Dante's Inferno & PotD, plus Eru or Not?

[Lalaith]

I was inspired after finishing Cahill's Mysteries of the Middle Ages to read Dante's Inferno. So far, it's quite interesting. One thing that struck me at the beginning was the similarities between the beginning of Dante's journey and Tolkien's depiction of the PotD.

First, there is the dark characters inscribed over the gateway to hell.

"Through me is the way into the woeful city; through me is the way into eternal woe; through me is the way among the lost people. Justice moved my lofty maker: the divine Power, the supreme Wisdom and the primal Love made me. Before me were no things created, unless eternal, and I eternal last. Leave every hope, ye who enter!"

These words of color obscure I saw written at the top of a gate; whereat I, "Master, their meaning is dire to me."

And he to me, like one who knew, "Here it behoves to leave every fear; it behoves that all cowardice should here be dead. We have come to the place where I have told thee that thou shalt see the woeful people, who have lost the good of the understanding."

Then, nearly all of Canto III reminded me of this part of the PotD.

And when he had put his hand on mine, with a glad countenance, wherefrom I took courage, he brought me within the secret things. Here sighs, laments, and deep wailings were resounding though the starless air; wherefore at first I wept thereat. Strange tongues, horrible cries, words of woe, accents of anger, voices high and hoarse, and sounds of hands with them, were making a tumult which whirls forever in that air dark without change, like the sand when the whirlwind breathes.

And I, who had my head girt with horror, said, "Master, what is it that I hear? and what folk are they who seem in woe so vanquished?"

And he to me, "This miserable measure the wretched souls maintain of those who lived without infamy and without praise. Mingled are they with that caitiff choir of the angels, who were not rebels, nor were faithful to God, but were for themselves. The heavens chased them out in order to be not less beautiful, nor doth the depth of Hell receive them, because the damned would have some glory from them."

And I, "Master, what is so grievous to them, that makes them lament so bitterly?"

He answered, "I will tell thee very briefly. These have no hope of death; and their blind life is so debased, that they are envious of every other lot. Fame of them the world permitteth not to be; mercy and justice disdain them. Let us not speak of them, but do thou look and pass on."

And I, who was gazing, saw a banner, that whirling ran so swiftly that it seemed to me to scorn all repose, and behind it came so long a train of folk, that I could never have believed death had undone so many. After I had distinguished some among them, I saw and knew the shade of him who made, through cowardice, the great refusal. [1] At once I understood and was certain, that this was the sect of the caitiffs displeasing unto God, and unto his enemies. These wretches, who never were alive, were naked, and much stung by gad-flies and by wasps that were there. These streaked their faces with blood, which, mingled with tears, was harvested at their feet by loathsome worms.

(This is not the translation I'm reading, but it suffices since I didn't have to type it all in myself! )

Am I just imagining this or does anyone else think there are similarities?


Lali

[axordil]

Yes, there's a connection. But it's older than Dante. The journey through the underworld goes back to Sumeria and Gilgamesh, at least in written form. It's one of the hallmark of a Joe Campbell monomyth.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Wow, Lali! I definitely think there are similarlities, and I would not be surprised at all to learn that Tolkien was influenced by Dante. One thing that I taking away from reading The History of the Hobbit is how incredibly wide-ranging his influences were (even in that "lesser" work).

[Lalaith]

Thanks for the comments, guys.

I would be surprised if Tolkien had not read Dante. That's what made me think that it might have influenced his writing.

Ax, to me, it's more about just a journey through the underworld, since that can also be found in Greek or Roman mythology. What struck me most was the spirits Dante first meets upon entering into hell and the similarity between the dead in Tolkien's PotD.

Shoot. This is all I have time for right now. More thoughts later, I hope!

Lali

[ToshoftheWuffingas]

Here sighs, laments, and deep wailings were resounding though the starless air; wherefore at first I wept thereat. Strange tongues, horrible cries, words of woe, accents of anger, voices high and hoarse, and sounds of hands with them, were making a tumult which whirls forever in that air dark without change, like the sand when the whirlwind breathes.

Interesting. I hadn't read Dante other than little snippets that one absorbs without noticing but in an episode of my serial soon to be posted I had cries of despair issuing from the entrance to the Paths. I was less poetic about it though.

