Cornice – Wrath and Fourth Cornice – Sloth

• 1. Lines 1-9 constitute the fourth apostrophe to the Reader in the Purgatorio. Can you remember an experience like the one Dante asks you to remember? How are these lines like a simile without being one? You should also notice that this apostrophe is the only one in this canticle that begins a canto.

The basic structure of a simile is “a is like b.” The first six lines set up the seeing of something (beautiful) through a mist or fog. The final three directly state that if you can remember such an experience, then you can imagine Dante’s perceiving of the setting sun as he has entered the cornice of the wrathful.

• 2. Lines 13-19 constitute a second apostrophe in this canto. To whom/what is it addressed?

It is addressed to imagination.

What is the meaning of lines 13-15?

Dante asserts that imagination can make us oblivious to the world around us, essentially usurping the usual power of the senses.

Early commentators recount a story of Dante discovering a book at a street stall and becoming so engrossed in it that he lost awareness of everything around him.

It took more than three hours to finish while in the meantime a joyous wedding procession passed him by. When asked if the procession had disrupted his reading, he claimed that he did not even notice it. His mind was completely absorbed by the images evoked by the book to the exclusion of that which was going on in reality around him.

What is the substance of lines 16-17?

Dante asks imagination how it forms images in his mind without input from the world around him. Put another way, Dante asks: “Who places such images in the mind so that they overpower the senses?”

What is the meaning of lines 16-19?

Esolen’s note is helpful here. Because the images perceived in his mind are of the examples of wrath, they are placed there by God’s will.

• 3. Three specific visions of actions motivated by wrath. What does the first vision (lines 19-24) concern?

It involves the second allusion to the story of Procne and Philomela who in an act of revenge against Tereus, the husband of Procne, who raped and imprisoned her sister Philomela, also cutting out her tongue so that she could tell no one, kill Itys, Procne’s son by Tereus, and serve him to his father Tereus.

Since Dante reduces the story to a brief reference to Philomela’s transformation — “the impiety of her who was transformed/into the bird that most delights to sing,” the reader has to supply the story from his own memory. (This is another indication of the extensive cultural and literary knowledge Dante expected of his readers.)

He does something similar in Canto XI, 13-18.

What does the second vision (lines 25-30) concern?

It recalls the story of Mordecai’s foiling of Haman’s attempted genocide of all the Jews in Persia. Haman himself is hanged on the scaffold he had built to hang Mordecai.

What does the third vision (lines 34-39) concern?

It alludes to an episode in Virgil’s Aeneid. Amata, the mother of Lavinia, vows not to see her daughter married to Aeneas rather than to Turnus. Even before Aeneas has slain Turnus, Amata hangs herself from a beam in the Latian palace. Lavinia grieves bitterly over her mother’s death who mourns for her even more than she does for Turnus.

Ronald Martinez sees in this allusion Dante’s prediction of the future despair of rebellious Florence.

• 4. What is Dante saying in lines 68-69?

Again, at the end of their time in a cornice of Purgatory, Dante hears a quotation from the Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount and adds “whose anger is no sin!” Making peace is the counter to the sin of wrath.

What do lines 85-87 mean?

It is a direct answer to Dante’s question concerning what sin is purged in this new cornice by defining sloth: the failure to love actively the good.

What significant statement does Virgil make in lines 91-93?

Love is the force that moves every created thing. Ultimately, love is the motivation for all actions. Consider the following:

“And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.” – 1 John 4:16

This verse supports Dante’s assertion that love is intrinsic to God’s nature. God is not merely loving; God is Love itself.

What is the substance of lines 94-96?

This answer requires some knowledge of medieval theology. Natural love is an innate inclination toward the good. For angels and humans, that good is God Himself. It is imbued in us by Him. It is natural to love God.

However, this “natural love” is not the only kind of love. Humans can sin in both the object of their love and the degree of their love. This is categorized as elective love.

In lines 97-123, Virgil discourses on the errors of elective love. What are those errors?

First of all, when love “does not/race for a good with the appropriated care” in other words, we may love to the wrong degree. In addition, we may sin by loving the wrong thing.

Lines 103-105 assert that love is the source of all good works but also of sinful works.

Lines 106-111 assert that it is impossible to hate oneself or God. [It is important to note here that both Augustine and Aquinas teach that suicides reveal their love for themselves by erroneously perceiving self-inflicted love as an escape either from pain or punishment.]

Lines 111-123 examine love of the wrong object. Lines 115-117 address pride: “one man strives for excellence that he might/put down his neighbor.” Lines 118-120 address envy: the man “who loves to see [his neighbor] fail.” Lines 121-123 address wrath: the man who “gluts himself with vindictiveness.”

In lines 130-133, Virgil explains sloth. What is the substance of that explanation?

Sloth is slowness in expressing the love of the highest good.

It is also called “acedia.”

In lines 133-139, Virgil categorizes the remaining three sins purged on Mt. Purgatory. How do these lines significantly differ from those explaining pride, envy, wrath, and sloth?

He merely says that the sins of excessive love are punished in the final three cornices. He leaves Dante to discover for himself what those three sins are and why they are sins through experiencing those cornices.