Inferno 17: Usury and the Absence of Jews

 intercalatory narrative structure of Inferno 16 and 17: Dante

splices the narrative of the transition from circle 7 (violence) to
circle 8 (fraud)
 the arrival of Geryon, ”image of fraud”
 Dante’s treatment of usury continues the indictment of the
Florentine nobility from the previous canto
 Dante’s treatment of usury, like his treatment of sodomy, is
culturally non-normative, since he avoids stigmatizing Jews or
invoking the typical anti-Semitic rhetoric that associates Jews
with usury and money-lending (for anti-Jewish iconography, see
Debra Higgs Strickland, Saracens, Demons, and Jews: Making
Monsters in Medieval Art, cited in Coordinated Reading)
 Dante’s own family was involved in the money-lending business
 the flight on Geryon and the pilgrim’s identification with two
“failed flyers” of classical mythology: Phaethon and Icarus,
doomed by their reckless daring
 Dante’s sustained interest in Icarus’s father, the
great artifex Daedalus, paired with another mythological figure
who challenged the limits set for humans in her mimetic woven
tapestries: Arachne
 Phaeton, Icarus, Daedalus and Arachne: all are avatars of Ulysses,
the embodiment of transgression in Dante’s personal
mythography

[1] In The Undivine Comedy, Chapter 3, I analyze the “intercalatory

structure” of the Geryon episode, referring to the complex way in which
Dante uses splicing techniques to narrate the transition from the
seventh circle (violence) to the eighth circle (fraud). In Inferno 17, the
narrator begins by having Virgilio announce the arrival of Geryon: “Ecco
la fiera con la coda aguzza” (Behold the beast who bears the pointed tail
[Inf. 17.1]). We are in this way given the impression that we have
already moved forward to the eighth circle: Geryon is a representation
of the circle of fraud who will serve as a vehicle of transition to the
eighth circle. But, after the initial sequence describing Geryon, the
narrator in Inferno 17 then “goes back” (narratologically and physically)
to describe the encounter with the usurers, thus postponing the descent
to the eighth circle and reminding us that we are in fact still in the
seventh. The narrator finally moves forward and completes the
transition to the eighth circle in the last section of Inferno 17, which
features the awe-inspiring depiction of the travelers’ downwards flight,
into the abyss, on Geryon’s back.

[2] By retarding the descent to the eighth circle to the end of the canto,
and by splicing the arrival of the representation of the eighth circle
(Geryon) with a final substantive episode devoted to the seventh circle
(the usurers), Dante-narrator makes transition itself a protagonist of his
narrative. Again, as in Inferno  8, Inferno 16 ends in medias res, as the
travelers wait to see what emerges from the abyss.

[3] With his splicing technique, Dante uses narrative structure

to make a spiral pattern writ large, terza rima writ large. For
more detail, see the narratological analysis of these canti in The
Undivine Comedy. The spiral pattern is visible in the following diagram
(The Undivine Comedy, p. 73):

[4] The approach to this transition begins in the first verse

of Inferno 16. Here the narrator first registers the crashing sound —
“rimbombo” (Inf. 16.1) — of the waterfall: it cascades over the cliff that
marks the physical boundary of the seventh circle. After the interlude
with the three Florentine nobles who are among the sodomites,
in Inferno 16.91 the narrator returns to the waterfall and begins to
describe the transition. There is a long section on the “cord” that Dante
wears around his waist and that Virgilio now throws into the abyss as a
kind of lure. Inferno 16 ends in medias res (as had Inferno  8), as the
narrator retards the action with a striking metapoetic moment: the poet
swears that the amazing creature that he saw swimming out of the deep
was not a figment of his imagination but rather absolutely real. 

[5] Using the “suspense” (etymologically, suspense is the condition of

being suspended, i.e. left hanging, as at the end of Inferno 16 we are
literally left hanging over the abyss) that is created by the interrupted
action at the end of canto 16, Dante postpones the description of Geryon
until the exordium of canto 17. Inferno 17 begins dramatically, with
Virgilio heralding the arrival of Geryon: 

«Ecco la fiera con la coda aguzza,

che passa i monti, e rompe i muri e l'armi!
Ecco colei che tutto 'l mondo appuzza!» (Inf. 17.1-3)
“Behold the beast who bears the pointed tail,
who crosses mountains, shatters weapons, walls!
Behold the one whose stench fills all the world!"
[6] After the detailed description of “that filthy effigy of fraud” — “quella
sozza imagine di froda” (Inf. 17.7) — who parks himself at the edge of
the cliff and swishes his tail in the void (23-5), Virgilio and Dante head
toward the monster. However, as the travelers approach the edge of the
cliff, Virgilio points out the group of souls that sits on the edge: these are
the usurers.

[7] The usurers are the last sinners in the circle of violence. The English
word “usury” derives from the medieval Latin noun “usuria,” which in
turn is etymologically linked to “usus,” the past participle of the Latin
verb “uti,” to use. Usury is, simply put, the excessive charging of interest
on money loaned: literally, it is compensation for the “use” of money.
The issue of usury is complexly interwoven with the growth of
capitalism in the Italian city-states, where the great merchant banking
houses are part of the new growth of trade and cultural exchange that
liquidity promotes. Liquidity, money that is not tied up in great feudal
landholdings but available for investment and self-promotion,
undoubtedly underlies some of the anxiety that Dante feels about the
rise of the “gente nuova” and their “sùbiti guadagni” (the new people
and their sudden gains [Inf. 16.73]).

[8] Indeed, liquidity and “sùbiti guadagni” go hand in hand. The

changes in the texture of Florentine life that Dante rues are thus deeply
connected to banking and money-lending: to the promotion of liquidity
and exchange. Dante knew this business intimately, as his own family’s
principal occupation was money-lending: “l’attività principale della
famiglia: il prestito del denaro” (the principal activity of the family: the
lending of money; see Faini, “Ruolo sociale e memoria degli Alighieri
prima di Dante,” p. 27).

[9] Technically (aka theologically), the church viewed usury as an

affront to God because it allows humans to make money from money
rather than only through the sweat of their labor (see the end
of Inferno  11). However, in practice, most of the up and coming citizens
of cities like Florence are merchants and/or bankers, and we should
bear in mind that Popes, like secular rulers, borrowed money from
Florentine banks.

***

[10] In Inferno 17 Dante focuses not on the individual usurers but on

the usurer’s family. There is no individual encounter of resonance and
importance to the pilgrim; indeed, the usurers are identified only
through their family crests. What is important is what the pilgrim learns
about Florentine society. Each usurer’s family name — the names of
great Florentine families, with the inclusion of one Paduan — is
inescapably indicated through minute evocations of the family’s heraldic
crest. The various components of these crests are so carefully designated
that illustrators of the Commedia have, since the beginning of the
commentary tradition, painted them with precision.
[11] The heraldic crests of Inferno 17 gesture back to the world
of cortesia that the use of heraldry signals — “back” both in terms of the
immediate narrative past, to Inferno 16, and in terms of the feudal
historical past, to the world of “cortesia e valor” (courtesy and valor
[Inf. 16.67]) evoked by the Florentine sodomites of the previous canto.

[12] At the same time these heraldic crests are now positioned
on material objects whose connotations are as far
from cortesia as one can imagine. For the heraldic crests
of Inferno 17 emblazon the moneybags that hang around the necks of
the damned usurers: “che dal collo a ciascun pendea una tasca / ch’avea
certo colore e certo segno” (from the neck of each a purse was hung /
that had a special color and an emblem [Inf. 17.55-56]). The narrator
here notes that the purses are distinguished by specific colors and
emblems: “certo colore e certo segno” (56). He goes on to describe them
as possessing a medley of the bright colors that are so absent
from Inferno. The specificity of color and emblem are signs that
indicate — or, rather, indict — specific noble Florentine families. Thus,
the indictment of the Florentine nobility continues from Inferno 16.

[13] The representative of the Florentine Gianfigliazzi family (Black

Guelph) boasts “a yellow purse with azure on it / that had the face and
manner of a lion”: “in una borsa gialla vidi azzurro / che d’ un leone
avea faccia e contegno” (Inf. 17.59-60). The representative of the
Ghibelline Obriachi family wears a “purse that was bloodred, / and it
displayed a goose more white than butter”: “vidine un’ altra come
sangue rossa, / mostrando un’oca bianca più che burro” (Inf. 17.62-3).
The usurer who speaks to Dante is a Paduan of the Scrovegni family, as
indicated by the insignia on his moneybag:

E un che d’una scrofa azzurra e grossa

segnato avea lo suo sacchetto bianco
mi disse: «Che fai tu in questa fossa?» (Inf. 17.64-6)
And one who had an azure, pregnant sow
inscribed as emblem on his white pouch, said
to me: “What are you doing in this pit?”
[14] A key social issue related to usury is anti-Semitism, which
was frequently expressed in attacks on Jewish money-
lenders. The commentary tradition of the Commedia does not look at
the social and historical context of usury and therefore readings
of Inferno 17 do not bring up the topic of anti-Semitism. Because anti-
Semitism is not invoked as a relevant conceptual category with respect
to usury, the commentary tradition does not register the absence of
Jews from Dante’s treatment of usury.

[15] As a result the commentaries fail to note two key features of Dante’s
treatment of usury in this canto: 1) Dante does not mention Jews; 2) he
does mention and feature the iconography that was associated with
Jews, namely moneybags.

[16] Dante’s use of moneybags, and his placement of them around the

necks of his usurers, is very important, since it indicates his awareness
of an iconography traditionally associated with Jews. For ample
documentation of this iconography, see the book of Debra Higgs
Strickland, Saracens, Demons, and Jews: Making Monsters in
Medieval Art (full reference in Coordinated Reading). The reader can
also view a selection of Strickland’s images in my essay “Dante’s
Sympathy for the Other, or the Non-Stereotyping Imagination: Sexual
and Racialized Others in the Commedia” (see Coordinated Reading).

[17] Rachel Jacoff writes: “By the time Dante was writing

the Inferno the negative associations of Jews with usury were current,
but Dante’s usurers are all Christian” (Dante and the Jewish Question,
p. 16; see Coordinated Reading for full citation). We can build on
Jacoff’s astute observation. Dante transfers the stereotypical image —
the moneybags worn around the neck — from the stereotypical wearers:
from the Jews who were synonymous with usurers in much of Europe.
Dante transfers the anti-Semitic trope of moneybags around the neck to
Christian usurers from well-known and non-Jewish families: two
contemporary Florentine families — Gianfigliazzi and Obriachi — and
one Paduan family (Scrovegni).
[18] In my essay “Dante’s Sympathy for the Other”, I draw on the visual
documentation of medieval anti-Semitism provided in Debra
Strickland’s book, Saracens, Demons, and Jews. Strickland documents
the visual demonizing of Jews, including the depiction of Jews heading
into Hell with moneybags around their necks. One image, from a late
thirteenth century Psalter from Northern France, shows a Jew in
Hellmouth with a moneybag around his neck:

Jew with moneybag in Hell. Psalter. Northern France, late 13th

century. Add. ms 17868, folio 31. Courtesy of the British Library.

[19] Put into social and historical context, we can see that Dante’s
treatment of usury is remarkable for its strict avoidance of Jews, even
though they were marginal — unimportant — members of his
society. Rather than scapegoat the marginal, Dante focuses
instead on his society’s most normative members: on the great
Christian families whom he indicts through the heraldic crests that
blazon the moneybags worn around their necks. 
[20] In other words, in Inferno 17 Dante evokes the precise iconography
associated with Jewish usurers, namely the moneybags worn around the
necks, but he jettisons the anti-Semitic cultural context to which that
iconography is linked. Dante then transfers the moneybag iconography,
along with the status of usurer, to Christians: in Dante’s Hell the
moneybags hang around the necks of Christian money-lenders.

[21] In her essay “Judecca, Dante’s Satan, and the Dis-placed Jew”,
Sylvia Tomasch writes about the “erasure” of Jews from the Commedia,
noting that Jews “never appear as Jews anywhere in the Divine
Comedy” (p. 248, for the full reference, see Coordinated Reading). I am
not convinced by Tomasch’s argument that the absence of Jews from
the Commedia — a poem whose premise is the Christian afterlife — is in
itself a negative. After viewing the virulent visual evidence of how Jews
were depicted in medieval Europe, evidence laid out in Strickland’s
book Saracens, Demons, and Jews, I came to the conclusion that in this
case exclusion is a good thing. While it is true that anti-Semitism was
not as virulent in Italy as in northern Europe — Strickland’s visual
documentation comes from Germany, England, and France — it is also
true, as Jacoff notes, that “By the time Dante was writing the Inferno the
negative associations of Jews with usury were current”.

[22] In a cultural context in which visual representations of Hell were

full of contemporary Jews, depicted with the visual stereotypes that
served as identifying markers of Jews (hooked noses, Phyrgian caps,
and moneybags — all documented in Strickland’s book), the absence of
any contemporary Jews in Dante’s Hell suggests the non-stereotyping
nature of his imaginative processes. Maybe this absence is part of why
the prominent Jewish writer and scholar, Immanuel ben Solomon, a
Roman contemporary of Dante (c. 1270-c. 1330), so admired Dante that
he wrote a Hebrew imitation of Inferno and Paradiso and exchanged
sonnets lamenting Dante’s death with Bosone da Gubbio. For discussion
of these sonnets, and for more on the fascinating figure of Immanuel,
see Isabelle Levy, “Immanuel of Rome and Dante”, on Digital Dante.

***
[23] The latter part of Inferno 17 describes in tactile and immediate
language, which is at the same time highly literary, the experience of
flying on Geryon’s back. Geryon carries the travelers in a spiraling
motion down into the abyss: from the seventh to the eighth circle.

[24] Dante depicts the experience of flying with great naturalism, basing

himself both on navigating a boat and on the swimming of animals. In
the opening sequence of canto 17, describing the monster’s position on
the edge of the abyss, the poet compares Geryon first to boats that are
banked on the shore, part in the water and part on land, and then to the
beaver. Then, in order to describe the way in which Geryon backs up
from the edge and turns around, Dante again pairs the image of a boat, a
“navicella”, with a marine animal, the eel.

[25] In the passage that follows Dante conjures the experience of flying,
telling us of the wind that blows on his face and from below: Geryon
“sen va notando lenta lenta; / rota e discende, ma non me n’accorgo / se
non che al viso e di sotto mi venta” (the beast goes swimming slowly on;
he wheels and descends, but I can make out nothing but the wind
blowing on my face and from below [17.115-17]). He conjures, from his
imagination, the experience of being in total darkness, feeling nothing
but the wind and seeing nothing but the animal on whom he rides.

[26] To communicate his fear, Dante cites Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and

compares himself to two mythological figures: Phaeton and Icarus. He
tells us that neither Phaethon nor Icarus experienced more fear during
their doomed flights than did he in his flight into the abyss of lower
Hell:

Maggior paura non credo che fosse

quando Fetonte abbandonò li freni,
per che ’l ciel, come pare ancor, si cosse;
né quando Icaro misero le reni
sentì spennar per la scaldata cera,
gridando il padre a lui «Mala via tieni!»,
che fu la mia, quando vidi ch’i’ era
ne l’aere d’ogne parte, e vidi spenta
ogne veduta fuor che de la fera. (Inf. 17.106-14)
I do not think that there was greater fear
in Phaethon when he let his reins go free —
for which the sky, as one still sees, was scorched —
nor in poor Icarus when he could feel
his sides unwinged because the wax was melting,
his father shouting to him, “That way's wrong!”
than was in me when, on all sides, I saw
that I was in the air, and everything
had faded from my sight — except the beast.
[27] Ovid’s story of Daedalus and Icarus is found
in Metamorphoses Book 8, 183-235. You can view the passage in Ovid
side by side with Dante’s text through Digital Dante’s Intertextual
Dante.

[28] Dante heightens the Ovidian description of Icarus’s flight with a

signature personal touch. The haunting and poignant words in direct
discourse that Daedalus speaks to his son — “«Icare», dixit, / «Icare»,
dixit, «ubi es? qua te regione requiram?»” (“Icarus,” he said, “Icarus”,
he said, “Where are you? In what region shall I seek you?”
[Metam. 8.231-32]) — are modified by Dante, who gives them a moral
edge: “gridando il padre a lui «Mala via tieni!»” (his father shouting to
him: “You’re on the wrong path!” [Inf. 17.111]). The words that Dante
invents, “Mala via tieni”, are words of enormous resonance for
the Commedia, a poem constructed on the metaphor of the path.

[29] And what could be more powerful than the concision of the

extraordinary verb spennar (literally, “to unfeather”)? Dante uses it in
the description of Icarus, who feels “his sides unwinged because the wax
was melting”: “le reni / sentì spennar per la scaldata cera” (Inf. 17.109-
10). The story of Daedalus and Icarus will be evoked again
in Paradiso 8. In another haunting moment, Dante will refer to
Daedalus as the one “who, flying through the air, lost his son”: “quello /
che, volando per l’aere, il figlio perse” (Par. 8.125-26). Here the
emphasis is on the tragically transitive use of the verb perdere (to lose):
Daedalus lost his son. To the agency of the verb “perse”
in Paradiso 8.126, we add the agency of Daedalus’ crying out to Icarus
“Mala via tieni” in Inferno 17.111. Dante humanizes Daedalus by
focusing on his tragedy as a father: to the roster of the Commedia’s
fathers and sons, we must add Daedalus and Icarus.

[30] On the basis of the recurrence of the Daedalus-Icarus story in

the Commedia, I suggest that, although in Inferno 17 Dante identifies
with Icarus, for him the key figure is the artifex, Daedalus. The
artist’s hubris in creating a method for flying ultimately takes
precedence in Dante’s imagination over Icarus’ recklessness in the air.
Daedalus will be invoked again in Inferno  29, again as the artificer of
flight. Here Dante coins the expression “to be a Daedalus”, by which he
means to achieve the ability to fly; hence to “make someone a Daedalus”
is to teach someone to fly, and “perch’ io nol feci Dedalo” (because I did
not make him a Daedalus [Inf. 29.116]) means to fail to teach someone
to fly. To “be a Daedalus” is to achieve a consummate mimesis that can
transgress the boundaries between art and nature, permitting men to do
what they were not endowed by nature to do. Daedalus for Dante is a
transgressor of human techne (the “arte vostra” of Inferno 11.103), a
mimetic genius par excellence.

[31] In these Ovidian similes of Inferno 17, Dante makes substantial his

self-comparison to great “failed flyers” of mythological antiquity. This is
a group he simultaneously compares himself to and distances himself
from. He fears he might be Phaethon or Icarus, but he knows — and
hence we know — that he will not be. Dante’s voyage is not destined to
end in failure. We learned that Dante’s journey is willed by God from
Virgilio quoting Beatrice in Inferno  2, when Dante-pilgrim initially
feared that his journey might be “folle” (Inf. 2.35) — like that of
Phaeton, like that of Icarus.

[32] Phaethon and Icarus are treated by Dante, within the poetic

economy of the Commedia, as failed flyers who are avatars of his
Ulysses. In Inferno  26 Dante will tell a personal version of the Ulysses
myth that casts the Greek hero as a transgressor. The voyage of Dante’s
Ulysses is a “mad flight” — “folle volo” (Inf. 26.125) — that leads to his
perdition. Dante borrows from classical mythology to construct a
personal mythography: in his personal mythography, Dante uses
Phaethon and Icarus as a template on which to construct Ulysses, who is
his most important failed flyer, his most important example of
transgression.

[33] Inferno 17 is saturated with mythological figures whose hubris led

to their failure: hubris not only existential (Phaeton and Icarus), but
artistic (Arachne and Daedalus). Geryon’s adorned and colorful flanks
are compared in the early section of this canto to the fabrics woven by
Turks and Tartars (a passage that has generated critical interest in
Dante’s treatment of textiles and in eastern trade), and to the webs
woven by the skilled Ovidian artist-weaver Arachne:

Con più color, sommesse e sovraposte

non fer mai drappi Tartari né Turchi,
né fuor tai tele per Aragne imposte.  (Inf. 17.16-18)
No Turks or Tartars ever fashioned fabrics
more colorful in background and relief,
nor had Arachne ever loomed such webs.
[34] Arachne will be cited as an example of artistic pride and
consequent fall on the terrace of pride in Purgatorio 12. In the Ovidian
account Arachne’s reckless pride in her art leads her to challenge the
goddess Minerva to a contest. In describing the work of each contestant,
Ovid emphasizes Arachne’s mimetic accomplishment. The girl’s woven
art is such that not only does Europa seem to be looking back and
calling to her companions on the shore, but an observer would believe
that the bull and the sea were real: “verum taurum, freta vera putares”
(you would think that both bull and waves were true
[Metam. 6.104]). Enraged at the girl’s success, the goddess transforms
Arachne into a spider. Dante, emphasizing the perils of Arachne’s
creativity, of the “opera” (work) that she recklessly made, depicts her
in Purgatorio 12 in mid-metamorphosis, on the way to being a spider:
O folle Aragne, sì vedea io te
già mezza ragna, trista in su li stracci
de l’opera che mal per te si fé. (Purg. 12.43-45)
O mad Arachne, I saw you already
half spider, wretched on the ragged remnants
of work that you had wrought to your own hurt!
[35] In The Undivine Comedy, where I analyze the Ovidian component
of Purgatorio’s terrace of pride, I classify Arachne as “the
textual/artistic correlative of Ulysses”, and therefore also of Phaeton
and Icarus:

By comparing the designs woven on Geryon’s flanks to the tele woven by

Arachne, Dante summons the mythological figure who more than any
other is an emblem for textuality, for weaving the webs of discourse.
Her tele are the webs of textuality, of art: they signify the inherent
deceptiveness of an art that can deceive through its mimetic perfection,
its achievement of verisimilitude (art, therefore, as “craft” in both its
senses, as handiwork and Ulyssean guile); also, because Arachne
challenged Minerva, her webs signify our hubris (again Ulyssean), our
will to challenge, to go beyond. In other words, Arachne is the
textual/artistic correlative of Ulysses, and also therefore of those
surrogates for Ulysses who figure so prominently at the end of the
Geryon episode. (The Undivine Comedy, p. 64)

[36] Hubris and failure are evoked in both existential and

representational terms in Inferno 17. Existential and representational
hubris overlap in the story of Daedalus and his son Icarus, for artistic
hubris is of course also present in the poignant figure of the great
craftsman whose art is responsible for his son’s death: “pennas aspexit
in undis / devovitque suas artes” (he caught sight of feathers on the
surface of the sea; and Deaedalus cursed his own artistry
[Metamorphoses, 8.233-34; trans. Allen Mandelbaum]). As Ovid writes,
Daedalus seeks to imitate nature by constructing true wings that can
really fly:

Dixit et ignotas animum dimittit in artes

naturamque novat. Nam ponit in ordine pennas,
a minima coeptas, longam breviore sequente,
ut clivo crevisse putes; sic rustica quondam
fistula disparibus paulatim surgit avenis.
Tum lino medias et ceris adligat imas,
atque ita compositas parvo curvamine flectit,
ut veras imitetur aves. (Metamorphoses, 8.188-95)
At once he starts
to work on unknown arts, to alter nature.
He lays out feathers — all in order, first
the shorter, then the longer (you’d have said
they’d grown along a slope); just like the kind
of pipes that country people used to fashion,
where from unequal reed to reed the rise
is gradual. And these he held together
with twine around the center; at the base
he fastened them with wax; and thus arranged—
he’d bent them slightly — they could imitate
the wings of true birds.
(Metamorphoses, trans. Allen Mandelbaum)
[37] The language used here by Ovid stresses the idea that art and
human techne are an imitation of nature. Ovid embraces the idea that
the more verisimilar the work of art — the more life-like it is — the
greater it is. The greatest work of art is the one that is most like life.
Arachne surpasses Athena as an artist because the figures on her woven
textiles are more true to life.

[38] Both Arachne and Daedalus are committed to the practice

of mimesis and both incur disaster as a result of their mimetic
prowess. This mimetic characterization of these figures is already
present in Ovid and is reprised by Dante. Dante has already indirectly
informed us of the theory of mimesis in his discussion of God’s two
“possessions” (nature and art) in Inferno 11.97-105, where he instructs
us that nature imitates God and that our art imitates nature. In that
passage he effectively sketches a mimetic hierarchy in which human
representational art is at two removes from the divine.

[39] As the pilgrim prepares himself for the terrifying transition to yet
further depths of evil, Virgilio stresses that there is no avoiding the evil
around him. In order to progress in this voyage, the pilgrim must
himself henceforth utilize and come into contact with the monsters and
guardians that he will meet. In this case he must fly to the eighth circle
on the back of the “filthy effigy of fraud” that is Geryon: “sozza imagine
di froda” (Inf. 17.7). Later a giant will place him on the ice of Cocytus.
Most remarkably, he will have to climb on Lucifer’s body in order to
depart from Hell.

[40] In other words, it is not enough for him to witness Hell as an

observer. The pilgrim must have his own personal encounter with evil.
As Virgilio says to him, speaking of clambering onto Geryon and flying
on the monster’s back: “Omai si scende per sì fatte scale” (for from now
on our descent is by this kind of stairs [Inf. 17.82]).

[41] Dante must go to the heart of darkness within himself.

Inferno 18: Fraud and Sex in a Post-Geryon

World
 a new beginning: the start of lower Hell and entry into the domain
of fraud
 the eighth circle has a name: “Malebolge” (evil ditches or evil
trenches)
 the eighth circle boasts a built environment — urban and
architectural — as compared to the perverted natural
environment of the circle of violence
 here we find devils as guardians, compared to the classically
inspired and animal-based guardians of upper Hell
 Dante’s emphasis on the semiotic nature of fraud
 Dante features Italian cities in Malebolge; in this canto they are
Bologna and Lucca
  political identity as linguistic identity (“sipa” as the Bolognese for
“yes”) and the connection to De vulgari eloquentia
 the presence of sexualized sins and sinners
 Malebolge features sinners who are coupled: one taken from the
classical world and one taken from the contemporary world
 Inferno 18 offers two sets of classical/contemporary couples

[1] Inferno 18 is the first canto devoted to the eighth circle of Hell, the
circle of fraud. The enormous eighth circle, featuring souls who
committed ten different varieties of fraudulent sin, extends
from Inferno 18 all the way to Inferno 30. The eighth circle makes up
38% of Dante’s Hell, textually speaking. Its immensity is reflected in the
number of its subdivisions: the eighth circle is subdivided into ten “evil
ditches” or “evil trenches” — hence the name that Dante coins,
“Malebolge”. Each trench houses a different kind of fraud.

[2] The opening verse of this canto self-consciously marks a narrative

new beginning within the economy of Inferno. This — finally — is the
true entrance to lower Hell:

Inferno 18 constitutes an emphatic new beginning situated at the

canticle’s midpoint, at its narrative mezzo del cammin. “Luogo è in
inferno detto Malebolge” (There is a place in hell called Malebolge)
begins the canto, with a verse that is crisply informative, explicitly
introductory, and patently devoted to differentiation: this is a new place,
a new locus. (The Undivine Comedy, p. 74).

[3] The first verse of Inferno 18 — “Luogo è in inferno detto Malebolge”

— is interesting on a number of counts. First, its merging of the Latinate
formula “Luogo è” (“locus est”) with Dante’s plebeian neologism
“Malebolge” will be mirrored in the narrative: as we shall see, Dante will
deliberately couple classical figures with contemporaries throughout the
eighth circle.
[4] I have discussed Dante’s ongoing cultivation of techniques
of verisimilitude that do the work of staking truth claims in
his possible world. An example from Inferno 5 is the casual dropping
of the placename “Caina” in verse 107, used for the part of lowest Hell
where Gianciotto’s soul is destined to go for killing his wife and his
brother: “Caina attende chi a vita ci spense” (Caina waits for him who
took our life [Inf. 5.107]). In Inferno 5.107, Dante treats his possible
world as so real that the reader will know what Caina is, although the
place is invented by him as part of his fictional afterlife.

[5] Similar in Inferno 18 is Dante’s deployment of the little word “detto”

in verse 1: “There is a place called Malebolge” (Inf. 18.1). Dante uses
the apparently innocent and mostly unnoticed past participle “detto” to
subliminally convey the information that “Malebolge” exists somewhere
other than in his mind. By saying that the place is “called Malebolge”,
Dante seeks to give “Malebolge” currency as a word that designates a
real place, suggesting that it comes frequently off the tongues of some
set of humans. To say “Luogo è in inferno detto Malebolge” (There is a
place in hell called Malebolge [Inf. 18.1]) is to treat Malebolge as an
accepted place on a real map, a place that is “called Malebolge” by
someone.

[6] I cite again from The Undivine Comedy: “the line, ‘Luogo è in

inferno detto Malebolge,’ confers truth status on the locus it names by
implying that it is so named by others — by whom, after all, is this place
‘called’ Malebolge?” (The Undivine Comedy, p. 75). By whom, indeed, is
this place called Malebolge? Given that Dante invented the name, there
can have been no one who uttered it until the existence of Inferno 18.
But we never pose the question “detto da chi?” — said by whom? We do
not pose it because Dante’s verisimilar art has lulled us into acceptance
of his invented reality.

[7] I turn now to the question of Inferno 18’s style, and style in lower
Hell more broadly. In the narrative/stylistic analysis of the canti of
lower Hell in The Undivine Comedy, Chapter 4, I write as follows about
the style of Malebolge and the style of Inferno 18 in particular:

From the stylistic perspective, these cantos run the gamut from the
lowest of low styles to the highest of high; here too, canto 18 is
paradigmatic, moving in its brief compass from vulgar black humor —
“Ahi come facean lor levar le berze / a le prime percosse! già nessuno /
le seconde aspettava né le terze” (Oh, how they made them lift their
heels at the first blows! Truly none awaited the second or the third [37-
39]) — to the solemnity with which Vergil displays Jason — “Guarda
quel grande che vene” (Look at that great one who comes [83)]) — to the
nastiness of the merda in which the flatterers are plunged. For
Barchiesi, such transitions constitute the essence of canto 18; he
suggests that the canto’s most singular aspect is its violent
juxtapositioning of elevated language with realistic language, of the
Latinate “Luogo è” with the plebeian neologism “Malebolge.” This
insight can be extended to the cantos of Malebolge as a group, whose
violent stylistic transitions provide an implicit commentary on the
questions of genre and style that were opened up for the poem by the
use of the term comedìa in the Geryon episode. (The Undivine Comedy,
pp. 75-6)

[8] One of the key features of Dante’s Inferno, notable in Malebolge, is

the extraordinary narrative and stylistic variatio that makes turning the
page into a new canto a continual encounter with the new.

[9] In stylistic terms, I classify Inferno 18 as mainly a “low” style canto,

whereas, for instance, the following canto belongs mainly to the “high”
style. A caveat: these categories should never be taken as
monolithic, since even when Dante has designated a certain section or
canto as mainly belonging to a particular register or style, he
nevertheless always includes some variety.

[10] Although Inferno 18 contains different stylistic registers, it is

famous for the lowly merda in which the flatterers are immersed.
Indeed, in later periods many authors and arbiters of style issued
rebukes to Dante for the language of Inferno 18.
[11] The language and style of Inferno 18 clarify the nature and the
properties of comedìa, as this text was recently named during the
Geryon episode (see Inferno 16.128 and the end of the Commento
on Inferno  16). We are now in a position to understand better
what comedìa is: a form of writing that willingly embraces every kind of
language and style, because it represents all of reality.

[12] The ongoing meditation on the nature of comedìa that runs through

the post-Geryon canti includes the contrast between comedìa, which can
be low as well as high, and the epics of classical antiquity, which are
composed in an unremittingly high style.

[13] The contrast between the mixed vernacular style and the high style
of classical epic is reflected in another narrative element that we can
associate with Malebolge: the classical/contemporary couple. In this
part of Hell Dante goes out of his way to couple contemporary figures
with classical figures. The classical/contemporary couples of
lower Hell are indexed to the poet’s ongoing meditation
on comedìa and tragedìa, a meditation that is particularly
strong in Malebolge.

[14] The coupling of classical with contemporary souls is spectacularly

on display in Inferno 18. Two of the ten trenches of Malebolge are
sandwiched into this one canto, and Inferno 18 actually boasts two sets
of classical/contemporary couples, one couple in each bolgia: Venedico
Caccianemico and Jason in bolgia 1, and Alessio Interminelli and Thaïs
in bolgia 2.

***

[15] The circle of fraud consists of ten bolge, or ditches, which are

packed with sinners. Eight of the ten categories of fraudulent sinners are
named in the below terzina from the discussion of the structure of Hell
in Inferno 11. This passage refers to hypocrites, flatterers, sorcerers,
falsifiers, thieves, simonists, panders, grafters and “similar trash”, in an
out of order jumble of fraudulent sinners:

ipocresia, lusinghe e chi affattura,

falsità, ladroneccio e simonia,
ruffian, baratti e simile lordura. (Inf. 11.58-60)
hypocrisy and flattery, sorcerers,
and falsifiers, simony, and theft,
and barrators and panders and like trash.
[16] Inferno 18 is unusually crowded from a taxonomic perspective,
housing three groups of sinners, who are divided into two bolge. Thus,
one canto contains two bolge which contain three kinds of sinners: the
first bolgia contains pimps and seducers, while the
second bolgia contains flatterers.

[17] The pimps and seducers of the first bolgia are  housed together

because they are related as sinners; both groups engaged in sexualized
sin involving the traffic of women. It is evident that in such a
taxonomically crowded canto, there will not be the opportunity for one
sinner’s character to impose itself. Rather than character development,
we note the classical/contemporary couple of the first bolgia: the pimp,
Venedico, is Bolognese, while the seducer is Jason, classical hero and
leader of the Argonauts.

[18] The two groups of the first bolgia circle the perimeter of the bolgia,

moving in opposite directions from each other. The manner of their
opposed circling is somewhat reminiscent of the method used by Dante
in Inferno  7, where he previously treated a “double” sin, in that case
pitting against each other the misers and the prodigals. The
second bolgia contains only one group — the flatterers — who do not
move at all: rather they are to different degrees immersed in shit.

[19] The pimps of bolgia 1 and the flatterers of bolgia 2 are named in

the summary tercet of Inferno 11: see, in the above citation, “lusinghe”
(flattery) in Inferno 11.58 and “ruffian” (pimps)
in Inferno 11.60. Inferno 18 is unusual in containing two bolge in one
canto, giving an impression of souls packed into Hell like commuters in
a packed subway car. The crowded feel of these two bolge is enhanced
by the two sets of sinners comprised in the first bolgia.

[20] An aspect of Inferno 18 that is ripe for future exploration

is the gendered and sexualized discourse featured throughout
the canto.

[21] The first soul with whom the pilgrim speaks does not want to be
recognized, another common trait of sinners in lower Hell. But Dante
persists in addressing him, asking him whether he is Venedico
Caccianemico, and inquiring as to what has led him to “such pungent
sauces” (“sì pungenti salse” [Inf. 18.51]). In explaining what has brought
him to the bolgia of pimps and seducers, Venedico offers a synthetic
account of a sordid tale. He pimped his sister, Ghisolabella (“beautiful
Ghisola”), constraining her to do the will of the Marquis, who paid him
for his services: “I’ fui colui che la Ghisolabella / condussi a far la voglia
del marchese” (For it was I who led Ghisolabella / to do as the Marquis
would have her do [Inf. 18.55-56]).

[22] A number of interesting points emerge from the pilgrim’s brief

colloquy with Venedico Caccianemico. In the verses in which Venedico
describes what he did to his sister, he casts both himself and the
Marchese as agents — one constrained Ghisolabella and the other
profited sexually — while casting the woman as the victim.

[23] The men who victimize Ghisolabella are men of power: Venedico

was a powerful Bolognese Guelph, while the “Marchese” of verse 56 is
Opizzo II d’Este, lord of Ferrara. Ghisolabella’s brother functions as a
pimp (hence a devil will call him “ruffian” in verse 66): he sold sexual
relations with his sister to Opizzo II d’Este, who purchased them. These
are men for whom women are “femmine da conio”, as accurately noted
by the devil who beats Venedico and sends him on his way: “Via, /
ruffian! qui non son femmine da conio” (Be off, pimp, here are no
women for you to sell [Inf. 18.65-6]]). Chiavacci Leonardi glosses “da
conio” thus: “da moneta, cioè da prostituire per guadagno” (women for
money, in other words to be prostituted for financial gain
[Inferno commentary, ad locum]). The financial aspect of the
transaction connects  it to fraud and deceit rather than simply to
violence. Financial motivations will pulse throughout
Malebolge.

[24] Violence is certainly present, however. Opizzo II is among the

tyrants in the circle of violence, and is named in Inferno  12:

e quell'altro ch’è biondo,

è Opizzo da Esti, il qual per vero
fu spento dal figliastro sù nel mondo. (Inf. 12.110-12)
that other there, the blonde one, is Obizzo
of Este, he who was indeed undone,
within the world above, by his fierce son.
[25] Immersed up to his brows in the river of blood in Inferno 12,
Opizzo d’Este was violent toward others in both their persons and their
possessions. The phrase “far la voglia del marchese” in Inferno 18.56 —
to do the will of the Marquis — captures the nature of a man for whom
others exist only as objects. At the same time, the few verses referring to
Opizzo in Inferno 12 remind us that violence breeds violence, for Opizzo
was killed by his son.

