Divine Comedy Ch. 6: The Gluttons in Eternal

Summary

Dante's sense returns after grief had dropped him. New torments whichever way he turns. He arrives in the third circle: showers ceaseless, heavy, and cold, unchanged forever. Hail, discoloured water, and sleet stream through dun midnight air. The land stinks wherever that tempest falls. Cerberus barks through a threefold throat over the multitude beneath, crimson-eyed, clawed, tearing and flaying. The spirits howl like curs under the rain. When that great worm shows his jaws, Virgil fills his palms with earth and casts it in the ravenous maw. As a dog drops his fury when the morsel comes, so Cerberus drops. They pass over shades thrown prostrate by the brunt of the tempest.

One sudden raises himself to sit. Dante cannot know the rain-wrecked form. The shade is Ciacco, worn by gluttony, and not alone in this woe. Dante weeps and asks what will befall the divided city, and whether any just one inhabits there. After long striving they will come to blood. The wild party from the woods will chase the other forth. Within three solar circles that party must fall, and the other rise by borrowed force of one who now rests under shore. The just are two, and they neglected. Avarice, envy, pride: three fatal sparks have set the hearts of all on fire. Dante still wants the well-deserving: Farinata, Tegghiaio, Giacopo, Arrigo, Mosca. Blacker spirits, deeper crimes. If he descends so far he may see them. When he returns to the pleasant world, Ciacco entreats, make mention of me there. No more. Fixed eyes turn askance. He bends his head and falls midst his blind companions.

Virgil says he wakes no more until the angelic trumpet. Then each shall resume flesh and hear that which rebounds to lasting doom. As each thing grows toward more perfection, it feels more sensibly both good and pain, so this accursed race will feel more, not less. They walk with tardy steps through spirits and rain. At the point where the steps lead below, they find Plutus, the great foe.

In this chapter:Terms Characters Key Quotes Modern Story

Why This Matters

Name the Spark That Left Your Desk

A private hunger can still set a whole city on fire. Ciacco names avarice, envy, and pride as the three sparks that have set every heart in Florence alight, then falls back among the blind and asks only to be remembered among the living.

This week, name one appetite that has left your desk and started setting other people on fire, write who is already lying in that rain, and tell one living person the name of someone who would otherwise go quiet.

This chapter

Inside the Mind: Ciacco

Under rain that never changes he names avarice, envy, and pride as the sparks that have set every heart in Florence alight, then asks only to be remembered among the living. The city's fire is clearer to him than his own hunger. A private appetite still wants a public name to carry it.

Continue this thoughtThe Sentence That Makes a Poem

Coming Up in Chapter 7

The steps lead down. A hoarse alarm waits there: Plutus, the great foe, screaming Satan's name. Virgil will call him a cursed wolf. Then a rude shock of hoarders and wasters, rolling weights until they crash into one another.

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Chapter 06

The Gluttons in Eternal Rain

My sense reviving, that erewhile had droop’d With pity for the kindred shades, whence grief O’ercame me wholly, straight around I see New torments, new tormented souls, which way Soe’er I move, or turn, or bend my sight. In the third circle I arrive, of show’rs Ceaseless, accursed, heavy, and cold, unchang’d For ever, both in kind and in degree. Large hail, discolour’d water, sleety flaw Through the dun midnight air stream’d down amain: Stank all the land whereon that tempest fell. Cerberus, cruel monster, fierce and strange, Through his wide threefold throat barks as a dog Over the multitude…

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The Gluttons in Eternal Rain

Summary

Why This Matters