Daeg Fienberg

There are two.2.Sell low, buy high, but not in that order.

There are two items.By the close of business tomorrow, dozens of others will be exploiting the ultimate secret.

The final draft of paper two was a completion of my assessment in exploring pride, greed, and envy in Inferno. Evaluating the problems that occurred in my rough draft, such as engaging evidence effectively, I focused on solving these issues in this draft. A considerable setback from success in paper one, paper two remained provocative in analysis, but fell short in acknowledgement and response. This shortcoming would later be the focus of the third project: paper three.

Christopher Chu

9th March 2011

Dante and the Modern Imagination

Scott Challener

The Essence of Pride, Greed, and Envy within The Divine Comedy

Of the seven capital sins, the trinity of pride, greed, and envy has many times been synonymous with evil and injustice throughout the Bible. Robert Lansing’s edition of The Dante Encyclopedia shows us that pride “first induced Lucifer to rise up against his creator” (Lansing, 709), while envy served “as the archetypal motivation of Satan himself” (343). Greed, synonymous with avarice, is “in direct opposition to justice” (76). Dante incorporates this terrible trinity in Inferno: pride, greed, and envy seem to exist everywhere in Hell and are repeatedly alluded to throughout the pilgrim’s journey. For example, when Dante encounters Ciacco in the third circle, Ciacco cites the trinity as the sole downfall of his beloved city of Florence; Dante’s former mentor, Brunetto Latini, also warns him of the now avaricious, envious, and proud people of Florence. However, as much as he incorporates the trinity in Hell, Dante does not directly punish the three sins in their own circles, leading to an investigation of Dante’s vision of the trinity. Why aren’t pride, greed, and envy punished in their own circles? The critic Robert Hollander suggests that they are punished, for avarice is punished in the fourth circle while envy is punished as Fraud, and pride is punished as Treachery. Yet, although it is suggested that this is Dante’s indirect intention, Dante purposely does not punish pride, greed, and envy in Hell. Dante’s true intention was to reveal the trinity as merely the root of greater, unforgivable evil: they serve to instigate the higher sins that are then punished in their own circles. Greed is the motive behind the denial of Fortune, while envy and pride collectively motivate violence and its subcircles. By not punishing the prideful, greedy, and envious in Hell, Dante reveals his own vision of the trinity: pride, greed, and envy can be forgiven if they are not acted upon. This explains the trinity’s absence of punishment in Hell, but capability of repentance in Purgatory. And by Dante’s interpretation of Sodom and Gomorrah, in which Lot represents a man that is saved from an entire city full of the prideful, greedy, and envious, Dante suggests that through righteous, Christian obedience that Lot similarly represents, the lowly sins of pride, greed, and envy can be overcome.

Dante does not punish greed in its own circle in Hell; rather, in the fourth circle he shows us that greed is the root of the greater sin: the denial of Fortune. Undoubtedly in the four circle, the sinners are a people of greed and lavishness. Both the sinners are in opposition, crying to each other “‘Why do you hold?’ and ‘Why do you toss?’” (VII.30), alluding to each’s greed and lavishness. Robert Hollander, claims that Dante intended for the fourth circle to punish the sin of greed: “Canto V is Lust; VI, Gluttony, VII should then be Avarice, and it is” (Hollander, 310). However, the circle is not made solely for punishing the avaricious but the actions of the avaricious and the prodigal. Avarice and lavishness fuel the sinners of this circle, but they collectively deny the laws of Fortune and, ultimately, are punished for doing so in Hell. This collective denial of Fortune is the reason both avarice and lavishness are found in the same circle, as the avaricious and the prodigal, in which “no measure governed their spending” (Dante Inf., VII.41-42), squander and hoard the “goods that are committed to Fortune, for which the human race so squabbles” (VII.63). Greed is the motive behind the greater. committed crime of blasphemy towards Fortune.