[N.E. Brigand]

Here are three posts on possible connections between Tolkien and Dante at another forum. Lots of spoilers for the Commedia, particularly Inferno and Purgatorio:

I. Infernal LOTR ("Abandon all hope, ye who enter here")
II. The Critics ("Bilbo is in good company")
III. Tolkien’s Malice (“Non c’è mestier lusinghe”)

As it happens, the Paths of the Dead is one of the likelier connections that gets very little attention in those posts.

Which translation are you reading?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Wow, N.E. Fascinating stuff. Do I understand correctly that you were the primary author for the entry on Dante for the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia? Well done. (I checked Scull and Hammond's Reader's Guide, and they didn't come up with anything more than you did.) You know, until relatively recently I was under the impression that TORN was pretty much a movie-centric site. I had no idea what you folks in the Reading Room were up to.

It is interesting, however, that you didn't consider the connection with the Path's of the Dead. Whether it was conscious or not, I think that the influence is pretty clear. Despite Tolkien's protestations to the contrary (which remind of his modest disclaimer in On Fairy Stories) it is clear that he was well versed in Dante's work. One does not become a member of the Oxford Dante Society without being so.

[Lalaith]

Wow! Thanks, N. E.! That was very informative! (BTW, do I know you from elsewhere? I mean, do you post under a different name on another board? I was born and raised in Cleveland and still consider it my hometown, even though I am currently living near Dayton.)

I am reading John D. Sinclair's translation. It seems quite good. Is it supposed to be okay?

I am feeling some serious geek happiness over here.


Lali

[N.E. Brigand]

Do I understand correctly that you were the author for the entry on "Dante" for the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia? Well done.

Well, I'll note the verdict on that article to date is: "On the one hand, it's well researched and written, but on the other hand, it seems to be so much ado about, well, not nothing, but very little." And the reviewer's concern that the Encyclopedia errs in including "Dante" but not "Chaucer" is just.

(I checked Scull and Hammond's Reader's Guide, and they didn't come up with anything more than you did.)

Then again, Scull and Hammond had permission to actually quote from, rather than merely describe, Tolkien's address to the Dante Society; and they knew what the Bodleian staff was unable to say in 2005: where the Dante Society's records are kept.

You know, until relatively recently I was under the impression that TORN was pretty much a movie-centric site. I had no idea what you folks in the Reading Room were up to.

No worries! There are too many Tolkien sites to keep up with. For myself, I didn't even start looking for Tolkiena on the internet until late 2003, and simply stumbled across TORN first. Which is ironic, because I was looking for anyone who might agree with me that the films failed the books, and as you say, TORN was heavily focused on the movies, or even dedicated to them. But the site's owners were largely content to let the discussion forums run of their own accord, and the Reading Room attracted enough lovers of the books to support weekly chapter-by-chapter discussions. Though I gather TORC has something similar? The VTSG? (And I was really impressed when I found TORC's attempt to annotate LOTR.) I only looked at that site for the first time in 2005, and heard about the Hall of Fire from MithLuin in Toronto in 2006.

It is interesting, however, that you didn't consider the connection with the Paths of the Dead. Whether it was conscious or not, I think that the influence is pretty clear.

Well, I did consider a connection --see the eleventh listed point at the first linked post-- but not in the finished article (one can say only so much with 500 words) and I think not the specific point that caught Lalaith's eye here, though I'd have to dig out my notebook. And as axordil noted, there is some difficulty in separating the possible influence of Dante on Tolkien from that of countless other stories with shared themes. One key example is Virgil's Aeneid, which Dante was explicitly borrowing from and expanding on.

Despite Tolkien's protestations to the contrary ... it is clear that he was well-versed in Dante's work. One does not become a member of the Oxford Dante Society without being so.

It is a small group: just twelve members at any one time, so I'm inclined to agree. And Tolkien was a member for ten years. Then again, in that time, he presented to them only once.

[N.E. Brigand]

BTW, do I know you from elsewhere? I mean, do you post under a different name on another board?

Probably not, and no.

I was born and raised in Cleveland and still consider it my hometown, even though I am currently living near Dayton.

How funny: I graduated from UD.

I am reading John D. Sinclair's translation. It seems quite good. Is it supposed to be okay?

Sorry, I have no clue about that -- I was just curious about which version you had!

[axordil]

I was perhaps too quick in my dismissal. The threads of a trip through the underworld are nearly universal in epic literature, but the vision of a punishment for the uncommitted, or specifically those who tried to wait out a conflict to see who would win, is really specific to Dante (and born, no doubt, from the political condition of the Italian peninsula during his life).