[26] We can see a vast interconnected network taking shape. The links
between the souls of Dante’s afterlife have yet to be fully explored and
mapped. As I wrote in “Only Historicize” (cited in Coordinated
Reading): “The Commedia includes an amazing web of family — and
hence political — interconnectivity spun by Dante, who so carefully
chose and enmeshed the characters of his great poem” (p. 49).

[27] Venedico’s account will also include the semiotic and

representational dimension that is so heightened in the post-Geryon
world. Venedico refers to the “sconcia novella” (filthy tale) that
circulates about him and his sister, in various permutations: “come che
suoni la sconcia novella” (however they retell that filthy tale
[Inf. 18.57]). He thus alludes to the oral dimension of gossip and
scandal, giving his behavior a precise civic and local contour. Venedico
specifically implicates his fellow Bolognesi in his sin of pimping women
for financial gain, saying “E non pur io qui piango bolognese” (I’m not
the only Bolognese who weeps here [Inf. 18.58]).

[28] In referring to his fellow Bolognese, Venedico characterizes them

geographically and linguistically: they are those living between the
rivers Savena and Reno and who say “sipa” for “sì” (verses 60-61). In
characterizing the Bolognese by their use of the affirmative adverb
“sipa” Dante draws on his own background as a linguist and writer on
language. He first uses the affirmative adverb as a marker of
political identity in his linguistic treatise De vulgari
eloquentia, where he distinguishes between Italian, French, and
Occitan by their modes of affirmation. Italian is the language that uses
“sì” to say “yes”:

Totum vero quod in Europa restat ab istis, tertium tenuit ydioma, licet
nunc tripharium videatur; nam alii oc, alii oïl, alii sì affirmando
locuntur; ut puta Yspani, Franci et Latini. (De vulgari eloquentia 1.8.5)

All the rest of Europe that was not dominated by these two vernaculars
was held by a third, although nowadays this itself seems to be divided in
three: for some now say oc, some oïl, and some sì, when they answer in
the affirmative; and these are the Hispanic, the French, and the ItaIians.
(trans. Steven Botterill)

[29] In Inferno 18, Dante picks up from the De vulgari eloquentia the

custom of identifying languages from their modes of saying “yes” and
creates a new subset for the Italian peninsula. He adds the Bolognese
“sipa” to the larger category “sì” that he used for Italian in his earlier
linguistic treatise.
[30] The characterization of the Bolognese in Inferno 18 includes a
reference to “il nostro avaro seno” (our avaricious hearts [Inf. 18.63]). It
is worth recalling the distinction, first discussed in the Commento
on Inferno 6, between the vices that trigger sin and the specific sinful
actions that follow, and for which we are damned if we do not repent.
We recall that avarice is one of the seven capital vices, one of the
impulses that cause us to sin. In this case, avarice is the vice and the
prostituting of women for money is the sin.

 * * *

[31] In this canto of sexualized sin, the women whom Dante

features run the gamut from passive victim to aggressor:
Ghisolabella is portrayed as victim, Hypsipyle as both victim and
aggressor, like Medea, while Thaïs is depicted solely as aggressor.

[32] The second group of sinners in the first bolgia is that of the

seducers and features the great classical hero Jason, in his role as
seducer and impregnator of Hypsipyle. Again the sexualized and
gendered components of Dante’s account are noteworthy. Hypsipyle
and the women of Lemnos are not simply victims, for the backstory of
their murder of the men of Lemnos is acknowledged. In recounting the
backstory, the language is highly gendered, pitting the “femmine”
against the “maschi”: “l’ardite femmine spietate / tutti li maschi loro
a morte dienno” (its women, bold and pitiless, / had given all their
island males to death [Inf. 18.89-90]).

[33] But Dante subsequently, just a few verses later, depicts Hypsipyle

no longer as the aggressor but as the quintessential seduced and
abandoned female: “Lasciolla quivi, gravida, soletta” (And he
abandoned her, alone and pregnant [Inf. 18.94]). Here the language
renders Hypsipyle’s vulnerability, and the two adjectives “gravida,
soletta” replace the two adjectives used for the women of Lemnos, the
“ardite femmine spietate”: the “bold and pitiless” Hypsipyle is now
“pregnant and all alone”.
[34] With “ornate words” — “parole ornate” that remind us of Virgilio’s
“parola ornata” in Inferno 2.67 — Jason deceives Hypsipyle
semiotically: “Ivi con segni e con parole ornate / Isifile ingannò” (With
polished words and love signs he took in / Hypsipyle [Inf. 18.91-2]). The
emphasis here is on Jason’s deception of her: “Isifile ingannò” (he
deceived Hypsipyle). But Dante then repurposes the verb ingannare to
make Hypsipyle the agent of deceit, reminding us that Hypsipyle, now
deceived by Jason, had previously deceived the women of Lemnos, when
she saved her own father from their mass murder of the island’s men:
“la giovinetta / che prima avea tutte l’altre ingannate” (the girl whose
own deception / had earlier deceived the other women [Inf. 18.92-3]).

[35] In the compressed compass of his Hypsipyle narrative, Dante

manages to convey the way in which Hypsipyle whipsaws
between being the one who harms and the one who is
harmed. Deceit is a common denominator in both parts of her story.

[36] In verse 100 Dante transitions to the bolgia of flattery, where he

sees “people plunged in excrement that seemed / as if it had been
poured from human privies”: “gente attuffata in uno sterco / che da li
uman privadi parea mosso” (Inf. 18.113-4). The inventive rhyme-words,
taken from everyday life and resolutely non-literary — for instance
“scuffa”/“muffa”/“zuffa” (Inf. 18.104-8) — are used to give a plebeian
tone to the degraded surroundings of the final two sinners of Inferno 18.

[37] Dante sees a man whose head is so covered with shit that it is

impossible to discern whether he is lay or cleric: “vidi un col capo sì di
merda lordo, / che non parëa s’era laico o cherco” (I saw one with a head
so smeared with shit, / one could not see if he were lay or cleric [Inf.
18.116-7]). With this aside, the poet reminds us that back in Inferno 7 he
was able to recognize the clerics among the misers of the fourth circle, a
group that includes cardinals and popes: “Questi fuor cherci, che non
han coperchio / piloso al capo, e papi e cardinali” (These to the left —
their heads bereft of hair — were clergymen, and popes and cardinals
[Inf. 7.46-7]). In the fourth circle, Dante was able to discern the
tonsured heads of the clerics; now such details are not visible, because
of the excrement that covers them.

[38] The pilgrim forcefully names this sinner, Alessio Interminelli of

Lucca (Inf. 18.122), despite the sinner’s unwillingness to be named. Both
Italian sinners in this canto crave anonymity, and both have long and
mellifluous names that Dante seems to delight in spreading out over the
length of the verse: first “Venedico se’ tu Caccianemico” (You are
Venedico Caccianmico [Inf. 18.50]), and then “e se’ Alessio Interminei
da Lucca” (You are Alessio Interminelli of Lucca [Inf. 18.122]).

[39] There is a division of labor in Inferno 18 between Dante (a

contemporary who identifies contemporary souls) and Virgilio (an
ancient who identifies ancients) that is keyed to the
contemporary/classical couplings of the souls.

[40] In bolgia one the pilgrim recognizes and names Venedico, while

Virgilio points to Jason: “Quelli è Iasón” (That one is Jason [Inf. 18.86]).
In bolgia two the pilgrim recognizes and names Alessio, while Virgilio
points to Thaïs. This division of labor is reflected in linguistic markers
as well: Venedico claims that Dante constrains him to reveal himself
because he speaks with a “chiara favella” (plain speech [53]), while
Virgilio notes approvingly Jason’s “parole ornate” (polished words
[Inf. 18.91]). Moreover, Virgilio demonstrates open admiration for
Jason, a hero, complimenting his “regal aspect”: “quanto aspetto reale
ancor ritene!” (how he still keeps the image of a king! [Inf. 18.85]).

[41] The division of labor between Dante and Virgilio in Inferno 18

anticipates the pièce de résistance of classical/contemporary couples in
Malebolge: Ulysses and Guido da Montefeltro. Virgilio insists that he
should be the one to speak to Ulysses (Inferno 26), because he is Greek,
and then instructs Dante to address Guido da Montefeltro, given that
Guido is Italian (Inferno 27).
[42] The last figure in Inferno 18 is the classical Thaïs, who is a whore in
Terence’s comic play Eunuchus. This is a play that Cicero cites in De
Amicitia 26.98 and Cicero is most likely Dante’s source. Dante
misunderstands his source and inverts the flatterer and the flattered,
ascribing the wrong role to Thaïs.

[43] The erudite and Latinate context from which Thaïs derives does not

preclude her being described in the sexualized terms that we have seen
throughout Inferno 18. She is the “sozza e scapigliata fante / che là si
graffia con l’unghie merdose” (that besmirched, bedraggled
harridan / who scratches at herself with shit-filled nails [Inf. 18.130-1]).
The adjective “scapigliata” in verse 130 specifies literally the courtesan’s
“tousled hair”, effectively her “bedroom hair”.

[44] The adjective “scapigliata” reminds us of our long history

of sexualizing female hair — and reminds us too that Dante does
not sexualize hair in Inferno  5’s treatment of lust. Dante does not do
what the painter Giotto does in his Last Judgment, where he hangs
lustful female sinners from their long hair. But Dante does sexualize
hair with respect to Thaïs in Inferno 18, and he does so again with
respect to Manto in Inferno  20. For the sexualizing of hair and Dante’s
avoidance of it in his treatment of lust in the Commedia, see “Dante’s
Sympathy for the Other”, cited in Coordinated Reading.

[45] The vulgarity of the Dantean verse that conjures Thaïs’ past

profession, “e or s’accoscia e ora è in piedi stante” (and now she
crouches, now she stands upright [Inf. 18.132]), stands in fascinating
contrast to the dialogue that follows between Thaïs and her lover, most
likely translated from Cicero’s De Amicitia. The courtesan speaks
flatteringly, with overwrought and excessive courtesy:

Taide è, la puttana che rispuose

al drudo suo quando disse “Ho io grazie
grandi apo te?”: “Anzi maravigliose!”.
(Inf. 18.133-35)
That is Thais, the harlot who returned
her lover’s question, “Are you very grateful
to me?” by saying, “Yes, enormously.”
[46] For Dante, the perfumed nature of Thaïs’ brief speech act is
linguistic deceit in action. The narrator makes the deceitfulness
of Thaïs’ speech clear by affirming what she is, insisting on her
essentialized nature as a “puttana” in verse 133: a whore, someone
incapable of engaging in courteous language unless for reasons of deceit.
In the essentialized language that makes Thaïs a puttana, Dante gives us
his final sexualized sinner of Inferno 18.

Inferno 19: Whoring the Bride

 Inferno 19 boasts a high style marked by many apostrophes —
including the canto opening — and much metaphoric language
 the prostituting of the Church-bride by her Pope-bridegroom
picks up and metaphorizes the sexualized language of Inferno 18
 reference to the capital punishment of propaginazzione in verses
49-51; see the Commento on Inferno  27 for discussion of the
historical tortures and punishments referenced in the Commedia
 the intense dialogic quality recalls Inferno  10, where too dialogue
is a font of pain and misunderstanding
 Dante manufactures a way to signal Boniface VIII’s damnation
before his death in 1303, thus effectively disregarding the
theology of repentance (see s, Inferno  27, and Purgatorio  5)
 Dante thereby comes close to a deterministic position, eliding
Boniface’s ability to exercise his free will
 St. John, author of the Apocalpyse?
 the Donation of Constantine and its eventual debunking by the
philologist Lorenzo Valla: one of the great examples of the
importance of philology, the discipline of the historicized
understanding of language
[1] Inferno 19 is the Commedia’s first full-fledged indictment of the
Church, picking up on some earlier indications that Dante links the
clerical establishment with the sin of avarice. We remember especially
the following verses from Inferno 7, where Dante says that he sees
cardinals and popes among the misers in the fourth circle:

Questi fuor cherci, che non han coperchio

piloso al capo, e papi e cardinali,
in cui usa avarizia il suo soperchio. (Inf. 7.46-48)
These to the left—their heads bereft of hair—
were clergymen, and popes and cardinals,
within whom avarice works its excess.
[2] The third bolgia is devoted to the type of fraud called simony, in
which spiritual things (“le cose di Dio” or “things of God” of verse 2) are
sold or exchanged for temporal things:

Simony is usually defined “a deliberate intention of buying or selling for

a temporal price such things as are spiritual or annexed unto spirituals”.
While this definition only speaks of purchase and sale, any exchange of
spiritual for temporal things is simoniacal. Nor is the giving of the
temporal as the price of the spiritual required for the existence of
simony; according to a proposition condemned by Innocent XI
(Denzinger-Bannwart, no. 1195) it suffices that the determining motive
of the action of one party be the obtaining of compensation from the
other. (“Simony,” from The Catholic Encyclopedia, accessed
10/27/2015)

[3] Simon Magus, from whom simony gets its name, is a figure in the
New Testament. Acts 8:9-24 recounts Simon’s attempt to buy from St.
Peter the power to grant the Holy Spirit through the laying on of hands:

Simon, seeing that the Holy Spirit was granted through the imposition
of the apostles’ hands, offered them money; let me too, he said, have
such powers that when I lay my hands on anyone he will receive the
Holy Spirit. Whereupon Peter said to him, take thy wealth with thee to
perdition, thou who hast told thyself that God’s free gift can be bought
with money. (Acts 8:18-20)
[4] Inferno 19 is a stunning canto, metaphorically and dramatically
elaborate. It begins explosively, with a dramatic apostrophe to Simon
Magus and his followers, all those who prostitute for gold and silver the
“things of God, that ought to be the brides of righteousness”:

O Simon mago, o miseri seguaci

che le cose di Dio, che di bontate
deon essere spose, e voi rapaci
per oro e per argento avolterate,
or convien che per voi suoni la tromba,
però che ne la terza bolgia state. (Inf. 19.1-6)
O Simon Magus! O his sad disciples!
Rapacious ones, who take the things of God,
that ought to be the brides of Righteousness,
and make them fornicate for gold and silver!
The time has come to let the trumpet sound for you;
your place is here in this third pouch.
[5] Here, at the beginning of Inferno 19, Dante inaugurates the key
theme of innocence that is wantonly corrupted by its alleged
protectors: the metaphor of a bride who is prostituted by her
bridegroom runs throughout the canto. Here the “things of God” that
should be “brides of righteousness” are not protected by those charged
to protect them, the men of the Church. Rather, “the things of God / that
ought to be the brides of Righteousness” — “le cose di Dio, che di
bontate / deon essere spose” (Inf. 19.2-3) — are prostituted: sold for
money, debased, and corrupted.

[6] Because this opening is couched as an apostrophe to Simon Magus

and his followers, as direct address, the indictment rings out in the
second person plural: “e voi rapaci / per oro e per argento avolterate”
(and you rapacious ones / prostitute them for gold and silver [Inf. 19.3-
4]). The second person plural pronoun “voi” is repeated in verse 5,
where the poet tells the simonists that his trumpet sounds for them, the
inhabitants of his third bolgia: “or convien che per voi suoni la
tromba, / però che ne la terza bolgia state” (The time has come to let the
trumpet sound / for you; your place is here in this third pouch [Inf. 19.5-
6]). The repeated voi initiates the intensely dialogic nature
of Inferno 19.

[7] Ultimately, in this canto, the “spose” will cease to be plural and

generic “brides of righteousness” and will become a singular bride: the
Church, prostituted not by generic simonists, but by her very
own bridegroom, the Pope. Dante thus uses the bolgia of simony to
indict the Church in its very pinnacle of power and authority: the
papacy. By putting two popes into the bolgia of simony, one who speaks
to Dante and another whose coming is foretold, Dante indicts the
papacy itself.

[8] Moreover, the metaphor of the Church as a bride prostituted by her

Pope-bridegroom is all the more effective coming as it does after the
prostituted sister (Ghisolabella, prostituted by her brother Venedico
Caccianemico) and the pregnant abandoned bride (Hypsipyle, seduced
and abandoned by Jason) of Inferno  18.

[9] In The Undivine Comedy I discuss the progression from the

relatively plain and unadorned language of Inferno 18 (“puttana”
in Inf. 18.133 refers to  the literal “whore” Thaïs) to the densely
metaphoric fabric of Inferno 19 (“puttaneggiar coi regi” in Inf. 19.108
refers to the whoring of the Church):

Again, the point is the stylistic discrepancy between the two cantos:
from the relatively simple, unadorned, plain style of canto 18 to the
rhetorical profusion of canto 19. The transition from a literal and
rhetorically unelaborated style to a language of great metaphorical
density finds its emblem in the transition from the literal “puttana” of
18.133, Thaïs, to the metaphorical “puttaneggiar coi regi” (whoring with
kings [19.108]) of the Church on behalf of the pimping popes. The back-
to-back use of puttana and puttaneggiar (the former used only twice
more, both times in Purgatorio 32 for the Church, the latter a hapax),
underscores the transition from literal to metaphorical whoring and
thus the rhetorical differences between cantos: the straightforward
narrative of Inferno 18 contrasts sharply with the grandiloquence
of Inferno 19, a canto that contains three apostrophes, that indeed
opens with the apostrophic trumpet blast directed at Simon Magus and
his fellow prostituters of “the things of God.” (The Undivine Comedy,
pp. 77-8)

***

[10] In this canto of high drama as well as of high language, Dante does
not simply view the sinners in their respective bolgie but participates in
an animated dialogic encounter with Pope Nicholas III, who mistakes
Dante for a later pontiff, Boniface VIII. Nicholas III, the Roman
nobleman Giovanni Gaetano Orsini, Pope from 1277 to 1280, is now in
the bolgia of simony, head-first in a cleft in the rock floor, only his feet
visible. Since he is buried head-first, Nicholas III cannot see the figure
standing above him and as a result he mistakes Dante for the man
whom he expects, whose arrival will push him further into the rock and
who will take his place as the upper-most of the upside-down popes
wedged deeply into the very floor of Hell.

[11] The narrator describes his own posture during the colloquy with
Nicholas III. He stands above the soul who is wedged into the rock floor
of Hell and compares himself to “’l frate che confessa” (the  friar who
confesses), the friar who stands above a man who is condemned to
death by propagginazione. This is the ghastly torture of being buried
alive, head down, resulting in the suffocation of the condemned:

Io stava come ’l frate che confessa

lo perfido assessin, che, poi ch’è fitto,
richiama lui per che la morte cessa. (Inf.19.49-51)
I stood as does the friar who confesses
the foul assassin who, fixed fast, head down,
calls back the friar, and so delays his death.
[12] The torture of propagginazione will be discussed in the context of
other references to contemporary capital punishment in
the Commedia in the Commento on Inferno  27.
[13] The successor pope to whom Nicholas III thinks he is speaking is
Pope Boniface VIII, born Benedetto Caetani. Boniface VIII became pope
fourteen years after the death of Nicholas III, in 1294, and remained
head of the Holy See until his death in 1303. Boniface VIII succeeded
the holy hermit, Pietro da Morrone, who was Pope Celestine V for five
months in 1294 before he became the first pope to resign his office.
Many, like the Franciscan poet Jacopone da Todi, hoped that the pious
and humble Celestine V would be erhable to reform the Church, a cause
that was set back by the “usurpation” of the papacy by the worldly
Boniface VIII. On Celestine V and his candidacy to be the unnamed soul
“che fece per viltade il gran rifiuto” (who made, through cowardice, the
great refusal [Inf. 3.60]), see the Commento on Inferno  3.

[14] Nicholas III indicates his great surprise at what he considers

Boniface VIII’s premature arrival to the bolgia of simony, agitatedly
asking “are you already here” — “Se’ tu già costì ritto, / se’ tu già costì
ritto, Bonifazio?” (Are you already standing, / already standing there, o
Boniface? [Inf. 19.52-3]) — and then adding that the book of the future
has lied to him by several years: “Di parecchi anni mi mentì lo scritto”
(The book has lied to me by several years [Inf. 19.54]). Nicholas’
amazement at thinking Boniface is present is legitimate: this scene takes
place in April 1300, and Boniface does not die until October 1303.
Perhaps Nicholas should have known better: the “writing” — “lo scritto”
of verse 54 — in which he read the true date of Boniface’s death is God’s
writing, and the book of God’s Providence cannot lie. On the other hand,
we learned in Inferno 10 that the sinners see the future only dimly,
“come quei c’ha mala luce” (like those who have poor light
[Inf. 10.100]), that their ability to see the future decreases as the event
draws nearer, and that they cease to see altogether when it becomes the
present (Inf. 10.100-105).

[15] Nicholas III proceeds to speak mordantly to the man standing

above him, whom he mistakenly believes to be Boniface VIII, accusing
him of having deceived the Church and then prostituted her. In the
following verses, the Church is the “beautiful lady” — “la bella donna” of
verse 57 — whom Boniface VIII (according to the accusation of Nicholas
III) first “took by deceit” (“tòrre a ’nganno” = togliere con l’inganno)
and then violated (fare strazio di):

Se’ tu sì tosto di quell’aver sazio

per lo qual non temesti tòrre a ’nganno
la bella donna, e poi di farne strazio? (Inf. 19.55-57)
Are you so quickly sated with the riches
for which you did not fear to take by guile
the Lovely Lady, then to violate her?
[16] In Nicholas III’s denunciation, Boniface VIII becomes the
metaphoric conflation of two sinners from Inferno 18. In the Boniface
VIII who is evoked and described by Nicholas III, we find metaphorized
and blended the sins of Jason and Venedico Caccianemico:

1.  Boniface VIII first deceives his bride, taking her by deceit

(“tòrre a ’nganno” in verse 56), like Jason, whose seduction
of Hypsipyle is characterized by the same
deceit, inganno (“Ivi con segni e con parole ornate / Isifile
ingannò” [Inf. 18.91-2]).
2.  Boniface VIII then prostitutes her, like Venedico
Caccianemico, who prostituted his sister Ghisolabella,
whose very name “Ghisolabella” is echoed in the
description of the Church as “la bella donna” in verse 57.

[17] The dialogue between Nicholas III and the pilgrim provides, first, a
stunning accusation directed by one simoniac Pope (present and stuffed
into the ground) at another simoniac Pope (mistakenly deemed to be
present and standing above him). The accusation leveled by Nicholas III
picks up on the canto’s opening salvo against those who prostitute “le
cose di Dio” for gold and silver and indicts Boniface on two counts: he
took the Church by force and he prostituted her, violating her purity.

[18]  The dialogue between the soul of Nicholas III and the man he
believes is Boniface VIII is also part of an extraordinary dramatic
conceit concocted by the narrator in order to damn a Pope who was still
alive in 1300.
[19] Boniface VIII did not die until 1303, while — as we know — the
fictive date of the pilgrim’s journey into Hell is April 1300. Dante,
writing this canto years after Boniface’s death on 11 October 1303, wants
to find a way to indicate that Boniface’s abode is Hell, while not
committing the error as author. The solution is that Nicholas III, who is
stuck head-first into the rock and cannot see, mistakenly identifies the
pilgrim as Boniface VIII and addresses him by name, using direct
discourse: “Se’ tu già costì ritto, / se’ tu già costì ritto, Bonifazio?” (Are
you already standing, / already standing there, o Boniface? [Inf. 19.52-
3]). Dante-poet thus “covers” himself by having Nicholas be the one to
indicate his surprise at Boniface’s premature arrival in Hell:

Ed el gridò: “Se’ tu già costì ritto,

se’ tu già costì ritto, Bonifazio?
Di parecchi anni mi mentì lo scritto.” (Inf. 19.52-54)
And he cried out: “Are you already standing,
already standing there, o Boniface?
The book has lied to me by several years.”
[20] Later in Inferno 19 Dante-pilgrim worries that he might have been
“troppo folle” (too rash [Inf. 19.88]) in the outburst that he directs at
Nicholas III. This is a good example of the poet defusing his
own boldness by projecting it onto the pilgrim. For the truly rash
act of Inferno 19 is the one executed by Dante-poet, who effectively
reserves a place in Hell for Boniface VIII.

[21] In damning Boniface VIII, Dante sets aside the theology of

repentance, which holds that sinners can delay repentance until the very
last moment of life and still be saved. Dante is highly aware of this
doctrine and indeed dramatizes late repentance and consequent
salvation in Purgatorio  5. By damning Boniface before he died in 1303,
Dante effectively denies him the possibility of repentance in extremis;
indeed, he denies him the use of the last three years of his life. Most
important, he denies Boniface’s free will, the agency gifted by God that
allows sinners to repent and convert to the good throughout life, as long
as one is alive.
[22] Within a poem whose premise of knowing the afterlife is by
definition deterministic, Dante flirts here — through the trope of
damning Boniface three years before his historical death in 1303 — with
a more specific and technical determinism: that practiced by astrologers
and diviners. This more technically construed determinism is precisely
the topic of Inferno 20. For further discussion of Boniface VIII in this
context, see the Commento on Inferno  20 and Inferno  27. For Cecco
d’Ascoli’s imputation of the sin of determinism to Dante, his accusation
that Dante did not sufficiently prize free will, see the Commento
on Inferno  7.

[23] In “pre-damning” Boniface VIII to Hell, Dante sets aside

the theology of repentance and comes perilously close to a
deterministic position, eliding from the picture Boniface’s
ability to exercise his free will in order to repent.

***

[24] We have seen that the capacity of words to wound or to

misrepresent is a feature of dialogue in Inferno: dialogue is essential to
all human interaction, but it can therefore also be a source of
misunderstanding and hurt. In Inferno  10 Cavalcanti père misconstrues
the pilgrim’s past absolute “ebbe” in verse 63 (“forse cui Guido vostro
ebbe a disdegno”), taking the tense of the verb as a sign that his son
Guido is dead: “Come? / dicesti ‘elli ebbe’? non viv’elli ancora?” (What’s
that? / He ‘did disdain’? He is not still alive? [Inf. 10.67-8]).

[25] The pilgrim hesitates in responding to the father in Inferno 10,

because he doesn’t understand how Cavalcanti senior had arrived at his
mistaken assumption. Here too, in Inferno 19, the pilgrim hesitates in
responding to Nicholas III. After all, it’s not every day in Hell that one is
mistaken for a Pope! His hesitation is sufficiently prolonged that Virgilio
intervenes, telling Dante precisely what to say to Nicholas: “Dilli tosto: /
‘Non son colui, non son colui che credi’” (Tell this to him at once: / ‘I am
not he — not who you think I am’ [Inf. 19.61-2]).
[26] The dialogic nature of this canto and of this encounter is distilled in
these verses, in which the narrator does not permit the pilgrim to simply
respond to Nicholas. Rather the narrator briefly stops the dialogue,
creating an urgent pause, and then has Virgilio present to Dante, in
embedded direct discourse, the very words that he should speak to
Nicholas III. The poet does not write “Tell him that you are not the one
he thinks you are”, employing indirect discourse (Tell him that . . .), but
rather “Tell him: ‘I am not he — not the one you think I am’”, employing
direct discourse. The rhythm of this passage, the excited cadence of
Nicholas III who thinks he is addressing Boniface VIII, the pilgrim’s
confused pause, the urgency of Virgilio’s instruction so as to preclude
further misunderstanding — all these features testify to Dante’s
brilliance as a stager of dialogue and to his continuing meditation on the
interstices and complexities of human communication. For a similar
dialogic moment, see the Commento on Inferno  9 on the opening of
that canto.

[27] When the pilgrim realizes that he is speaking to the very custodian

of the Church-bride, to her Pope-bridegroom, he is emboldened to
speak harsh words of censure to Pope Nicholas, beginning
in Inferno 19.90. We remember that, in the simile of verses 49-51, the
narrator describes himself as like the “friar who confesses” in his
posture toward this sinner. All the more appropriate, then, that the
pilgrim appropriates biblical language for his harsh reproof, at a certain
point in his tirade citing the New Testament and specifically the visions
of the Apocalypse:

Di voi pastor s’accorse il Vangelista,

quando colei che siede sopra l’acque
puttaneggiar coi regi a lui fu vista... (Inf. 19.106-108)
You, shepherds, the Evangelist had noticed
when he saw her who sits upon the waters
and realized she fornicates with kings...
[28] In the above passage Dante calls the author of the Apocalypse “the
Evangelist” or writer of the Gospel: “il Vangelista” (Inf. 19.106). Dante is
not confused; rather he is showing lack of historical knowledge. In
Dante’s time John the Evangelist was believed to be the author of the
Apocalypse, as well as the author of the Gospel of John. There was as yet
no knowledge of John of Patmos.

[29] John’s visions in the King James version of the Bible include the
following: “I will shew unto thee the judgment of the great whore that
sitteth upon many waters: With whom the kings of the earth have
committed fornication” (Revelation 17:1-2). Dante invokes this passage
from the Apocalypse (also known as Revelation), telling Nicholas that
the Evangelist had become aware of “pastors” like him when he saw “the
whore who sits upon the waters” engaged in “fornicating with kings”:
“quando colei che siede sopra l’acque / puttaneggiar coi regi a lui fu
vista” (Inf. 19.107-8).

[30] The “meretrix magna” of Apocalypse 17:1-3 was interpreted in

antiquity as a reference to Rome. John of Patmos, in other words, was
attacking Rome with the slur “the great whore that sitteth upon many
waters”. However, medieval Christians, especially in the milieu of
reformers like the spiritual Franciscans, interpreted the whore who sits
upon the waters as a reference to the corrupt and wealthy Church. The
extraordinary verb puttaneggiare of verse 108 (“puttaneggiar coi regi”
— “whoring with kings”) thus concludes the traslatio from literal pimps
and whores in Inferno 18 to metaphorical pimps and whores
in Inferno 19: from Venedico Caccianemico, the pimp of his sister, and
Thaïs, the “puttana” of Inferno 18.133, to the pimping Popes who make
the Church a whore engaged in “puttaneggiar coi regi”
in Inferno 19.108.

[31] Dante-pilgrim concludes his tirade with an apostrophe to the

Emperor Constantine, beginning in Inferno 19.115:

Ahi, Costantin, di quanto mal fu matre,

non la tua conversion, ma quella dote
che da te prese il primo ricco patre! (Inf. 19.115-17)
Ah, Constantine, what wickedness was born—
and not from your conversion—from the dower
that you bestowed upon the first rich father!
[32] Here initiates another long and critically important thematic thread
of the Commedia: the idea that the corruption of the Church began
when Emperor Constantine, who ruled from 306 to 337 CE, departed
for Constantinople (present-day Istanbul). It was believed that Emperor
Constantine, having been cured by Pope Sylvester of leprosy, in
gratitude bequeathed the Western Roman Empire to the Church, as a
parting “dowry” for the Church (“dote” in verse 116, continuing the
canto’s bridal metaphor). According to this view of history, current in
Dante’s time, Pope Sylvester thus received from Constantine on behalf
of the Papacy a vast empire and a vast fortune.

[33] The Papal claim to temporal power was based on the so-called

Donation of Constantine. This document, which purports to bequeath
Rome and its empire to the Church, was held in Dante’s time to be a
legal document written in Constantine’s court. In reality it was written
in the papal curia centuries after Constantine’s time and ultimately
became known as “the most important forgery of the Middle Ages”:
Donation of Constantine, Latin Donatio
Constantini and Constitutum Constantini, the best-known and most
important forgery of the Middle Ages, the document purporting to
record the Roman emperor Constantine the Great’s bestowal of vast
territory and spiritual and temporal power on Pope Sylvester I (reigned
314–335) and his successors. Based on legends that date back to the 5th
century, the Donation was composed by an unknown writer in the 8th
century. Although it had only limited impact at the time of its
compilation, it had great influence on political and religious affairs in
medieval Europe until it was clearly demonstrated to be a forgery by
Lorenzo Valla in the 15th century.

(“Donation of Constantine,” Encyclopedia Britannica, accessed

10/27/2015; the fresco shows Sylvester [left] receiving the purported
donation from Constantine [right], in Santi Quattro Coronati, Rome,
13th century)

[34] Dante deplores the Donation of Constantine, believing that the

corruption of the Church and its inability to follow in the footsteps of
Christ and live according to His mandate of evangelical purity are the
result of the enormous temptations and mistaken priorities generated
by so vast a material gift. In Dante’s view, the Donation of
Constantine corrupted the Church: the dowry corrupted the
bride.

[35] In Dante’s view the Church was effectively submerged by earthly

goods and by the pernicious desire to possess those goods, as a direct
consequence of Constantine’s well-intentioned but maleficent
gift. Dante makes his views known throughout the Commedia:

1. In Purgatorio  32, a canto that is in effect Dante’s personal

version of the Apocalypse, he has a vision of the Church as
a chariot that is submerged in eagle’s feathers
(Purg. 32.124-29). The feathers represent the corrupting
 material goods that came to the Church via the imperial
eagle and through the Donation of Constantine.
2. In Paradiso  6, the Byzantine Emperor Justinian, who
reigned from 527 to 565,  tells the story of the Roman
Empire, and he refers to Constantine’s transferral of the
seat of the Roman Empire from Rome to Constantinople in
330 as going “contr’al corso del ciel” — “counter to heaven’s
course”: “Poscia che Costantin l’aquila volse / contr’ al
corso del ciel” (After Constantine had turned the
Eagle / counter to heaven’s course [Par. 6.1-2]).
3. At the same time, Constantine’s good intentions will be
specifically vindicated in Paradiso 20 when the pilgrim
sees the soul of the Emperor twinkling among the lights of
the eagle of justice. The eagle will describe Constantine as
the one “whose good intention bore evil fruit”: “L’altro che
segue, con le leggi e meco, / sotto buona intenzion che fé
mal frutto, / per cedere al pastor si fece greco” (The next
who follows — one whose good intention / bore evil fruit —
to give place to the Shepherd, / with both the laws and me,
made himself Greek (Par. 20.55-7).

[36] The skills and knowledge that eventually debunked the

centuries-long conspiracy that is the Donation of Constantine
were rooted in a new ability to historicize language acquired
by the humanists of the Quattrocento. If Dante had lived a few
centuries later, he would have witnessed the great Italian humanist
Lorenzo Valla (1407-1457) use newly acquired philological knowledge to
attack the authenticity of the Donation of Constantine. Lorenzo showed
that the Latin of the Donation of Constantine was not the Latin of
Emperor Constantine’s fourth century. The Donation of Constantine
was a forgery written in the papal court circa 750-800 CE, long after the
reign of Emperor Constantine.

[37] Valla conclusively debunked the document on which the Church’s

claims to temporal rule in the West were based. This heroic undertaking
was enabled by the new discipline of philology: a discipline based on a
historicized understanding of language that was not yet fully evolved in 
Dante’s time.

[38] Dante, having no basis to believe the document fraudulent and

illegal, could only kick and scream against its contents.

Inferno 20: Determinism and Astrology

Manqué
 this is the bolgia of divination and false prophecy: practices that
are forms of determinism
 and yet Dante does not engage the most important medieval art of
divination, namely astrology
 the fourteenth-century commentator Benvenuto da Imola
implicates Dante in the material of this bolgia
 instead of dealing with contemporary astrology and the issues of
determinism it raises, Dante deflects by litigating the truth value
of classical poetry and classical culture
 the canto focuses on four classical diviners associated with four
great classical texts: Amphiaraus from Statius’ Thebaid, Tiresias
from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Arruns from Lucan’s Pharsalia, and
Manto from Vergil’s Aeneid
 the brief mentions of medieval astrologers Michael Scot and
Guido Bonatti recall the astrologer who in real life engaged Dante
textually, Cecco d’Ascoli (1257-1327)
 Virgilio is again, and more explicitly than before, assigned the
task of debunking the Aeneid
 tragedìa vs. comedìa
 two classical sorceresses in the Inferno — Erichtho and Manto —
both connected to Virgilio
 gender issues: the unnamed contemporary witches are treated
with far less respect than the wizard Michael Scot
 the classical seer Tiresias and Dante’s fascination with
transgressing the boundary of gender: transgender experience
[1] Inferno 20 deals with the sin that commentators have traditionally
referred to as false prophecy or divination. In this bolgia Dante features
the gamut of activities with which humans have attempted to foretell the
future and to convince fellow humans that they are able to do so. He
features these activities, but he also sidesteps them, evading a
confrontation with the importance of these activities in his own day.

[2] Dante lived in a moment when prophecy, divination, magic,

alchemy, and astrology were intensely valued and intensely
debated. The views of various claimants to inspired truth existed in
tension, and many attacks of “false prophet” were launched and
rebutted and litigated throughout this period. One example is the life
and subsequent reception of Joachim of Flora, the Cistercian abbot and
mystic who died in 1202. Dante places Joachim in the heaven of the sun
and describes him as “endowed with prophetic spirit”: “di spirito
profetico dotato” (Par. 12.141). And yet, having been supported by the
Church while alive, Joachim’s ideas excited suspicion later on: they were
condemned by Alexander IV in 1256, his central doctrine was confuted
by St. Thomas in the Summa Theologiae (I-II, Q. 106, a. 4), and its
Franciscan exponents were sternly repressed by St. Bonaventure.

