Stevenson and Dante
A post contributed by Robert-Louis Abrahamson
In his 1878 essay ‘Pan’s Pipes’, Stevenson describes those who ‘hold back the hand from the rose because of the thorn, and from life because of death’ as ‘tooth-chattering ones’. The phrase ‘tooth-chattering’ posed a problem when compiling the notes for my edition of Virginibus Puerisque. Like so many other phrases in the essays, it seemed to be lifted or adapted perhaps from the Bible, or Shakespeare, or some French idiom, but I could find no sources. Richard Dury and I pondered this problem, and the best we could come up with was: ‘an invention of Stevenson’s based on the ancient “kindly ones” (that is, the Eumenides, or Furies)’.
Nearly five years after the edition of Virginibus Puerisque came out, I can supply what I think is a better note. In Canto 3 of Dante’s Inferno, the souls waiting to be transported across the Acheron quake when they hear Charon’s words of doom (‘I come to conduct you nelle tenebre eterne, in caldo e in gelo, into eternal darkness, into fire and ice’). These are the souls who have lost all the goodness life had offered them. Forlorn and naked, changing colour, Dante shows them as they dibattero i denti, they chattered with their teeth. These, of course, are the ‘tooth-chattering ones’. In his essay about one mythic story, Pan, Stevenson draws on another myth, Dante’s journey, and if we catch the infernal allusion, we see these ‘recreant[s] to Pan’ in a much darker light.
EdRLS 
I think Stevenson may have confused two groups of souls presented one after the other in Canto III of the Inferno.
After passing through the gate of Inferno with its famous inscription, Dante and Virgil are in the vestibule, Antinferno, placed before Inferno proper. There they meet the ignavi, the cowards, those who refused to make a clear choice between good or evil, together with the angels who had remained neutral during Lucifer’s rebellion.
I would say that these are the ones that Stevenson is thinking of when he condemns those who ‘hold back the hand from the rose because of the thorn, and from life because of death’, as they too are cowards. Afraid of risk and danger, they refuse the fully lived life. These souls are stuck in Antinferno.
Immediately afterwards Dante and Virgil see the crowd of those waiting to be ferried across Acheron to Inferno proper, where they will be judged and allotted appropriate punishment for their sins. These are the teeth-chattering ones, uncertain of what terrible punishment awaits them.
The confusion is understandable, but I think Stevenson intends to compare those who refuse the fully lived life not with those awaiting terrible punishment, but with the cowards who lacked the courage to make a clear moral choice.
rdury
03/07/2023 at 2:30 pm