Inferno: Canto 17 -- Circle 7, Round 3
The beast, the monster, Geryon, swims up through the air, "passes mountains, breaks through walls and weapons . . . [and] makes the whole world stink" (2-3). Like the other guards we've encountered, Geryon represents what it is he precedes. Having been summoned by a symbol of simplicity and spiritualism, this beast of compound complexity and materialism has the face of an honest man "benign and just in feature and expression;/ and under it his body was half reptile" (11-2). Ciardi describes him as derived from a Spanish myth that, nonetheless, makes its way into a Grecian one through the connection of his having been killed by Hercules. Dante, Ciardi writes, probably relies upon a later tradition, which "represents him as killing and robbing strangers whom he lured into his realm," and may have drawn from Revelation 9: 9-20 in his depiction of him. Regardless of the origin of the composite of the leopard and the lion, we can safely say with Dorothy, "We ain't in Kansas no more!"
Because we know that fraud is a perversion of reason, it seems odd that Virgil would bid Dante to "go now and see the last state of that crew" (36), meaning the usurers of the third round of this circle, while he stays to "reason with this beast till [Dante] returns" (37-8). Human reason may not reason with that which is the antithesis of reason, and it is the perversion of reason that has most confounded (and will confound him further in their descent) Virgil since crossing Styx. It makes sense on a human level, though, for just as a doctor will send a nervous husband to find hot water at the moment of his wife's delivery, Virgil needs to figure out a way to interact with Geryon without Dante's presence muddling the issue.
Dante disappears onto the outer edge of the cliff and sees the most heinous sinners of that round -- usurers, those who committed violence against art (meaning industry and the gifts of labor and value). Accosted by one of these damned, Dante learns he neither knows them nor can bring himself to express any concern for them -- they are unlike the sodomites who evoked in both him and Virgil such pity. Bitter and weighted down by their own money bags and coats of arms, these bankers hang forever on the precipice between violence and fraud.
Without further adieu, Dante the pilgrim beats a hasty retreat back to Virgil and finds Virgil already mounted on Geryon. The ride on this beast beats any thrill seeker's dream at Disneyworld, and there is the first idea that mortal danger, of the kind we saw at the gate of the 6th circle with Medusa and entering the seventh circle with Chiron's arrow, again awaits below. Geryon's tail ends in a scorpion sting, and that there is no trusting it (fraud), Virgil places himself between it and Dante. Like the fable of the scorpion and the turtle, where the scorpion wins passage across the lake with the argument, "Why would I sting you? You'd die and I would drown," and promptly stings the turtle mid-water, Geryon's response would be as simply, "Tis my nature, after all."
The beast descends for a long time into the eighth circle, leaving the poets safely at the base of the cliff before darting away faster than an arrow flies. How unnerving the flight into fraud with fraud as one's guide might be if added to that the realization that fraud deprives us not only of the use of our reason but also the stabilizing presence of our senses as terra firma disappears from beneath our feet and our sense of flying (like Icarus) is confounded by that of falling.
S.
Because we know that fraud is a perversion of reason, it seems odd that Virgil would bid Dante to "go now and see the last state of that crew" (36), meaning the usurers of the third round of this circle, while he stays to "reason with this beast till [Dante] returns" (37-8). Human reason may not reason with that which is the antithesis of reason, and it is the perversion of reason that has most confounded (and will confound him further in their descent) Virgil since crossing Styx. It makes sense on a human level, though, for just as a doctor will send a nervous husband to find hot water at the moment of his wife's delivery, Virgil needs to figure out a way to interact with Geryon without Dante's presence muddling the issue.
Dante disappears onto the outer edge of the cliff and sees the most heinous sinners of that round -- usurers, those who committed violence against art (meaning industry and the gifts of labor and value). Accosted by one of these damned, Dante learns he neither knows them nor can bring himself to express any concern for them -- they are unlike the sodomites who evoked in both him and Virgil such pity. Bitter and weighted down by their own money bags and coats of arms, these bankers hang forever on the precipice between violence and fraud.
Without further adieu, Dante the pilgrim beats a hasty retreat back to Virgil and finds Virgil already mounted on Geryon. The ride on this beast beats any thrill seeker's dream at Disneyworld, and there is the first idea that mortal danger, of the kind we saw at the gate of the 6th circle with Medusa and entering the seventh circle with Chiron's arrow, again awaits below. Geryon's tail ends in a scorpion sting, and that there is no trusting it (fraud), Virgil places himself between it and Dante. Like the fable of the scorpion and the turtle, where the scorpion wins passage across the lake with the argument, "Why would I sting you? You'd die and I would drown," and promptly stings the turtle mid-water, Geryon's response would be as simply, "Tis my nature, after all."
The beast descends for a long time into the eighth circle, leaving the poets safely at the base of the cliff before darting away faster than an arrow flies. How unnerving the flight into fraud with fraud as one's guide might be if added to that the realization that fraud deprives us not only of the use of our reason but also the stabilizing presence of our senses as terra firma disappears from beneath our feet and our sense of flying (like Icarus) is confounded by that of falling.
S.
posted by Sebastian Mahfood at 6:40 AM
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