[3] Dante does not use his bolgia of false prophets and diviners to

wrestle with contemporary debates around the practices of prophecy,
divination, or astrology. Rather, in Inferno 20 Dante deflects: he
features classical diviners rather than Christian ones. He sidesteps the
crucial contemporary issues with which he could have engaged.

[4] Most interestingly, Dante deflects astrology, a pursuit in which he

personally took pleasure, according to the astute gloss offered by the
fourteenth-century commentator Benvenuto da Imola: “qui
aliquantulum delectatus est in astrologia” (who to some degree took
pleasure in astrology). (The citation is from Benvenuto’s commentary
to Inferno 20.19-24: Benvenuti de Rambaldis de Imola, Comentum
super Dantis Aldigherij Comoediam, ed. J. P. Lacaita, 5 vols. [Firenze:
Barbèra, 1887], vol. 2, p. 67, also available through the Dartmouth
Dante Project.)

[5] Benvenuto goes so far as to implicate Dante in astrology, a

sin of this bolgia, writing that the matter of
this bolgia touches the author personally. Indeed, this is the
observation that leads him to note that Dante took pleasure in 
astrology: “praesens negotium tangebat autorem ipsum, qui
aliquantulum delectatus est in astrologia” (the present matter touches
the author himself, who to some degree took pleasure in astrology).

[6] Benvenuto goes on to suggest that the author reveals his personal

connection to this sin through the weeping pilgrim. The pilgrim,
weeping at the grotesquely twisted bodies of this bolgia, really weeps
out of compassion at Dante’s own “error”: “Ideo bene fingit se nunc ita
plorare compatiens aliis et sibi de errore suo” (Therefore he does well to
depict himself now weeping, having compassion for others and himself
for his error). So what is this “error” of which Benvenuto writes?

[7] Astrology is the most important form of divination in

Dante’s time. In the medieval period astrology still had academic,
scientific, and philosophical standing. In our modern age, “astrology”
has declined into a pseudoscience, while the scientific study of the stars
is now termed “astronomy”. In Dante’s time, astrology was not
distinguished from astronomy.

[8] Dante mentions two medieval astrologers in Inferno 20 (three if we

include Asdente). All are briefly touched upon at the end of the canto.
One tercet (Inf. 20.115-17) is devoted to the very important figure of
Michael Scot, an astrologer and scholar whose work is central in the
history of the transmission of Aristotle in the West:
Michael Scot, (born c. 1175—died c. 1235), Scottish scholar and
mathematician whose translations of Aristotle from Arabic and Hebrew
into Latin are a landmark in the reception of that philosopher in western
Europe.

Scot was famous in the European Middle Ages as an astrologer and soon
acquired a popular reputation as a wizard. He is first recorded at Toledo
in 1217, where he finished translating the treatise of al-Bi ṭrūjī
(Alpetragius) on the sphere. In 1220 he was in Bologna and during the
years 1224–27 may have been in papal service, as he is mentioned in
several papal letters. A pluralist, he was promoted archbishop of Cashel
in Ireland (May 1224) but declined the see a month later. He seems,
however, to have held benefices in Italy from time to time. After 1227 he
was at the Sicilian court of the Holy Roman emperor Frederick II and
was mentioned as recently dead in a poem written early in 1236.

His works are mainly undated, but those on natural philosophy seem to
predominate in his earlier, Spanish period, and those on astrology in his
later, Sicilian period. At Toledo, in addition to his translation of al-
Biṭrūjī, Scot translated Aristotle’s Historia animalium from Hebrew or
Arabic. He also translated, perhaps at this time, Aristotle’s De caelo, and
he was probably responsible for the translations of the De anima and
the commentary by Averroës that is found in the same manuscripts.
There is no evidence that Scot translated Aristotle’s Physics,
Metaphysics, or Ethics.

He wrote three treatises on astrology, and several alchemical works

were ascribed to him. He appears in Dante’s Inferno (xx) among the
magicians and soothsayers and has the same role in Boccaccio.

(“Michael Scot,” Encyclopedia Britannica, accessed 10/27/2015)

[9] Immediately after the sighting of Michael Scot, Virgilio points to the

thirteenth-century Italian Guido Bonatti: “Vedi Guido Bonatti”
(Inf. 20.118). Bonatti is, according to Cesare Vasoli, “il più autorevole
trattatista di astrologia del Medioevo italiano” (the most authoritative
author of astrological treatises in the Italian Middle Ages; see “Bonatti,
Guido,” in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, available online
at Treccani.it, accessed 10/27/2015). Vasoli cites Bonatti’s self-
description from 1260: “astrologus Communis Florentiae de Forolivio”
(astrologer of the Commune of Florence from Forlì).

[10] The intellectual profiles of Michael Scot and Guido Bonatti — the

latter was astrologer to various lords whose careers interested Dante:
Ezzelino da Romano, Guido Novello da Polenta, and Guido da
Montefeltro — offer many points of interest to the author of
the Commedia. Dante himself both concedes the importance of the stars
in determining some human traits and dispositions but also vehemently
rejects the idea that they determine our choices. They cannot determine
our choices, Dante states categorically in Purgatorio  16 (see especially
verses 73-6), because humans are endowed with free will.

[11] At the same time there is no denying that Dante engages in

a kind of generic determinism in the Commedia, a poem that
reads the future with respect to every character we meet. It is
clear that determinism in this non-technical sense is built into the very
enterprise of writing a poem that adjudicates the afterlife. Moreover, the
same Paradiso that defends the absolute freedom of the will also
presents souls who return to their natal stars, an idea that the poet then
has to dismiss as a metaphor. The representational template that
governs Paradiso is revealed, with fanfare, to be merely a trope; it could
not possibly reflect reality, Beatrice explains in Paradiso 4, because the
idea of the soul returning to its natal star is dangerous, a deterministic
Platonic “poison”.

[12] Again, we marvel at the perspicacity of Benvenuto da Imola, who

also notes in his commentary to Inferno 20 that Dante in
the Commedia set out to predict some future events: “et voluit
praedicere aliqua futura, sicut patet in libro isto” (Dante wanted to
predict some future things, as appears in this same book).
[13] One of the future events that Dante predicts  is the damnation of
Boniface VIII, who was not yet dead — hence not yet damned — when
Dante visited the bolgia of the simonists in April 1300.
In Inferno  19 Pope Nicholas III claims to have read in the book of the
future — the “scritto” of Inferno 19.54 — that Boniface VIII will
eventually join him in the third bolgia of the eighth circle. By
condemning Boniface to Hell while he was still alive (Boniface died on
11 October 1303), Dante effectively denies Boniface the benefit of his
free will. In doctrinal terms, Boniface must be granted the opportunity
to repent until the last moment of his life, as Dante knew full well; in
fact, Dante dramatizes precisely this doctrine of repentance in
extremis in the case of Bonconte da Montefeltro in Purgatorio  5.

[14] How can Boniface be free to repent until the hour of his death on 11
October 1303  when his name is already inscribed in the book of the
future in April 1300? The case of the pre-damnation of Boniface VIII
in Inferno 19 seems dangerously deterministic, even discounting the
generic determinism that inheres to the genre of afterlife vision.

[15] Dante-poet opines in Inferno 19.88 that he was perhaps “troppo

folle” (too rash) in the outraged tirade he directs at Nicholas III: “Io non
so s’i’ mi fui qui troppo folle, / ch’i’ pur rispuosi lui a questo metro” (I do
not know if I was too rash here — I answered so [Inf. 19.88-9]). In fact,
Dante-poet was “troppo folle” in Inferno 19 — but less in what he says
than in what he does: he engineers the theologically audacious pre-
damnation of Boniface VIII.

[16] Dante steps back in Inferno 20. He evades determinism and

astrology and the dangers surrounding these issues by focusing on
classical diviners instead of medieval astrologers.

[17] Dante’s substitution of classical diviners for medieval astrologers is

a way of distancing the Commedia from the practice of divination by
contemporary medieval astrologers. It is a way of distancing himself
from the dangers of determinism, the determinism for which Cecco
d’Ascoli attacks Inferno 7 and the determinism that we note in the
treatment of Boniface VIII in Inferno 19.

[18] And yet, the historical record  offers us some traces of the reality
that Dante did not fully succeed in distancing himself from the
deterministic quotient of the Commedia. We have been considering
Benvenuto da Imola, and we should also consider the links between
Dante and the astrologer Cecco d’Ascoli (1269-1327), the author of the
philosophical poem Acerba. Cecco attacks Dante on a number of counts
in Acerba, where he makes clear that he views Dante as engaged in an
inferior version of his own project.

[19] Cecco would not have taken the trouble to condemn Dante’s project
if he had not viewed Dante’s project as in some fundamental ways
analogous to his own. Moreover, if Dante’s project had not overlapped
in some ways with that of professional astrologers like himself, Cecco
would have had no interest in competing with him.

[20] Very interesting in this context is Cecco’s indictment of verse 89

of Inferno 7, which he considers an example of determinism on Dante’s
part. See the Appendix to the Commento on Inferno  7, where I explain
that Cecco’s attack was not dismissed as without foundation by
contemporaries. Rather, both Boccaccio and Benvenuto da Imola took
Cecco’s concern about Inferno 7.89 seriously.

[21] Benvenuto da Imola was right on target when he wrote

of Inferno 20 that “the present matter touches the author himself”.
Here is the full passage from Benvenuto’s commentary to Inferno 20,
verses 19-24:

praesens negotium tangebat autorem ipsum, qui aliquantulum

delectatus est in astrologia, et voluit praedicere aliqua futura, sicut patet
in libro isto. Ideo bene fingit se nunc ita plorare compatiens aliis et sibi
de errore suo.
the present matter touches the author himself, who to some
degree took pleasure in astrology, and wanted to predict some
future things, as appears in this same book. Therefore he does
well to depict himself now weeping, having compassion for
others and himself for his error. (Benevenuti de Rambaldis de
Imola, Comentum super Dantis Aldigherij Comoediam, ed. J. P. Lacaita
[Florence: Barbèra, 1887], commentary to Inferno 20.19-24, available
through the Dartmouth Dante Project)

[22] What did Benveunto mean by “some future things” — “aliqua

futura”? Perhaps with the qualification that Dante wanted to predict
“some future things” Benvenuto intends the Commedia’s specific
prophecies: the prophecy of the coming of the veltro in Inferno 1.101,
the prophecy of the DXV in Purgatorio 33.43, and so forth. But the real
point is that the entire Commedia is a prophecy, a revelation concerning
matters hidden to ordinary mortals, not given to us to see.

[23] Benvenuto vigorously defended Dante against Cecco’s charge of

determinism in Inferno 7.89. But Benvenuto’s commentary
to Inferno 20 shows that he was nonetheless fully aware of the ways in
which Dante was complicit and that he understood that Dante’s
behavior might indeed excite suspicion. Benvenuto’s insightful
comment about the weeping pilgrim and Dante’s participation in the
“error” of this bolgia shows us that even Dante-poet’s concerted attempt
at deflection and evasion was not sufficient to get Benvenuto off the
scent.

[24] In short, with the sinners of Inferno 20 Dante is dealing with

versions of himself. The poet distances the sinners in this bolgia by
choosing figures from classical antiquity. He does so because the topic at
hand is one of too much potential personal proximity.

***
[25] Instead of litigating astral determinism or mystical
prophecies about the future of Christendom in Inferno 20,
Dante litigates the truth value of classical culture.

[26] As we have seen, Dante chooses to avoid the issue of truth claims
and prophecy in contemporary society in this canto. Instead, he turns
his treatment of false prophecy into an indictment of the limitations and
hubris of classical culture. This canto is thus linked to others where
there are negative characterizations of figures from classical antiquity,
for instance Inferno  9 (featuring Erichtho, Medusa, etc.)
and Inferno  14 (Capaneo). Inferno 20 is also linked to canti where
Dante-poet finds an imaginative way to undermine the authority of
the Aeneid as carrier of truth; this he does, for instance, in the
encounter with Pier della Vigna in Inferno  13.

[27] Capaneo is particularly relevant to our discussion here, because he

is in Hell as a blasphemer, and blasphemy is a religious crime. We recall
that Dante presents the scene of the blasphemer who taunts Jove to use
his thunderbolts, using language studded with references to classical
mythology. As he does in Inferno 20, Dante in Inferno 14 sidesteps a
contentious area of contemporary religious life and uses a classical
figure as a form of avoidance.

[28] In Inferno 20 Dante focuses on the soothsayers and diviners of

antiquity. He features four classical figures, each one taken from one of
the great epic poems of classical antiquity. Inferno 20 falls into four
narrative segments. Lines 1-30 present the sin of divination in general
terms. Lines 31-57 introduce famous diviners of antiquity, each of whom
figures in and represents a major classical text. Lines 58-99 encompass
the digression on the founding of the city of Mantova. Lines 100-130
contain Dante’s query regarding further diviners, and Virgilio’s
response, in which he names Eurypylus from the Aeneid and the
contemporary practitioners discussed above.

[29] The four diviners of antiquity who dominate the bolgia of false

prophecy and divination in Dante’s telling are:
 1. Amphiaraus from Statius’ Thebaid
2. Tiresias from Ovid’s Metamorphoses
3. Arruns from Lucan’s Pharsalia
4. Manto from Vergil’s Aeneid

[30] Inferno 20 is also an important installment in the ongoing

Vergilian narrative: Virgilio does most of the speaking in Inferno 20 and
he speaks with unusual passion. Perhaps because of the severe
condemnation of classical culture in this canto, Virgilio feels the need to
distance himself from the sinners here with greater than usual vigor.
Virgilio speaks with the same kind of harshness to Capaneo
in Inferno 14, and there are interesting points of contact, centered on
the city of Thebes and its dark history, between Capaneo and three of
the diviners of Inferno 20.

[31] When Dante weeps at the sight of the deformed bodies of the

diviners, whose heads are twisted around so that their tears run down
their buttocks, Virgilio rebukes him in no uncertain terms: “Qui vive la
pietà quand’ è ben morta” (Here pity only lives when it is dead [Inf.
20.28]).

[32] Virgilio’s strong condemnation of the diviners requires him,

moreover, to inveigh against the prophetess Manto, featured in his own
poem, the Aeneid, where she is the founder of a city named after her.
Mantova is the city where the Latin poet was born, as we remember
from Virgilio’s first speech in Inferno 1: “e li parenti miei furon
lombardi, / mantoani per patria ambedui” (Both of my parents came
from Lombardy, / and both claimed Mantua as native city [Inf. 1.68-9]).

[33] Manto is not the first classical sorceress named in the Inferno. That

honor goes to Erichtho, by whose black magic Virgilio was compelled to 
make this journey once before: according to Virgilio he was “congiurato
da quella Eritón cruda / che richiamava l’ombre a’ corpi sui” (compelled
by that savage Erichtho / who called the shades back to their bodes
[Inf. 9.23-4]).  We note that Erichtho’s power, in Virgilio’s telling, is
demiurgic: she can reconnect shades to their bodies, in a perverse kind
of resurrection. According to Virgilio’s story in Inferno  9, Erichtho
“forced” him to undertake his previous entry of the city of Dis: “ella mi
fece intrar dentr’ a quel muro” (she made me enter that wall [Inf. 9.26]).
Dante raises the question of coercion, and suggests Virgilio’s passivity in
the face of Erichtho’s power.

[34] But can one’s will be coerced by a sorceress, by a diviner,

by a seer? Can the stars determine our fates? Determinism is
the core issue here.

[35] Virgilio now tells the story of Manto — who is connected to

Erichtho by her identity as a classical sorceress and by the adjective
“cruda” — significantly and negatively altering the earlier account in the
tenth book of the Aeneid. The Latin poem relates that the prophetess
bears a child, Ocnus, who founds the city and gives it his mother’s name:
“qui muros matrisque dedit tibi, Mantua, nomen” (who gave you walls
and the name of his mother, O Mantua [Aen. 10.200]). The Commedia,
on the other hand, relates that Manto, childless and indeed a “savage
vergin” (“la vergine cruda” [Inf. 20.82]), settled and died in a spot later
chosen by men from the surrounding regions as suitable for a city: “Fer
la città sovra quell’ossa morte” (They built a city over her dead
bones [Inf. 20.91]). Virgilio’s correction of the text of the Aeneid with
respect to Manto constitutes another authorial self-correction of the sort
that Dante-poet imposed upon Virgilio at the end of Inferno  14, where
Virgilio must explain that the river Lethe is not in Hell but in Purgatory,
a contradiction of the description of the underworld in Aeneid 6.

[36] In the Aeneid Manto is fertile and sutured to local history, bearing

a son who founds a city in her name. In the Commedia Manto is cut off
from civilization, a vergine cruda who left no son but only her bones to
mark the place where she had lived, in a spot later chosen by others for a
city. At the end of Virgilio’s speech detailing the founding of Mantova,
he instructs the pilgrim to disregard all other accounts of his birthplace:
“la mia terra” (Inf. 20.98). The only true version of the founding of
Mantova is the one he has just heard, says Virgilio. In fact, the pilgrim
must “let no lie defraud the truth”, in other words he must reject all
other accounts as false:
Però t’assenno che, se tu mai odi
originar la mia terra altrimenti,
la verità nulla menzogna frodi. 
(Inf. 20.97-9)
Therefore, I charge you, if you ever hear
a different tale of my town’s origin,
do not let any falsehood gull the truth.
[37] Here we find a programmatic undermining of
the Aeneid. In Dante’s Poets, I note: “But in what source could Dante
find the story of ‘mia terra’ told ‘altrimenti,’ if not in the Aeneid?
According to Vergil’s own statement then, the Aeneid is a text that —
like the false prophets of this bolgia — is capable of defrauding the
truth” (Dante’s Poets, p. 217).

[38] Echoing Inferno  13, where Virgilio positions the Aeneid’s account

of a man changed into a tree as a “cosa incredibile” and the Commedia’s
account of the metamorphosis of Pier della Vigna into a tree as true and
therefore credible, in Inferno 20 Virgilio dismisses as false the account
of the founding of Mantova told in Aeneid 10 and replaces it with the
“true” version of the Commedia.

[39] All of these elements feed into the important information about

genre that Virgilio offers toward the end of Inferno 20, where he calls
his Aeneid “l’alta mia tragedìa” (my high tragedy [Inf. 20.113]). At the
beginning of canto 21 Dante reconfirms that his poem is, instead, a
“comedìa”:

Così di ponte in ponte, altro parlando

che la mia comedìa cantar non cura,
venimmo... (Inf. 21.1-3)
We came along from one bridge to another,
talking of things my Comedy is not
concerned to sing.
[40] The three occasions on which Dante uses the genre
terminology comedìa vs. tragedìa are all in Inferno:
 1. Inferno 16.128: the narrator swears an oath by the notes of
his comedìa as he seeks to describe the not-to-be-believed
arrival of Geryon, “maravigliosa ad ogne cor sicuro”
(enough to bring amazement to tehe firmest heart
[Inf. 16.132])

2. Inferno 20.113: toward the end of Inferno 20 Virgilio calls

the Aeneid his “alta tragedìa”

3. Inferno 21.2: soon thereafter, at the outset of Inferno 21,

Dante refers to “la mia comedìa”, as though in reply to
Virgilio’s “alta mia tragedìa” at the end of the previous
canto

[41] Dante uses this constellation of moments to define his

poem in juxtaposition to Vergil’s Aeneid, the greatest poem of
antiquity that he had read, through a system of associations analyzed
in Dante’s Poets:

The language of line 99, with its harsh juxtaposition

of verità and menzogna, as well as the appearance in line 113
of tragedia, the Comedy’s second d genre term, indicate the close ties
which bind this episode to that of canto XVI: Vergil’s poem, defined
as a tragedia, is, at least at times, a lie that defrauds the truth,
while Dante’s poem is a truth that sometimes bears the face of
a lie. Such a poetic truth is, as we already know, a comedìa, a term
Dante will now use for the last time in the opening verses of canto XXI.
We note the progressive unfolding of information: first the implicit
association of the Aeneid with menzogna in XX, 99; then Vergil’s
reference to his poem as “l’alta mia tragedia” in XX, 113, which results in
the alignment of menzogna and tragedia; and finally, safely distanced
from the tragedies of the ancients by the boundary between cantos XX
and XXI, the reference to Dante’s poem as “la mia comedìa” in XXI, 2,
which confirms that his poem is the opposite of the Aeneid and
therefore also of menzogna. (Dante’s Poets, pp. 217-18)
[42] There is a second diviner from the Aeneid in Inferno 20. The minor
character Eurypylus is revised by Dante from a common foot-soldier in
the Aeneid to an augur in Inferno 20.106-17, thus becoming another
element in the massive rewriting of the Aeneid that we find
in Inferno 20. Moreover, Virgilio points precisely to the heavily revised
Eurypylus to commend Dante for knowing the Aeneid — his “alta
tragedìa” (113) — in its entirety:

Euripilo ebbe nome, e così ’l canta

l’alta mia tragedìa in alcun loco:
ben lo sai tu che la sai tutta quanta. 
(Inf. 20.112-14)
His name’s Eurypylus; a certain passage
of my high tragedy has sung it so
you know that well enough, who know the whole of it. 
[43] Dante-poet thus puts Virgilio, his character, into an unenviable
position in Inferno 20, scripting for him a wholesale repudiation of
the Aeneid on the subject of the founding of Mantova and following up
with a similar insistence that Virgilio embrace a completely different
Eurypylus from the minor character in his poem:

The episode belongs to the Aeneid’s second book. In order to persuade

the Trojans to take the fateful horse into their city, Sinon invents his
deceitful tale, claiming that the Greeks were going to offer him in
sacrifice to Apollo; Eurypylus is the soldier who, according to Sinon, was
sent to consult the oracle, which would respond by demanding a Greek
life: “suspensi Eurypylum scitatum oracula Phoebi / mittimus”
(Uncertain, we send Eurypylus to consult the oracle of Phoebus
[Aeneid II, 114-115]). In canto XX Dante transforms this harmless
messenger into a partner of the seer Calchas, responsible with Calchas
for the sacrifice of Iphigenia at Aulis, and has Vergil insist on this
identification by pointing to the Aeneid as its source and stressing
Dante’s thorough knowledge of that text, a poem that he is said to know
in its entirety, “tutta quanta”. (Dante’s Poets, p. 221)

[44] As the above analysis demonstrates, through Eurypylus Dante-poet

enmeshes Virgilio’s alta tragedìa in a skein of lies and deceit that goes
back to Sinon and the Trojan Horse. Sinon will figure as Malebolge’s
quintessential liar in Inferno 30.

[45] Nonetheless, while in Dante’s Poets I stress the negative

implications of the tercet devoted to the revision of Eurypylus, I now
note that — despite the Virgilian violations in which this tribute to
Dante’s knowledge of the Aeneid occurs — there is still genuine
satisfaction in witnessing Dante’s claim to know Vergil’s alta
tragedìa from stem to stern: “tutta quanta” — all of it. Dante may revise
the Aeneid for his own purposes, but he honored it enough to learn it by
heart. There is, moreover, something quite remarkable about the
simplicity and directness of verse 114: the spoken cadence of “ben
lo sai tu che la sai tutta quanta” carries the conviction of lived
experience.

***

[46] The treatment of Tiresias and Manto reverts to the gendered and

sexualized language that is featured in Inferno 18 and that needs to be
systematically explored in the treatment of lower Hell. Here the
emphasis is very much on the body, apparent from the frequent use of
words referring to body parts: 26 in the course of 126 verses. (For charts
and further discussion of the most “body-saturated” canti in Inferno, see
the Commento on Inferno 25.) The bodies of the diviners are twisted
and distorted. Their punishment for trying to see too far “ahead” is to
have their heads now literally face backwards: “perché volle veder
troppo davante, / di retro guarda e fa retroso calle” (and since he
wanted so to see ahead, / he looks behind and walks a backward
path [Inf. 20.38-9]).

[47] Dante takes this opportunity to remind us that Tiresias is the

ancient prophet who had a transgender experience, having experienced
life as both male and female: “quando di maschio femmina divenne”
(when he from male became female [Inf. 20.41]). While the evocation of
Tiresias’s experience of gender is not negative, the description of Manto,
the “vergine cruda” of Inferno 20.82, dwells on her sexuality in crude
and degrading fashion that is highly gendered. There are references to
her “breasts” (“mammelle” [Inf. 20.52]), her “hairy parts” (“ogne pilosa
pelle” [Inf. 20.54]) and to her “loosened braids”: “le trecce sciolte”
(Inf. 20.53).

[48] The sexualization of hair, present also in the treatment of

Thaïs in Inferno  18 and notably absent from the circle of lust
in Inferno 5, is a typical misogynist trope employed to attack
female transgression and sexuality.

[49] This gendered treatment of false prophecy, emphasized in the

figure of Manto, is reprised at canto’s end with the fascinating and
depressing reference to anonymous contemporary female diviners:

Vedi le triste che lasciaron l’ago,

la spuola e ’l fuso, e fecersi ’ndivine;
fecer malie con erbe e con imago.
(Inf. 20.121-23)

See those sad women who had left their needle,

shuttle, and spindle to become diviners;
they cast their spells with herbs and effigies.
[50] There is no language that more confines females to their
gendered niche than the words “ago”, “spuola,” and “fuso”:
“needle,” “shuttle,” and “spindle” (Inf. 20.121-122). The point here
is that these “triste” — sad and miserable female wretches — should
have stayed faithful to their needles and spindles, rather than branching
out to “make themselves diviners”: “fecersi ’ndivine” (122).

[51] We note the contrast between the treatment of these unnamed

contemporary witches to that of the male astrologers whom Dante
mentions by name. Michael Scot was popularly considered a wizard (see
the Encyclopedia Britannica entry cited above), a view that Dante
clearly endorses: he uses the word “magic” in relation to Michael Scot,
writing that “veramente / de le magiche frode seppe ’l gioco” (he
certainly / knew how the game of magic fraud was played [Inf. 20.116-
17]). The adjective “magiche” in “magiche frode” is a hapax in
the Commedia: the only form of the term “magic” to appear in the
poem, it draws attention to the magical component of astrology and to
Michael Scot’s status as a wizard. The word “magiche” also reminds us
of the witch Erichtho, of whom we could also say that “veramente / de le
magiche frode seppe ’l gioco”.

[52] Despite his damning knowledge of fraudulent magic, Michael Scot

was a mathematician and a scholar, a translator of Aristotle from
Arabic, and he maintains some of the dignity accorded to his (male)
professional attainments in Dante’s Hell. So too for Guido Bonatti,
despite the “fama di empietà e di oscura stregoneria” (fame of impiety
and witchcraft) attributed to him by Vasoli in the biography cited above.

[53] Even the lowly cobbler of Parma is referred to by his nickname,

Asdente (118). Although distinguished from the even lowlier females by
the dignity of a name, Asdente is nonetheless also connected to the
anoynmous witches who follow him in Virgilio’s presentation. He is
castigated for not having stuck to the tools of his trade, “his cord and
leather”: “ch’avere inteso al cuoio e a lo spago / ora vorrebbe” (who now
would wish he had attended to / his cord and leather [Inf. 20.119-20]).
Asdente’s cuoio and spago introduce the list of  tools that the women
foolishly left behind to become witches: “l’ago, / la spuola e ’l fuso”
[Inf. 20.121-2]). From cord and leather we move to needles, shuttles,
and spindles: Asdente’s lower class status seems to position him as the
male pivot to the  divining women who “fecer malie con erbe e con
imago” (cast their spells with herbs and effigies [Inf. 20.123]).

[54] Manto, a pagan female sorceress who has no offsetting male

professional attainments to her credit, is treated in a harsh and
degradingly sexualized manner in this canto: she is, as we saw, the
“vergine cruda” (Inf. 20.82). But at least Manto has a name, and a city
named after her, however the story of its founding is negatively revised.
[55] The sad and lowly unnamed female witches of Inferno 20 are
forerunners of the many women who were condemned to cruel and
gendered fates, as witches, in the centuries to come.

Appendix

Tiresias: “Hardly nobody gets to live two genders in their life”

(Caitlyn Jenner)

[56] Tiresias is presented in a way that explicitly recalls the Ovidian tale

told in Metamorphoses 3.316–36. Dante conjures the prophet as one
who experienced life both as male and as female:

Vedi Tiresia, che mutò sembiante

quando di maschio femmina divenne
cangiandosi le membra tutte quante;
e prima, poi, ribatter li convenne
li duo serpenti avvolti, con la verga,
che riavesse le maschili penne.
(Inf. 20.40-45)
And see Tiresias, who changed his mien
when from a man he turned into a woman, 
so totally transforming all his limbs 
that then he had to strike once more upon 
the two entwining serpents with his wand 
before he had his manly plumes again.
[57] Ovid tells the story of Tiresias who witnesses two large snakes
mating in the forest and strikes them. As a result the seer is transformed
into a woman, living as a woman for seven years. In the eighth year he
happens upon the same snakes again and resolves to strike them again.
He is transformed back into a man, regaining his “prior form”: “forma
prior rediit” (Metam. 3.331).

[58] Dante’s condensed account in Inferno 20 of Tireisias’ double

transformation foreshadows the metamorphoses of Inferno  25. The
experience is one that involves “cangiandosi le membra tutte quante”
(totally transforming all his limbs [Inf. 20.42]) and the phrase “mutò
sembiante” in verse 40 anticipates the programmatic mutare of canto
25: “Così vid’ io la settima zavorra / mutare e trasmutare” (And so I saw
the seventh ballast change /and rechange [Inf. 25.142-43]). There are
more connections that would bear further investigation, synthesized in
the reference to “li duo serpenti avvolti” (the two entwining snakes)
of Inferno 20.44: the seventh bolgia teems with entwining snakes, but
not loving ones, like those of the Tireisias myth — nor for that matter, of
the Cadmus myth, to name an Ovidian figure whom Dante cites
in Inferno 25.97. Cadmus and his wife Harmonia are transformed
in Metamorphoses 4.563-603 into two loving snakes, reminiscent of the
copulating snakes struck by Tiresias, and very unlike the terror-inducing
predator-serpents of the seventh bolgia.

[59] But these considerations, while important for any full accounting of

Tireisias’ story as an intertext of Inferno 25, take us away from the issue
that I want to stress here, which is the importance of gender
in Inferno 20. The Ovidian tale of Tireisias is evoked in language that is
highly gendered — “maschio”, “femmina”, “maschili” — and has the
specific merit of explicitly raising the issue of transgender experience.

[60] Dante is fascinated by the idea of transgressing the

strictly patrolled boundary of male-female gender. Already in
early lyrics in the Vita Nuova he imagines transgressing female space
and being able to mourn alongside women, in a way that was socially
unacceptable:

Voi che portate gives us a glimpse of a Dante who is not comfortable

with the social norms with which he lives, a poet who uses poetry to
create occasions for dialogue and encounter that are not permitted by
the world around him. His intense desire to participate in the female
work of mourning — caught in the imperatives “Ditelmi, donne” (tell
me, ladies [7]) and “nol mi celate” (don’t hide it from me [11]) — verges
on impropriety. His is a desire that threatens to trespass the rigid social
barrier placed between male and female and that also risks feminizing
him. We will see in the next sonnet how the ladies take action to re-
establish the normal divisions between the sexes and between their
roles. (Dante’s Lyric Poetry: Poems of Youth and of the Vita Nuova, p.
195)

The brief but compelling evocation of Tireisias’ transgender experience

speaks to a long-term Dantean aspiration.

Inferno 21: Comedìa and Truth

 adding a new technique of verisimilitude to his roster, Dante
begins Inferno 21 with the tantalizing news that he omits
information from his account of Hell, and that there is therefore
more to his possible world than he chooses to share: “altro
parlando / che la mia comedìa cantar non cura” (talking of things
my Comedy is not / concerned to sing [Inf. 21.1-2])
 the rough “tavern humor” and plebeian lexicon adds to the
narrative variatio and innovation of lower Hell
 here begins a novella in four acts, with a beffa; it extends
from Inferno 21 through the first third of Inferno 23
 a small society comes into focus, with a complex and stratified
social order
 this canto offers a major installment in the ongoing Virgilio
narrative
 Malacoda’s “truthful lie” vs. Dante’s “lying truth” (the phrases are
based on “ver c’ha faccia di menzogna” from Inf. 16.124)

A Novella in Four Acts:

Act 1. Inferno 21, verses 4-57

Act 2. Inferno 21, verses 58-end, and Inferno 22, verses 1-30

 Act 3. Inferno 22, verse 31-end;

Act 4. Inferno 23, verses 1-57 Act 4. Inferno 23, verses 1-57

[1] The first tercet of Inferno 21 features the Commedia’s second and

last use of the noun — “comedìa” — that gave the poem its title:

Così di ponte in ponte, altro parlando

che la mia comedìa cantar non cura,
venimmo . . .                            
(Inf. 21.1-3)
We came along from one bridge to another,
talking of things my Comedy is not
concerned to sing . . . 
[2] In this tercet Dante lets us know that, although comedìa tells truth,
it does not tell everything: it tells only what has been deemed necessary
and important for its readers. Dante here lets us know that he has
curated his account of his voyage, having omitted many things that he
saw but chooses not to relate.

[3] By claiming to omit some of what he saw, Dante adds to his

text’s quotient of realism. He gives life to the text by casually
insisting on the life outside the text.

[4] This is one of the many remarkably effective subliminal techniques

for garnering verisimilitude of which the Commedia is full. This
particular technique, that of putting emphasis on what he is not going to
tell us, goes back to Inferno 4, where Dante spells out the power of
the poet to withhold information. After the pilgrim joins the bella
scola of classical poets and is welcomed as “sixth among such wisdom”
(Inf. 4.102), Dante tells us that the group of poets discussed many
things, but he does not specify what they were; in fact, he actively omits
that information. Rather, he concocts a rather aggressive formula to
emphasize the value of such omission, saying that they spoke of matters
of which it is as beautiful now to be silent as it was then beautiful to
speak: “parlando cose che ’l tacere è bello, / sì com’ era ’l parlar colà dov’
era” (talking of things about which silence here / is just as seemly as our
speech was there [Inf. 4.104-5]).

[5] The two travelers have left behind the twisted forms of the diviners
in the fourth bolgia. In the second tercet of Inferno 21 they pause at the
top of the arched bridge to look down into the next “fessura” — cleft or
ditch (4) — which is “mirabilmente oscura” (wonderfully dark
[Inf. 21.6]). The reason for the darkness of the fifth bolgia will turn out
to be that it is filled with boiling pitch of the sort used to mend ships. All
this is explained by way of a famous and detailed comparison between
the pitch that is prepared during the winter by the Venetians in their
arsenal — “Quale ne l’arzanà de’ Viniziani” (As in the Venetian arsenal
[Inf. 21.7]) — and the material prepared in the fifth bolgia, “not by fire,
but by the art of God”: “non per foco, ma per divin’ arte” (Inf. 21.16).

[6] The fifth bolgia of the ten bolge of the circle of fraud holds

the barattieri, as specified in Inferno 21.41: “ogn’uom v’è barattier”
(there, everyone’s a grafter). Baratteria is a medieval term no longer in
use, which signifies fraud committed to obtain illicit gain to the
detriment of one’s community; such fraud includes selling influence,
taking bribes and kickbacks, and in general corrupting public office and
civic life. There is an archaic use of “barratry” in English with a similar,
but more localized meaning: fraud or gross negligence of a ship’s master
or crew at the expense of its owners or users. For Dante, baratteria is
the corruption of the state as simony is the corruption of the Church.
Since the term “barratry” is well nigh meaningless in English, I will use
the Italian or refer to graft or public corruption.

[7] As a technical and legal matter, baratteria was the crime typically

used in Dante’s day as the juridical pretext of those newly come to
power for exiling their adversaries. As such it was leveled against Dante
and other “Bianchi” (the White party, to which Dante belonged) when
the “Neri” (the Blacks) came to power. See Inferno  6 and Inferno  10 for
the struggles between the two factions and the ultimate wresting of
power from the Bianchi by the Neri, resulting in Dante’s exile. It must
have been particularly galling for one such as Dante, deeply committed
to the study of ethics and to living an ethical life, to find himself formally
accused of baratteria.

[8] Baratteria is the corruption of civic governance, and the result is the

corruption of the social order. Hence, in the canti devoted to graft,
Dante will create the contours of a small society that is deeply
corrupted by mutual and absolute lack of trust.

[9] The treatment of the fifth bolgia is unusually extended (perhaps,

some have speculated, because of the autobiographical importance
of baratteria as the crime used to justify Dante’s exile). It embraces
roughly two and one-third canti: canto 21, canto 22, and the first 57
verses of canto 23. In order to parse the drama’s linear unfolding, I have
divided the drama into four narrative blocks or “acts”. If, on the other
hand, we consider the narrative materia of this bolgia not as it unfolds
in linear time, but structurally, we see that the fifth bolgia boasts two
story-arcs, a primary story-arc  that extends over the whole bolgia and a
secondary story-arc that is inserted into the first:

1. Inferno 21.4 – Inferno 23.57: the primary story-arc

recounts what happens between Dante and Virgilio and the
devils who are the guardians of this bolgia; this story-arc
extends all the way from the beginning of Inferno 21
to Inferno 23.57.

