Week Five - Sign Inventory - "Fresco"

Fresco

In hell, maximum use
Is made of the sinners.

With the help of tweezers,
Brooched and bracelets, hairpins and rings,
Linen and bedclothes
Are extracted from the heads of the women.
Who are subsequently thrown
Into boiling cauldrons
To keep an eye on the pitch
And see that it doesn't boil over.

Then some of them
Are transformed into dinner pails
In which hot sins are carried to the domiciles
Of pensioned-off devils.

The men are employed
For the heaviest work,
Execept for the hairiest of them,
Who are spun afresh
And made into mats.

-Marin Sorescu, translated from the Romanian by D.J. Enright and Joana Russel-Gebbett.


-This may be very, very loose, but: The title "Fresco," which is an Italian word, and the subject matter of "Hell," which is very Dante, an Italian writer. Likewise, as Inferno focuses on the punishments given, so does this poem.

-The odd choice of "linen and bedclothes" being removed in addition to "brooches and bracelets,/hairpins and rings," which seem more superficial and "pretty" than "linen and bedclothes."

-The weak beginning: "In hell, maxium use is/ made of the sinners." The phrasing is both passive and awkward, though this could be a translation issue (why not "Hell makes maximum use of the sinners"? It sounds 'better' and it forfronts "Hell" even more.).

-A slightly repetive structure: "Are extracted from" alongside "Are transformed into"; "Who are subsequently" before "Who are spun afresh"; and "And see that it doesn't boil over" to go with "And made into mats."

-Are we supposed to assume the third stanza is also about women? If so, why do they get so many more lines dedicated to their punishments? If not, why does it go from women, to general sinners, to men? Why the gendered punishments at all? Who gets off worse?