Some more difficult reading this month. There is the continuation of the journey through Dante’s Inferno, and then the start of Marx’s major opus- Capital… but just Vol 1. Mind you there are three volumes. Yeah. So two of the books I’m reading here are just me getting partially through. But in my defense, I’m actually translating the Inferno, and taking copious notes on Capital, so, ya know… cut me some slack.
L’inferno- Dante (1321)
Continuing through the inferno, this month Cantos 7-13.
Canto 7 finds Dante and Virgil in the fourth level of hell, where the greedy are sent, then down to the fifth circle where those consumed by anger are. Those on the fifth level are divided into two groups- those who are outwardly angry and combative, and those who are inwardly angry- sullen.
In Canto 8, the pair are on their way to the sixth circle when they are confronted by Filippo Argenti, who tries to rock their boat and capsize them. Virgil knocks him loose though and Dante is pleased to see him assaulted by the other vicious souls in the mire.
As they approach the walls of the city, Dis, in the sixth level, they are met by thousands of demons. Virgil calls them out for a secret meeting that Dante can’t attend. Whatever Virgil attempted didn’t work, the demons withdraw inside the walls, and refuse to let them in. Virgil disappears for a bit, leaving Dante petrified, but then returns and tells Dante that help is on the way. But the poet here uses this as symbolic of something: Virgil is the personification of reason, and reason will only get one so far in this life. When faced with spiritual opposition, reason won’t suffice to overcome it. Only the help of the Lord will do.
Canto 9 finds the pair still waiting on the shore outside the city walls. Virgil seems uncertain, and this uncertainty is picked up by Dante, who starts to worry. There is a brief conversation about these internal fears, when the three furies show up on top the wall and mock the pair. They threaten to bring the Medusa’s head and turn them to stone. But then, in the coolest moment of the book so far, the angel that Virgil appealed to in Canto 8, shows up, looking rather bored. His mere presence sends the demons scattering and the angel opens the gate with nothing more than pushing on it. Then he leaves without so much as a word to the pair, acting as if he had other things more important to deal with. At this, Virgil and Dante pass through the gate unopposed. As they enter in, they find the ground littered with open, burning tombs, filled with the heretics.
Canto 10 has one of Dante’s Florentine opposition leaders pop up from a tomb and speak with him. Out of that same tomb, the father of a fellow poet makes an appearance. The dialogue concerns the consecutive exiles of both sides as one party came to power and the other fell, then fortunes were reversed. There is also a discussion on how those in hell can know the future, but not the present.
Canto 11 finds Virgil and Dante about to descend into the lower regions of hell, but the stink coming up is so bad they withdraw a bit to find some relief. They decide to descend slowly, so their sense can get used to it through time. But with the delay, Dante says they should redeem the time and Virgil, agreeing, takes the time and explains what they are going to find in the lower levels. This canto then is basically a description of the structure of hell.
In Canto 12, Virgil and Dante get into the seventh circle of hell, which is divided into three rings. They visit the first ring. The first ring punishes the violent tyrants. The blood boiled over into murderous rages in life, so here they are punished in a river of boiling blood. If any try to escape, centaurs shoot them with arrows and they sink back in. How bad the men were determines how far under they must be. The worst are up to their eyebrows, some only their feet. Virgil enlists one of the centaurs to help guide them the rest of the way.
Canto 13 has the pair in the second ring of the seventh circle, which contains those whose violence was aimed at themselves: suicides and squanderers. Those that committed suicide are tossed in without any concern, since they had no concern for their own lives on earth, and become gnarled plants that bleed when broken. Virgil has Dante break off a branch from one of the plants, who screams his objection. Dante is flabbergasted to find talking plants. As they are talking with him, a pair of men come running through the forest trying to outrun some hellhounds. They are the squanderers, one of which is caught and torn limb from limb.
Lessico Famigliare- Natalia Ginzburg (1963)
This isn’t a novel, it’s a biography- recollections of the author over her family and life. It just so happens though that her family was somewhat well known, and ran in circles of personages that were also well known. So we see glimpses of the personal lives of authors during the years from the 1920s to the 50’s.
Capital, Vol 1- Karl Marx (1866)
I tried years ago to read this book, and couldn’t get through the first chapter. But in the interim years, I’ve read a lot more philosophy, polemic, and even just Communist literature itself, so the style isn’t so foreign to me as it was 35 years ago. But this is a MASSIVE work. This volume, 1 of 3, is 1000 pages by itself. I’m not sure if I’ll read all three or not, after all, there’s only so much a guy can take… but I wanted to read, for myself, the basic foundational works of socialism/communism, so I could understand where socialists were coming from. This is, by far, the largest and most complex of what I call the commy classics, so…..here I am, reading Capital.
First off, I’ll say the work is pretty interesting, despite the seemingly boring nature of the material. Marx is no idiot, and he has a pretty good understanding of economics and capitalism. Marx, being German, writes incredibly long, detailed, and drawn out arguments, starting from really basic premises, to get where he’s going. While I don’t agree with his analysis, I might have had I been a contemporary. He has clearly documented a long list of abuses by captains of industry pursuing after profits above all else.
But there is an obvious difference between recognizing problems in the present and being able to predict the future. Marx considered his arguments thoroughly scientific, indisputable, and worst of all- prophetic. He was certain that the path he foresaw was inevitable, and his answers were the only real answers. The twentieth century painfully demonstrated with real-world examples how wrong he was. I’m only getting through half of this volume this month, since I want to take a break and read a novel or two before continuing on. So for this month, I’ve covered 4 of 8 parts- around 60% of the novel. I’ll finish this volume next month.
Roots- Alex Haley (1976)
I watched the 1977 miniseries when it came out. It was something of a cultural event at the time; the kind of thing that everyone talked about the next day. I had considered it a documentary of Alex Haley’s family, with some extra meat fleshed out to fill in details. As I am reading it though, it becomes clear, that there is no way the author could have access to the level of details of African life, in the mid 1700’s that he was writing. It is 200 pages in, when Kunta Kinte, the Mandinka man from Gambia, is captured. Having supposedly learned about his forebears from a Gambian griot, a tribal keeper of oral history, one could reasonably accept maybe the names of his ancestors, and what a typical life would have looked like. But access to the inner thoughts, motives, and detailed daily life are clearly just manufactured. Alex Haley himself acknowledged this, but it apparently came out later that much of his history is wrong, and worse, some of it was flatly plagiarized. I was interested in understanding how much of the work was imagination-based, and had read that basically everything prior to the civil war was essentially made up. Unfortunately, out of an 888 page book, you don’t get out of the civil war until around page 830.
If you want the actual documentary of his research, that is contained in the last chapter of the book.
For whatever historical accuracy problems it contains, the work was important for many American blacks, who, if they were descendants of slaves, were uprooted, brought to America, and then actively denied association with their cultural heritage. This work meant to reclaim some of those lost connections and reestablish roots with their African heritage.