2. Inferno 22.31 – Inferno 22.151: the secondary story-

arc is confined to canto 22 and is the story of what happens
between a particular sinner and the devils who capture
him; this story-arc begins in Inferno 22.31 and concludes
at the end of the canto 22.

[10] We saw this same narrative procedure of a briefer story-arc

embedded within a longer one when Dante and Virgilio last encountered
devils, at the gates of Dis (Inferno 8-9). There the encounter with
Filippo Argenti (Inferno 8) is embedded within the story of the devils’
recalcitrance and unwillingness to open the gate. The opposition of the
devils is dealt with by the arrival of the angelic messenger who sweeps
everything out of his way.

[11] I will present the events of this bolgia as a “novella in 4 acts” that

unfolds over two and one-third canti. The drama involves both sinners
and devils; the devils are the guardians of this bolgia, whose job it is to
fork the sinners and stick them back under the boiling pitch whenever
they try to come up for relief. A devil is described in verses 29-33, where
we learn that he is black and fierce, with wings spread wide: “con l’ali
aperte e sovra i piè leggero!” (His wings were open and his feet were
lithe [Inf. 21.33]).

[12] As the above description of a devil suggests, this is

the bolgia that conforms most explicitly to the popular
medieval conception of Hell.

[13] Those of you who have read the Decameron can also think of the

parallels between the story-line of these canti and the many novelle in
which we see the theme of the “beffator beffato”: the trickster who is
tricked in turn by someone even cleverer than he. The beffa or deceitful
trick is a staple of the novella tradition: in Boccaccio’s hands it is a form
of trickery and deceit that has an active and physical component, that is
not simply verbal deceit. The beffa will play a major role in this bolgia,
particularly in canto 22.

[14] Everyone in this bolgia — including both grafter-prisoners and

devil-guards — is tricky and deceitful, and everyone is trying to deceive
everyone else. This is Dante’s representation of civic governance.

[15] Military themes and lexicon are featured in Inferno 21 and 22.

These themes have the effect of focusing on the state and its citizenry
and the weighty responsibilities of those who govern, the very
responsibilities that are abused by the grafters. The simile of the
Venetian arsenal at the beginning of Inferno 21 emphasizes civic
industry and collaboration. Likewise, the autobiographical reference to
the battle of Caprona in Inferno 21.95 serves to remind us of Dante’s
own civic engagement: as a citizen of Florence he was also perforce a
member of the militia and had the responsibility to take part in battle, a
responsibility that he fulfilled.

Act 1. Inferno 21, verses 4-57

[16] After the introductory sequence describing the features of the

fifth bolgia, Dante begins the action with the arrival of a devil. The first
devil calls out to his fellow devils, “O Malebranche” (37), thus giving us
for the first time an appellation for the diabolic denizens of this realm.
We are in a place that, as we learned in Inferno 18, is “detto Malebolge”
(called Malebolge [Inf. 18.1]); we recall that Malebolge means “evil
sacks” or “evil ditches”. We now learn that the diabolic guradians of this
evil ditch are the “Malebranche” (Inf. 21.37) or “evil claws”; we will
learn further on that their leader is named “Malacoda” (Inf. 21.76) or
“evil tail”. The society of devils who inhabit the fifth bolgia is coming
into focus.

[17] The first unidentified devil carries an “anziano” (Inf. 21.38): a

magistrate, holder of public office, the equivalent of prior in Florence.
Through the reference to the local cult of “Santa Zita” (Inf. 21.38) it is
stipulated that this magistrate is from Lucca. The focus on Lucca, a
Tuscan city, highlights the theme of civic graft as part of the urban fabric
in city-states like Lucca and Florence.

[18] As I mentioned above, this bolgia conforms to the popular

conception of Hell. Along with its popular infernal iconography of devils
armed with prongs and hooks, it also features popular diction and
humor. Carrying the sinners by the ankles, slung over their shoulders in
the way that butchers carry carcasses (34-36), the devils are compared
to cooks who order their scullery-urchins to force the meat in the pot
back down under the broth, so that it does not float:

Non altrimenti i cuoci a’ lor vassalli

fanno attuffare in mezzo la caldai
la carne con li uncin, perché non galli.  
(Inf. 21.55-57)
The demons did the same as any cook
who has his urchins force the meat with hooks
deep down into the pot, that it not float.
[19] In the precision of “cuoci” and their “vassalli” we see an emblem of
the stratified social order that emerges from these canti. If we begin to
form in our minds the image of a huge kitchen in a castle, populated by
cooks and scullery-urchins and enormous pots of boiling broth, that
image will be in keeping with the sinner whom we meet in the next
canto. The action of Inferno 22 revolves around an unnamed petty
embezzler who lived on the seedy fringes of life in the castle of King
Thibaut II of Navarre.

[20] Dante will come back to this image of meat floating in a pot of

boiling broth at the end of Inferno 21, where the sinners are called “li
lessi dolenti” (the sorrowful boiled ones [Inf. 21.135]). The
adjective lesso conjures boiled meat, as in the current usage “carne
lessa” or meat that has been cooked in boiling water.

Act 2. Inferno 21, verses 58-end, and Inferno 22, verses 1-30

[21] Now begin the interactions and negotiations between Dante,

Virgilio, and a troop of devils bearing evocative names and led by
Malacoda. For the first time in their journey together Virgilio orders
Dante to hide. At the same time that Virgilio demonstrates concern, he
also attempts to be reassuring. He tells his charge not to fear, for he
knows how to handle devils, having dealt with them on a previous
occasion:
e per nulla offension che mi sia fatta,
non temer tu, ch’i’ ho le cose conte,
perch’ altra volta fui a tal baratta.  
(Inf. 21.61-63)
No matter what offense they offer me,
don’t be afraid; I know how these things go—
I’ve had to face such fracases before.  
[22] Virgilio’s reminder that he has been here before, intended to
reassure, is not very reassuring when we consider the two possible
referents for “altra volta” in verse 63. The phrase refers to the “other”, or
previous, occasion on which Virgilio was faced with such a fracas. The
“altra volta” can refer to the time, long before this journey, when Virgilio
went to the pit of Hell conjured by the sorceress Erichtho
(see Inferno  9), or it can refer to the time, within the parameters of this
journey, when he attempted to negotiate with the devils at the gate of
Dis (see Inferno  8 and 9). The first occasion is tainted because of its
association with black magic and coercion by the forces of evil. The
second occasion too is less than reassuring because Virgilio’s
negotiations with the devils at the gate of Dis did not result in success.

[23] We know that the pilgrim will not find a reminder of the events at
the gate of Dis reassuring because he has already stated clearly, to
Virgilio, that he knows his guide failed on that occasion. In Inferno 14
the pilgrim tellingly addresses his guide as “you who can defeat / all
things except for those tenacious demons / who tried to block us at the
entryway”:

Maestro, tu che vinci

tutte le cose, fuor che ’ demon duri
ch’a l’intrar de la porta incontra uscinci  (Inf. 14.43-45)
[24] Despite his previous failure, and despite the pilgrim’s obvious
awareness of that failure, Virgilio remains touchingly confident in his
abilities. And yet he is facing a greater challenge than the one he faced
in Inferno 8-9.

[25] At the gate of Dis Virgilio negotiates with devils who remain
anonymous. They are truculent and defiant. They sing in only one key:
that of resistance and opposition. Effectively, what they communicate is:
“no, you may not pass, we are committed to blocking your passage”.

[26] Malacoda, an individualized devil with a name and

personality, has many more arrows in his quiver. Instead of
being overtly truculent and overtly defiant, he is suavely
charming and apparently helpful. In other words, Malacoda is
a master of deceit.

[27] With the addition of much more color and detail, and with a
baroque and burlesque unfolding of diabolic names that correspond to
varying diabolic personalities — Malacoda, Alichino, Calcabrina,
Cagnazzo, Barbariccia, Libicocco, Draghignazzo, Ciriatto, Graffiacane,
Farfarello, Rubicante —, the scene from Inferno 8 is now reprised and
modulated, replayed not in the key of defiance but in the key of malice
and deceit.

[28] Virgilio explains to Malacoda that his mission as guide to someone

— an unspecified someone, for Dante is still in hiding — through the
infernal regions is willed by God. Malacoda replies with a resignation
that is likely feigned but that immediately results in Virgilio summoning
Dante from his hiding place. The suggestion is that Virgilio is too
trusting in the power of reason.

[29] The narrator compares the fear that he feels on coming forth from
hiding to the fear of the conquered Pisan soldiers whom he personally
saw exit the castle of Caprona after the battle of August 1289. A pact was
struck at Caprona, whereby the Pisans, having surrendered, would be
allowed to exit the castle with guarantee of safe-passage. Similarly, a
pact has been struck here, in the fith bolgia, between Virgilio and
Malacoda. But Dante-pilgrim fears that the pact cannot be trusted, and
of course he is right.

[30] Throughout this drawn-out encounter with devils, the pilgrim is

not as trusting as his guide. The pilgrim resists Malacoda’s offer of an
escort and continues to consider the devils hostile in verses 127-32.
Virgilio is wrong when he states categorically toward the canto’s end
(verses 133-5) that Dante has nothing to fear. Reasonable Virgilio is
deceived by Malacoda’s reasonable demeanor.

[31] Malacoda weaves truth with falsehood into a perfectly designed

trap, giving instructions and information that seem straightforward and
helpful to Virgilio but that his troops can decode as deceitful and hostile.
We can parse Malacoda’s speech, labeling its sections true or false. In
this way we can see how cleverly the devil weaves falsehoods with truths
to create a fabric of deceit:

1. Verses 106-8: “Più oltre andar per questo / iscoglio non si

può, però che giace / tutto spezzato al fondo l’arco sesto”
(You can go no farther / on this ridge, because the
sixth bridge / lies smashed to bits at the bottom
there) TRUE

2. Verses 109-11: “E se l’andare avante pur vi

piace, / andatevene su per questa grotta; / presso è un altro
scoglio che via face” (Yet if you two still want to go
ahead, / move up and walk along this rocky edge; / nearby,
another ridge will form a path) FALSE

3. Verses 112-14: “Ier, più oltre cinqu’ ore che

quest’otta, / mille dugento con sessanta sei / anni compié
che qui la via fu rotta” (Five hours from this hour
yesterday, / one thousand and two hundred sixty-
six / years passed since that roadway was shattered
here) TRUE

[32] More succinctly, Malacoda’s three declarations can be labeled thus:

1. It is TRUE that the way forward is obstructed because the

sixth bridge lies smashed to bits on the floor of Hell.
 2. It is FALSE that they will eventually find an unbroken
bridge over the bolgia.

3. It is TRUE that the shattering of the bridge occurred

precisely 1266 years ago (plus one day minus five hours).

[33] The falsehood of an intact bridge that the travelers will access

further on is successfully packaged as truth, by being sandwiched
between the truthful statements on either side of it.

[34] In verses 115-26 Malacoda orders his troop to set out on a

reconnaissance mission; they are to check on sinners who have exited
the pitch and simultaneously to accompany the travelers to the next
bridge. He concludes with a clear signal that the travelers are fair game,
for they are to be kept safe until they arrive at the next intact crossing-
point: “costor sian salvi infino a l’altro scheggio / che tutto intero va
sovra le tane” (keep these two safe and sound till the next ridge / that
rises without break across the dens [Inf. 21.125-26]).

[35] However, there is no bridge that crosses over the next bolgia intact

— “tutto intero” (all whole [Inf. 21.126]) — since all the bridges over the
sixth bolgia were shattered at the same time. Hence Malacoda’s
instruction to his fellow-devils to guide Dante and Virgilio and to keep
them safe until (“infino a”) they reach the next intact bridge is a covert
instruction to attack them. Malacoda’s safe-passage is a fraud.

[36] Malacoda correctly informs the travelers that the broken bridge

was shattered 1266 years ago (plus one day minus five hours), in other
words, he correctly informs them that the bridge fell during the
earthquake that accompanied Christ’s Crucifixion. However, he omits
the information that at that time all the bridges over the
sixth bolgia crumbled and fell in ruins to the floor of Hell. There is thus
no intact bridge over the sixth bolgia.

[37] The devil embeds his lie about the bridges over the sixth bolgia of
Malebolge into his truthful account of the earthquake that accompanied
the Crucifixion. The larger truth to which he attaches his falsehood
makes his lie compelling and assures the success of his deceit.
Malacoda’s account is so truthful, so “historical,” that he dates Dante’s
journey by telling us the precise number of years that have passed since
Christ harrowed Hell and so caused the infernal “ruine” to be formed
(for the ruine, see Inferno  12):

Ier, più oltre cinqu’ore che quest’otta,

mille dugento con sessanta sei
anni compié che qui la via fu rotta.
(Inf. 21.112-114)

Five hours from this hour yesterday,

one thousand and two hundred sixty-six
years passed since that roadway was shattered here.
[38] The earthquake occurred in the year 34 CE at noon of Good Friday.
It is now 1266 years plus one day minus 5 hours later: in other words, it
is now 7 AM of Holy Saturday in the year 1300. In order to deceive
Virgilio and Dante, Malacoda offers true and precise information with
which we can date the pilgrim’s journey. Indeed, Malacoda’s reference is
so important that all our critical discussions as to precise dates and
times within the Divine Comedy begin from the information that
Malacoda provides us in Inferno 21.

[39] Malacoda dates Dante’s journey. He does so by stipulating

the precise amount of time that has elapsed — in years, days,
and even hours — since the Crucifixion.

[40] Malacoda is able to deceive Virgilio because he accompanies his lie

with a great truth: the date of the death of Christ. Moreover, Dante
fashions a backstory that is chronologically very subtle and precise.
Malacoda is able to deceive Virgilio about the state of the bridges over
this bolgia because the Roman poet does not know that the bridges have
fallen: when he was previously here, the bridges were still intact. In
other words, Virgilio’s first trip to lower Hell antedates the earthquake
caused by Christ’s Harrowing of Hell; it antedates the earthquake that
caused these bridges to crumble and the other ruine to form. Virgilio
indeed tells us as much in Inferno  12. With respect to the ruina that
marks the entrance to the seventh circle, Virgilio informs the pilgrim
that the great landslide was not present when he journeyed this way
before: “Or vo’ che sappi che l’altra fïata / ch’i’ discesi qua giù nel basso
inferno, / questa roccia non era ancor cascata” [Now I would have you
know: the other time / that I descended into lower Hell, / this mass of
boulders had not yet collapsed [Inf. 12.34-6]).

[41] Let us reconstruct the chronology. We have just learned from

Malacoda that the bridges over the sixth bolgia fell as a result of the
Harrowing of Hell. In Inferno 9, Virgilio tells Dante that he was newly
stripped of his flesh — newly dead — when Erichtho summoned him:
“Di poco era di me la carne nuda” (My flesh had not been long stripped
off [Inf. 9.25]). Therefore, Erichtho caused Virgilio to journey to lower
Hell in the window of 54 years that transpired between the Latin poet’s
death in 19 BCE and Christ’s arrival in Limbo in 34 CE. The fashioning
of so precise a backstory adds psychological density and realism to
Dante’s Virgilio-narrative.

[42] Malacoda’s truthful lie — in effect, a falsehood that

appears true — is the precise inverse of comedìa, a truth that
appears false. When Dante first uses the term comedìa in the context
of Geryon’s arrival in the final verses of Inferno  16, he defines it as a
“truth that has the face of a lie”: “ver c’ha faccia di menzogna”
(Inf. 16.124). In other words, Dante defines comedìa as a truth that may
at times appear false: “a comedia is that truth which has the appearance
of a lie but which is nonetheless always a truth” (Dante’s Poets, p. 214).

[43] Inferno 21 ends with a burlesque treatment of military behavior as

practiced by devils in Hell and with a famous instance of the low “tavern
humor” that characterizes this bolgia. The devils signal to their leader
that they have understood his instructions by pressing their tongues
between their teeth. He in turn signals them to depart on their mission
with a trumpet blast from his ass:
ma prima avea ciascun la lingua stretta
coi denti, verso lor duca, per cenno;
ed elli avea del cul fatto trombetta.  
(Inf. 21.137-39)
But first each pressed his tongue
between his teeth as signal for their leader.
And he had made a trumpet of his ass.
[44] A comedìa necessarily embraces and meditates on all
forms of semiosis, because it embraces and meditates on all
forms of reality.

Inferno 22: Life at Court, Novel Sport

 a manifesto of the mixed style: “ma ne la chiesa / coi santi, e in
taverna coi ghiottoni” (in church with saints, with rotters in the
tavern [Inf. 22.14-15])
 from urban corruption in Lucca to the courtly setting of the
kingdom of Navarre: the issues of “wealth management” as
discussed in the Introduction to Inferno  16 are here applied to the
hangers-on of a great court
 Sardinian barraters, part of an intratextual “Sardinian network”
that will be reprised in Inferno 32-33
 a specific micro-society is formed by the sinners of the
fifth bolgia, one that includes communication systems and
sporting events
 the “nuovo ludo” (new sport [Inf. 22.118]) has features of
the beffa from the novella tradition (see “buffa” in Inf. 22.133
and “beffa” in Inf. 23.14)

Act 2, Continued.  Inferno 22, verses 1-30

[1] Inferno 22 continues the drama initiated in Inferno 21, into which a

secondary drama will soon be inserted. The canto opens with a mock-
heroic passage that continues the military imagery from Inferno 21 and
is a repertory of different kinds of military communication and semiosis.
In the context of the bolgia that treats corrupt governance, the
emphasis on the sign-systems necessary for effective communication in
the military, and on the trust that we place in shared sign-systems in a
healthy and functioning society, is a way of commenting on the break-
down in governance and trust in the Italian cities.

[2] For the same reason, the mock-heroic opening of Inferno 22 takes

the form of an apostrophe addressed to the citizens of Arezzo: “Aretini”
(Inf. 22.5). The continuing references throughout Malebolge to Italian
city-states — evoked through the presence of citizens, as well as through
rhetorical devices like the simile of the Venetian arsenal in Inferno 21.7-
18 and this apostrophe implicating Arezzo — is a way of continuing the
connection between Italy and the fraudulent tar in which its citizens are
caught.

[3] The targeting of the citizens of Arezzo in the apostrophe that

opens Inferno 22 recalls Dante’s own participation in the recent military
history of Florence. Dante tells us in Inferno 21.95 that he participated
in the seige of Caprona, which occurred in August 1289. A few months
earlier, in June 1289, Dante was among the cavalry at the battle of
Campaldino, the battle in which Guelf Florence defeated Ghibelline
Arezzo.

[4] This opening passage is thus a way of returning to the military

context as one that bespeaks the functioning of society and one that is
replete with sign-systems and forms of semiosis. It is also a way to
return to the last verse of Inferno 21 and the cenno (signal) given there:
“ed elli avea del cul fatto trombetta” (And he had made a trumpet of his
ass). In all his past experience of military forms of communication, says
the narrator, an experience that is replete with trumpets (“trombe” [7]),
bells (“campane” [7]), drums (“tamburi” [8]), and signals from castle
walls (“cenni di castella” [Inf. 22.8]), he has never seen troops moved by
so strange a bugle (“sì diversa cennamella” [10]) as that resounding fart
at the end of Inferno 21.
[5] The “cenni di castella” of Inferno 22.8 recall the signs exchanged
between diabolic watch-towers in a similar semiotic activity described as
“render cenno” (to return a sign [Inf. 8.5]). This signal exchage occurs
as the travelers approach the city of Dis at the beginning of Inferno  8:

Io dico, seguitando, ch’assai prima

che noi fossimo al piè de l’alta torre,
li occhi nostri n’andar suso a la cima
per due fiammette che i vedemmo porre
e un’altra da lungi render cenno
tanto ch’a pena il potea l’occhio tòrre.
(Inf. 8.1-6)
I say, continuing, that long before
we two had reached the foot of that tall tower,
our eyes had risen upward, toward its summit,
because of two small flames that flickered there,
while still another flame returned their signal,
so far off it was scarcely visible.
[6] We are reminded that all encounters with devils have involved
challenge, obstruction, and, most significantly, the need to decode
hostile semiosis.

[7] The high-style opening of Inferno 22 was interpreted by Pietro di

Dante as an indirect stylisltic apology for the exceedingly vulgar ending
of Inferno 21. Pietro di Dante comments à propos the opening of canto
22 as follows: “unde excusat se auctor si ita turpiter hic modo hoc recitat
ratione loci et qualitatis materie, nam multa in taberna dicta et facta
tollerantur, ut dicitur hic in textu, que in Ecclesia improbantur” (the
author excuses himself if at this point he writes in such vulgar fashion
because of the nature of the place and the material, for indeed many
things may be said and tolerated in a tavern that are not approved in
church, as here is said in the text). (The Latin text is  from the critical
edition: Pietro Alighieri, Comentum super poema Comedie Dantis: A
Critical Edition of the Third and Final Draft of Pietro Alighieri’s
Commentary on Dante’s Divine Comedy, ed. Massimiliano Chiamenti
[Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies,
2002], p. 223; also available online through the Dartmouth Dante
Project.)

[8] Jacopo della Lana writes of the end of canto 21: “Circa la qual
locuzione si può scusare l’autore a chi l’accusasse di parladura sporca e
villana sì in questo luogo, come eziandio in lo XVIII, di Taide; chè la
materia e l’atto del luogo lo costrinse, cioè l’inferno, in lo quale è ogni
inordinazione e disconcio” (Regarding this language, we can excuse the
author to those who accuse him of shameful and lowly speech, both in
this place and also in the 18th canto of Thais; for it is the material treated
and the nature of the place that constrain him: namely Hell, in which
exist all disorder and filth). (The Italian text is from the critical
edition: Comedia di Dante degli Allaghieri col Commento di Jacopo
della Lana bolognese, ed. Luciano Scarabelli, 3 vols. [Bologna,
Tipografia Regia, 1866-67], vol. 1, p. 363; also available online through
the Dartmouth Dante Project.)

[9] Pietro di Dante considered the exordium of Inferno 22 a way of

making amends for the offensively low conclusion of the preceding
canto. I agree that the two passages are intended to contrast with each
other. In my view, the opening of canto 22 draws attention to the
purposefulness of the conclusion of canto 21 and to the constraint under
which the author operates: as Jacopo della Lana says, he must capture
Hell, a place that contains all disorder — moral and hence stylistic.
These canti are in this sense an intentional recital of the disparate
elements that make up the mixed style.

[10] The canti of Malebolge are notable for their stylistic

plenitude, for their fearless veering from high to low. Following
the arrival of Geryon and the announcement of the word comedìa at the
end of Inferno  16, Dante more aggressively promotes the mixed
style. Comedìa is not qualified by an adjective that limits it, like
Vergil’s alta tragedìa in Inferno  20.113. Comedìa is not the opposite
of alta tragedìa because it is not limited to one manner. It is not low,
but it includes low; it is not high, but it includes high.
[11] These canti are a manifesto for the mixed style; like the mock-
heroic exordium of Inferno 22, they are neither high nor low. Language
must adapt to represent all facets of reality.

[12] The poet turns to proverbial language in verses 14-15 in order to

synthesize the comedìa’s manifesto of stylistic decorum. The travelers
join up with the band of devils — “Noi andavam con li diece demoni. /
Ahi fiera compagnia! (We made our way together with ten demons: / ah,
what ferocious company! [Inf. 22.13-14]) — and the poet explains the
travelers’ counter-intuitive behavior with a proverbial comment: “ma ne
la chiesa / coi santi, e in taverna coi ghiottoni” (in church with saints,
with guzzlers in the tavern [Inf. 22.14-15]).

[13] The proverb justifying the plot development described above is

transferable from plot to style. Dante is effectively declaring that reality
dictates behavior (the decision to join the band of devils) and also
representation. The requirements of place dictate both our companions
(either sants or guzzlers), and also the manner of our speech: “ma ne la
chiesa / coi santi, e in taverna coi ghiottoni” (Inf. 22.14-15). In church
we are with saints, and we behave and speak accordingly. Likewise in
the tavern.

Act 3. Inferno 22, verse 31-end

[14] Into the overarching plot-line about Dante, Virgilio and the devils
(a more elaborate version of the encounter with devils at the gate of Dis
in Inferno  8–Inferno  9), the poet now inserts a remarkable secondary
plot about the devils and their interaction with one of the damned souls
of this bolgia.

[15] We recall that at the end of canto 21 Malacoda sent a

reconnaissance party, led by Barbariccia, on a mission to make sure that
no damned souls are outside of the boiling pitch. At that time Malacoda
also instructed his troop to accompany Dante and Virgilio to the next
intact bridge over the bolgia: “costor sian salvi infino a l’altro
scheggio / che tutto intero va sovra le tane” (keep these two safe and
sound till the next ridge / that rises without break across the dens [Inf.
21.125-26]). Accordingly, the travelers — reassured by Malacoda’s
having granted them apparent safe passage — have set out with ten
devils: “Noi andavam con li diece demoni” (We made our way together
with ten demons [Inf. 22.13]). Occasionally they see a sinner show his
back above the surface like a dolphin (19-24), but most of all they see
sinners partly exposed at the edges of the bolgia, like frogs at the
margins of a ditch (25-28). These souls rush to submerge themselves
when the devils approach, but one unlucky soul is captured by
Graffiacane:

e Graffiacan, che li era più di contra,

li arruncigliò le ’mpegolate chiome
e trassel sù, che mi parve una lontra. 
(Inf. 22.34-36)
And Graffiacane, who was closest to him,
then hooked him by his pitch-entangled locks
and hauled him up; he seemed to me an otter. 
[16] This grafter, protagonist of the forthcoming episode, is not named
in the text, but is commonly known in the commentary tradition as
Ciampolo. (This is an Italian corruption of the French name Jean Paul.)
Ciampolo explains that he is from the kingdom of Navarre in France,
that his mother placed him in the service of a lord — “Mia madre a servo
d’un segnor mi puose” (My mother made me servant of a lord [Inf.
22.49]) — and that his father was a rake who squandered his
possessions and killed himself: “che m’avea generato d’un
ribaldo, / distruggitor di sé e di sue cose” ([my mother] had had me by a
wastrel, / destroyer of himself and his possessions [Inf. 22.50-51]).
Eventually he moved up and served in the household of King Thibaut II
of Navarre, where he began to practice graft: “Poi fui famiglia del buon
re Tebaldo: / quivi mi misi a far baratteria” (Then I was in the
household of the worthy / King Thibault; there I started taking
graft [Inf. 22.52-53]).

[17] Ciampolo’s brief but rich narrative transitions the poet’s

lens from the urban graft of Lucca in central Italy in the
previous canto to a courtly setting in the south of France.
Suddenly we are transferred to the homeland of the courtly culture to
which Dante had been so drawn as a young poet. Thibaut II was King of
Navarre from 1253 to his death at 1270. His father Thibaut I was a
courtly poet who wrote in French. Thibaut I is the only Old French poet
named and cited in Dante’s linguistic treatise, De vulgari eloquentia,
where he is specifically called “King of Navarre”.

[18] The language that Ciampolo uses is taken from feudal and courtly
culture. The word “famiglia” in verse 52 — “Poi fui famiglia del buon re
Tebaldo” (Inf. 22.52) — indicates that he became a familiaris of King
Thibaut: familiaris is the technical term for a courtier in the service of a
lord. For instance, the poet Sordello whom the travellers meet
in Purgatorio 6 was a courtier and protégé of Charles I of Anjou, and
was described by Charles as “dilectus familiaris et fidelis noster” (our
faithful and beloved servant) in a document granting him certain feudal
castles in the Abruzzi. (The reference is from the Introduction
to Sordello: Le Poesie, ed. Marco Boni [Bologna: Libreria Antiquaria
Palmaverde, 1954], p. xcviii.)

[19] In his brief account, Ciampolo depicts an upward arc. He outlines

nothing less than his successful transtion from “servo” of a minor lord,
the role he was placed in by his mother — “Mia madre a servo d’un
segnor mi puose” (Inf. 22.49) — to familiaris of the king: “Poi fui
famiglia del buon re Tebaldo” (Inf. 22.52).  Anna Maria Chiavacci
Leonardi glosses the word famiglia in verse 52 thus: “da servo dunque
di un barone del re, divenne per la sua industria famiglia, cioè
cortegiano, degli uomini di fiducia del re stesso” (from the servant of a
baron of the king, he became through his hard work a bonafide member
of the famiglia, in other words a courtier, one of the trusted men of the
king himself). (See Chiavacci Leonardi, ed., Inferno [Milan: Mondadori,
2005], p. 662; also available through the Dartmouth Dante Project.)

[20] Of the term that Ciampolo uses for his father, “ribaldo” in verse 50,
Chiavacci Leonardi notes that it originally signified a man of the court
and subsequently took on negative connotations, and that the shift in
the word occurred precisely because of the negative habits associated
with courtiers: “in origine uomo di corte, devoto a signore (Tommaseo);
termine poi passato a cattivo senso, per i costumi propri dei cortigiani”
(originally man of the court, dedicated to the service of the lord
[Tommaseo]; the term subsequently took on a negative sense, because
of the habits typical of courtiers [Chiavacci Leonardi, op. cit., p. 662]).

[21] Sapegno adds to our understanding of “ribaldo” in his commentary,

citing Barbi:

Il vocabolo era usato per estensione a indicare ogni uomo che menasse
un’esistenza viziosa e dissipata, frequentando assiduamente bische,
taverne e postriboli. Il padre di Ciampolo è detto qui ribaldo, «non
perché tale di condizione sociale (ha un patrimonio da distruggere), ma
perché menava vita da ribaldo, in ciò che aveva di meno umiliante, ma
di piú vizioso, cioè giocare, gozzovigliare e stare in bordello» (cfr.
BARBI, Probl., I, 212-13, 242).

(The word was used by extension to indicate any man who led a vicious
and dissipated life, who assiduously frequented taverns and brothels.
The father of Ciampolo is here called ribaldo, “not because this was his
social condition — he had a patrimony to destroy — but because he lived
a ribald form of life, in its less humiliating but more vicious features:
that is gaming, extravagant feasting, and frequenting brothels”.)

(Natalino Sapegno,  ed., Inferno [Firenze: La Nuova Italia, 1968], p.

244; also available through the Dartmouth Dante Project)

[22] The life of a ribaldo is thus the dissipated life of a rake: a man who
gambles, drinks, and whores. It is the life evoked by the “taverna” in the
proverb cited above: “ma ne la chiesa / coi santi, e in taverna coi
ghiottoni” (in church with saints, with guzzlers in the tavern [Inf. 22.14-
15]). The life of Ciampolo’s father is a veritable rake’s progress, as he
proceeds from dissipation of his possessions to destruction of his self,
from squandering to suicide: he is, in his son’s words, “distruggitor di sé
e di sue cose” (destroyer of himself and of his possessions [Inf. 22.51]).
Verse 51 encapsulates both types of violence against the self featured in
the second rung of the circle of violence (Inferno  13).

[23] Ciampolo’s story and the story of his father offer a

keyhole onto the world of a court and its satellites, onto the
ethically-challenged lives of the hangers-on who inhabit the
margins of a great court. Ciampolo’s story is poignant: after all, he
worked his way up the courtly ladder from a baron’s servant to a king’s
courtier before his fall. Most of all, it suggests the difficulty of
maintaining equilibrium — “misura” is Dante’s word — toward material
goods in such an environment.

[24] Let us unpack a bit more. Ciampolo was the son of a ribaldo. His
father was not poor; as Barbi points out in Sapegno’s above citation, he
had an inheritance to squander. Ciampolo’s father destroyed first his
means and then himself. In other words, Ciampolo was born into an
environment of profound dismisura. Such a man is then put into
service, into a life in which he is surrounded by luxury and magnificence
that is not his. His biography sounds like a recipe for the making of an
embezzler.

[25] I think of Dante’s canzone Poscia ch’Amor, where he inveighs

against those who squander their wealth while posing as generous
citizens. I am not suggesting that Ciampolo’s father falls into the latter
camp; he was a ribaldo, a rake pure and simple, never mistakenly
considered a good citizen like the men whom Dante castigates in his
canzone.

[26] But the story of Ciampolo’s father, like Ciampolo’s own,

does suggest the pressures generated by life in an
environment where financial prudence was much less valued
than largesse in spending. For more on these issues, and for the
contradictions between courtly and Christian values regarding material
goods, see the essays “Sociology of the Brigata”, “Aristotle’s Mezzo,
Courtly Misura, and Dante’s Canzone Le dolci rime”, and “Dante on
Wealth and Society, between Aristotle and Cortesia”, cited in
Coordinated Reading. See too the Commentary on Inferno  16 in this
commentary.

[27] The same courtly culture of southern France, whose literature and

values were of vital importance to Dante in his youth and throughout his
life, will be featured in Paradiso 6, 112-42. Here Dante (through the
character of Justinian) will tell of a man called Romeo of Villeneuve
(1170-1250). Romeo was minister and chamberlain to Count Raymond
Berenger IV of Provence (reigned 1209-1245) and was the opposite of
a barattiere: rather than using his position of trust to practice
corruption, Romeo enhanced the Count’s prestige. He successfully
married Raymond’s four daughters, giving him back a return greater
than he had received: “che li assegnò sette e cinque per diece” (given
ten, Romeo gave Raymond five and seven [Par. 6.138]). Nonetheless
Romeo is unjustly exiled, due to the envy that bedevils courts (a
phenomenon on which Dante comments in Pier della Vigna’s story
in Inferno 13). Once again Dante depicts the pathology of courtly life
and suggests the difficulty of achieving balanced and ethical deployment
of material goods in a courtly setting.

***

[28] Now begins the build-up to a diabolic sport, which will culminate at

the canto’s end. We might — if we were to remain within the courtly
codes that mark this canto — consider this sport akin to an infernal
jousting match: “the clash of tournaments, the rush of jousts” are after
all present in the canto’s mock epic opening (“fedir torneamenti e correr
giostra” [Inf. 22.6]). The poet draws our attention to this sport with a
solemn address to the reader (also reminiscent of the mock epic opening
of this canto), which features the severely out of place Latin
word ludus (play or game), here barely vernacularized as ludo: “O tu che
leggi, udirai nuovo ludo” (O you who read, hear now of this new sport
[Inf. 22.118]). This is a nuovo ludo: a novel game, a new sport never
seen anywhere else.
[29] Dante sets out to recount the trick that Ciampolo will play on the
devils. In a wonderful emblem of the mixed style, Dante mixes Latinate
“ludo” (sport) and vernacular “beffa” (trick), high and low styles. The
term beffa signals the tricks and tricksters of the novella tradition, and
carries connotations of literary genre: the great novella writer Giovanni
Boccaccio devotes many stories of the Decameron to
narrating beffe played by one person upon another. That the sport
played by devils and grafters in Hell is both ludo and beffa
— both Latin and vernacular, both high and low — testifies to
the mixed mode that the author of the Commedia is forging.

[30] The word beffa refers to a deceitful trick that involves not only

words but also deeds, a trick of the sort that in English we call a
practical joke. To use Boccaccio as a reference point again, the beffe of
the Decameron are action-oriented affairs. Dante designs a “novel
sporting event” — “nuovo ludo” (Inf. 22.118) — that is effectively also a
“beffa”, a trick that gets the better of and therefore enrages the devil
Calcabrina: “Irato Calcabrina de la buffa” (But Calcabrina, raging at the
trick [Inf. 22.133]).

[31] Dante uses “buffa” in Inferno 22.133, followed by the now standard

spelling “beffa” in Inferno 23.14. Here we learn that the devils’ malice
toward the travelers has been stoked by the beffa that has successfully
been played on them by a sinner:

Io pensava così: “Questi per noi

sono scherniti con danno e con beffa
sì fatta, ch’assai credo che lor nòi.” 
(Inf. 23.13-15)
I thought: “Because of us, they have been mocked,
and this inflicted so much hurt and scorn
that I am sure they feel deep indignation.”
[32] The sport that is played in Hell — a “nuovo ludo” with features of
the vernacular and burlesque beffa from the novella tradition — is a
reflection of the infernal society that invented it: it is a game of
interlocking and mutual and complete deception. But it is also
important to stipulate that it is a game, in other words that Dante
intends his optic on human society and human cultural artifacts to be
broad enough to take in those essential staples of human life: games,
play, and sport. We think back to the Aeneid, the Latin poem that Dante
just told us he knew entirely, “tutta quanta” (Inf. 20.114), and remember
that Vergil devoted Book 5 of his epic to games played by the displaced
Trojans.

[33] Baratteria is the corruption of civic governance, and the result of

civic graft is the corruption of the social order. Hence in the canti
devoted to baratteria Dante will create the contours of a
specific micro-society that is deeply corroded by mutual and
absolute lack of trust. That small society is on display in Inferno 22,
a canto that emphasizes distinctive features of human societies, such as
courtly life and novel sport.