For the same reason greed does not have a circle, Dante also does not grant envy or pride its own circles in Hell because envy and pride both instigate higher sins; pride and envy collectively drive violence and its subcircles. Pride and envy instigate the first subcircle: the violence against one’s neighbors. Found in this subcircle are tyrants like Alexander, Attila the Hun, and Dionysus. It must be acknowledged that they are a people full of pride and envy: prideful, as they commit “pitiless crimes” (VII.106), and envious as they “put their hands to blood and to others’ goods” (XII.104-105). Yet, the circle does not punish them for pride and envy, but for pride and envy’s instigation of violence, the action of putting their hands to blood. The congruity of sin and punishment, in how harsh the sin is compared to how harsh the punishment is, confirms that violence is punished, but not pride and envy: “Then I saw people who held their heads out of the river and then all of their trunks…thus the blood became shallower and shallower, until it was cooking only feet” (XII.121-125). The actions of bloodshed and murder each sinner has committed, the more punished they are in Hell. Yet pride and envy cannot be punished, for they serve merely to drive the forces of violence.

Pride and envy also instigate the sin of the second subcircle: violence against themselves. In this subcircle we find Pier della Vigna, who committed suicide after envious politicians had the people of Frederick turn against Pier. Indeed Pier reveals himself to be prideful: “I kept faith with my glorious office so much that because of it I lost sleep and vigor” (XIII.62-63), while also envious of a better fate than his, where “bright honors turned to sad mourning” (XIII.68-69). Yet ultimately, his pride and envy instigate the greater sin of suicide, and committing violence upon himself. This is evident in Dante’s contrapasso, in which Pier is punished as a tree in which corpses are hung from. He is eternally damned to watch the form of life he deprived himself of, but not because of his pride as an emperor or his envy of fate. Rather, his pride and envy instigated the unforgivable sin in committing suicide.

Lastly pride and envy instigate the sin of the third subcircle: violence against God or Nature. In the first part of the subcircle where sinners of violence against God are punished, the sinner Capaneus is found being rained on by fire. He is indeed prideful and envious, as Dante identifies him as the “great one who seems not to mind the fire, and lies there scornful and frowning, so that the rain does not seem to ripen him” (XIV.46-48). He himself pridefully claims, “as I was alive, so am I dead” (XIV.50), testifying his unrestfulness in arrogance even in Hell, while his envy towards God fuels his defiance. However, although his “pride is not extinguished” (XIV.63), the measurement of his punishment is dictated by his fury and his persistent blasphemy towards God. As the Dante critic Karl Witte states, “Capaneus sinned from presumption and pride, but his punishment is for blasphemy” (Witte, 129), because it remains the greater sin, or the sin that had been acted upon.

By not punishing the sins of pride, greed, and envy in Hell, Dante reveals his own vision of the trinity: pride, greed, and envy can be forgiven if they are not acted upon, as they are absent of punishment in Hell, but capable of repentance in Purgatory. Siegfried Wenzel describes Dante’s judgment in his review, claiming that Dante had taken the seven deadly sins from medieval tradition, but to have “explained their order and number and deduced them from the general principle of misdirected love, by the efforts of his own thought and imagination” (Wenzel, 530). These efforts of his thought and imagination have been intensely debated: Robert Hollander claims that Dante “probably thought of Fraud as issuing from the passion Envy” (Hollander, 311), while “there is little doubt that the last area, Treachery, is seen in major respects to be the same sin as, or at least to issue from, Pride” (311). Yet, this cannot be the true nature of Dante’s intention because it is evident through the sins of violence and denial of Fortune that pride, greed, and envy are merely instigators. There is also no evidence that Hollander can provide in which envy is synonymous with fraud. Aside from his claim that “Dante twice uses the word for Envy, invidia, in its verb form, in the area [of Fraud’s circle]” (311), perhaps the usage of envy in its verb form is to show that envy is the root of Fraud. Likewise, in Hollander’s reasoning that pride is the same sin as treason, pride may have induced Lucifer to sin, but treason, the action of pride, is his reason for punishment in Hell. Karl Witte also agrees, stating that “it was envy and pride alike that impelled Satan to revolt against his Creator, but the heaviest of all the punishments of Hell is laid on him for treachery against his highest benefactor” (129). Ultimately, as much as Hollander attempts to argue that pride, greed, and envy indirectly have their own circles, they do not, and cannot, for Dante’s envisioning of Hell does not allow for this.