Layer that with the fine old Germanic concept of Oathbreaking--the vilest of vices--and you have the ingredients for the POTD.

Of course, you still have to mix them up and bake them in a 350 degree oven for 55 minutes.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

N.E., in your first linked post, you wrote:

In the ninth circle of Hell, in the section of ice known as Ptolomea, where those who betrayed their guests are punished (frozen with only their heads sticking out from the ice sheet) Dante sees a man he thinks to be alive, and learns that, “When a soul betrays as I did / it falls from flesh, and a demon takes its place / ruling the body till its time is spent.” When I read this, I scribbled “hröa / fëa?” but never followed it up: doesn’t Tolkien describe something like this in Morgoth’s Ring?

I don't know that Tolkien specifically described something like this in Morgoth's Ring, but I actually made a suggestion of something of this sort based on something that he did say in Morgoth's Ring (actually in the Athrabeth), in a discussion here about the nature of the Orcs. I wrote:

Okay. The dilemma has been pretty well stated by Prim and Sassy.

On the one hand, like Prim I believe that it is absolutely imperative that the Orcs do not have redeemable souls. I believe the whole moral structure of LOTR and indeed all of Tolkien's work collapses like a house of cards if they did.

On the other hand, as Sassy demonstrates, the only possible conclusion that one can reach from the full body of Tolkien's work is that the Orcs came from beings that did have souls (fëa), possibly men but also undoubtedly including Elves corrupted and twisted by Melkor (and even possibly some Maian spirits, which she doesn't mention).

How then can these two seemingly contradictory points be reconciled? The answer comes from a surprising source.

But before I go there I wanted to make another point. There is some precedent in Tolkien's writing for the idea expressed in Myth's Transformed that despite having speech and even cleverness the Orcs possessed no 'rational soul' or fëa. In the chapter "Of the Coming of the Elves" in the Later Quenta Silmarillion (published in Morgoth's Ring) (in what appears in the second paragraph of chapter three of the published Sil) in talking about the Balrogs the word "(ëalar)" appeared after "These were the" and before the word "spirits" with a footnote explaining that this word did not refer to an incarnate spirit, which was "fëa" and that it simply referred to "being". Thus the Balrogs themselves, as powerful as they were, and even being the first ancient spirits that allied themselves with Morgoth, were seen as merely having "being" and NOT having incarnate souls. I believe the explanation that I point to below must apply to them as well.

Okay, turning back to the paradox described above. How do I explain how the Orcs could not have incarnate souls when they were derived from beings that did have incarnate souls. I find the answer in, of all places, the Athrabeth. As I have discussed before, one of the key concepts discussed in the commentary and notes that follow the Athrabeth is the idea that "the separation of fëa and hröa is 'unnatural', and proceeds not from the original design but from the 'Marring of Arda', which is due to the operations of Melkor." It is from this concept that I derive my answer to the dilemma.

The Orcs originated from the hröar of originally incarnate beings (whether Elves or Men or both, and even as I believe Tolkien suggests at one point in Myths Transformed from some Maian spirits as well) that Melkor managed to separate from their fëar. Like the Balrogs these corrupted beings had "ëalar" or "being" but not "fëar" or souls. They had no wills of their own, but rather were animated by Melkor's own will, and later by Sauron's as Melkor's proxy. They were similar in that way to the beings created by Aulë before Eru took pity on him and them and gave them their own independent wills.

This would even explain why, as Prim, pointed out, the Orcs "magically" died when Sauron was destroyed; with no will of their own there was nothing to animate them once Melkor's proxy was destroyed.

http://www.thehalloffire.net/forum/view ... 4783#24783

[vison]

I have only read The Inferno once, and that very long ago, and in English. I don't recall whose translation it was. So I'm not really familiar with it. Still, that won't stop me from expressing an opinion or two in this thread!

A journey through the underworld is sort of de rigeur, is it not, for your "hero"? Yet Aragorn's journey is at once that same old thing, and something quite strange. Other heroes had merely to endure it, as one of their "trials" but Aragorn not only endures it, he allows the uneasy tormented-by-being-undead Dead the chance of redemption. Is that why he is called The Redeemer?