[34] Let us reconstruct the events that lead up to the nuovo ludo that

concludes Inferno 22. The devils hook Ciampolo,  and then offer the
travelers the opportunity to speak with the sinner before they shred him
(Inf. 22.31-63). Virgilio knows what interests Dante, and he asks
Ciampolo whether there are any Italians under the pitch: “Or dì: de li
altri rii / conosci tu alcun che sia latino / sotto la pece?” (Now tell:
among the sinners / who hide beneath the pitch, / do you know any who
are Italian?” [Inf. 23.64-66]). In detailing the fellow sinners from whose
company he has recently parted, Ciampolo focuses on two important
figures from Sardinia: Frate Gomita and Michele Zanche (Inf. 22.81-
90).

[35] The two Sardinian grafters are part of a Sardinian network in

the Commedia. Describing Frate Gomita, Ciampolo refers to the lord
whom Frate Gomita betrayed using the Sardinian term “donno”
(from dominus) for “lord”: “ebbe i nemici di suo donno in mano” (he
had his master’s enemies in hand [Inf. 22.83]). Sardinia was conquered
by Pisa in 1117, and Frate Gomita’s lord was Nino Visconti, who ruled
the giudicato of Gallura on behalf of Pisa from 1275-1296. (Sardinia was
divided into four giudicati in the Middle Ages.) Nino Visconti was
grandson of the Pisan noble Ugolino della Gherardesca and Sardinia will
be implicated in the story of Ugolino in Inferno 32. Nino Visconti was
also Dante’s personal friend, as we learn in Purgatorio  8, where he
notably carries his Sardinian title of “judge” (because he ruled
a giudicato): “giudice Nin gentil” (Noble Judge Nino [Purg. 8.53]). In
effect, Inferno 32 and 33 will be the dark locus in which the corruption
and politics of Pisa — and therefore of its possession Sardinia — will
come to a head.

[36] The other Sardinian grafter is “donno Michel Zanche / di

Logodoro” (lord Michel Zanche of Logodoro [Inf. 22.88-89]). Here
again Dante uses the Sardinian “donno” for “lord”. Michel Zanche will
also be linked intratextually to Inferno 33. Michele Zanche’s son-in-law
is the traitor Branca Doria, whose soul is in the ninth circle. As we shall
see, Branca Doria had his father-in-law Michele Zanche murdered in
order to acquire his lands and dominion. Branca’s sin was so heinous
that his soul went to Hell at the moment of his betrayal, while his body
— only apparently alive — remained on earth, now inhabited by a devil.

[37] The in-credible account — the fact that a devil came to inhabit the
traitor Branca Doria’s body at the moment that he killed his father-in-
law Michele Zanche — becomes a wonderful intratextual opportunity for
Dante-poet in Inferno  33. In order to support the truth of the
unbelievable assertion that Branca Doria’s body on earth is inhabited by
a devil, the soul who recounts the event (Frate Alberigo) invokes . . .
the bolgia of the barattieri. Frate Alberigo conjures the moment when
Michele Zanche arrives at the fifth bolgia, saying that Michele had not
yet arrived “nel fosso sù . . . de’ Malebranche” (in the Malebranche’s
ditch above [Inf. 33.142]) when a devil entered Branca’s body:

“Nel fosso sù”, diss’ el, “de’ Malebranche,

là dove bolle la tenace pece,
non era ancora giunto Michel Zanche,
che questi lasciò il diavolo in sua vece
nel corpo suo.”               
(Inf. 33.142-46)
“There in the Malebranche’s ditch above,
where sticky pitch boils up, Michele Zanche
had still not come,” he said to me,
“when this one left a devil in his stead
inside his body.”
[38] In the above passage Dante has Frate Alberigo drive his point home
by referring back, intra-textually, to “the ditch above”: to the tar of the
fifth bolgia. In effect, the poet appeals to his own creation — his own
possible world — as guarantor of the truth of that world. I analyze this
moment in the poem in The Undivine Comedy:

How does Alberigo — the creature in the fiction — persuade the pilgrim
to believe him? By appealing to “reality,” namely the fiction to which he
belongs. His reply is one of the most remarkable intratextual moments
within the Commedia, as the text buttresses the text, the fiction
supports the credibility of the fiction: “‘Nel fosso sù,’ diss’el, ‘de’
Malebranche, / là dove bolle la tenace pece, / non era ancora giunto
Michel Zanche, / che questi lasciò il diavolo in sua vece / nel corpo su’”
(“In the ditch of the Malebranche above,” he said, “there where boils the
sticky pitch, Michel Zanche had not yet arrived when this one [Branca]
left a devil in his place in his own body” [Inf. 33.142-46]). With these
references to the text of the Inferno — to the Malebranche and the
boiling pitch of the bolgia of the barraters — the pilgrim is convinced;
and the poet, who has mirrored and thereby mounted a sneak attack on
the reader’s reluctance to believe, concludes the canto by stating as
simple fact what he learned from Alberigo: in this place he found —
“trovai” (155) — a spirit whose soul was in Cocytus, while his body was
on earth. Now that the fiction has been accepted as reality, reality — in a
typically Dantesque inversion — can be revealed to be a fiction: “e in
corpo par vivo ancor di sopra” (and in body he still appears alive up
above [Inf. 33.157]). (The Undivine Comedy, p. 95)

[39] After telling of the Sardinians, Ciampolo offers to call other Italians

for Dante and Virgilio. He says he will use the sign-system shared by the
sinners to indicate that the coast is clear, and that by whistling he will
succeed in obtaining Tuscans and Lombards for Dante and Virgilio to
interview (Inf. 22.97-105). He has deduced that Dante and Virgilio will
be particularly interested in “Toschi o Lombardi” (99): we know that
Dante speaks like a Tuscan, because Farinata recognizes him
on the basis of his Tuscan speech, but does Virgilio then
sound like a Lombard? We will return to this question in
the Commento on  Inferno  27.

[40] Ciampolo is offering to abuse the trust of his companions in order

to secure Tuscans and Lombards. In return, the travelers will induce the
devils to stand away from him. He is trying to negotiate a truce like the
one under whose terms the Pisan foot-soldiers left the castle of Caprona
(see Inferno 21.94-96). The castle of Caprona is one of the castles whose
delivery to the Florentines was involved in Ugolino’s fall from power in
Pisa: again, all roads lead to Inferno 32-33.

[41] Ciampolo tries to secure the devils’ compliance by stressing the

magnitude of his offer to deceive his fellows; he must be telling them the
truth because he is offering to harm his friends! There is a brief standoff
as each “team” tries to ascertain the level of deceit of the other
(Inf. 22.106-117). Then mayhem ensues as Ciampolo finds a moment to
free himself and to dive back into the pitch — here is the culmination of
the “nuovo ludo” — with the devils in hot pursuit (Inf. 22.121-123). In
their anger and spite at being deceived by a sinner, the devils turn upon
each other and, at canto’s end, the “cooks are cooked”: “ch’eran già cotti
dentro da la crosta” (they were already cooked within that
crust [Inf. 22.150]).

[42] In sum: Ciampolo offers to betray his fellows in order to

betray the devils, who betray each other in their eagerness to
betray the sinners and in their enthusiasm to have Ciampolo
betray his comrades.

[43] A complex and perverse social order unfolds in Inferno 22: a

micro-society furnished with its own sign-systems and even its own
sports. The sinners have their own communications and codes of
governance, all deeply rooted in malice and betrayal.

[44] The narrator uses Ciampolo’s “nuovo ludo” and the subsequent

havoc to conclude Inferno 22 and to delay the next Act of his novella in
four Acts: Act 4, which returns to the overarching plot-line of the deceit
practiced by Malacoda on Dante and Virgilio, resumes in the next
canto. Inferno 22, like Inferno 8 and Inferno 16 before it, ends in
medias res, as Dante again works to script suspense into his
overdetermined plot. The devils have been humiliated: instead of being
the “cooks” engaged in submerging the sinners, they are now themselves
cooked within the tar. Will they seek to avenge themselves on Dante and
Virgilio?

Canto 23: Imaginary — or Real?

 an uneasy opening in a Franciscan key
 semiotic uncertainty through proliferation of meaning: the
Aesop’s Fable analogy and its component of “Geryonesque
fraudulence”
 how does an author script suspense in an overdetermined
narrative?
 an event that is “imagined” can also be true ⇒ the “nonfalse
errors” of Purgatorio 15
 the Virgilio double helix
 Dante and the Jews
 the bolgia of hypocrisy and religion: cf. “la malvagia ipocresia de’
religiosi” (the wicked hypocrisy of the religious) of Decameron 1.6

Act 4. Inferno 23, verses 1-57

[1] After the grafter Ciampolo succeeds in tricking the devils and causes
them to fight each other at the end of Inferno 22, Inferno 23 resumes by
continuing the “play in 4 acts” begun in Inferno 21. The secondary
plotline involving Ciampolo, the devils, and the nuovo ludo is now
complete, and the author returns to the main plotline: the story of Dante
and Virgilio deceived by recalcitrant and malevolent devils. We recall
that in Inferno 21 Malacoda instructed Barbariccia and his band to
grant Dante and Virgilio safe passage to the place where they will find
an intact bridge that spans the sixth bolgia: “costor sian salvi infino a
l’altro scheggio / che tutto intero va sovra le tane” (keep these two safe
and sound till the next ridge that rises without break across the dens
[Inf. 21.125-26]).

[2] Because there is no intact bridge over the sixth bolgia (in fact, all the

bridges over the sixth bolgia collapsed at the same time, during the
earthquake that accompanied the Crucifixion), Malacoda was effectively
telling his devils that they will soon be authorized to attack the travelers.
Malacoda’s deceptive instructions in Inferno 21 are intended to lull
Dante and Virgilio into a sense of false security before the devils turn on
them.

[3] Moreover, Malacoda issued his instruction to his troops at the end

of Inferno 21, when  the devils were feeling cocky and exuberant
— before the incident with Ciampolo that takes place in Inferno 22.
When the devils regroup after having been tricked by that tricky grafter,
Ciampolo, after the humiliation of being embroiled in the pitch
alongside the very sinners whom they guard, they are angry. The
humiliated devils are more stoked with malice toward the travelers than
they were before.

[4] And so Inferno 23 begins with a sense of uneasiness. The travelers

walk alone and “without company”: the phrase “sanza compagnia” in
the first verse of Inferno 23 recalls the “fiera compagnia” (fierce
company) with which Dante and Virgilio were forced to travel
in Inferno 22.14 and underscores the change that has occurred. Dante
and Virgilio are silent and in single file, like Franciscan friars when they
walk together:
Taciti, soli, sanza compagnia
n’andavam l’un dinanzi e l’altro dopo,
come frati minor vanno per via.
(Inf. 23.1-3)
Silent, alone, no one escorting us,
we made our way—one went before, one after—
as Friars Minor when they walk together. 
[5] The reference to Franciscan friars anticipates the bolgia of the
hypocrites in the second half of this canto: it is a bolgia that features
clerics and religious. The brief passing simile also suggests the special
place that Franciscan friars hold in Dante’s imagination.

[6] The sense of uneasiness increases as a result of learning what the

pilgrim is thinking about as he walks. He is meditating on Aesop’s Fable
of the frog and the mouse, which he considers analogous to the events
that have just occurred:

Vòlt’ era in su la favola d’Isopo

lo mio pensier per la presente rissa,
dov’ el parlò de la rana e del topo. 
(Inf. 23.4-6)
The present fracas made me think of Aesop —
that fable where he tells about the
frog and mouse.
[7] To understand Dante’s analogy we must begin with the plot of the
Fable to which Dante refers, which unfolds as follows: tying the mouse
to his leg with a string, the frog sets out and, at midstream, begins to
dive, intending to kill the mouse. The mouse resists; a kite flying by
seizes the mouse and, because of the string, is rewarded with the
malicious frog as well.

[8] Knowing the plot of the Fable brings some clarity: we know that the
Fable augurs badly for our travelers. But in fact, Dante’s literary analogy
obscures more than it clarifies, opening up a moment of great semiotic
density and hermeneutic obscurity. As I show in my discussion of this
passage in The Undivine Comedy, the comparison of the events
occurring in Inferno 23 to Aesop’s Fable of the frog and mouse
leads away from semiotic clarity.

[9] Dante complicates matters right off the bat by comparing the Fable
not only to the events that have been unfolding in “real time” in the
fifth bolgia but also to two little signifiers: the two little words “mo” and
“issa”, which both mean “now”. He declares that the events that have
occurred in the fifth bolgia are as similar to the events recounted in
Aesop’s Fable about a mouse who asks a frog for help in crossing a river
as mo is similar to issa: “ché più non si pareggia ‘mo’ e ‘issa’ /  che l’un
con l’altro fa” (for ‘mo’ and ‘issa’ are not more alike than the one with
the other [Inf. 23.7-8]).

[10] Comparing one set of signs to another set of signs is not a method

for achieving semiotic clarity. As I write in The Undivine Comedy:
“Applying one set of signs (the text of the fable) to another (the text of
the poem) results not in clarity but in confusion. And, in fact, the two
signs — ‘mo’ and ‘issa’ — whose likeness is declared the basis of the
comparison between the larger sets of signs, are themselves irreducibly
different” (p. 84).

[11] If we analyze the analogy between Aesop’s Fable and the events
of Inferno 21 and 22, as I do in The Undivine Comedy, we see that it
leads to a multiplicity of possible meanings:

The most common interpretation of this passage views Alichino as the

mouse, Calcabrina as the frog who should have come to his aid, and the
pitch as the kite who triumphs over both. More recently, scholars have
begun to focus on a second level of meaning, suggesting a proleptic
analogy between the fable and the pursuit that is about to occur,
whereby Dante is the mouse, Virgilio is an unwitting frog leading the
mouse into danger, and the Malebranche are the kite.

What interests me here, however, is not the correct interpretation of the

passage, but the fact that its interpretation has traditionally proved so
arduous. Establishing the equivalences between the two sets of signs —
indeed, three sets, if we add the story of Dante, Virgilio, and the devils —
has resulted in as many interpretations as there are ways of combining
the variables Dante has given us.

Thus, in addition to the most popular reading mentioned above, the

exegetical record includes the following combinations: Ciampolo as
mouse, Alichino as frog, Calcabrina as kite; Alichino as frog, Calcabrina
as kite; Ciampolo as frog, devils as mouse; Alichino as mouse,
Calcabrina as frog, Barbariccia as kite; Dante and Virgilio as mouse,
devils as frog, with the sometime addition of Ciampolo as kite; Ciampolo
as frog at beginning, Calcabrina as frog at end; Alichino and Dante as
mouse, Calcabrina and Virgilio as frog, devils twice as kite; Ciampolo
and Dante as mouse, Alichino and Virgilio as frog, Calcabrina and devils
as kite.

Undoubtedly, some of these equivalences are more plausible than

others; nonetheless, it is significant that Dante has planted a semiotic
terrain fertile enough for all of them — even the most farfetched — to
spring up. In other words, the historical lack of critical consensus
regarding the application of the fable to the events of the poem is part of
Dante’s point, which is the ambiguity — the Geryonesque fraudulence —
of all signs, all representation. Applying one set of signs (the text of the
fable) to another (the text of the poem) results not in clarity but in
confusion. And, in fact, the two signs — “mo” and “issa” — whose
likeness is declared the basis of the comparison between the larger sets
of signs, are themselves irreducibly different.

(The Undivine Comedy, pp. 83-84; for documentation of the reception

of the passage and its proliferating interpretations, here synthetically
recited, see the notes in The Undivine Comedy)

[12] The semiotic density and obscurity of the Aesop’s Fable

analogy — its “Geryonesque fraudulence” — increases the
sense of apprehension that hangs in the air in the opening
of Inferno 23.
[13] The narrator continues to recount the pilgrim’s thoughts, which are
focused on the devils and what he imagines will be their heightened
malevolence. The pilgrim reasons (correctly) that the devils’ anger will
be heightened because they have been mocked, made to absorb damage
and scorn due to the “beffa” inflicted upon them by Ciampolo:

Io pensava così: “Questi per noi

sono scherniti con danno e con beffa
sì fatta, ch’assai credo che lor nòi.” 
(Inf. 23.13-15)
I thought: “Because of us, they have been mocked,<
and this inflicted so much hurt and scorn<
that I am sure they feel deep indignation.”
[14] The pilgrim intuits that the devils will chase them, and that they
will be all the more determined not to lose this very special prey after
having lost a routine grafter. Immediately upon having this thought, the
pilgrim imagines the Malebranche in hot pursuit, using the
verb imaginare: “io li ’magino sì, che già li sento” (I so imagine them, I
hear them now [Inf. 23.24]). His hair curls with fear (19-20) and he tells
Virgilio that the devils are already right behind them, at their heels: “Noi
li avem già dietro; / io li ’magino sì, che già li sento” (they are after
us; / I so imagine them, I hear them now [Inf. 23.23-24]).

[15] The challenge for the narrator in the above passage is how to create
and manage fear of the Malebranche. How, in other words, does the
narrator generate suspense about the devils’ pursuit of the travelers,
given the overdetermined plot with which he is working? All readers
of Inferno who have read carefully thus far know that Dante cannot be
harmed, that his journey through the afterlife is willed by God (see the
Commento on Inferno  2).

[16] Dante-poet here faces a narrative dilemma: how to

represent the devils as though they pose a real threat and yet
not contradict the providential nature of the pilgrim’s quest?

[17] Dante has particular techniques with which he manipulates

narrative time and generates a feeling of suspense in the reader, a
feeling that he creates narratologically through the suspension of events
in order to suggest uncertainty as to their outcome. We saw at the end
of Inferno  8 how Dante uses the little adverb “già” to great effect as the
travelers wait, in a suspenseful sequence, for the arrival of the divine
messenger who will open the gate of Dis: “e già di qua da lei discende
l’erta / . . . tal che per lui ne fia la terra aperta” (and now, already well
within that gate, descends . . . the one who will unlock this realm for us
[Inf. 8.128, 130]).

[18] In Inferno 23 we witness an accelerated use of the same technique.

Dante-poet begins the buildup of narrative suspense with the
adverb già in verse 19: “Già mi sentia tutti arricciar li peli / de la paura”
(Already I felt my hair curling with fear [19-20]). The pilgrim then
alerts Virgilio to his fear of the Malebranche with a double use of the
same adverb già, to indicate that he already feels the devils hot on their
heels: “Noi li avem già dietro; / io li ’magino sì, che già li sento”
(Already we have them behind us; / I so imagine them, I already hear
them [23-24]). As soon as Virgilio has suggested a way for them to flee
“the imagined chase” — “l’imaginata caccia” (33) — the narrator cuts in
with another già. Here già is deployed to manage the transition from a
chase that is presented as only “imagined” to a chase that is now
acknowledged as real: “Già non compié di tal consiglio rendere, / ch’io
li vidi venir con l’ali tese” (He’d hardly finished telling me his
plan / when I saw them approach with outstretched wings [34-35]).

[19] The narratological analysis of The Undivine Comedy explains in

detail the importance of “già”, how Dante deploys the little adverb in
order to insinuate a feeling of simultaneity, and to denote urgency and
immediacy at the level of the plot:

Here già must do what the narrator, constrained by temporal order,

cannot; the adverb insinuates simultaneity, gives us the impression that
the devils are upon the travelers before Virgilio has finished speaking
(while in actual fact, of course, the narrator has been obliged to register
all of Virgilio’s words, and only then can pass on to the pursuers).
Throughout the episode there is a tension between, on the one hand,
temporal adverbs that denote urgency and immediacy (not only già,
but tostamente [22], tosto [27], pur mo [28], sùbito [37], sì tosto [46], a
pena [52]) and, on the other, the word imaginare, which seems to
relegate the devils to the pilgrim’s overheated imagination (“io li
’magino sì”, “imaginata caccia”). (The Undivine Comedy, p. 85)

[20] As noted above, the devils are now revealed to be not merely
imagined, but real. Dante here uses imaginare in a significant way: it is
a term, like sognare and parere, that denotes a very special category,
proper to visionaries and mystics: an “imagined” or heightened reality
that is simultaneously also real.

[21] Hence the alignment of the “imaginata caccia” of Inferno 23.33

with the “true imaginings” of Purgatorio, a list that encompasses the
“’ncendio imaginato” (imagined conflagration) of the dream of the eagle
in Purgatorio 9 (verse 32) and the Virgin Mary “imaginata” in the act of
responding to the angel Gabriel during the Annunciation. Of these and
other examples I write in The Undivine Comedy:

In the world of nonfalse error, what seems less realistic need not be less
true. The adjective imaginato tells an interesting story in this regard, for
when Vergil uses it to suggest that the devils’ pursuit is not real
in Inferno 23, he is mistaken; and if the “imaginata caccia” of
the bolgia of barratry is real, why not the “incendio imaginato” of the
pilgrim’s first dream? Maybe, in Purgatorio 9, the eagle is the “erring”
gloss of that for which Lucia is the “true” explanation, but if so the eagle
is a nonfalse error. And the Virgin imaginata in the act of speech, the
incense imaginato as its smoke enfolds the dancing Psalmist (both
these uses belong to the sculpted exempla of Purgatorio 10), are equally
“real”. These images are real, like the dream of the dreamer who wishes
he were dreaming in the remarkable simile of Inferno 30: “Qual è colui
che suo dannaggio sogna, / che sognando desidera sognare, / sì che quel
ch’è, come non fosse, agogna” (Like the one who dreams his hurt and, /
dreaming, wishes he were dreaming, / so that what is, as though it were
not, he craves [Inf. 30.136-38]). (The Undivine Comedy, p. 164)
[22] The devils’ chase not only gives the narrator the opportunity to
create suspense and fear. The devils’ aggression also offers the narrator
the opportunity to offset Virgilio’s overconfidence in his parley with
Malacoda, and his consequent failure to protect his charge from possible
harm, with the protective love and concern that he now shows for the
pilgrim in the face of imminent danger.

[23] Because all the bridges over the sixth bolgia were destroyed

(see Inferno  21 and the discussion of Malacoda’s lie), Virgilio and Dante
must slide on their backs right down into the sixth bolgia, where —
thankfully — there is no boiling tar. In their precipitate flight from the
devils, Virgilio is described as a mother who thinks naught of herself or
her own dignity as she leaves a burning home without her shift — naked
— in order to save her child:

Lo duca mio di sùbito mi prese,

come la madre ch’al romore è desta
e vede presso a sé le fiamme accese,
che prende il figlio e fugge e non s’arresta,
avendo più di lui che di sé cura,
tanto che solo una camiscia vesta . . .
(Inf. 23.37-42)
My guide snatched me up instantly, just as
the mother who is wakened by a roar
and catches sight of blazing flames beside her,
will lift her son and run without a stop —
she cares more for the child than for herself—
not pausing even to throw on a shift . . .
[24] We have seen Virgilio as a father-figure, and indeed he is frequently
called “padre” in the poem; he will be “dolcissimo padre” in the scene
that is his last, in Purgatorio 30. With the above simile in Inferno 23, in
which Dante compares Virgilio to a mother saving her child, the poet
shows his willingness to cross the gender barrier in order to further
deepen our sense of the affective bonds between the pilgrim and his
guide.
[25] In the final chapter of Dante’s Poets I analyze at length
the double helix of Dante’s “Virgilio narrative”, with its
braided intellective and affective strands. I show how Dante
constructs a coordinated story-line for his guide. He renders Virgilio on
the one hand ever more liable to fail in the intellective domain, in terms
of the decisions that he makes. And, simultaneously, on the other side of
the same narrative ledger, the poet renders Virgilio ever more loved and
admired in the affective domain. The events of Inferno 21-23 constitute
a major installment in the creation of this double helix narrative fabric:
these canti posit both Virgilio’s failure as guide in dealing with
Malacoda, and also the love and care that Virgilio shows for his charge
when confronted with danger.

[26] The lengthy and complex narrative arc that begins in Inferno 21

concludes with a strong narrative assertion of the impotence of the
devils of the fifth bolgia. However, in a dialectical treatment that is
typically Dantean, the devils’ impotence is imprinted —  narratologically
— with the urgency of the travelers’ escape: scarcely (“a pena”) have
Virgilio’s feet touched the floor of the sixth bolgia than the devils are on
the edge above them! By communicating that the travelers just barely
manage to arrive at the safety of the sixth bolgia, the narrator
communicates their peril and their fear. But, just as immediately, that
fear is no more, for the same Providence that made the devils the
ministers of the fifth bolgia has denied them the power to leave it. In an
echo of Beatrice’s claim that Hell’s misery does not touch her
(Inferno 2.92), the narrator informs us that the devils are powerless
outside of the bolgia whose guardians they are, and that the travelers
are therefore safe:

A pena fuoro i piè suoi giunti al letto

del fondo giù, ch’e’ furon in sul colle
sovresso noi; ma non lì era sospetto;
ché l’alta provedenza che lor volle
porre ministri de la fossa quinta,
poder di partirs’ indi a tutti tolle.
(Inf. 23.52-57)
His feet had scarcely reached the bed that lies
along the deep below, than those ten demons
were on the edge above us; but there was
nothing to fear; for that High Providence
that willed them ministers of the fifth ditch,
denies to all of them the power to leave it.
[27] The travelers have nothing to fear, says the narrator, because the
devils do not have the “power” (“poder”) to leave the fifth bolgia. In this
formulation Dante once again fudges theological certainty in order to
preserve the dramatic quotient of his story. The narrator’s phrasing here
gives the impression that the pilgrim would have been at risk had the
devils caught him within the fifth ditch, within their own
prescribed bolgia. And yet, technically — which is to say, theologically,
given that this journey is willed by God — the devils’ impotence is a
certainty, even within the bolgia of which they are ministers, for they
are ministers of God’s justice who operate only within the divine
framework.

[28] By manipulating the reader to feel suspense and concern over the
welfare of the travelers, and then dramatizing the devils’ frustration and
impotence as they look down at their escaped quarry, Dante shows that
Hell is powerless, that the devils are powerless: fundamentally, evil is
powerless. Christ, we recall from the description of the Harrowing of
Hell in Inferno 4, is the “possente” — the powerful one — Who goes
where He wants and Who enters Hell undeterred (Inf. 4.53), while these
devils lack  even the “poder” (the power) to leave the fifth bolgia.

[29] The broken bridges, the ruine, the beffe played on the

devils: all echo Christ’s Harrowing of Hell and all are
signifiers that spell out Hell’s impotence.

[30] Once the travelers enter the sixth bolgia, in Inferno 23.58, the

dramatic arc that extends from Inferno 21 to Inferno 23, verse 58, has
apparently come to an end. The rest of Inferno 23, from verse 58 to the
canto’s end, treats the hypocrites. Roughly speaking, Dante assigns two
and one-third canti to civic corruption (baratteria) and two-thirds of a
canto to hypocrisy, demonstrating again that he has opted for
narrative variatio and for lack of symmetry. However, not all is said and
done on the topic of the devils and Virgilio’s misplaced trust in his
negotiating skills. There is a coda to the story-line of the travelers and
the devils, tucked at the very end of Inferno 23.

[31] In conversation with Catalano and Loderingo, two contemporary

Bolognese hypocrites, Virgilio finally learns that there is no intact bridge
over the sixth bolgia. As a result he comes to understand, belatedly, that
Malacoda deceived him: “Mal contava la bisogna / colui che i peccator di
qua uncina” (He who hooks sinners over there / gave us a false account
of this affair [Inf. 23.140-41]). This, it seems, is the episode’s final blow
to Virgilio’s sense of mastery over Hell.

[32] But it is not; there is worse to come. Virgilio’s dismay at being lied

to by Malacoda prompts not surprise and sympathy from the hypocrites,
but rather the mocking assertion that devils are liars. In other words,
Virgilio should have known better than to put his trust in a devil. And
so, Catalano blandly comments that he once heard it said in Bologna
that devils are liars:

E ’l frate: “Io udi’ già dire a Bologna

del diavol vizi assai, tra ’ quali udi’
ch’elli è bugiardo, e padre di menzogna.” 
(Inf. 23.142-44)
At which the Friar: “In Bologna, I
once heard about the devil’s many vices—
they said he was a liar and father of lies.”
[33] The added barb in Catalano’s remark is the reference to Bologna:
Bologna was a great seat of learning, a great faculty of theology, and yet
the statement that devils are liars is a platitude known to every
schoolboy. To everyone, apparently, but to Virgilio, who, despite being a
great sage, was deceived by Malacoda. The conclusion to Inferno 23 is
an important commentary on Virgilio and his limitations as guide,
highlighted by the previous events.
[34] Virgilio’s composure is now upset; he is no longer an unruffled
sage, like his comrades in Limbo. In the escape from the devils in the
first part of the canto he shows his love for Dante; and in the encounter
with the hypocrites at the canto’s end, with its implied rebuke, he shows
his anger. He is the great sage, “quel savio gentil, che tutto seppe” (that
gentle sage, who knew all [Inf. 7.3]), the “mar di tutto ’l senno” (sea of
all wisdom [Inf. 8.7]), and yet he has been lied to by a devil and mocked
by a hypocrite. We will come back to Virgilio’s anger in the opening
section of the Commento on Inferno  24.

***

[35] The hypocrites wear capes, of the same shape as those worn by the
monks of the famous Benedictine abbey in Cluny: “de la taglia / che in
Clugnì per li monaci fassi” (of that same cut / that’s used to make the
clothes for Cluny’s monks [Inf. 23.62-63]). These capes have glittering
gold exteriors but are made of lead, thereby representing hypocrisy:
their beautiful exterior hides a hideous interior.

[36] These capes are more heavy than the lead capes that were made as
instruments of torture by Frederick II (Inf. 23.61-66). Verse 66 alludes
to Frederick II’s alleged gruesome torture for the crime of lèse majesté,
unverified by historians but repeated by all ancient commentators. The
report holds that the criminal was caped in lead and put into a cauldron
under which a fire was set. I will come back to this passage in my
discussion of Inferno’s historic tortures in the Commento on Inferno  27.

[37] Dante speaks with two Bolognese hypocrites of his own time, the
“Frati Godenti” (Jovial Friars) Catalano and Loderingo: “Frati godenti
fummo, e bolognesi, / io Catalano e questi Loderingo / nomati” (We
both were Jovial Friars, and Bolognese; / my name was Catalano,
Loderingo / was his [Inf. 23.103-04]). Frati Gaudenti is the popular
name for the lay Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Ordo Militiae
Mariae Gloriosae. In Dante’s Poets, I link Dante’s mockery of the order
of Frati Gaudenti to his views of the poet Guittone d’Arezzo, also a
member of the order:
Guittone seems to have been well-acquainted with Loderingo, one of the
order’s principal founders: the two were companions in the monastery
of Ronzano, and Guittone commiserated with him on his undeserved
tribulations in a canzone reverentially addressed to “Padre dei padri
miei e mio messere” (Father of my fathers and my lord). (Dante’s Poets,
p. 105)

[38] The Frati Godenti Catalano and Loderingo went jointly

as podestà (mayor) to Florence where they were supposed to be
impartial and evenhanded in their handling of the city’s factions.
Instead their hypocrisy took the form of favoritism toward the Guelphs
that resulted in the destruction of the Ghibelline Uberti homes in the
Gardingo section of Florence (Inf. 23.108; for the Uberti family
see Inferno  10).

[39] After the exposure of the political hypocrisy of Catalano and

Loderingo, the pilgrim sees a hypocrite crucified on the ground, in an
infernal echo of the Crucifixion (Inf. 23.109-126). This is Caiaphas, the
Jewish high priest who in the New Testament charged Jesus with
blasphemy, thus paving the way for the Crucifixion. He is described by
Catalano thus:

mi disse: “Quel confitto che tu miri,

consigliò i Farisei che convenia
porre un uom per lo popolo a’ martìri.” 
(Inf. 23.115-17)
He told me: “That one impaled there, whom you see,
counseled the Pharisees that it was prudent
to let one man—and not one nation—suffer.
[40] Caiaphas and Annas (Jesus was first taken before Annas, Caiphas’
father-in-law and previous high priest), and all other members of the
council that condemned Christ are crucified in this bolgia:

E a tal modo il socero si stenta

in questa fossa, e li altri dal concilio
che fu per li Giudei mala sementa.  
(Inf. 23.121-23)
Like torment, in this ditch, afflicts both his<
father-in-law and others in that council,<
which for the Jews has seeded so much evil.
[41] Inferno 23 offers insight into Dante’s assessment of the
role of the Jews in Providential history, anticipating the
charge of deicide lodged against the Jews in Paradiso  7. In an
act that Dante classifies as hypocritical, Caiaphas advised his fellow
Pharisees that Jesus should be put to death rather than risk the deaths
of many Jews: “consigliò i Farisei che convenia / porre un uom per lo
popolo a’ martìri” (counseled the Pharisees that it was prudent / to let
one man — and not one nation — suffer  [Inf. 23.116-17]). Here Dante is
citing the Gospel of John: “it is expedient for us, that one man should
die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not” (John 11:50).
According to Christian exegetes of history, the council’s decision “was an
evil seed for the Jews”: “fu per li Giudei mala sementa” (Inf. 23.123). As
an “evil seed”, it bore evil fruit: the killing of Christ (itself a just payment
for original sin) was nonetheless justly “avenged”, according to
traditional Christian historiography, by the destruction of Jerusalem,
carried out by the Roman Emperor Titus in 70 CE. These events in
Jewish history are posed as a dense historic and moral conundrum
in Paradiso  7: “come giusta vendetta giustamente / punita fosse”
(how / just vengeance can deserve just punishment [Par. 7.20-21]).
These same events are unpacked and disturbingly “explained”
in Paradiso 7.47.

[42] In her essay “Dante and the Jewish Question”, Rachel Jacoff notes
the biblical Jews present in the sixth bolgia and wonders about the
significance of the absence of contemporary Jews from Dante’s Hell:
“One question that has arisen for me since I began to work on this
material is why Dante refrains from putting any actual Jews, other than
the Biblical figures Judas, Caiphas, Annas and the Sanhedrin, in Hell”
(p. 16; for full reference, see Coordinated Reading). The issue of the
absence of contemporary Jews from Dante’s Hell is discussed in my
treatment of usury, in the Commento on Inferno  17.
[43] In Inferno  28 Dante will repurpose the trope of the historical event
which is an evil seed for an entire people, transferring it from the Jews
in Inferno 23 to Dante’s own people, the Tuscans. While in Inferno 23 it
is Caiafas’ counsel regarding Jesus that seeds an evil history for the
Jews, in Inferno 28 it is the counsel given by the Florentine Mosca de’
Lamberti regarding Florentine Buondelmonte de’ Buondelmonti that is
viewed as “the seed of evil for the Tuscans”: “fu mal seme per la gente
tosca” (Inf. 28.108). By echoing Inferno 23.123 in Inferno 28.108,
Dante connects the Jewish and the Tuscan people, linking them through
the trope of the “evil seeds” that haunt their histories.

[44] Dante’s treatment of the hypocrites is rooted in a

profound and scathing critique of the clergy and of religious
hypocrisy throughout history.

[45] Dante’s critique of religious hypocrisy in Inferno 23 might well

have influenced Boccaccio in Decameron 1.6, a novella whose rubric
states that it treats “the evil hypocrisy of the clergy”: “la malvagia
ipocresia de’ religiosi”. In his novella Boccaccio’s exposé of clerical
hypocrisy focuses on the “Friars Minor, who do not dare to touch
money”: “frati minori, che denari non osan toccare” (Dec. 1.6.9). These
are precisely the “frati minori” referenced in verse 3 of Inferno 23.

[46] As we can see from the above discussion, Dante’s critique of what
Boccaccio calls “la malvagia ipocresia de’ religiosi” is thorough and
profound. In this canto, Dante’s scathing critique takes in Franciscans,
Benedictines, the lay Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary known as Frati
Gaudenti, the faculty of theology of Bologna, and Hebrew Pharisees.