While they are absent from Hell, the trinity is included in Purgatory, justifying Dante’s belief that the trinity can be forgiven if they are not acted upon. Dante’s inclusion and exclusion of sins in his different works is explained by Witte: although sins are ultimately derived from injustice and evil, “the desire to raise [the sinner’s] moral condition must always influence the manner in which the sentence is carried out; whereas no such considerations apply to the sinner who goes unrepentant to Hell; and his punishment can only be retributive” (Witte, 129). Through a sinner’s moral condition, the sins of pride, greed, and envy are capable of repentance. In the first terrace in Purgatory, pride is purged by the virtue of humility, where Omberto repents for the sin of pride: “I am Omberto; and my pride does harm not to myself alone, for all my kin were dragged thereby down to calamity. And ‘tis for it that I must bear this burden here mid the dead, till God be satisfied” (Dante Purg, XI.83). Omberto symbolizes a higher moral condition in which he acknowledges his sin and is determined to purge from it by humility. And while the envious cleanse their guilty life by wearing cloaks and the avaricious cleanse themselves by praying “Adhaesit pavimento anima mia” (98), these souls similarly did not commit damnable actions that deserve of punishment in Hell. This is the fundamental difference between the sins in Hell and Purgatory; as prideful, greedy, and envious as a sinner can become, if it is not acted upon, they can be saved by God in Purgatory.

Dante ultimately believes that these sins can be overcome through righteous, Christian obedience, explained by Dante’s exploration of Sodom and Gomorrah. Dante uses Sodom and Gomorrah as a template of Florence’s downfall, as the “new people and the rapid gains have generated pride and excess” (Dante Inf., XVI.73-5). Florence, where “pride, greed, and envy are the three sparks that set hearts ablaze” (VI. 73-75), is destined by God to fall, as similarly as Sodom and Gomorrah does.  Yet, one person is saved from the downfall of the city: Lot, who perhaps characterizes the antithesis of pride, greed, and envy. He is humble under God and generous to God’s servants, leading the angels stay in his place, and defending them from the sinful villagers. And, as an entire city is punished and destroyed, Lot represents the overcoming of sin: Lot obediently trusts in the word of God, and dares not to look back to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, while his wife does and is punished. Lot’s subservient obedience to God, and his trust in the word of God, leads to his salvation, and the overcoming of sin that Dante faithfully believes in.

Though there are claims that Dante indirectly punishes pride, greed, and envy, Dante does not punish the trinity in their own circles in Hell, for they serve as the root of greater, unforgivable injustice and evil. Greed motivates the crime of denying Fortune, while pride and envy motivate the injustice and evil of violence towards others, oneself, and God. And by not punishing the trinity in Hell, Dante shows us that pride, greed, and envy can be forgiven if they are not acted upon, as the sinners in Purgatory express their higher moral intent in purging their sin. Ultimately, Dante chooses to structure Hell and Purgatory so to prove the greater significance: that any sin can be overcome by obedience and subservience to God.

Works Cited

Lansing, Richard. The Dante Encyclopedia. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc, 2000. Print.

Dante Alighieri. The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. Ed. and trans. Robert Durling. Vol 1.

New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Print.

Dante Alighieri. The Divine Comedy. Ed. and trans. Lawrence Grant White. New York:

Pantheon Books, Inc, 1948. Print.

Hollander, Robert. Allegory in Dante’s Commedia. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University

Press, 1969. Print.

Wenzel, Siegfried. “Dante’s Rationale for the Seven Deadly Sins (“Purgatorio XVII”)”. The

Modern Language Review. Vol. 60 No. 4. Modern Humanities Research Association,

1965. Pp. 529-533. < www.jstor.org...>

Witte, Karl. Essays on Dante. Selected, ed. and trans. C. Mabel Lawrence, Philip H. Wicksteed.

New York: Haskell House Publishers Ltd, 1970. Print.

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