I can't recall any other hero doing such. If I'm mistaken I daresay someone will point it out.

eta: the Dead in POTD are not in Hell, being punished for "sins". They have not sinned against God, but were condemned for breaking a warrior's rule. The worship and/or fear of God do not exist in LOTR, and that alone makes more than a cursory comparison to The Inferno just that, IMHO, a surface comparison, the Paths of the Dead serve in LOTR to move Aragorn along on his path to the throne in Minas Tirith, not to a seat in heaven.

[axordil]

I can't recall any other hero doing such. If I'm mistaken I daresay someone will point it out.

Well, if you approach the story of the Gospel as epic...

[N.E. Brigand]

Other heroes had merely to endure it, as one of their "trials" but Aragorn not only endures it, he allows the uneasy tormented-by-being-undead Dead the chance of redemption. Is that why he is called The Redeemer?

Is he? I remember him being called the "Renewer" but not the "Redeemer".

They have not sinned against God, but were condemned for breaking a warrior's rule.

Who condemned them? Who has the power to keep their spirits locked up in the White Mountains? Did Isildur who cursed them have that power?

[N.E. Brigand]

I can't recall any other hero doing such. If I'm mistaken I daresay someone will point it out.

Well, if you approach the story of the Gospel as epic...

And as it happens, Dante mentions the Harrowing of Hell on several occasions in the Commedia.

[vison]

Other heroes had merely to endure it, as one of their "trials" but Aragorn not only endures it, he allows the uneasy tormented-by-being-undead Dead the chance of redemption. Is that why he is called The Redeemer?

Is he? I remember him being called the "Renewer" but not the "Redeemer".

They have not sinned against God, but were condemned for breaking a warrior's rule.

Who condemned them? Who has the power to keep their spirits locked up in the White Mountains? Did Isildur who cursed them have that power?

Well, precisely. Who?

It seems like mixing things up, if you ask me, trying to have your cake and eat it, too. Then, being full of cake, you fall between two stools.

Much as I love LOTR, and I do love it and have loved it for decades, when we get upon ground such as this, I get queasy.

I love it as a tale, a great tale, well told. A stand-alone tale, not a Christian fable. Nor, for that matter, do I see it as being any other kind of "fable" or myth. Tolkien had great knowledge of myth and fable, from many sources, and inevitably his learning coloured his writing, or influenced it. Yet I think he failed at the attempt of creating a myth, if indeed that was his intent. Myths are not created by one man at one time, they are organic and spring from the Earth. Great literature is fed by myths, not the other way around.

If you are going to have your hero do such things as pass through the Underground, your view of the place is very likely to be coloured by what you know of other heroes and their journeys through this territory. What matters to me, in LOTR, is what Tolkien did with familiar things, and how beautifully he did it.

As for Aragorn being called The Redeemer, I seem to recall that bit from LOTR, but I haven't got time to scope it out right now. In the last book, at any rate. Maybe the appendix.


And, the other thing I liked at the time but don't any more is when he names Númenor "Atlantis".

[Primula Baggins]

I know how you feel, vison.

Middle-earth is an amazing place, but (to most of us ) it is less real than the world in which we actually live. Yet while I read, and live there and only there, it is completely real to me.

But explicit reminders of some literal connection between that place and this, that history and ours, let the energy run out like, like a grounding wire draining an electric charge away. I can understand why Tolkien wanted that connection, in the end, but to me it's a diminishment. The world I live in makes Tolkien's impossible.

I think of it as a parallel of sorts. Not that LotR is set on some alien world; that would be prosaic, too, and also a diminishment. Part of the strength of the tale is that its humans are genuinely human (especially the hobbits ). No, it's set on a world that's ours—just not the one we live in. That's enough for me.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Who?

There is only one "who" in Tolkien's universe that has that power. Regardless of whether people want to accept that or not.

As for Númenor, I will wait to address that issue in a new thread that I think is going to appear sometime in the future.

[vison]

Who?

There is only one "who" in Tolkien's universe that has that power. Regardless of whether people want to accept that or not.

As for Númenor, I will wait to address that issue in a new thread that I think is going to appear sometime in the future.

Voronwë, in one way you are perfectly right and in another way, you're less right. I won't say wrong. IMHO, of course.

At any rate, that being is not mentioned in LOTR.

As for me, I took it all as "magic", in a "magic world". A world where a being could create a Ring of Power, a Ring that could make its wearer invisible. Where Eagles spoke and Wizards wizzed.

Nothing else was needful.