Inferno 24: Metamorphosis (Ovid)

 the double helix of the Virgilio-narrative: the affective strand
interwoven with the intellective strand
 the lengthy narrative sequence of the broken
bridges: Inferno 21.106 – Inferno 24.64
 the opening simile of the villanello: its backward-looking
connection to the Virgilio-narrative and its forward-looking
connection to metamorphosis
 discussion of the disproportion between the sin of fraudulent
thievery and the contrapasso of this bolgia
 rather than insist on a proportion that does not exist, it is better
to say that Dante uses fraudulent thievery as 1) an opportunity to
treat metamorphosis; and 2) for political reasons, much as he
uses sodomy, as an opportunity for a discourse on Florence and
its corrupted values
 exoticism and Orientalism: the Libyan sands, Ethiopia, the
Arabian desert
 Dante’s discourse of the body: from Inferno 13 to Inferno 24-25
 metamorphosis as a complex of ideas about which Dante has been
thinking for decades, going back at least to the phrase “forma
vera” in verse 10 of the early sonnet Piangete, amanti (Vita
Nuova 8)
 metamorphosis as an opportunity to go to the heart of
how humans conceive of self: if our shape changes, does
our substance — our essence — change as well?
 the text that provides the starting-point for Dante’s meditation
in Inferno 24-25 is Ovid’s Metamorphoses, with its issues of self
and essence, inner form and outer shape

 the Ovidian tale that I consider a template for Dante’s meditation

on selfhood in Inferno 24-25 is the story, not mentioned  by
Dante, of Peleus and Thetis

 metamorphosis offers the opportunity to tackle fundamental

Christian mysteries
 three metamorphoses in the seventh bolgia: one in Inferno 24,
two in Inferno 25
 Metamorphosis 1: Man ⇒ Dust ⇒ Man = in malo Death and
Resurrection
[1] Inferno 24 begins with an erudite simile devoted to
the villanello (the farmer or peasant): first chagrined by the unexpected
sight of snow, the villanello is then relieved when he realizes that the
snow is frost, and that consequently he will be able to take his sheep to
pasture. This long simile will resolve into an installment of the Virgilio-
narrative, since it turns out to be a rhetorically complex way to tell us
that Virgilio has recovered from the anger that he feels after his
demeaning dialogue with the hypocrites at the end of Inferno 23, and
that he is once more sweet and affectionate to his charge. Like
the villanello, relieved that what he thought was snow is but frost,
Dante-pilgrim is relieved when Virgilio’s demeanor changes from angry
to kindly: from “turbato un poco d’ira nel sembiante” (somewhat
disturbed, with anger in his eyes [Inf. 23.146]), as Virgilio was at the
end of Inferno 23, he becomes tender and affectionate, as he is by the
time we reach the end of the simile of the villanello, in verses 20-21
of Inferno 24. In these verses, the poet tells us that Virgilio turns to him
“with that sweet manner / I first had seen along the mountain’s base”:
“ con quel piglio / dolce ch’io vidi prima a piè del monte” (Inf. 24.20-
21).

[2] This information about Virgilio’s sweet demeanor toward the pilgrim

constitutes an affectively charged moment in the ongoing Virgilio-
narrative. Moreover, this information is novel, since in it Dante-poet
tells us that Virgilio’s demeanor was “sweet” when the pilgrim first met
his guide, at the foot of the mountain in Inferno 1: “a piè del monte”
(Inf. 24.21). And yet, dolce was by no means an adjective used to
describe the demeanor or deportment of the dignified Virgilio back
in Inferno 1. In Inferno 24.20-21, Dante-poet effectively revises what he
told us originally about Virgilio’s demeanor, rewriting the formal
teacher/student relationship of Inferno 1 into the tender filial/parental
dynamic that we saw in Inferno 23. As I note in Dante’s Poets, the
narrator institutes an affective tie in Inferno 1 that at the time was not
there, and so doing inscribes a new thread of affectivity into the texture
of the Inferno:

What is remarkable about this passage is not so much the tenderness of

Virgilio’s regard per se as the author’s specification that he first saw
such a “sweet look” at the foot of the mountain, i.e. in Inferno 1, where
Dante tries to climb the colle and fails. At that point in the narrative
there is no indication of any loving demonstration on Virgilio’s part
toward Dante, or of any sweetness in his look; indeed, the meeting
between the two poets is described in stiff and formal terms, as is their
relationship throughout the early cantos of the Inferno. Therefore, in
specifying that Virgilio’s “piglio / dolce” (where the enjambment
puts dolce into relief) is first seen “a piè del monte”, Dante is
retrospectively rewriting the original meeting of Inferno 1, instituting an
affective tie which at the time was not there. Not only are we forced to
revisualize the episode of canto 1, but also to conjure up many another
sweet glance that the narrative has not seen fit to mention. Thus, in two
lines Dante inscribes a new thread of affectivity into the texture of
the Inferno, casting a long sweet light all the way back to canto 1.
(Dante’s Poets, p. 239)

[3] The verses that inscribe Virgilio’s “piglio / dolce” where it had not
previously existed do not occur in Inferno 24 fortuitously. Virgilio’s
retroactive “piglio / dolce” is part of a subtle strategy of
counterbalancing that dictates the moves in Dante’s Virgilio-narrative.
Dante here engages the dialectical principles of the double helix
narrative structure that he is creating, whereby an affective narrative
strand is interwoven with an intellective narrative strand.

[4]  After Dante-narrator has undermined Virgilio in the

intellective domain, he then takes care to enhance him in the
affective domain.

[5] In the previous canti the narrator has greatly compromised Virgilio’s
standing as “quel savio gentil che tutto seppe” (that gentle sage, who
knew all [Inf. 7.3]), allowing him to be deceived by a devil and
condescendingly instructed by hypocrites in Hell. In the immediate
aftermath of this narrative nadir in Virgilio’s authority, what does the
narrator do? The same narrator who has worked to undermine Virgilio’s
authority makes sure to reinforce the affective ties between guide and
pilgrim. He does this by referring to Virgilio’s “care piante” (dear feet) in
the last verse of Inferno 23 and then to his “piglio / dolce” (sweet
manner) in Inferno 24.20-21.

[6] Dante’s goal is to have Virgilio “function as a paradox at the heart of

the poem” (Dante’s Poets, pp. 200, 239). Through engagement with this
paradox the reader is “forced, with the pilgrim, into the dilemma of
loving and respecting that which is fallible, corruptible, and transitory —
into the human experience par excellence”:

At the outset of Inferno 24, Vergil has just emerged severely tarnished

from a test that spans three cantos: he has been lied to by Malacoda, and
humiliated by the discovery. Precisely at this moment of intellectual
defeat, Dante tightens the affective screws; if Vergil is to function
as a paradox at the heart of the poem, the reader must not be allowed
easily to dismiss him, but instead must be forced, with the pilgrim, into
the dilemma of loving and respecting that which is fallible, corruptible,
and transitory — i.e. into the human experience par excellence. This is
accomplished rhetorically by the insinuation of affective
language into the narrative at the moments of greatest
intellective stress. Thus, at the end of Inferno 23, after Catalano has
informed Vergil that devils are liars, Vergil walks off with great strides
in evident anger, and the author concludes the canto as follows: “ond’ io
da li ’ncarcati mi parti’ / dietro a le poste de le care piante” (so I
departed from those burdened spirits, / while following the prints of his
dear feet [Inf. 23.147-48]). The reference to Vergil’s “dear feet” — “care
piante” — at this juncture represents an escalation in the tension of the
Vergilian dialectic; although the great sage has been treated like a fool
by a hypocrite in hell, his charge loves him not less, but more. The “dear
feet” are in fact an element in an affective crescendo that peaks with the
“sweet look” of Inferno 24, and that begins with the simile in which
Vergil is compared to the mother who rescues her son from a burning
house, a simile that has the effect of neutralizing the event it is
illustrating. (Dante’s Poets, pp. 239-40)

[7] The simile of the villanello also contributes in fascinating ways to

the Inferno’s ongoing meditation on representation and semiosis, as
discussed in The Undivine Comedy. It is a densely semiotic moment, in
this respect akin to the Aesop’s Fable moment that opens the preceding
canto, Inferno 23:

Although this simile presents us with less sheer multivalence than the
Aesop’s fable analogy, it begins to explore the implications of semiotic
failure in a way that the earlier passage does not, by raising the larger
issue of representation through its use of artistic/mimetic language. The
peasant mistakenly believes the frost to be snow because the frost has
imitated the snow; borrowing from the lexicon of mimesis, the poet tells
us that the frost “copies the image of its white sister”. Attempting to
represent snow, the frost appropriates the mode of art, and it fails, for
like all art — all human representation — it is non-durable, subject to
time: “little lasts the point of its pen”. As compared to Purgatorio 10,
where art is assimilated to nature and becomes real, infallible, here
nature is assimilated to art, becoming fallible, corruptible, subject to
time. From a concern with the shifting values of signs, Dante’s
meditation broadens to engage the constraints of human representation.
(The Undivine Comedy, p. 87)

[8] Finally, the villanello simile looks forward to the materia of the

next bolgia, namely metamorphosis. Thus, verse 13 — “veggendo ’l
mondo aver cangiata faccia” (seeing the world to have changed its face
[Inf. 24.13]) — states the theme of metamorphosis in succinct fashion.
Moreover, the employment of equivocal rhymes in the simile anticipates
the experience of metamorphosis. Equivocal rhymes feature rhyme-
words that are the same in appearance but are not the same in
substance, for the words have different meanings.

[9] The rhyme-words faccia / faccia in verses 11 and 13 are an example

of equivocal rhyme: the two words faccia possess the same shape —
appearance — but they have a different substance or meaning: in verse
11 “faccia” is the present subjunctive of fare (to do) while in verse 13 it is
the noun “face”. Dante is here broaching the issue of metamorphosis
through its converse.
[10] While equivocal rhymes have the same appearance but
differing substance, metamorphosis is a transformation in
which the same substance takes on a different appearance:
the same substance takes on a different shape.

[11] Through verse 64, Inferno 24 is devoted to the climb out of the

sixth bolgia. We recall that, in their haste to get away from the pursuing
demons, the two travelers slid down into the sixth bolgia on their backs,
as fast as water channeled through a sluice to a mill (Inf. 23.46-48). By
contrast, they have to scramble up the other side arduously, engaged in
a kind of mountain climbing as they grapple with the crags of
the bolgia’s wall and the boulders that were strewn about when the
bridges over the sixth bolgia collapsed. In verse 19 the travelers arrive
at a “broken bridge”: “venimmo al guasto ponte” (we arrive at a broken
bridge [Inf. 24.19]). In verse 24 Dante uses the term “ruina” as a
descriptor of the ruined landscape created by that broken bridge:
“riguardando prima / ben la ruina (first carefully examining the ruin
[Inf. 24.23-24]). As a technical term indicating the ruins incurred by the
coming of Christ, ruina here underscores the lengthy narrative
sequence of the broken bridges and the issue of Hell’s status, its
fundamental impotence. This is a sequence that begins
in Inferno 21.106, and that will not be completed until the travelers
have finished climbing the ruina and look down into the seventh bolgia,
beginning in verse 65 of Inferno 24.

***

[12] Inferno 24 is the first of two canti that treat the seventh bolgia,

home of the fraudulent thieves. The fraudulence of these thieves mark
them as different from the violent robbers plunged into the river of
blood in Inferno  12. Dante takes care to clarify the distinction between
these thieves and the earlier robbers (as he does not, for instance, clarify
the distinction between the prodigals in the fourth circle and the
wastrels in the second rung of the seventh circle). He does this by
specifying in Inferno 25 that the centaur Cacus, housed in this bolgia, is
not with his fellow Centaurs (they inhabit and guard the first ring of the
circle of violence, in Inferno 12) — “non va co’ suoi fratei per un
cammino” (he does not ride the same road as his brothers [Inf. 25.28])
— because of the fraudulent nature of his theft: “per lo furto che
frodolente fece” (Inf. 25.29).

[13] In this way, Dante uses the fiction of his underworld to make his
taxonomic point. The surprising presence of the centaur Cacus here, in
the bolgia of fraudulent thieves, is glossed by way of the “normative”
collocation of centaurs within Dante’s fiction: centaurs belong to the
first ring of the circle of violence, the ring that houses those who were
violent toward others, in both their persons and their possessions. If a
centaur is found elsewhere than in the first ring of the seventh circle,
there must be a good reason, namely the fraud that (so alliteratively)
governed Cacus’ thievery: “per lo furto che frodolente fece” (Inf. 25.29).

[14] The relation between the sin of theft and the contrapasso of

this bolgia — consisting of various kinds of metamorphoses — may
plausibly (but to my mind not compellingly) be based on the violation of
the boundaries between individuals, boundaries that are violated by
thieves. Natalino Sapegno explains the contrapasso thus: “i ladri sono
qui a loro volta derubati, e della proprietà più intima ed inalienabile, la
loro stessa figura umana” (The thieves are here in turn robbed — of their
most intimate and inalienable property, their own human forms). (See
Sapegno edition and commentary, Inferno [Firenze: La Nuova Italia,
1968], p. 270.)

[15] Let me say explicitly that the spectacular nature of

the contrapasso in this bolgia is disproportionate to the sin in question,
and, to my mind, no amount of investigation will eliminate this
disproportion. The suggestion put forward by Robert Hollander,
whereby this bolgia recalls the “the ‘primal scene’ of thievery in Eden”
(Hollander commentary, Inferno 24, at verses 91-96, accessed
through http://dantelab.dartmouth.edu), certainly raises the status of
the theft, as well as predicting the presence of serpents, but ultimately
does not offer a sufficient hermeneutic lens for consideration of
this bolgia.
[16] Dante himself does not treat the violation of the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil by Adam and Eve as a fraudulent theft, but
as a form of incontinence — what I call “epistemological incontinence”
(hence the title of the Commento on Purgatorio  19, the canto that
inaugurates Dante’s purgatorial treatment of the vices of incontinence).
Dante insists on the primal violation as a form of transgressive eating, a
form of incontinence, by locating grafts from the tree of Eden on his
terrace of gluttony in Purgatory. In Purgatorio  32, where the primal
scene in Eden is recreated by Dante in his Earthly Paradise, the
griffin/Christ is congratulated precisely for not having plucked and
eaten from this tree. As though we might miss the connection to eating,
the lesson continues (almost humorously) by making the point that the
sweet fruit of this tree is such as to hurt the belly of the one who eats it:

Beato se’, grifon, che non discindi

col becco d’esto legno dolce al gusto,
poscia che mal si torce il ventre quindi.
(Purg. 32.43-45)
Blessed are you, whose beak does not, o griffin,
pluck the sweet—tasting fruit that is forbidden
and then afflicts the belly that has eaten!
[17] Moreover, thievery in the treatment of Inferno 24-25 clearly has a
civic dimension, given the apostrophes to Pistoia and Florence that
frame the seventh bolgia and the Black Guelph Florentine families to
which the thieves belong. Dante uses thievery much as he uses sodomy,
as an opportunity for a discourse on Florence and its corrupted values.

***

[18] Most importantly, Dante uses the bolgia of the thieves in order to

tackle the concept of metamorphosis itself. In analogous fashion, he
uses the circle of lust not to connect to any of the timeworn moralistic
formulae regarding lust that were in circulation but to tackle a complex
of issues at the heart of his poem and of his life-long meditation: the
issues of reading, authorship, reception, and — most cogently —
responsibility and free will.
[19] Metamorphosis, like authorship, is a complex of ideas about which
Dante has been thinking for decades by the time he writes Inferno 24
and 25. Already in the sonnet Piangete, amanti (Vita Nuova 8), Dante
probes the issue of the “forma vera” (10), playing with the boundaries
between “true form” and its converse, between animate and inanimate,
between life and death. (For a reading of the sonnet, see Dante’s Lyric
Poetry: Poems of Youth and of the Vita Nuova, p. 75.)

[20] Metamorphosis boasts both a classical pedigree and profound

religious implications. As a concept that probes the implications of a
being that changes its shape, metamorphosis poses such questions as:

 what is lost, in ontological terms?

 what is gained?

 does the self that has undergone metamorphosis remain an

immutable self?

[21] Ovid’s metamorphoses are traditionally treated by commentators as

no more than occasions for “bel narrare” or “beautiful story-telling”
(Chiavacci Leonardi, ed., Inferno [Milan: Mondadori, 2005], p. 732). I
contend, instead, that Dante saw great metaphysical
profundity in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and that Inferno 24 and
25 offer a profound and sophisticated reading of the great
Latin poet.

[22] Dante would have associated with Ovid the word “forma”, which he
uses with metaphysical import as early as the sonnet Piangete,
amanti (“forma vera” in verse 10), and which Ovid uses metaphysically
in the extraordinary first verse of his epic: “In nova fert animus mutatas
dicere formas / corpora” (My mind is bent to tell of bodies changed
into new forms). (See Metamorphoses in the Loeb Classical Library
edition, trans. Frank Justus Miller [Cambridge: Harvard U. Press,
1968].) Dante may well have construed Ovid’s “forma” to possess its
Aristotelian significance of “substance” or “essence”, as it does for
Dante: when Beatrice says “Anzi è formale” in Paradiso 3.79, she is
saying “Anzi è essenziale” (The Undivine Comedy, p. 17). Therefore, I try
to avoid “form” as an indicator of the external, and use “shape” instead.

[23] The word forma has an important story to tell in the Commedia,

coming into its own in that most metaphysical canticle, Paradiso. So too
Ovid’s Metamorphoses come into their own in Paradiso; it is in the
third canticle that Ovid supplants Vergil as the classical poet with whom
Dante is most engaged. Dante viewed Ovid’s text as a metaphysical
examination of identity, embodiment, and essence — all ideas at the
heart of Christian religious thought.

[24] Above I defined metamorphosis as a transformation in which the

same substance or essence takes on a different shape. For Dante,
metamorphosis offers an opportunity to think as well about its
counterpart, metousiosis, the Greek term that refers to a change of
essence or inner reality. Greek metousiosis is the equivalent of
Latin transsubstantiatio or English transubstantiation, which is the
technical term used by theologians for the change by which the bread
and the wine used in the sacrament of the Eucharist become in actual
reality the body and blood of Christ.

[25] The questions that Dante is here posing go to the heart of how

humans conceive of self: if our shape changes, does our substance — our
essence — change as well?

[26] For Ovid in the Metamorphoses, as for Dante in this bolgia,

violence — often sexual violence — is frequently the precursor and
instigator of shape-changing. The core issues of identity and essence
that inform Dante’s Ovidian metamorphoses are posed in highly visible
fashion in the story of Peleus and Thetis. Although this is not a story to
which Dante ever refers, I find it very useful and propose it as a template
that illuminates what it is that Dante finds in Ovid.

[27] Peleus desires Thetis, the sea nymph destined to bear Achilles. She,
however, changes shape to elude him. Peleus receives counsel to “bind
her with snares and close-clinging thongs” while she sleeps and to hold
on tenaciously throughout her shape-changing until she returns to her
first form: “And though she take a hundred lying forms, let her not
escape thee, but hold her close, whatever she may be, until she take
again the form she had at first” (Metamorphoses, Book 11, lines 253-54,
trans. Miller). In Latin, he must hold on until she regains the form she
had — “reformet”, from the verb reformare —, until she returns to
“what she was before”: “quod fuit ante” (254). What Thetis was before,
at the beginning — “quod fuit ante” — is what she will be again, once she
has re-formed, returned to her original form.

[28] Ovid is writing about essence, about being. He is making

the case that Thetis’ being remains unchanged, unaltered,
through all the changes of her shape, her “form”. She will re-
form. However much her outside form has changed, her inner
self remains the same. Therefore, if Peleus can but hold on, he
will eventually possess her.

[29] Ovid’s idea that the essential self remains intact, although not
visible, is one that Dante retains in this bolgia, where the souls are
bound not with cords but by serpents who are fellow sinners. As always
in Dante’s Hell, but more sensationally because of their shape-changes,
the sinners’ true punishment is that they never cease to be themselves.

[30] Dante adds to the Peleus-Thetis model discussed above:

1.  a dimension of Hellish community, for the violent

instigators (in the role of Peleus) are fellow sinners;
2.  a dimension of Hellish spirituality, since metamorphosis
only underlines the basic truth of Hell, which is that these
sinners do not change. As Capaneus says: “Qual io fui vivo,
tal son morto” (As I was when I was alive, so am I dead
[Inf. 14.51).

***
[31] The seventh is perhaps the most spectacular ditch in Dante’s
Malebolge: it swarms with serpents of all stripes and sizes. The
gruesome sight of all those snakes occasions an erudite and classically-
inspired boast with an exotic and orientalizing flavor. Dante tells us that
the evil pestilences he saw here find no match in the Libyan desert
(described in the Pharsalia by Lucan, whose Latin names for various
serpents Dante here repeats), nor can such an evil writhing mass be
found in Ethiopia, or in the Arabian desert:

e vidivi entro terribile stipa

di serpenti, e di sì diversa mena
che la memoria il sangue ancor mi scipa.
Più non si vanti Libia con sua rena;
ché se chelidri, iaculi e faree
produce, e cencri con anfisibena,
né tante pestilenzie né sì ree
mostrò già mai con tutta l’Etiopia
né con ciò che di sopra al Mar Rosso èe.
(Inf. 24.82-90)

and there within I saw a dreadful swarm

of serpents so extravagant in form—
remembering them still drains my blood from me.
Let Libya boast no more about her sands;
for if she breeds chelydri, jaculi,
cenchres with amphisbaena, pareae,
she never showed—not with all of Ethiopia
or all the land that borders the Red Sea—
so many, such malignant, pestilences.
[32] The classical references to Lucan prepare for the remarkable poetic
challenges of Inferno 25.94-102, where Dante will tell of
metamorphoses that, he boasts, outdo those of both Ovid and Lucan.

[33] The seventh bolgia features metamorphoses, changes of shape that

are violently inflicted by serpents upon sinners. We will eventually learn
that the serpents are sinners who have previously been changed to
serpents. The vicious circularity of the bolgia of the thieves is therefore
absolute: far from the solidarity between sinners that Ciampolo offers to
betray in the bolgia of baratteria (Inferno  22), now we find a situation
so degraded that there is no solidarity a sinner can betray. The demons
in the fifth bolgia are God’s “ministers”  (Inf. 23.56); here the sinners
themselves are both ministers and recipients of God’s justice.

[34] A discourse on shape-changing necessitates consideration

of the shape that changes, i.e. the body.

[35] We remember that in Inferno  13 the human shape is not present at

all: the souls of the suicides are “embodied” as trees. The static
metamorphoses that we saw in Inferno 13 have become dynamic
in Inferno 24. In Inferno 13 a metamorphosis from human shape into
tree shape is stipulated as having taken place once, at the moment of the
soul’s assignment to the ring of suicide. In the bolgia of thieves we find
dynamic and ongoing metamorphoses that apparently have no
beginning or ending. Not only have flora become the more dynamic
category of fauna (the trees of Inferno 13 are now snakes), but the
metamorphoses themselves are never static: they are always changing.

[36] The discourse on the body takes lexical form in the many body-
parts named in this bolgia, for instance in the following tercet’s
description of the sexualized bondage inflicted on the sinners by their
serpent-comrades:

con serpi le man dietro avean legate;

quelle ficcavan per le ren la coda
e ’l capo, ed eran dinanzi aggroppate.
(Inf. 24.94-96)

Their hands were tied behind by serpents; these

had thrust their head and tail right through the loins,
and then were knotted on the other side.
[37] There is an unsettling sexualized component to the way in which
the serpents “thrust their head and tail right through the loins” in order
to bind the sinners into knots. I will return to the sexualized language of
this bolgia in the Commento on Inferno 25. I turn now to the first
metamorphosis of the seventh bolgia.

Metamorphosis 1

Man ⇒ Dust ⇒ Man:

in malo Death and Resurrection

[38] A sinner is pierced by a serpent “just where the neck and shoulders
form a knot”: “là dove ’l collo a le spalle s’annoda” [Inf. 24.99]). The
result is that the sinner is incinerated, literally, turning to ash, only then
to recompose into human form. This metamorphosis — from man to
dust and then again to man — is a perverse Resurrection, explicitly
compared to the death and rebirth of the phoenix (a mythological bird
used in Christian imagery as a figura Christi): “Così per li gran savi si
confessa / che la fenice more e poi rinasce” (just so, it is asserted by
great sages, / the phoenix dies and then is born again [Inf. 24.106-7]).

[39] Dante has here used metamorphosis to present a fundamental

Christian mystery, death followed by resurrection. The mystery of
Resurrection is rendered in a perverted and hellish mirror-image of
itself.

[40] The new life and resurrection that the Christian soul

finds in Christ is here a degraded pantomime in which the
soul is resurrected only to die again. The dust does not “return to
the earth as it was: and the spirit . . . unto God who gave it” (Ecclesiastes
12:7). Rather, in a perversion of the biblical text, the dust rises over and
over again.
[41] This infernal Resurrection is followed by a dialogue with the
unhappily resurrected soul, who turns out to be Vanni Fucci of Pistoia.
The Pistoian thief insists on his bestial and non-human nature, while
still alive: “Vita bestial mi piacque e non umana” (the bestial life pleased
me, and not the human [Inf. 24.124]). Nothing, it seems, could be more
natural and fitting than the circumstances in which he now finds himself
in Hell, bound and trussed by snakes.

[42] Vanni Fucci — a Black Guelph, like the other thieves in this bolgia

— then gives vent to a political prophecy about the fall of the White
Guelphs (Dante, we recall, is a White Guelph). He concludes that his
goal is to wound Dante to the quick: “E detto l’ho perchè doler ti
debbia!” (And I have told you this to make you grieve! [Inf. 24.151]).
This hate-filled jab, inflicted not by a serpent but by a damned soul,
anticipates the gruesome realization of the next canto, when we learn
that the hateful serpents that attack the souls are fellow sinners.

Inferno 25: Shape, Substance, Sex, Self

 intratextual references to earlier passages in Inferno: Capaneus
in Inferno 14 and Centaurs in Inferno 12
 the “Geryon principle” (see Inferno 25.46-48)
 metamorphosis: a process through which essence changes its
outward shape
 metamorphosis in this bolgia is used as a means of perverting the
most fundamental Christian mysteries and the most
natural/biological events constitutive of self: sex and birth
 Metamorphosis 2: in malo Copulation, performed as male-on-
male (serpent-on-male) rape, which is also an in
malo Incarnation, whereby the mystery of Two Who Become One
degrades into Two Who Become No One
 the relationship of the above to the “bi-form” griffin/Christ
of Purgatorio 32
 Metamorphosis 3: in malo Embryology, which is also in
malo Transubstantiation, whereby Two Exchange Shape &
Substance
 this is the negative variant of embryology in Purgatorio 25
  the relevance of the stories of Arethusa and Salmacis
from Metamorphoses, stories of rape culture and loss of self: “et
se mihi misceat” (that he might mingle with me [Metam. 5.638])

[1] Inferno 25 is the second canto devoted to the seventh bolgia, the

home of the fraudulent thieves, all Florentine Black Guelphs. It features
changes of shape that are even more spectacular and grotesque than
those in Inferno 24.

[2] The beginning sequence of Inferno 25 functions as a conclusion

to Inferno 24, which ended with Vanni Fucci’s lacerating political
prophecy. Now the thief engages in extreme defiance of God, with his
fists raised in an obscene gesture and his speech violent — “Togli, Dio,
ch’a te le squadro!” (Take that, God! God; I square them off for you!
[Inf. 25.3]) — until he is silenced by the serpents. As a result of the
silencing of Vanni Fucci the serpents become “Dante’s friends”: “Da indi
in qua mi fuor le serpi amiche” (From that time on, those serpents were
my friends [Inf. 25.4]). Given that the serpents will be revealed to be
sinners — in this bolgia sinners alternate between their original human
shape and the shapes of many and diverse kinds of serpents — the
thought of them as “friends” is quite unsettling.

[3] Moreover, the idea of the serpents as friends sets the stage for the
socially macabre aspect of this bolgia, part of the dramatic unfolding
of Inferno 25: since the serpents are sinners in serpent form,
the sinners are attacked by their own erstwhile “friends” and
comrades. 

[4] There is also a fascinating intratextual component to the opening

sequence of Inferno 25. Here Dante employs one part of his text to
buttress another part of his text, using his possible world in all its
aspects as guarantor of the truth of his account. In Inferno 25, in order
to underscore the arrogance of the thief Vanni Fucci, Dante compares
him to Capaneus, one of the seven against Thebes and the featured
blasphemer of Inferno  14:

Per tutt’ i cerchi de lo ’nferno scuri

non vidi spirto in Dio tanto superbo,
non quel che cadde a Tebe giù da’ muri. 
(Inf. 25.13-15)
Throughout the shadowed circles of deep Hell,
I saw no soul against God so rebel,
not even he who fell from Theban walls.
[5] In all of Hell, Dante says, he saw no soul so arrogant — “tanto
superbo” (Inf. 25.14) —  as Vanni Fucci, not even the one who fell from
the walls of Thebes. The periphrasis for Capaneus, here called “quel che
cadde a Tebe giù da’ muri” (he who fell from Theban walls [Inf. 25.15]),
evokes the inevitable fall of those who blaspheme against the Highest
Power, be that power called “Giove” by Capaneus (Inf. 14.52) or “Dio”
by Vanni Fucci (Inf. 25.3). The adjective “superbo” in Inferno 25.14
echoes the noun “superbia” from Virgilio’s impassioned attack on
Capaneo in Inferno 14:

O Capaneo, in ciò che non s’ammorza

la tua superbia, se’ tu più punito;
nullo martiro, fuor che la tua rabbia,
sarebbe al tuo furor dolor compito. 
(Inf. 14.63-6)
O Capaneus, for your arrogance
that is not quenched, you’re punished all the more
no torture other than your own madness
could offer pain enough to match your wrath. 
[6] This passage is instructive in terms of the ongoing distinction that
Dante establishes between the actual sins that — because never
repented — place the sinners in Hell, and the underlying vice that
originally prompts a given soul to sin. In the case of Vanni Fucci, as with
Capaneo, the underlying vice is superbia, pride. In Capaneo’s case the
actual sin is blasphemy, while in Vanni Fucci’s case the actual sin is
theft, but in both cases the underlying vice is pride: pride, left
unchecked, drove both souls to sin. I discuss the distinction between sin
and vice for the first time in the Commento on Inferno  6.

[7] A second intratextual moment occurs slightly further on

in Inferno 25, when the author explains why the centaur Cacus does not
“ride the same road as his brothers”: “Non va co’ suoi fratei per un
cammino” [Inf. 25.28]). In other words, Cacus does not reside with the
other centaurs in the first ring of the seventh circle (Inferno  12), the ring
that contains the violent against others, in both their selves and in their
possessions. As I discussed in the Commento on Inferno  24, Dante uses
the reference to the centaurs in Inferno 12 to construct his distinction
between violent robbers and fraudulent thieves.

[8] Ultimately, these intratextual moments are always in service of

the Commedia’s truth claims: the text buttresses the text, the fiction
supports the credibility of the fiction. And indeed the author will
shortly apply the rhetorical trope that I call the “Geryon
principle” (The Undivine Comedy, p. 60), whereby the more
fantastical and in-credible the “maraviglia” that the narrator is called
upon to describe, the more he asserts he is telling the truth, using the
verb “vidi” (I saw):

Se tu se’ or, lettore, a creder lento

ciò ch’io dirò, non sarà maraviglia,
ché io che ’l vidi, a pena il mi consento.
(Inf. 25.46-48)
If, reader, you are slow now to believe
what I shall tell, that is no cause for wonder,
for I who saw it hardly can accept it.
[9] For Dante’s construction of his visionary authority through
techniques like the “Geryon principle” see The Undivine Comedy,
passim; for the first time that Dante applies this trope, in Inferno 16, see
pp. 60 and 90.

***
[10] As discussed in the Commento on Inferno  24, the
seventh bolgia features metamorphoses: processes through
which essence changes its outward shape. In Inferno 24 serpents
bind one of the sinners, Vanni Fucci, who burns and goes up in smoke,
becoming a pile of ash, and then “is reborn” (“rinasce” [Inf. 24.107]) and
returns to human form. This metamorphosis is a perverse and in
malo version of death and resurrection, and indeed the image of the
phoenix (featured in Inferno 24.106-8) was used in Christian
iconography to represent the Resurrection of Christ. The perversion of
fundamental Christian mysteries continues in Inferno 25, where there
are two further metamorphoses.

[11] In the seventh bolgia, Dante uses the concept of metamorphosis, a

process through which essence changes its outward shape, as a means of
perverting the most fundamental Christian mysteries. He
simultaneously perverts the most natural and biological events
constitutive of self: sex and birth.

[12] In this way, as he destroys the very foundations of selfhood, Dante

indicates that Christianity and its core mysteries support the
constitution of the self.

[13] The negation of the constitution of selfhood in the

seventh bolgia also has a social dimension. Dante carefully scripts
this bolgia in order to deny the sinners their names. Their names are
withheld until after they have undergone a change in shape. These souls
do not receive that most fundamental marker of selfhood and
historicity, their names.

[14] More precisely, these souls do not receive their names until they are
no longer the selves to which their names belong. Or better, they receive
their names when they no longer appear to be the selves to which their
names belong. As we stipulated previously, in the Commento
on Inferno 24 (and indeed, as discussed also in the Commento
on Inferno 13), Dante’s point (like Ovid’s) is that the self
remains, indelible for all eternity, despite being perversely
violated and transformed.
[15] In verse 35 of Inferno 25, Dante first tells us that three spirits have
appeared. They are directly below Dante and Virgilio, who look down
into the seventh bolgia: “e tre spiriti venner sotto noi” (just beneath our
ledge, three souls arrived [Inf. 25.35]). From that time on the narrator
goes to extraordinary lengths to withhold the names of the three
sinners. He never vouchsafes their last names, and we learn that they
are Florentines only in the opening apostrophe of Inferno 26.

[16] Social ties are evoked in order to be monstrously violated.

Thus, it happens that one sinner names another, an event that Dante
introduces with the ambiguous pronouns typical of this canto: “l’un
nomar un altro convenette” (one of them called out the other’s
name [Inf. 25.42]). The sinner who speaks is asking his comrades where
another sinner, Cianfa, has gotten to: “Cianfa dove fia rimaso?” (Where
was Cianfa left behind? [Inf. 25.43]). This is such a simple question, the
sort that occurs in social units all the time, many times a day. But here
the question hides a sinister reality: in this bolgia it behooves one to
keep tabs on one’s comrades, for a “friend” who disappears from sight
may well resurface as a serpent. And, in fact, the simple “Where has
Cianfa gotten to?” heralds a sinister outcome, for the six-footed snake of
verse 50 will turn out to be none other than Cianfa.

[17] We learn the identity of the sinner attacked by the serpent of verse
50 — as noted, the serpent is his comrade, Cianfa, now in serpent form
— only in the moment of his grotesque transformation: “Omè, Agnel,
come ti muti!” (Ah me, Agnello, how you change! [Inf. 25.68]). Buoso,
too, is named only after he has become a snake, his name uttered
venomously and vindictively by the newly-formed man who has
exchanged forms with him: “I’ vo’ che Buoso corra, / com’ho fatt’ io,
carpon per questo calle (I want Buoso to run / on all fours down this
road, as I have done [Inf. 25.140-41]). Puccio Sciancato is named in
verse 148, the only one of the three original souls not to have been
changed in the course of the pilgrim’s viewing of this bolgia: “ed era
quel che sol, di tre compagni / che venner prima, non era mutato” (the
only soul who’d not been changed among / the three companions we
had met at first [Inf. 25.149-50]). The last verse of Inferno 25 is devoted
to indicating the identity of the final soul, without however stating his
name: the opaque apostrophe about making Gaville weep will have to
suffice to identify Guercio de’ Cavalcanti.

[18] The social community that forms in the seventh bolgia is decidedly

more sinister than, for instance, the community that we glimpse in the
fifth bolgia. There Ciampolo offers to betray his fellow grafters to the
Malebranche, to use their secret signal to summon his comrades from
the safety of the pitch (Inferno 22.103-05) and thereby leave them open
to the attacks of the devils. In the seventh bolgia, in contrast, the
mediation of violent devils is no longer necessary: one thief directly
attacks the other, inflicting on his comrade the transformative abuse
that he himself has previously suffered.

[19] When the thieves are in their human shapes, they are victims of
their comrades in their serpent shapes. When they are in their serpent
shapes, the previous victims are now perpetrators, intent upon
victimizing their fellow thieves.

[20] It is difficult to ascertain who is who as we read the canto, for

Dante systematically uses pronouns instead of names and blurs
identities as he recounts the metamorphoses. Only by careful tracking of
the pronouns can we reconstruct a story-line in which the protagonists
have names. By giving the last two characters their names only in the
very last verses of Inferno 25, only as the text is about to leave them
behind, Dante reinforces the loss of selfhood and identity that
this bolgia of in malo transformation explores.

[21] In effect, Dante tells the story of the thieves in such a way that each
is at risk of becoming “no one” during the course of the action. 
Analogously, in Inferno 25’s first metamorphosis (the second
metamorphosis of the bolgia), a “perverse image” is formed that is “due
e nessun”: “two and no one” (Inf. 25.77).

Metamorphosis 2
 Two Become One ⇒ Two Become No One:

in malo Copulation and Incarnation

[22] In the first metamorphosis of Inferno 25, a six-footed serpent (the

missing Cianfa) takes hold of a sinner and intertwines its body with the
man’s body, in a grotesque replay of copulation. Latin “copula” means
“bond” or “tie”; all through this bolgia the serpents are seen tying and
binding the sinners in their disgusting coils.

[23] Dante here scripts what he dramatizes as obscene sexual

intercourse, as obscene copulation. In fact, given the violence of the
snake’s assault, this is not sexual intercourse but rape, a violent and
degrading physical intimacy imposed by one being upon another.

