As the "Pilgrim" in Hell - the Inferno - Dante, led by Virgil, arrives at a place where he sees those who he described as "sowers of discord." The Oxford English Dictionary defines "discord": to disagree, to quarrel, be different or inconsistent, be dissonant: dissonant as incongruous, harsh toned.
The tone and nature in which Dante characterises these individuals in verse lines 34 - 36 in Canto 28 is:
"The souls that you see passing in this ditch
were all sowers of scandal and schism in life,
and so in death you see them torn asunder."
Dante brings together sowers of discord in religious history. Poetry and intellect are not enough. He condemns moral failings, creators of divisions in faith. (Kline)
Illustratively, Gustave Dore has them placed prostrate across rocks looking in extreme pain and completely desolate. His illustration can be found by putting into Google "Gustave Dore Sowers of Discord Dante Divine Comedy" A strip of Illustrations appear. Look at the first one on the left. See if it is at all possible to put ourselves within the nature of the gesture of just one of these individuals. What does it feel like? How do we express this feeling?
What was it that brought Dante in the 13th Century to be so passionately concerned about this type of individual? He wrote in detail about the characteristics of many key individuals at that time. It was his perceptions of their behaviours that moved him to create those he thought needed confronting about them and being helped to achieve balance between their characteristic tendency and the opposite behaviour. For example anger and humility. Humility being a balance to anger. Non judgemental objectiveness being a balance to flattery. Truthful openness being a balance to hypocrisy.
Dante's descriptions of different human behaviours were both historical and prophetic. Before and since individuals have either felt it "necessary" to, unconsciously or unknowingly have exhibited the range of behaviours he describes and values they imply. In relation to Sowers of Discord this is particularly true of today.
Add to the above three verse lines a further six and you have Gustave Dore's Illustration in words:
"A devil stands back there who trims us all
in this cruel way, and each one of this mob
receives anew the blade of the devil's sword
each time we make one round of this sad road,
because the wounds have all healed up again
by the time each one presents himself once more."
Verse lines 37 - 42 Canto 28 (Mark Musa)
Speaking aloud the whole set of nine lines may help create the image and feeling of a "sower of discord."
The resulting question for our lives today is to what degree Dante's verse writing and corresponding interpretive illustrations by artists Gustave Dore and William Blake help us make sense of the world we live in.
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