Canto XIII -- The Second Cornice: The Whip of Envy

Fr. Henke gave me a wonderful insight today on the nature of envy as sorrow at another's good fortune. Too much sorrow at the good that another experiences leads to fraud and malice against the other; thus, envy is at the root of circle 8 in hell just like pride (Satan) is at the root of circle 9. This finished the puzzle of purgatory as an inversion of hell for me, for just as all penitent are rebuilding the communities that those in hell are ripping apart, the climb up the mountain is an allegory of community reconciliation in the same way that the descent into hell was an allegory of communal strife and discord. This is very clearly drawn on this ledge of the envious where the penitent have their eyes wired shut, for in seeing the good that came to others is what led these souls astray, in the way Dante's seeing Beatrice wracked his heart with anguish, and have to lean against one another for support. In this leaning on one another, they are learning how to be joyful in the presence of others, a reality at which St. David of Wales would be pleased.



In the same way that the cornice of pride had a whip and a rein, so, too, does this cornice of envy. Pope writes that "[t]wo principles in human nature reign;/ Self-love, to urge, and reason, to restrain" (II, 53-4). Here, the penitent are urged by acts of caritas, love for others as opposed to the self, and restrained, as we will see, by sounds of reason's opposite. Thus, they are unlearning that which their willful human experiences had taught them and understanding the efficaciousness of mercy in their social relationships. Not seeing anything at first, Virgil puts his trust in the direction of the sun since that's the direction of God and warmth. Then the whip -- an acoustic, rather than visual event, and at first Dante doesn't understand the disembodied voices he is hearing. Having discovered television on the first ledge, he's now discovered the radio (I really think we should revisit the credit we give to the so-called early conceivers of these ideas -- who knows but that Da Vinci learned more from Dante about the 20th century than he taught it!) -- and a moment later he's discovered the purpose for it. Eyes wired shut, these penitent would find no value in movies.

In his conversation with Sapia, we learn two things about Dante -- one, that he worries about his penance on the ledge of pride (and we saw that he spent more time talking with Od'risi, who represents his own sin, which is pride of talent, than Virgil gave him time to do), and, two, that his ability to seek prayers directly from the living (his ability to pray, himself, in fact), is a kind of currency he can use on this mountain. In hell, he could offer to convey the memory of the person back to the living, and in hell, that was sufficient because that was all they had. Here, though, the conveyance is actually efficacious for the progress of the soul -- it's worth more here, in that case, than it is in hell, but perhaps the difference is one of kind and not degree.

Take special note of the catechism section in the activities -- I plugged all seven of the capital sins into the online catechism, and the only one of the seven that had its separate and exclusive list was envy. Now, why is that one wonders . . . ?

S.