[24] What occurs in this bolgia is male-on-male — serpent-on-

male — rape. The moments of contact, as described in the three
metamorphoses, are all violent and all involve compulsion:

1. Metamorphosis 1, Inferno 24.97-99: “Ed ecco a un ch’era

da nostra proda, / s’avventò un serpente che ’l trafisse / là
dove ’l collo a le spalle s’annoda” (And — there! — a serpent
sprang with force at one / who stood upon our shore,
transfixing him / just where the neck and shoulders form a
knot)
2. Metamorphosis 2, Inferno 25.49-51: “Com’io tenea levate
in lor le ciglia, / e un serpente con sei piè si lancia / dinanzi
a l’uno, e tutto a lui s’appiglia” (As I kept my eyes fixed
upon those sinners, /  a serpent with six feet springs out
against / one of the three, and clutches him completely)
3. Metamorphosis 3, Inferno 25.83-86: “un serpentello
acceso, / livido e nero come gran di pepe; / e quella parte
onde prima è preso / nostro alimento, a l’un di lor trafisse”
(a blazing little serpent / moving  against the bellies of the
other two, / as black and livid as a peppercorn. / Attacking
 one of therm, it pierced right through / the part where we
first take our nourishment)

[25] The male-on-male rapes of Inferno 25 (informed by Ovidian

heterosexual rapes, as discussed below) give us some insight into
what Dante could have done, but most emphatically does not do, in his
treatment of sodomy in Inferno  15 and 16. The violent sexual assaults
of Inferno 24 and 25, all occurring between men in the forms of men
and men in the forms of snakes (men in the forms of phalluses!), show
us that Dante is able to conjure graphically sexualized language and
comportment in an all-male context. This is precisely the language and
imagery that he avoids in Inferno 15-16.

[26] In the seventh bolgia, Dante is depicting the violation of one being

by another through an obscene and violent copulation. Stripped of the
violence and perversion of this bolgia, copulation is the process whereby
two differentiated substances become one through sexual intercourse,
while simultaneously remaining two.

[27] If we were to exalt this biological process, the process whereby two
become one would be known (as in fact it is, through various media,
poetic and philosophical) by the name love. Dante in his canzone Doglia
mi reca specifically defines love as the power that can make two
essences into one: “di due poter un fare” (of two, [Love has] the power
to make one [Doglia mi reca, 14]).

[28] The power to make two into one finds expression in the “rhetorical
copulation” that Dante invents in the heaven of Venus (Dante’s Poets, p.
116), where the pronouns “I” and “you” metamorphose into verbs that
perform the copulation of the Self and the Other. In the stunning verse
“s’io m’intuassi, come tu t’inmii” (if I could in-you myself, as you in-me
yourself [Par. 9.81]), the pronouns “io” and “tu” are agents of a
transfigured and copulated ontology. It is worth noting that Dante-
pilgrim speaks those words to his friend Carlo Martello; in other words,
this “rhetorical copulation” of the heaven of Venus does not shy away
from male-on-male “intercourse”. For more on this topic, as it relates to
the subset of love that we call friendship, see my essay “Amicus eius:
Dante and the Semantics of Friendship”, cited in Coordinated Reading.

[29] The process whereby two differentiated substances become one,

while simultaneously remaining two, is also applicable, mutatis
mutandis, to the idea of Christ. The doctrine of the Incarnation is that
Christ is both two and one: fully God and fully human. This is the
penultimate mystery of Paradiso 33, dramatized as the second of the
three circles at the end of the Commedia: the second circle is the one on
which a human image can be individuated, despite being painted in
same color as the circle itself. The fact that the human image can be
seen is a way of communicating that the image is differentiated, that
there are indeed two components to Christ’s nature; the fact that the
human image is painted in the same color as the circle itself is a way of
communicating that Christ’s nature is undifferentiated, that it is one.

[30] As the first metamorphosis of bolgia seven

(in Inferno 24) pantomimes the Resurrection, so the second
metamorphosis of bolgia seven pantomimes the
Incarnation. Dante’s dramatizations take the form of infernal
perversions. We note that “perversion” is Dante’s category, explicitly
stated with the label “imagine perversa” (perverse image [Inf. 25.77]),
with which he defines the product of the second metamorphosis.

[31] Dante’s second metamorphosis is constructed as an in

malo violation of principles of unity, of the binding of two into one,
principles that he parses into three different categories:

1. Sexual Unity: in malo perversion of copulation

2. Psychological Unity: in malo perversion of love
3. Metaphysical Unity: in malo perversion of Christ’s
Incarnation

[32] In the course of dramatizing the perversion and degradation of the

idea of “two becoming one”, Dante produces two formulas regarding the
two beings — man and snake — and what they become. The first
formula is “neither two nor one”: “Vedi che già non se’ né due né uno”
(you are already neither two nor one [Inf. 25.69]). The second formula
is “two and no one” in “due e nessun l’imagine perversa / parea” (the
perverse image seemed two and no one [Inf. 25.77-78]):

Ogne primaio aspetto ivi era casso:

due e nessun l’imagine perversa
parea; e tal sen gio con lento passo.
(Inf. 25.76-78)
And every former shape was canceled there:
that perverse image seemed to share in both —
and none; and so, and slowly, it moved on.
[33] The phrase “two and no one” seems to indicate that the monstrous
hybrid produced by this metamorphosis is not a new being, but a new
non-being and that Dante has set himself the challenge of
representing the creation of that which is not. But at the same time
his language suggests that it is not possible to create non-being, for the
hybrid “imagine perversa” comes into being and exists. In the Appendix
below the reader can explore some of the philosophical problems that
are raised by Dante’s formulations, in the light of modern philosophy of
mind.

[34] In Inferno 25 Dante dramatizes a perversion of the

Incarnation. The imagine perversa is a perversion of the fundamental
Christian doctrine of Christ’s dual nature, as evoked through the figure
of the griffin in the Earthly Paradise.  The griffin is “biforme”, literally
“bi-form”, possessing two forms: “la biforme fera” (the two-form animal
[Purg. 32.96]). The word “biforme”, used uniquely for the griffin/Christ
and a hapax in the Commedia, is the in bono Christological variant of
the in malo dual hybrids we have seen throughout Inferno: the
Centaurs, for instance, possess two forms. Most importantly, the griffin
is the in bono reply to the infernal metamorphosis in which a sinner
becomes not “two-form” but “no-form”: a kind of existential black hole.
Moreover, as I discuss below in the last section of this commentary, the
word “biforme” in Purgatorio 32 echoes “forma duplex” from a key
Ovidian intertext of these metamorphoses. In the dark Ovidian account
of Salmacis’ rape of Hermaphroditus, the two protagonists become a
new bi-form, which seems neither and both:

nec duo sunt et forma duplex, nec femina dici

nec puer ut possit, neutrumque et utrumque videntur.
(Metam. 4.378-79)
No longer two but one — although biform:
one could have that shape a woman or
a boy: for it seemed neither and it seemed both.
(Mandelbaum trans.)
Metamorphosis 3

Two Exchange Shape & Substance:

in malo Embryology and Transubstantiation

[35] In the third metamorphosis of the seventh bolgia (the second

of Inferno 25), a serpent and a man exchange shapes. This double
metamorphosis figures an obscene — because violent and
perverse — embryology. The process as described here is the in
malo variant of the generation of the fetus as described in the great
discourse on embryology and differentiation of Purgatorio  25.

[36] The attacking “serpentello” of verse 83 pierces a sinner through the

navel, described in embryological terms as “the part where we first take
our nourishment”: “quella parte onde prima è preso / nostro alimento”
(Inf. 25.85-86). It  fixes its gaze on the sinner, catching him in a
hypnotic snare from which there is no escape: “Elli ’l serpente e quei lui
riguardava” (The serpent stared at him, he at the serpent [Inf. 25.91]).
Enveloped in a noxious smoke that emanates from the mouth of the
attacking snake and from the “wound” in the navel of the thief, and that
forms a kind of amniotic sack around the two conjoined figures, a long
and revolting process unfolds: body part for body part is exchanged, in a
precise and graphic transmutation of man into serpent and serpent into
man.
[37] Embryology and birth — the generation of new life — suggest that
Dante has shifted from metamorphosis to metousiosis (μετουσίωσις),
the Greek term that refers to a change not of shape alone but also of
essence or inner reality. Greek metousiosis is the equivalent of
Latin transsubstantiatio or transubstantiation, which is the technical
term used by theologians for the change by which the bread and the
wine used in the sacrament of the Eucharist become in actual reality the
body and blood of Christ: “vere, realiter ac substantialiter” (truly, really,
and substantially). Not a figure or symbol of Christ’s body and blood,
nor merely the outward shape or external form of Christ’s body and
blood: the bread and wine become the true substance and reality of
Christ’s body and blood. In other words, the substance or essence of the
being is changed.

[38] Dante, I suggest, offers here an in malo version of

transubstantiation or metousiosis. In this process, not only shape is
changed, but essence, indicated by the Aristotelian word “forma” which
in scholastic Latin means “essence”:

ché due nature mai a fronte a fronte

non trasmutò sì ch’amendue le forme
a cambiar lor matera fosser pronte. 
(Inf. 25.100-2)
He [Ovid] never did
transmute two natures, face to face, so that
both forms were ready to exchange their matter. 
[39] In this creation of new — but horrific — life, all the principles of
divine creation are violated. In Inferno 25, creation is an act of
violent depredation: of one creature imposed upon another. It
is not God’s act of Creation as a manifestation of His infinite love and
generosity, as described in Paradiso  7, Paradiso  13, and Paradiso 29.
Nor is it the love of the mother for the infant.

[40] The love that is violated in this perverse embryology is God’s love

for His Creation and also the love of a mother for the child that gestates
within her, the love for the embryo that is created within Self but that
differentiates into an Other. Given the hypnotic gaze of the serpentello,
the words of the psychologist Daniel Stern about the extraordinary and
anomalous gaze exchanged between mother and infant are highly
relevant:

The first rule in our culture is that two people do not remain gazing into
each other’s eyes (mutual gaze) for long. Mutual gaze is a potent
interpersonal event which greatly increases general arousal and evokes
strong feelings and potential actions of some kind, depending on the
interactants and the situation. It rarely lasts more than several
seconds. In fact, two people do not gaze into each other’s eyes
without speech for over ten or so seconds unless they are
going to fight or make love or already are. Not so with mother
and infant. They can remain locked in mutual gaze for thirty
seconds or more. (Daniel N. Stern, The First Relationship: Infant
and Mother)

[41] In the third metamorphosis we witness the perverse creation of new

unities. We can think in terms of the same in malo violation of
principles of unity that we saw in the previous metamorphosis, parsed
into the same three categories:

1. Biological Unity: in malo perversion of embryology,

gestation, and birth
2. Psychological Unity: in malo perversion of maternal love
3. Metaphysical Unity: in malo perversion of the Christian
doctrine of Transubstantiation

[42] The verses that detail this obscene embryology have a weird

plasticity about them, as though an unseen hand were sculpting the two
shapes that emerge:

Quel ch’era dritto, il trasse ver’ le tempie,

e di troppa matera ch’ in là venne
uscir li orecchi de le gote scempie;
ciò che non corse in dietro e si ritenne
di quel soverchio, fé naso a la faccia
e le labbra ingrossò quanto convenne.
(Inf. 25.124-29)
He who stood up drew his back toward the temples,
and from the excess matter growing there
came ears upon the cheeks that had been bare;
whatever had not been pulled back but kept,
superfluous, then made his face a nose
and thickened out his lips appropriately.
[43] As we read the passage that extends 33 verses (from verse 103 to
verse 135), we feel that we are receiving the intense and precise
instructions of a demiurge, of a fabbro, of a sculptor of living shapes. If
we were to start with two clay figures in front of us, one a serpent and
the other a man, we could — I believe — follow the poet’s detailed
instructions so that, step by step, the serpent would change into a man
and the man would change into a serpent.

[44] This 33-verse description is the reason, Dante says, that he can

claim to have done what Ovid never did. For, he says, Ovid in his
metamorphoses never demonstrated how two beings simultaneously —
“a fronte a fronte” (face to face) — exchange shape and substance
(forma):

ché due nature mai a fronte a fronte

non trasmutò sì ch’amendue le forme
a cambiar lor matera fosser pronte. 
(Inf. 25.100-2)
 
He [Ovid] never did
transmute two natures, face to face, so that
both forms were ready to exchange their matter.
 

[45] In verses 103 to 135 Dante does precisely what he describes above:
he puts the two shapes “a fronte a fronte” and — verse by verse, body
part by body part — he transmutes them, changing serpent to man and
man to serpent. He culminates with the heads of both creatures, as the
man’s lips thicken and the serpent’s tongue becomes unforked, giving it
the human gift par excellence, that of speech.

[46] Not surprisingly, Dante has concentrated here the greatest number

of body parts in the Inferno. In the chart below, compiled by Grace
Delmolino, Inferno 25 (top right) emerges as the canto featuring the
densest saturation of words designating body parts. A total of 63 body
parts are named in this canto (followed by 41 in Inferno 28, 30
in Inferno 30, and 26 in Inferno 20). This linguistic saturation occurs
because Inferno 25 describes a birth — nothing less than a revolting,
monstrous birth.

 
  

***

[47] In the seventh bolgia Dante boasts that he has surpassed both

Lucan and Ovid, the classical poets who supply the store of
metamorphoses on which he draws. In commanding Lucan and Ovid to
be silent, since he has surpassed them, Dante calls out specific
metamorphoses recounted by the earlier poets. With respect to Ovid,
these are the metamorphoses of Cadmus and Arethusa: “Taccia di
Cadmo e d’Aretusa Ovidio” (Let Ovid be silent, where he tells of Cadmus
and Arethusa [Inf. 25.97]).
[48] The Ovidian metamorphosis of Cadmus recounts his
transformation, with his wife Harmonia, into two loving snakes. Quite
the opposite of the violent assaults of Inferno 25,
Harmonia desires Cadmus’s touch, even after he is a snake, and asks to
join him in serpent conjugality (see Metam. 4.563-603). Serving as a foil
to the grotesque copulations of Inferno 25, the Ovidian story of Cadmus
and Harmonia depicts two snakes loving each other, in sharp contrast to
the terror-filled depredations of the seventh bolgia. Moreover, the
reference to Ovid’s Cadmus evokes “li duo serpenti avvolti” (the two
entwining serpents [Inf. 20.44]) of the description of Tiresias
in Inferno 20.40-45. (See the Appendix on Tiresias in the Commento
on Inferno  20.)

[49] The other Ovidian myth evoked in the verse “Taccia di Cadmo e

d’Aretusa Ovidio” (Inf. 25.97) is the story of the nymph Arethusa, which
is an account of a rape. The nymph runs and runs from the pursuit of
the river god Alpheus, who has taken on the form of a man
(Metam. 5.572-641). Her struggle is vain, for she turns into a fountain
and he resumes his river form in order to merge with her. Struggle as
she might to remain individuated, she ends up merged with him as
liquid:

sed enim cognoscit amatas

amnis aquas positoque viri, quod sumpserat, ore
vertitur in proprias, et se mihi misceat, undas.
(Metam. 5.636-38)
But in those waters, he, the river-god
Alpheus, recognizes me, his love;
leaving the likeness he had worn,
he once again takes on his river form,
that he might mingle with me.
(Mandelbaum trans.)
[50] The Latin phrase “et se mihi misceat” (638) — “that he might
mingle with me” — is programmatic with respect to the first of the two
metamorphoses recounted in Inferno 25.
[51] Similarly programmatic and Ovidian is the reference to fiercely
entwining ivy in Inferno 25.58-60, an image that summons another tale
of violent sexual assault, that of the nymph Salmacis on the boy
Hermaphroditus, as recounted in Metamorphoses 4.274-316. Dante
found in Ovid’s account of Salmacis’ rape of Hermaphroditus much to
inspire the language and terror of Inferno 25.

[52] Ovid compares Salmacis to an entwining serpent, to ivy as it coils

around tree trunks, to an octopus who holds its enemy in its tentacles:

denique nitentem contra elabique volentem

inplicat ut serpens, quam regia sustinet ales
sublimemque rapit: pendens caput illa pedesque
adligat et cauda spatiantes inplicat alas;
utve solent hederae longos intexere truncos,             
utque sub aequoribus deprensum polypus hostem
continet ex omni dimissis parte flagellis.
(Metam. 4.361-67)
At last, although he strives
to slip away, he’s caught, he’s lost; she twines
around him like a serpent who’s been snatched
and carried upward by the king of birds —
and even as the snake hangs from his claws,
she wraps her coils around his head and feet,
and with her tail, entwines his outspread wings;
or like the ivy as it coils around
enormous tree trunks; or the octopus
that holds its enemy beneath the sea
with tentacles, whose vise is tight. (Mandelbaum translation)
[53] Ultimately, Salmacis and Hermaphroditus merge into one new
being:

vota suos habuere deos; nam mixta duorum

corpora iunguntur, faciesque inducitur illis
una.  (Metam. 4.373-75)
Her plea is heard; the gods consent; they merge
the twining bodies; and the two become
one body with a single face and form. (Mandelbaum trans.)
[54] The two become one, a concept Ovid restates in more sinister
fashion at the end of the account, noting that the new duplex being is
neither the one nor the other:

nec duo sunt et forma duplex, nec femina dici

nec puer ut possit, neutrumque et utrumque videntur.
(Metam. 4:377-79)
so were these bodies that had joined
no longer two but one—although biform:
one could have that shape a woman or
a boy: for it seemed neither and it seemed both.
(Mandelbaum trans.)
[55] The Latin “neutrumque et utrumque videntur” (it seemed neither
and it seemed both) is carried over into Dante’s “due e nessun /
l’imagine perversa parea” (Inf. 25.77-78).

[56] Ultimately, from Dante’s point of view, the superiority of his

metamorphoses to Lucan’s and Ovid’s derives from that which they
pervert: not only the most natural and biological events constitutive of
self — sex and birth — but the Christian doctrines of the Resurrection,
the Incarnation, and the Transubstantiation. As negative versions of
Christian mysteries, these metamorphoses perforce, from Dante’s
perspective, resonate with a power not available to their classical
counterparts. At the same time, Dante continues to find in Ovid’s
treatment of sexuality, embodiment, and even violent sexual assault a
key to the highest mysteries: for Ovid is the poet whose transformations
inform the Paradiso.

Appendix

A Philosopher’s Note

[57] Here follows the fascinating response of a contemporary

philosopher of mind to Dante’s first metamorphosis in Inferno 25, the
metamorphosis that results in “two and no one”. The author of the
below remarks is Dr. Nemira Gasiunas, who recieved her Ph.D. in
Philosophy from Columbia University in 2019. Dr. Gasiunas’
dissertation is on the part-whole structure of mental representation.
Although distinct from the traditional understanding of the problem of
unities (which belongs to the domain of metaphysics rather than to that
of philosophy of mind), the topics converge in so far as they are both
informed by foundational questions about mereology; that is, the study
of the relationship between wholes and their parts.

[58] Nemira Gasiunas’ comments on the metamorphoses of Inferno 25,

cited below, illuminate how the issues that Dante is dealing with here
are fundamental to philosophy and continue to invite exploration and
analysis. And, indeed, her comments also suggest how Dante’s
formulations can be challenged.

When Dante describes the perverse intermingling of the snake and the
sinner, he describes it first as “two and no-one”, and later as “neither
two nor one”. But these are two quite different states of affairs — the
first suggests two entities, but no unity; whilst the second suggests
something much stronger: that the mixture of the snake and the sinner
has brought about a more extreme dissolution whereby not only does
there cease to be a unity but the original entities cease to be, also. I think
the second scenario is the more interesting one, since it it speaks to the
opposite of a unity. We usually think of a unity — for example, as with
the holy trinity — as a case where several wholes, coming together, both
preserve their wholeness and also make some new entity which is
something more than the sum of its parts. Dante’s “neither two nor one”
suggests the opposite: a mingling where not only is there no unity, but
wholeness of the ‘ingredients’ are themselves dissolved.

In either case, however, the question that arises is: what are Dante’s
grounds for distinguishing when a combination is a unity and when it is
not? That is, on what basis can he claim that the sinner/snake
combination forms a (spatio-temporally continuous) ‘nothing’ rather
than a novel (albeit horrific) ‘something’?
I do see how Dante is constrained, in describing the ‘nothing’ that is the
snake and the sinner combination, by the need to apply his description
to ‘something’ (!). But although it seems in general okay to say that a
spatio-temporally continuous entity may nevertheless fail to be a
genuinely novel entity — in the sense that the father, the son and the
holy ghost make the holy trinity, or in the sense that a pair of lovers
might make a love union — the interesting question (it seems to me) is
under which circumstances we accept that a combination has produced
something new and under which circumstances we claim that it has
resulted in a dissolution. In other words, what would Dante say to
someone who insisted that the snake/sinner combination forms a
(devilish) unity just as much as a union of lovers does?

Perhaps there is no answer to this question. Someone might just hold

that whether a new thing is created from a combination is simply a
brute fact, about which nothing further can be said. But that would be
disappointing, I think, especially for someone with interests in the
metaphysical aspects of spirituality, as Dante has. Shouldn’t there be a
reason why lovers merge to create something new and better whilst
sinners merge to create nothing at all?

Inferno 26: The Epic Hero

 Florentine imperial ambitions are castigated by Dante in the
opening apostrophe (contrast Guittone d’Arezzo in Ahi, lasso, or
è stagion de doler tanto)
 “Ulyssean” lexicon and metaphors are sutured into the DNA of
the Commedia: this poem’s foundational metaphor, in which
Dante equates flying with the desire to know, is coded in this
canto as Ulyssean
 Dante did not read Greek and did not read Homer‘s Odyssey (the
verses in Inferno 26 that sound uncannily like the opening of
the Odyssey he learned through Horace’s Ars Poetica)
 the transmission of the Ulysses-myth: it came to the Middle Ages
from Latin writers, mainly from Vergil and Cicero
  the transmission of the Ulysses-myth led to a bifurcated critical
reception, as explained below
 in this canto an epic hero is remarkably writ into the vernacular
 Dante’s “upside down pedagogy”: the Greek hero Ulysses is a
counter-intuitive Dantean signifier for Biblical Adam

[1] Inferno 26 presents one of the Commedia’s most famous characters:

the Greek hero of Homer’s Odyssey, Odysseus, known to Dante by his
Latin name, Ulysses.

[2] Inferno 26 opens with a scathingly sarcastic apostrophe to Florence.

Enjoy your greatness, Florence! You have reached such pinnacles of
greatness, says the poet to his natal city, that you beat your wings over
sea and land and spill your name throughout Hell. Let us consider both
parts of that statement. The first part (“over sea and land you beat your
wings”) conjures the metaphor of flying, which will be so important in
this canto:

Godi, Fiorenza, poi che se’ sì grande

che per mare e per terra batti l’ali,
e per lo ’nferno tuo nome si spande! 
(Inf. 26.1-3)
Be joyous, Florence, you are great indeed,
for over sea and land you beat your wings;
through every part of Hell your name extends!
[3] The poet’s second denunciation, “through every part of Hell your
name extends!”, is further elaborated in the canto’s second tercet, which
lets us know, retrospectively, that the five souls whom we see in
the bolgia of thieves in Inferno 25 are all Florentines. (This
retrospective technique is not uncommon: for instance, Dante adopts it
at the beginning of Inferno 6, where he tells us retrospectively that the
lovers Paolo and Francesca of Inferno 5 are “cognati”, in-laws.) Here
Dante protests his shame at seeing five fellow Florentines midst the
serpents of Inferno 25:

Tra li ladron trovai cinque cotali

tuoi cittadini onde mi ven vergogna,
e tu in grande orranza non ne sali. 
(Inf. 26.4-6)
Among the thieves I found five citizens
of yours — and such, that shame has taken me;
with them, you can ascend to no high honor. 
[4] The first tercet of Inferno 26 launches the canto’s theme of
epic quest and journey, by framing Florentine imperial
ambitions and expansionism with the metaphor of flying. This
is language that is deeply sutured into the DNA of this poem: the first
verse of the Commedia introduces the metaphor of a land-journey
(a cammino) and the first simile in Inferno 1 is that of a mariner whose
ship is lost at sea. The opening apostrophe of Inferno 26 features
Florence as a giant bird of prey that beats its wings relentlessly over all
the world: “per mare e per terra” — over both sea and land.

[5] The wings of the beautiful Ulyssean image that is sealed in the

collective imaginary from later in this canto, that of the hero’s turning
his oars into wings for his mad flight — “de’ remi facemmo ali al folle
volo” (we made wings of our oars in a wild flight [Inf. 26.125]) — are
thus at the outset of Inferno 26 presented as the wings of a giant and
malignant bird of prey.

[6] Let me note, à propos Florentine expansionism, that Dante was

atypical in castigating his native city for her imperial ambitions. An
inscription of 1255 on the Palazzo del Bargello in Florence celebrates the
city “who possesses the sea, the land, the whole world”: “quae mare,
quae terram, quae totum possidet orbem” (cited by commentators, for
instance Chiavacci Leonardi and Sapegno). There is no sarcasm about
Florentine imperialism in the inscription on the Bargello; it is
celebratory.
[7] Whereas Dante is an outlier, the poet Guittone d’Arezzo (circa 1230-
1294) offers a useful benchmark for contemporary feeling in his political
canzone Ahi, lasso, or è stagion de doler tanto, written after the defeat
of Florence at Montaperti in 1260. Guittone deplores the political
decline of Florence, which until then had been the most powerful city in
Tuscany, and uses biting sarcasm: not to criticize Florentine
imperialism, but in an attempt to reawaken Florentine imperial
ambitions.

[8] The opening verses of Inferno 26 also forecast the canto’s great

protagonist. Florence is “grande” in verse 1 (“poi che se’ sì grande”) and
Ulysses is grande — a great hero. Whereas Florence’s greatness is
punctured immediately by the author’s sarcasm, Ulysses’ is not.

[9] The Ulysses episode is not cast in the mode of sarcasm or

irony but of tragic, heroic, flawed greatness. The author does not
intend to cut his hero down to size as he does Capaneus and Vanni
Fucci, at least not within the borders of Inferno 26. The
adjective grande that stands at the threshold of the bolgia that houses
the Greek hero casts an epic grandeur over the proceedings, an epic
grandeur and solemnity that Dante maintains until the beginning
of Inferno 27.

[10] In The Undivine Comedy, I noted the “anti-oratorical high style”

of Inferno 26, a rhetorical mode that Dante uses to endow “the cadences
of authentic grandeur” upon his epic hero, Ulysses:

The rhetoric of canto 26 is austere, sublimely simple. The opening

apostrophe to Florence carries over from the oratorical flourishes and
virtuoso displays of the preceding bolgia. As the canto progresses the
narrative voice takes on more and more the note of dispassionate
passion that will characterize its hero, that indeed makes him a hero,
until finally the voice flattens out, assumes the divine flatness of God’s
voice, like the flat surface of the sea that will submerge the speaker,
pressing down his high ambitions. The anti-oratorical high style that
culminates at the end of Inferno 26 is perhaps the most telling index of
the poet’s commitment to the canto’s protagonist, upon whom he
endows the cadences of authentic grandeur. (The Undivine Comedy, p.
89)

[11] As noted above, the opening apostrophe of Inferno 26 engages

Dante’s self-consciously “Ulyssean” lexicon, dipping into the deep
reservoir of metaphoric language related to quest and voyage that Dante
has been using since the beginning of his poem. This code and lexicon
will persist long after we leave Inferno 26, indeed it will persist to the
end of the poem, where the poet’s wings finally fail him at the end
of Paradiso  33: “ma non eran da ciò le proprie penne” (and my own
wings were not up to that [Par. 33.139]).

[12] The description in verse 2 of Florence as a giant bird whose wings

beat over land and sea causes Dante to invoke all three modalities of
journeying: by land, by sea, and by air. The metaphor of Florence’s
wings that beat in flight takes us back mentally to the pilgrim’s flight
down to the eighth circle on Geryon’s back (Inferno  17), with its
comparison of Dante to the mythological failed flyers Phaeton and
Icarus. The metaphor of battere le ali also forecasts the great verse
spoken by Ulysses later in this canto, when he conjures the heroic quest
as a passionately exuberant and indeed reckless flight: “de’ remi
facemmo ali al folle volo” (we made wings of our oars in a wild
flight [Inf. 26.125]).

[13] The opening description of Florence as a giant bird of prey also

anticipates the brooding eagle as a figure for tyrannical rule
in Inferno 27: “l’aguglia da Polenta la si cova, / sì che Cervia ricuopre co’
suoi vanni” (the eagle of Polenta shelters it /and also covers Cervia with
his wings [Inf. 27.41-2]). The Polenta dynastic eagle does not offer the
simple and positive “shelter” of Mandelbaum’s translation above, but
the more sinister control and “cover” (“ricuopre” in Inf. 27.42) offered
by tirannia. For Dante’s views of tirannia, see the Commento
on Inferno  12 and the Commento on Inferno  27.

[14] Because of the metaphorics of desire as flying that

the Commedia codes as Ulyssean, the Greek hero has a wholly
unique status among sinners. Ulysses has a sustained presence in
the poem: he is named in each canticle, not only in Inferno 26 but also
in Purgatorio 19, where the siren of Dante’s dream claims to have
turned Ulysses aside from his path with her song, and in Paradiso 27,
where the pilgrim, looking down at Earth, sees the trace of “il varco /
folle d’Ulisse” (the mad leap of Ulysses [Par. 27.82-83]). The poet could
not have written a more stunning reminiscence of the “folle volo”
of Inferno 26.125 than “il varco / folle d’Ulisse” of Paradiso 27.82-3,
where he conjures the hero’s “mad leap” against a cosmic backdrop and
in the enjambment that leaps over the abyss between verses 82 and 83.

[15] As “folle volo” and “varco / folle” indicate, Ulysses and his
surrogates, other failed flyers like Phaeton and Icarus, are connected to
one of the Commedia’s most basic metaphorical assumptions: if we
desire sufficiently, we fly; if we desire sufficiently, our quest takes on
wings. Dante explicitly establishes this equivalence in Purgatorio 4,
telling us that in order to climb the steep grade of lower Purgatory one
needs to fly with the wings of great desire:

ma qui convien ch’om voli;

dico con l’ale snelle e con le piume
del gran disio 
(Purg. 4.27-29)
But here one must fly,
I mean with the swift wings and the pinions
of great desire
[16] Ulysses is an embodiment of Dante’s fundamental trope of voyage.
He is the dramatic expression of the Commedia’s metaphorization of
desire as flight.

***

[17] The first thing to know before tackling Inferno 26, the canto of

Ulysses, is that Dante did not read Greek and never read the Iliad or
the Odyssey. Homer’s works were not available in the West until later
humanists recovered the knowledge of ancient Greek and the texts of
Greek antiquity. Dante’s Ulysses is entirely mediated through Latin
texts, in particular through Book 2 of Vergil’s Aeneid and through
Cicero’s De Finibus.

[18] Both negative and positive versions of Ulysses reached the Middle

Ages from classical antiquity. The negative Ulysses is portrayed in Book
2 of Vergil’s Aeneid, where he is labeled “dirus” (dreadful [Aen. 2.261])
and “scelerum inventor” (deviser of crimes [Aen. 2.164]). Vergil’s
portrayal came to dominate the Latin tradition and later the medieval
tradition, producing the stereotype of a treacherous and sacrilegious
warrior that leads directly to Dante’s fraudulent counselor, who is
punished in one flame with his comrade-in-arms Diomedes, since
“insieme / a la vendetta vanno come a l’ira” (together they go to
punishment as they went to anger [Inf. 26.56-57]).

[19] However, Dante’s Ulysses is a complex creation that goes

far beyond Vergil’s negative portrayal. Dante borrowed also from
the positive rendering of Ulysses that was preserved mainly among the
Stoics, for whom the Greek hero exemplified heroic fortitude in the face
of adversity. Horace praises Ulysses in the Epistle to Lollius for his
discernment and endurance and especially for his ability to withstand
the temptations that proved the undoing of his companions: “Sirenum
voces et Circae pocula” (Sirens’ songs and Circe’s cups [Epistles 1.2.23]).
From the Ars Poetica, where Horace cites the opening verses of
the Odyssey, Dante learned that Ulysses “saw the wide world, its
ways and cities all”: “mores hominum multorum vidit et urbes” (Ars
Poetica, 142).

[20] And, most suggestively, in De Finibus, Cicero celebrates the mind’s

innate craving of learning and of knowledge, what he calls the “lust for
learning”: “discendi cupiditas” (De Finibus 5.18.49). As his exemplary
lover of wisdom, Cicero presents none other than Ulysses. Cicero
interprets Homer’s Sirens as givers of knowledge and Ulysses’ response
to their invitation as praiseworthy. He endorses Ulysses’ quest, writing:
“It is knowledge that the Sirens offer, and it was no marvel if a lover of
wisdom held this dearer than his home” (De Finibus 5.18).
[21] Dante’s reconfiguring of Ulysses is a remarkable blend of the two
traditional characterizations that also succeeds in charting an entirely
new and extremely influential direction for this most versatile of mythic
heroes. For Dante invents a new story, never told before. His
Ulysses departs from Circe directly for his new quest, pulled not by the
desire for home and family, but by the lure of adventure, by “the
longing / I had to gain experience of the world / and of the vices and the
worth of men”: “l’ardore / ch’i’ ebbi a divenir del mondo esperto / e de li
vizi umani e del valore” (Inf. 26.97-99). As the classicist W. B. Stanford
points out in The Ulysses Theme: “In place of [Homer’s] centripetal,
homeward-bound figure Dante substituted a personification of
centrifugal force” (p. 181).

[22] Stanford offers a remarkable tribute to the importance of Dante’s

contribution to the Ulysses myth: “Next to Homer’s conception of
Ulysses, Dante’s, despite its brevity, is the most influential in
the whole evolution of the wandering hero” (The Ulysses Theme,
p. 178). The wings of Dante’s alta fantasia may fail him at the end of
the journey but they vouchsafe him remarkable insights along the way.
It is indeed a testament to that fantasia that Dante was able to summon
the authentic Ulyssean spirit in his brief episode, and to impress his
version of that spirit upon our collective imagination.

***

[23] The critical reception of Inferno 26 reflects the bifurcated Ulysses

of the tradition that Dante inherited from antiquity.

[24] Dante criticism has been divided on the subject of Ulysses

essentially since its inception. Among the Commedia’s fourteenth-
century commentators, Buti takes a moralizing position critical of the
Homeric hero, while Benvenuto sees him as exciting Dante’s
admiration. For documentation and analysis of the Ulysses debate,
beginning with the early commentators and moving to later critics,
see The Undivine Comedy, Chapter 3, “Ulysses, Geryon, and the
Aeronautics of Narrative Transition”, and my article “Ulysses” in The
Dante Encyclopedia, cited in Coordinated Reading.
[25] We can sketch the positions of various modern critics around the
same polarity demonstrated by Buti and Benvenuto in the fourteenth
century. There is a pro-Ulysses group, spearheaded by Fubini, who
maintains that Dante feels only admiration for the folle volo, for the
desire for knowledge that it represents, and for the sinner’s oration that
justifies it. (Fubini’s supporters include Sapegno, Pagliaro, and Forti.)
Then there is a less unified group that emphasizes the Greek hero’s
sinfulness and seeks to determine the primary cause for his infernal
abode.

[26] Discussion of Ulysses’ suitability for the eighth bolgia is further

complicated by Dante’s avoidance of this pit’s label until the end of the
next canto. Only at the end of Inferno 27 does a devil, cited in Guido da
Montefeltro’s account of the dramatic altercation that occurred at his
death, clarify that Guido is located in the eighth bolgia “perché diede ’l
consiglio frodolente” (because the counsel that he gave was fraudulent
[Inf. 27.116]).

[27] Within the Ulysses debate, the more negative critical camp can be
subdivided into those who see the folle volo itself as the chief of Ulysses’
sins and those who concentrate instead on the sin of fraudulent counsel.
Those in the latter group focus on Ulysses’ rhetorical deceitfulness as
manifested in his “orazion picciola” (Inf. 26.122), the “little speech” with
which he persuades his men to follow him. (This group includes Padoan
and Dolfi.)

[28] Most influential in the first category has been the position of Nardi,
who argues that Dante’s Ulysses is a new Adam, a new Lucifer, and that
his sin is precisely Adam’s: trespass, the “trapassar del segno” (going
beyond the limit) of which Adam speaks in Paradiso 26.117. Ulysses is
thus a transgressor, whose pride incites him to seek a knowledge that is
beyond the limits set for man by God, in the same way that Adam’s
pride drove him to a similar transgression, also in pursuit of a
knowledge that would make him Godlike.

[29] We can consider the positions of Dante scholars within the

Ulysses querelle along a continuum with extreme positions at either
end. At one extreme are those critics, like Fubini, who maintain that
Dante feels only admiration for Ulysses’ voyage and that the folle
volo has nothing whatever to do with the hero’s damnation. At the other
extreme are those critics, like Cassell, who deny Ulysses any special
importance, telling us that the poet feels nothing but scorn for his
creature and that to see anything else at work in the canto is to read it
through anachronistic romantic eyes.

[30] Both these readings are wrong. They rob the episode of its tension
and deflate it of its energy: on the one hand, by making the fact that
Ulysses is in Hell irrelevant and, on the other, by denying that this
particular sinner means more to the poem than do his companions.
Fubini’s simple admiration fails to deal with the fact that Dante places
Ulysses in Hell; Cassell’s simple condemnation fails to take into account
the structural and thematic significance that the Greek hero bears for
the Commedia as a whole.

