Second Circle (Lust)
Main article: Second circle of hell
Gustave Doré's depiction of Minos judging sinners at the start of Canto V
Canto V
Dante and Virgil leave Limbo and enter the Second Circle – the first of the circles of Incontinence – where the punishments of Hell proper begin. It is described as "a part where no thing gleams".[32] They find their way hindered by the serpentine Minos, who judges all of those condemned for active, deliberately willed sin to one of the lower circles. At this point in Inferno, every soul is required to confess all of their sins to Minos, after which Minos sentences each soul to its torment by wrapping his tail around himself a number of times corresponding to the circle of Hell to which the soul must go. The role of Minos here is a combination of his classical role as condemner and unjust judge of the underworld and the role of classical Rhadamanthus, interrogator and confessor of the underworld.[33] This mandatory confession makes it so every soul verbalizes and sanctions their own ranking amongst the condemned since these confessions are the sole grounds for their placement in hell.[34] Dante is not forced to make this confession; instead, Virgil rebukes Minos, and he and Dante continue on.
In the second circle of Hell are those overcome by lust. These "carnal malefactors"[35] are condemned for allowing their appetites to sway their reason. These souls are buffeted back and forth by the terrible winds of a violent storm, without rest. This symbolizes the power of lust to blow needlessly and aimlessly: "as the lovers drifted into self-indulgence and were carried away by their passions, so now they drift for ever. The bright, voluptuous sin is now seen as it is – a howling darkness of helpless discomfort."[36] Since lust involves mutual indulgence and is not, therefore, completely self-centered, Dante deems it the least heinous of the sins and its punishment is the most benign within Hell proper.[36][37] The "ruined slope"[38] in this circle is thought to be a reference to the earthquake that occurred after the death of Christ.[39]
Gianciotto Discovers Paolo and Francesca by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
In this circle, Dante sees Semiramis, Dido, Cleopatra, Helen of Troy, Paris, Achilles, Tristan, and many others who were overcome by sexual love during their life. Due to the presence of so many rulers among the lustful, the fifth Canto of Inferno has been called the "canto of the queens".[40] Dante comes across Francesca da Rimini, who married the deformed Giovanni Malatesta (also known as "Gianciotto") for political purposes but fell in love with his younger brother Paolo Malatesta; the two began to carry on an adulterous affair. Sometime between 1283 and 1286, Giovanni surprised them together in Francesca's bedroom and violently stabbed them both to death. Francesca explains:
Love, which in gentlest hearts will soonest bloom
seized my lover with passion for that sweet body
from which I was torn unshriven to my doom.
Love, which permits no loved one not to love,
took me so strongly with delight in him
that we are one in Hell, as we were above.
Love led us to one death. In the depths of Hell
Caïna waits for him who took our lives."
This was the piteous tale they stopped to tell.[41]
Francesca further reports that she and Paolo yielded to their love when reading the story of the adultery between Lancelot and Guinevere in the Old French romance Lancelot du Lac. Francesca says, "Galeotto fu 'l libro e chi lo scrisse".[42] The word Galeotto means 'pander', but is also the Italian term for Gallehaut, who acted as an intermediary between Lancelot and Guinevere, encouraging them on to love. John Ciardi renders line 137 as "That book, and he who wrote it, was a pander."[43] Inspired by Dante, author Giovanni Boccaccio invoked the name Prencipe Galeotto in the alternative title to The Decameron, a 14th-century collection of novellas. Ultimately, Francesca never makes a full confession to Dante. Rather than admit to her and Paolo's sins, the very reasons they reside in this circle of hell, she consistently takes an erroneously passive role in the adulterous affair. The English poet John Keats, in his sonnet "On a Dream", imagines what Dante does not write, the point of view of Paolo:
… But to that second circle of sad hell,
Where 'mid the gust, the whirlwind, and the flaw
Of rain and hail-stones, lovers need not tell
Their sorrows. Pale were the sweet lips I saw,
Pale were the lips I kiss'd, and fair the form
I floated with, about that melancholy storm.[44]
As he did at the end of Canto III, Dante – overcome by pity and anguish – describes his swoon: "I fainted, as if I had met my death. / And then I fell as a dead body falls".[45]