I’m in the “Great Books” program at my school. This is a shared inquiry course involving small classes and classic literature. Due to the nature of the program, great emphasis is put on discussion among the students (as opposed to the professor, whose purpose is generally to “lead” the discussion without actually answering any questions); and as a result we get to hear lots of different viewpoints - some interesting, and some…interesting…if you know what I mean.
On this wet day in Southern California, we were finishing up our study of Dante’s Purgatorio. The final stage of purgatory proper in the book is the Terrace of the Lustful, where those people who acted out their sexual urges in inappropriate ways or measures are punished with cleansing flames.
Dante and his guide Virgil speak with one of those swathed in fire, and he explains the structure of the terrace to them. There are two groups of shades, he says, in this stage of purgatory:
"The people moving opposite us shared
the sin for which once, while in triumph, Caesar
heard ‘Queen’ called out against him [homosexuals]…
Our sin was with the other sex; but
we did not keep the bounds of human law,
but served our appetites like beasts…"
Dante, in his original Italian, calls these people ermafrodito - hermaphroditic - although the translation makes it clear that he’s talking about what we would call heterosexuals (specifically, for the purposes of the poem, sexually depraved heterosexuals).
Now, this was a college class. We’d all been through biology and anatomy, and I thought it would have been reasonable to assume that everyone there had some idea of what a hermaphrodite, in the sense that we use the word, was.
I thought that, but I was wrong.
As we were discussing this, one girl insisted on knowing why the term “hermaphroditic” was used, since it didn’t indicate that with which we, in modern times, would associate it.
This sparked a mini-discussion, nothing of much consequence. One guy, across the room from me, looked confused. Was he pondering the possible semantic or poetic or, hey, even theological reasons for using the word “hermaphroditic”?
No.
Actually, he was trying to figure out or remember what a hermaphrodite was. All became clear when he opened his mouth and said, quite loudly enough to be heard by all in the small classroom:
"Aren’t hermaphrodites people who have sex with plants?"
I guess you could say this jolted people out of their rainy-day stupor. A dozen-and-a-half mouths were silent for a moment, and then, like a patch of flowers opening up in the sunshine (botanophiliacs will no doubt catch the innuendo), a dozen-and-a-half mouths expelled a dozen-and-a-half barks of disbelieving laughter and, perhaps, confusion.
“How is that even possible?” one girl asked, quite seriously.
We never found out. Needless to say, our concentration was shot for the next quarter-hour or so, and I fully expect that guy’s comment to be perhaps the most significant legacy of my spring 2005 Great Books II class.