[31] The encounter with Ulysses belongs to the eighth bolgia, but Dante

does not tell us that the eighth bolgia houses fraudulent counselors
until the end of Inferno 27. A deliberate ambiguity is thus structured
into the presentation of Ulysses. On the one hand it is clear (at least
retrospectively, after we read Inferno 27) that Ulysses is guilty of
fraudulent counsel: in Dante’s account he urges his men to sail with him
past the pillars of Hercules, and so leads them to their deaths. On the
other hand, it is equally clear that Dante’s narrative does not
focus on fraudulent counsel but on the idea of a heroic quest
that leads to perdition.

[32] For more on the critical responses to Ulysses, see The Undivine

Comedy, where my goal is to achieve an integrated critical response, as
Dante’s hero himself integrates the complex and polysemous mythic
hero who came down through the centuries.

[33] Dante is most often a both/and writer, rather than an either/or

writer. So much of his language is susceptible to multiple meanings, not
in the banal sense of allegory but in the living sense of language that
goes in multiple directions, all psychologically true and real to life.
In Inferno 26 Dante weaves together both the deceptive Ulysses of
the Aeneid and the lover of knowledge praised by Cicero in the De
Finibus. Dante’s brilliance is to capture both strands in a polysemous
whole.

***

[34] Dante’s placement of Ulysses among the sinners of fraud, and

specifically among the fraudulent counselors, depends heavily on the
anti-Greek and pro-Trojan propaganda of imperial Rome; this is the
sentiment that Dante found in the Aeneid. Aeneas, mythic founder of
Rome, is a Trojan, and Vergil’s Ulysses reflects the tone of the second
book of the Aeneid, in which Aeneas recounts the bitter fall of Troy.
After ten long years of war, Troy fell — not because of military
superiority but because of Ulysses’ deceitful strategem: the Trojan
horse.

[35] In Inferno 26 Virgilio recites a list of Ulyssean crimes that recall

the “scelera” (crimes) narrated by Vergil in Aeneid Book 2, where he
calls the Greek hero “scelerum inventor” (deviser of crimes
[Aen. 2.164]). Ulysses is guilty first and foremost of the Trojan horse:
“l’agguato del caval che fé la porta / onde uscì de’ Romani il gentil seme”
(the horse’s fraud that caused a breach — / the gate that let Rome’s
noble seed escape [Inf. 26.59-60]). He is guilty also of the trick by which
Achilles was lured to war and the theft of the Palladium:

Piangevisi entro l’arte per che, morta,

Deïdamìa ancor si duol d’Achille,
e del Palladio pena vi si porta.
(Inf. 26.61-63)
There they regret the guile that makes the dead
Deidamia still lament Achilles;
and there, for the Palladium,they pay.
[36] On the other hand, despite this damning recital, countless readers
have felt compelled to admire Ulysses’ stirring account of his journey
beyond the Pillars of Hercules (the name given in antiquity to the
promontories that flank the entrance to the strait of Gibraltar). He
wants to experience that which is “beyond the sun, in the world that is
unpeopled”: “di retro al sol, del mondo sanza gente” (Inf. 26.117).

[37] Like humans then who were involved in the European explorations

of the Atlantic that were just beginning in Dante’s day, like humans
today who seek to go further into the solar system, Ulysses wants to go
beyond the markers of the known world.

[38] In order to persuade his old and tired companions to undertake

such a “folle volo” (mad flight [Inf. 26.125]), Ulysses deploys his forceful
eloquence in an “orazion picciola” (little oration [Inf. 26.122]). Rightly
or wrongly, his oration has moved generations of readers and (quite
divorced of its infernal context) has achieved proverbial status in Italy.
Ulysses exhorts his companions to follow him to the unknown, framing
such a voyage as a pursuit of knowledge:

Considerate la vostra semenza:

fatti non foste a viver come bruti,
ma per seguir virtute e canoscenza.
(Inf. 26.118-20)
Consider well the seed that gave you birth:
you were not made to live your lives as brutes,
but to be followers of worth and knowledge. 
[39] The inspiring words spoken by Dante’s Ulisse in the orazion
picciola were recast in English in the poem “Ulysses”, written by the
nineteenth-century British poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson:

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
[40] In its infernal context, this oration exemplifies fraudulent counsel,
since through it Ulysses leads his companions to their destruction. But
the oration also powerfully evokes the authentic spirit of the
Ciceronian discendi cupiditas: the lust for knowledge.
[41] Here we have a classic example of Dante’s both/and brilliance as a
writer: his damnation of Ulysses for fraudulent counsel does
not blind him to the authentic grandeur of his Ciceronian
heroic quest. If anything, the opposite is true. Dante is a little too un-
blinded, a little too susceptible to the discendi cupiditas. Ulysses’
damnation is, at least in part, the poet’s response to the need to subdue
the lust for knowledge in himself. As I wrote in The Undivine Comedy:
“Ulysses is the lightning rod Dante places in his poem to attract and
defuse his own consciousness of the presumption involved in anointing
oneself God’s scribe” (p. 52) … “Thus Ulysses dies, over and over again,
for Dante’s sins” (p. 58).

[42] The cupiditas or lust for learning that Cicero’s Ulysses feels is

perfectly captured by his “ardor” to see all that there is to see:

l’ardore
ch’i’ ebbi a divenir del mondo esperto
e de li vizi umani e del valore.
(Inf. 26.97-99)
the longing
I had to gain experience of the world
and of the vices and the worth of men.
[43] The desire to see and to know is a long-term Dantean quest,
celebrated in the opening of the Convivio, where Dante cites
Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Aristotle begins the first book of
the Metaphysics thus:

All men by nature desire to know. An indication of this is the delight we

take in our senses; for even apart from their usefulness they are loved
for themselves; and above all others the sense of sight. For not only with
a view to action, but even when we are not going to do anything, we
prefer seeing (one might say) to everything else. The reason is that this,
most of all the senses, makes us know and brings to light many
differences between things.
[44] Although Virgilio gives a concise account of all the deceits and
tricks for which Ulysses was famous, Dante focuses Inferno 26 on the
heroic quest. His Ulysses presents himself as a fearless — perhaps
reckless — voyager into the unknown who leaves behind all the ties of
human affect and society to “pursue virtue and knowledge”: “per seguir
virtute e canoscenza” (Inf. 26.120). He incites his men to a mad flight to
uninhabited lands beyond the known world. Sailing the watery and
uninhabited wastes of the southern hemisphere, Ulysses eventually sees
a mountain in the distance, “the highest mountain I had ever seen”
(Inf. 26.133-135). This is Mount Purgatory, unapproachable except by
way of an angel’s boat, as we will see in Purgatorio 1 and 2. The end
of Purgatorio  1, in particular, is suffused with Ulyssean tropes, whose
function is to make evident the contrast between Ulysses and Dante-
pilgrim.

[45] Indeed, the sighting of Mount Purgatory makes inescapable the

connection between Dante and Ulysses, a connection that in any case
the narrator of Inferno 26 has underscored throughout the episode.
Dante tells us explicitly from the outset that the materia of this canto
grieves and concerns him in a particular way:

Allor mi dolsi, e ora mi ridoglio

quando drizzo la mente a ciò ch’io vidi,
e più lo ’ngegno affreno ch’i’ non soglio,
perché non corra che virtù nol guidi...
(Inf. 26.19-22)

It grieved me then and now grieves me again

when I direct my mind to what I saw;
and more than usual, I curb my talent,
that it not run where virtue does not guide...
[46] The idea that he must curb his own ingegno, restraining it from
running recklessly, reflects Dante’s fears with respect to his own quest.
Dante first expresses these fears in Inferno  2, a canto devoted to both
declaring and preemptively defusing Dante’s self-identification with
trespass, the trespass that he figures as Ulyssean. In Inferno 2 Dante
brands his own journey with the Ulyssean adjective “folle”: “temo che la
venuta non sia folle” (I fear my venture may be wild and empty
[Inf. 2.35]). Is one’s quest for knowledge a self-motivated search for
personal glory or is it a divinely sanctioned journey undertaken to help
others? We remember that in his reply to Cavalcante de’ Cavalcanti
in Inferno 10 — “da me stesso non vegno” (my own powers have not
brought me [Inf. 10.61]) — Dante very deliberately puts his journey at
the opposite end of the spectrum from Ulysses’ self-willed voyage.

[47] But the pilgrim’s self-association with Ulyssean trespass

is very strong. In this bolgia, the souls are not visible in human form:
they are tongues of flame that flicker like fireflies in the summer twilight
(Inf. 26.25-33). When Dante learns from Virgilio of Ulysses and
Diomedes encased in a twinned flame (an interesting reprise of the “two
in one” theme from the previous canto), his desire to make contact
overwhelms him, causing him to incline toward the “ancient flame”:
“vedi che del disio ver’ lei mi piego!” (see how, out of my desire, I bend
toward it! [Inf. 26.69]). Later in the poem we learn that the bending or
inclination of the soul toward an object of desire is love: “quel piegare è
amor” (that bending is love [Purg. 18.26]).

[48] The narrator also creates a fascinating linguistic opportunity for

dissociating the pilgrim from Ulysses. Virgilio suggests that he, a writer
of great epic verse, must address the twinned flame, because the epic
heroes housed therein would be disdainful towards Dante’s Italian
vernacular:

Lascia parlare a me, ch’i’ ho concetto

ciò che tu vuoi; ch’ei sarebbero schivi,
perch’ e’ fuor greci, forse del tuo detto.
(Inf. 26.73-75)
Let me address them — I have understood
what you desire of them. Since they were Greek,
perhaps they’d be disdainful of your speech.
[49] In our discussion of the next canto we will return to this important
passage, where Dante suggests that it is best for an epic poet to address
epic heroes. Virgilio referred before to ”l’alta mia tragedìa” (Inf. 20.113);
now — in speaking to Ulysses — he refers to his “alti versi” (Inf. 26.82).
At the beginning of Inferno 27, Dante will pick up this idea of a
correspondence between the Latin poet and the Greek heroes whose
adventures he narrated.

[50] For now, let us note that here Dante scripts for Virgilio language
that — while written in Italian — sounds as much like Latin epic as
it is possible for the vernacular to sound. Virgilio’s lofty words to
Ulysses resound with the high accents of heroic undertakings and noble
deeds. These are the noble deeds that it is the duty of the epic poet to
immortalize in verse, a duty that Virgilio underscores in his anaphoric
“s’io meritai di voi“:

O voi che siete due dentro ad un foco,

s’io meritai di voi mentre ch’io vissi,
s’io meritai di voi assai o poco
quando nel mondo li alti versi scrissi,
non vi movete; ma l'un di voi dica dove,
per lui, perduto a morir gissi.
(Inf. 26.79-84)

You two who move as one within the flame,

if I deserved of you while I still lived,
if I deserved of you much or a little
when in the world I wrote my noble lines,
do not move on; let one of you retell
where, having gone astray, he found his death.
[51] Ulysses himself will maintain this lofty diction. His language is
solemn, sublime, noble — modulating from the unfettered excitement of
his ardor to know and the charismatic humanism with which he
summons his men to his dignified and lapidary final submission to the
higher power that sends him to a watery grave. The waters close over
him, but he remains heroic: one of the few figures in the Inferno to utter
no complaint.

***

[52] This final note touches on what I call the “upside down pedagogy”
of the Commedia.

[53] As we have seen in the above commentary, Dante gives his

Ulysses an Adamic function. In Dante’s very idiosyncratic and
personal mythography, Ulysses inhabits a moral space analogous to that
of Adam in the Christian tradition. Ulysses is a signifier of what Dante’s
Adam will call “il trapassar del segno” (Par. 26.117).

[54] When we meet Dante’s Adam in Paradiso  26, Adam names another

figure who also signifies trespass. This is Nembrot, the Biblical builder
of the Tower of Babel. Nembrot, whom we encounter in Inferno  31, is
for Dante the emblem of linguistic trespass and consequent fall. He is
cited by Adam for his “ovra inconsummabile” (unaccomplishable task
[Par. 26.125]). The task of the Tower of Babel was “unaccomplishable”
because it was sinfully hubristic, which is why God stopped it.

[55] Nembrot is the only Dantean sinner, other than Ulysses, whom

Dante names in each canticle of the Commedia (see The Undivine
Comedy, p. 115). By the time we reach Paradiso 26, and indeed by the
time we reach the Garden of Eden, this strange constellation — Ulysses,
Nembrot, Adam — makes sense to us.

[56] But it is worth noting that Dante, a Christian author, leads his

readers on a very counter-intuitive course to the understanding that we
eventually attain. It would have been far simpler, in other words, to have
presented Adam himself — rather than Ulysses — as the signifier of
Adamic trespass. The fact that in the Commedia we work backwards,
arriving at the idea of Christian trespass through Dante’s incarnation of
the Greek hero, is itself worthy of note.
[57] Of course, at a fundamental level this happens because Dante has
us read Inferno before Purgatorio and Paradiso, thus introducing
much material to the reader in its negative variant. The effect of this in
malo reading experience must inevitably be to complicate matters, since
we get hold of ideas from the wrong end first and have to disentangle
them to get them back to right. For instance, we have to wrestle with
feeling compassion in Hell and learn why it is wrong rather than
avoiding such an arduous lesson until we are well versed in the requisite
theology. For a fuller discussion of Dante’s upside down pedagogy, see 
“Dante, Teacher of his Reader”, in Coordinated Reading.

[58] But the experience of backward reading is not in itself sufficient to

account for Ulysses as Dante’s avatar of Adam. After all, Nembrot alone
would have been able to fulfill that function more straightforwardly,
confronting one Biblical character with another.

[59] What is remarkable is the choice of a classical figure for

the personification of Adamic trespass, a choice that creates a
yet more steep learning curve for the reader.

[60] The choice of Greek Ulysses is one for which we are prepared by

the presence of other classical trespassers in Inferno, particularly by
Capaneus, one of the Seven Against Thebes. At the same time, Capaneus
is a figure for whom the author elicits no sympathy, whom he keeps at
arm’s-length and to whom Virgilio speaks with disdain. Ulysses, by
contrast, is a figure to whom Virgilio speaks with great respect and with
whom the pilgrim identifies.

[61] The identification of the pilgrim with Ulysses is one that the poet
has been building since Inferno 1-2, through voyage and maritime
imagery, through a specific metaphoric code, through a dedicated
lexicon. From the beginning of the Commedia we are schooled in
Dante’s personal rhetoric and mythography, so that we can navigate a
poetic journey saturated in early humanism and classical antiquity, a
poetic journey that is the poet’s own varco folle. It is a sign of Dante’s
having consummated his own “ovra inconsummabile” — of his having
done the un-doable — that we now take his mythography for granted
and give so little consideration to an upside down pedagogy that starts
with Ulysses and finally arrives at Adam.

Inferno 27: Disconversion

 a classical/contemporary couple: Ulysses and Guido da
Montefeltro
 Ulysses recounts a failed quest, Guido recounts a failed
conversion; both stories are structurally central to the plot of
the Commedia
 what language does Virgilio speak?
 historical torture versus metaphoric torture
 tirannia reprised (see Commento on Inferno  12)
 Guido’s story involves a second actor, Boniface VIII (for Boniface,
see Commento on Inferno  19)
 Christian doctrine on repentance wedded to Aristotelian logic: the
law of non-contradiction (A ≠ not A)
 disconversion as a means for meditating on the laws that govern
conversion
 the little temporal adverbs that are the linguistic correlatives of
conversion, as in Augustine’s Confessions: conversion follows the
arrow of time
 both Petrarch and Boccaccio understand Inferno 27 as a
meditation on conversion and disconversion: the connections of
Guido da Montefeltro’s story to Petrarch’s Rerum vulgarium
fragmenta and to Boccaccio’s Decameron

[1] Inferno 27 is the second of two canti devoted to the sin of fraudulent

counsel. In this bolgia, as elsewhere in Malebolge, we see a classical
figure (Ulysses in Inferno 26) paired with a contemporary figure (Guido
da Montefeltro in Inferno 27). Atypically, however, and creating a
different narrative dynamic, both Ulysses and Guido are great
characters: each dominates an entire canto, and each tells a story that is
structurally central to the plot of the Commedia. Ulysses recounts a
failed quest, while Guido recounts a failed conversion.

[2] In Inferno 27 we have the opportunity to observe how Dante goes

about transposing fraudulent counsel from the heroic/epic/classical key
of Ulysses to the vernacular/ contemporary/quotidian key of Guido da
Montefeltro. As we shall see, Dante will “transpose” the key of this
canto by literally transposing the language that Virgilio
speaks.

[3] The canto of Guido da Montefeltro functions in many ways as an

unmasking of the canto of Ulysses. As Inferno 16 serves to
demythologize Inferno 15, focusing on the physical degradation of the
three noble Florentines in a way that does not occur vis-à-vis Brunetto
Latini, so Inferno 27 demythologizes Inferno 26. The difference between
Dante’s treatment of Ulysses and his treatment of Guido is immediately
apparent.

[4] The travelers are beginning to move off after Ulysses has finished
speaking, when another flame comes after them, emitting a “confuso
suon” (perplexing sound [Inf. 27.6]): instead of Virgilio’s lengthy and
beautiful captatio benevolentiae, here it is the sinner who begs the
travelers to remain, and instead of Ulysses’ sonorous exordium, here
there is only a confused racket. Dante now elaborates on the modus
operandi of this speaking flame, something he chose not to do
in Inferno 26, and there follows the graphic horror of the simile of the
Sicilian bull.

[5] This is the bronze bull in which the tyrant Phalaris of Sicily roasted
his victims, whose shrieks were transformed by the machine into the
bellowing of a bull. As the tortured victims in the bull attempt to wail,
but have their human cries transformed into a bull’s bellowing (a further
degradation to amuse the tyrant), so the soul within the flame attempts
to speak, but can find no outlet for his voice (Inf. 27.7-15). An artistic
emphasis symptomatic of Malebolge is built into the simile, by way of
the reference to the bull’s inventor, Perillos of Athens, and his just
punishment (verses 8-9).

[6] The simile of the Sicilian bull functions as a transforming medium.

The simile is stationed at the outset of Inferno 27 in order to transform
the discourse: to accomplish the transition from high to low,
from epic to quotidian, from human to bull. The issue at stake
here is transformation; it is conversion, as the verb convertire in verse
15 indicates.

[7] This transformation is articulated at the level of language, as is

appropriate in an infernal pit inhabited by tongues of fire. The simile
articulates the transition from speech, the “high” epic speech of Virgilio
and Ulysses in Inferno 26, to the “low” sound of a bull’s bellows. The
simile’s second term describes the “conversion” of Guido’s words into
“the language of the fire”: “in suo linguaggio / si convertian le parole
grame” (the miserable words were converted into the flame’s language
[Inf. 27.14-15]). Dante uses the transformation of human speech into a
bull’s bellows as a means of engaging the canto’s theme: conversion.

[8] Only now do we understand that Ulysses’ voice, like Guido’s, must

have been physically degraded by the effort of speaking as a flame. Only
now do we understand the physical effort that is implied by “gittò voce
di fuori” (he threw forth his voice [Inf. 26.90]). Only now do we realize
that Ulysses’ eloquence, like that of Pier della Vigna, who emitted
“parole e sangue” as he spoke, was accompanied by great pain.

[9] This passage is followed by another tercet describing the mechanics

of Guido’s speech, and then, finally, by his first words: a subversive
direct address to Virgilio, referring to the maestro’s recent dismissal of
Ulysses. This dismissal was already mentioned in verse 3, where
Ulysses’ flame departs “con la licenza del dolce poeta” (with the
permission of the gentle poet [Inf. 27.3]). We have noted Dante’s love of
the telling periphrasis, and Guido now uses a linguistic periphrasis to
address Virgilio: Virgilio is the one “who was just now speaking
Lombard“ (“che parlavi mo lombardo” [Inf. 27.20]) and who was saying
“‘Istra ten va, più non t’adizzo” (Go away now, I urge you no more
[Inf. 27.21]). If it is surprising to learn that Virgilio, who had addressed
Ulysses with such manifest respect in Inferno 26, should dismiss him
with the words “Go away now”, it is even more surprising to find these
words recorded in a coarse Lombard dialect:

udimmo dire: “O tu a cu’ io drizzo

la voce e che parlavi mo lombardo,
dicendo ‘Istra ten va, più non t’adizzo’” 
(Inf. 27.19-21)
We heard: “O you to whom I turn my voice,
who only now were talking Lombard, saying,
Go away now, I urge you no more’” 
[10] As I wrote in Dante’s Poets, “We now see what transformation the
Sicilian bull has prepared us to accept: Vergil’s ‘S’io meritai di voi’ has
become ‘Istra ten va’; the high style has been converted to the low style”
(p. 231). Indeed, Virgilio’s high, sonorous, Latinate “S’io meritai di voi”
of Inferno 26 has become low, clipped, coarse Lombard dialect — “Istra
ten va” — in Inferno 27.

[11] On the subject of Virgilio speaking Lombard, we recall that he is a

Lombard native, as stipulated in “li parenti miei furon lombardi” (my
parents were from Lombardy [Inf. 1.68]). Consequently, we must also
wonder: did Ciampolo offer to call “Toschi e Lombardi” (Tuscans and
Lombards [Inf. 22.99]) out of the grafters’ pitch because he heard
Virgilio speaking Lombard? And, if so, what form of Lombard did
Ciampolo hear?

[12] Although linguistic diversity is a fictional premise of Dante’s

afterlife, inhabited by people who speak “Diverse lingue, orribili favelle”
(Different languages, horrible tongues [Inf. 3.25]), it is not a narrative
premise, in that almost everyone speaks in the language in which the
poem is written. Dante frequently approximates the speech of his
characters in his Italian (a gallicism for Hugh Capet, regional
dialectisms where appropriate), and occasionally employs other
languages (Provençal for Arnaut Daniel, Latin for Cacciaguida), but, as
Antonino Pagliaro points out: “si tratta di caratterizzazione di ordine,
non linguistico, ma stilistico” (this form of characterization is not
linguistic, but stylistic; see “Dialetti e lingue nell’oltretomba,” cited in
Coordinated Reading).

[13] What language did Dante imagine the historical Vergil spoke?

Ettore Paratore convincingly demonstrates that Dante recognized a
Latin vernacular as the root of the Romance vernaculars. Dante would
further have believed, according to the thesis he lays out in his linguistic
treatise De vulgari eloquentia, that the literary Latin of the classical
poets was abstracted from spoken Latin, in the same way that literary
Italian was abstracted from spoken Italian (see Paratore, “Il latino di
Dante,” cited in Coordinated Reading). According to Paratore, Dante
imagined that Vergil spoke a vernacular form of the gramatica in which
he wrote (see De vulgari eloquentia 1.3 for gramatica), i.e. a vernacular
form of Latin. I therefore suggest that Virgilio’s “Lombard” is a
reference to the vernacular Latin that Dante believed the Roman poet
spoke while alive, a “Lombard Latin” as it were. For more bibliography
on the linguistic issues at stake in this passage, see the long note
in Dante’s Poets, p. 232.

[14] Linguistic issues are inevitably represented by stylistic shifts

in Inferno 26 and 27, for Dante does not have the means to represent
real linguistic change. In other words, although we do not know in what
language Virgilio originally spoke to Ulysses (i.e. whether Guido’s
reference to Virgilio’s “Lombard” applies only to his last dismissal, or to
his previous address as well), we do know that he originally spoke in a
high style, and is now represented as speaking in a low one.

[15] Dante necessarily works within the constraints of his medium,

which is the Italian vernacular. In Inferno 26 he ennobles the style and
diction of spoken Italian, as used by both Virgilio and Ulysses. When,
instead, Guido da Montefeltro says that he heard Virgilio say “Istra ten
va, più non t’adizzo” (Go away now, I urge you no more [Inf. 27.21]), it is
as though Dante had literally “translated” the style and register of
vernacular Italian from the mode of tragedìa (Inferno 26) to the mode
of comedìa (Inferno 27).

 * * *

[16] The Sicilian bull is a likely historical instrument of torture recorded

by classical authors as devised for Phalaris, the real tyrant of Agrigento,
in Sicily. Phalaris ruled circa 570 to 554 BCE and was known to
Aristotle, who notes his depravity and cites him as an example of
bestiality in Nicomachean Ethics 7.5.

[17] Along with the Sicilian bull, there are other real tortures
cited in Inferno. In Inferno 19 Dante stands over Nicholas III stuck
head-first in the floor of Hell and compares himself to a friar who
confesses an assassin (Inf. 19.49-51). Dante is referring here to the
capital punishment meted upon paid assassins, called propagginazione,
which consists of burying the criminal head-first in a hole, filling the
hole with dirt, and creating death by suffocation. In Inferno 23.66
Dante compares the leaden capes worn by the hypocrites to the lead
mantle supposedly devised as an instrument of torture by Frederick II
(there is no documentary confirmation of this torture, whose alleged
connection to Frederick is repeated by all the ancient commentators).
In Inferno 28.80, Dante refers to a form of torturous murder committed
on board ships: called mazzerare, this torture consists of putting a
living man in a sack with a heavy rock, tying the sack, and throwing it
overboard. In Inferno 30.75, Maestro Adamo reports having been
burned alive on the stake: “per ch’io il corpo sù arso lasciai” (for this I
left my body, burned, above [Inf. 30.75]).

[18] Dante-narrator will suggest in Purgatorio 27 that he had witnessed

both propagginazione and burning at the stake. He references the
pallor of one who is condemned to being buried alive: “colui che ne la
fossa è messo” (one who is placed in the ditch [Purg. 27.15]). Shortly
thereafter he mentions having seen human bodies set alight: “umani
corpi già veduti accesi” (the human bodies I’d once seen burning [Purg.
27.18]). Interspersed with the literalized metaphors that Dante devises
as contrapassi, representations that have always captured the attention
of his readers, there are thus historical forms of torture that Dante knew
about and even witnessed.

[19] In the context of Inferno 27, the Sicilian bull and the tyrant who
deployed it anticipate the first part of the pilgrim’s dialogue with Guido
da Montefeltro, which will treat the spread of tirannia as a form of
governance throughout the cities of Romagna. On tirannia, and on
Malatesta da Verucchio and Malatestino as quintessential Romagnol
typrants, see the Commento on Inferno  12.

[20] Realizing that Dante is Italian, Guido da Montefeltro asks whether

his native Romagna experiences peace or war. Going city by city through
the region, Dante explains that, although there is no outright war at
present, Romagna is never free of war “in the hearts of its tyrants”:
“Romagna tua non è, e non fu mai, / sanza guerra ne’ cuor de’ suoi
tiranni” (Your Romagna is not now and never was / quite free of war
inside its tyrants’ hearts [Inf. 27.37-38]).

[21] This meditation on the birth of tyrannical rule in Italy features a list

of Romagnol dynasties that includes both Francesca da Rimini’s birth
family, the Polentani, and the family into which she married, the
Malatesta (Inf. 27.41 and 46 respectively). In verses 46-48, Dante
pungently describes the cruelty of the founder of the Malatesta dynasty,
Malatesta da Verucchio, and his son, Malatestino, who became lord of
Rimini after his father’s death. In the next canto, Dante adds to the
indictment of this dynasty, calling Malatestino a “tiranno fello” (foul
tyrant [Inf. 28.81]) for his ghastly murder of the two best citizens of
Fano. In this canto and the next, Dante thus positions one particular
dynasty, the Malatesta, as the quintessential Romagnol tyrants.

[22] Guido da Montefeltro himself was a great warlord and political

strategist who founded the ruling dynasty of Urbino, and whose role in
shaping the destiny of the Romagna region has been insufficiently
considered in discussions of Inferno 27. In The Malatesta of Rimini
and the Papal State, historian P. J. Jones notes that the ‘‘transformation
of local into regional signoria was mainly the work of one man”: this
man was Guido da Montefeltro. In my essay “Only Historicize” I cite
Jones and consider how such an understanding can transform our
reading of Inferno 27:

Reading historians of Romagna allowed me to glimpse the remarkable

and unexploited historical density of Dante’s poetry in Inferno 27: the
drama of Guido da Montefeltro’s false conversion in the canto’s latter
half is ripe for a reexamination that reads his story against the canto’s
earlier probing of Romagnol history. In The Malatesta of Rimini and
the Papal State, the historian P. J. Jones writes of Guido’s impact on
Romagna that the ‘‘transformation of local into regional signoria was
mainly the work of one man’’. Even the imagery of Inferno 27 can be
contextualized with respect to contemporary politics: for instance, Jones
mentions a Ghibelline poem that ‘‘sets out to contrast the two captains,
Guido ‘leone’ and Malatesta da Verucchio ‘veltro’ ’’ (34), while
in Inferno 27 Malatesta is a mastiff rather than a veltro, and Guido
famously says that his deeds ‘‘non furon leonine, ma di volpe’’ (Inf.
27.75). When the pilgrim, speaking to Guido da Montefeltro
in Inferno 27, refers to the ‘‘lunga prova’’ endured by Forlì before it
reduced the French to a ‘‘sanguinoso mucchio,’’ he is referring to events
in which historians assign that same Guido da Montefeltro the central
role. And yet there has not been a reading of Dante’s Guido da
Montefeltro that takes into account his crucial role in a historical
process — the formation of tirannia — that Dante deplored. (“Only
Historicize,” pp. 16-17)

***

[23] Dante praises Guido da Montefeltro in Convivio 4.28.8 for having

renounced worldly ambitions in old age to become a Franciscan friar.
In Inferno 27, Dante uses the same template — renunciation of worldly
ambition and embrace of a friar’s life — but dramatically refashions it.
The result of Dante’s refashioning is that Guido’s story holds up a mirror
to the Commedia’s central theme: conversion.
[24] Disconversion is a necessary predicate to a meditation on
conversion, and in the Commedia Guido da Montefeltro tells a
devastating story of failed conversion.

[25] Both Petrarch and Boccaccio understand Inferno 27 as a

meditation on conversion and disconversion, as I discuss at the end of
this commentary. Their responses signal that the importance
of Inferno 27 for Dante’s contemporaries is philosophical and not keyed
to what Dante did or did not learn from chroniclers with respect to
Guido’s life.

[26] Guido prefaces his story with lines made famous by the poet T. S.
Eliot, who uses Inferno 27.61-66 as the epigraph to “The Love Song of J.
Alfred Prufrock”, thus offering me and many others our first encounter
with Dante’s poetry. Eliot does not identify the author or provenance of
the verses he cites. I still remember my youthful encounter with
language that I found even more hauntingly beautiful than Eliot’s and
my father’s explanation that this was Dante.

[27] Guido begins his address to Dante with a conditional contrary to

fact (verses 61-63), followed by a mistaken deduction from a false
premise (verses 64-66). If he thought that he were speaking to someone
able to go back to earth, says Guido to Dante, then he would be silent;
but, since he has heard that no one exits from this pit, he will speak
without fear of infamy:

S’i’ credesse che mia risposta fosse

a persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
questa fiamma staria sanza più scosse;
ma però che già mai di questo fondo
non tornò vivo alcun, s’i’ odo il vero,
sanza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.
(Inf. 27.61-66)
If I thought my reply were meant for one<
who ever could return into the world,
this flame would stir no more. 
And yet, since none, if what I hear is true,
ever returned alive from this abyss, then
without fear of facing infamy, I answer you. 
[28] Guido’s over-confident susceptibility to false premises — the very
susceptibility that will be exploited by Boniface VIII — is already visible
in this opening passage, where the false premise of his argument is that
no one ever exits Hell. Guido weighs whether to tell his story to Dante
and carefully calculates that, based on the false premise he has accepted
as true, he is safe and may therefore speak. Guido errs in his prudential
calculation, of course, since Dante is the one traveler who does leave
this pit.

[29] Guido’s miscalculation vis-à-vis the pilgrim is a mise-en-abyme of

the erring prudential calculation that delivered him to Hell in the first
place. His error is revealed in his syntax, in the conditional contrary to
fact and the causal conjunctions plus temporal adverbs of verse 64: the
words “ma però che già mai” — “given that never before” — give the
impression of ironclad reasoning, but in truth the reasoning is faulty.

[30] Similarly, Guido’s plan to guarantee salvation by becoming a

Franciscan was, he thought, ironclad. We note the telling emphasis
on the outer vestments of conversion, as though being girt
with the Franciscan cord is tantamount to conversion. And yet,
he is not proof to the seductions of the High Priest, Pope Boniface:

Io fui uom d’arme, e poi fui cordigliero,

credendomi, sì cinto, fare ammenda;
e certo il creder mio venìa intero,
se non fosse il gran prete, a cui mal prenda!
che mi rimise ne le prime colpe. 
(Inf. 27.67-71)
I was a man of arms, then wore the cord,
believing that, so girt, I made amends;
and surely what I thought would have been true
were it not for the High Priest — may he be damned —
who made me fall back into my former sins.
[31] The “gran prete” whom Guido da Montefeltro damns in verse 70
will indeed be damned, according to Dante, for Guido is referring to
Boniface VIII, the very pope whom Dante condemns for simony
in Inferno  19. However, Guido here is damning himself: for he is
revealing that his conversion was not real, but prudential. Boniface
could not have compelled him to return to his “prime colpe” (former
sins [Inf. 27.71]) had he truly converted and left those sins behind.

[32] The verb mettere in the past absolute is used by both Ulysses and

by Guido in key verses that are emblematic: of Ulysses’ failed
adventurism on the one hand and of Guido’s failed conversion on the
other. Ulysses speaks of himself as in control, the agent of his destiny
who sets out boldly onto the open sea: “ma misi me per l’alto mare
aperto” (I set out on the open sea [Inf. 26.100]). Guido instead speaks of
Boniface VIII as agent, the one who turned him back to his old bad
ways: “mi rimise ne le prime colpe” (he made me fall back into my
former sins [Inf. 27.71]).

[33] In this respect, Ulysses is unusual in Inferno while Guido da

Montefeltro is typical: it is typical of Dante’s sinners, beginning with
Francesca, to shift the blame for damnation from oneself.

 * * *

[34] While Ulysses‘ journey to death and damnation is one of isolated

grandeur in both decision-making and execution (the crew are but his
pawns, in his telling), Guido da Montefeltro’s story involves a second
actor. The story Guido tells is therefore in some ways more layered and
complex, involving a double set of motivations.

[35] According to Guido, Boniface sought counsel from the old warrior

on how to conquer Palestrina, the stronghold of his Colonna enemies.
The Colonna cardinals had refused to accept the legitimacy of the
abdication, in 1294, of Boniface VIII’s predecessor, the holy Benedictine
hermit, Celestine V. Consequently, they did not accept the legitimacy of
Boniface VIII’s reign, and the result was the brutal papal seige of the
Colonna stronghold at Palestrina. Boniface VIII is thus
another tiranno to add to the list of tyrants offered earlier in this canto.

[36] When Boniface sees that Guido hesitates to give him the counsel he
requires, the pope reassures the retired condottiere that he need not
fear for his soul. At this point Boniface gives false counsel, for he lies,
telling Guido da Montefeltro that as pope he has the power to absolve
and — here is the lie — that he will absolve Guido of his future sin
immediately, from this very moment:

E’ poi ridisse: “Tuo cuor non sospetti;

finor t’assolvo, e tu m’insegna fare
sì come Penestrino in terra getti.
(Inf. 27.100-02)

And then he said: “Your heart must not mistrust:

I now absolve you in advance —— teach me
to batter Penestrino to the ground.
[37] In a most remarkable instance of layering, Dante provides us with a
troping of fraudulent counsel in this episode, for the fraudulent
counselor Guido da Montefeltro relates that he was fraudulently
counseled by Boniface VIII. Boniface gave Guido fraudulent advice
when he tells him not to worry about sinning, promising that he will
absolve him in advance, before he sins: “finor t’assolvo” (I now absolve
you in advance [Inf. 27.101]). Boniface offers apparently prudential logic
based on a false premise, for not even a pope can absolve of a sin that
has not yet been committed.

[38] Boniface of course knows that one cannot be absolved of a sin

before committing it. (However, theology runs afoul of history: for a
historical example of papal absolution offered in advance, see Appendix
1 below.) The logic here is simple: commission of a sin requires the soul
to will to carry out the sin, and it is not possible to will an act and repent
of that act simultaneously. It is this simultaneous repenting and willing
that is challenged by the devil who arrives to take Guido’s soul to Hell,
snatching him from St. Francis in the final episode of his story, which
Guido relates at the canto’s end.

[39] The devil unites in his analysis both elementary Christian

doctrine — absolution requires repentance — and elementary
Aristotelian logic: we cannot simultaneously want to commit
an action and want not to commit it.

[40] As the devil points out, this argument presents a logical fallacy,
based on the law of non-contradiction. The law of non-contradiction —
which Dante states explicitly in Paradiso  6, verse 21, also in the context
of conversion (see Appendix 2 below) — holds that a true statement and
its opposite cannot both be true at the same time in the same sense. This
principle can be stated logically as A ≠ not A:

ch’assolver non si può chi non si pente,

né pentere e volere insieme puossi
per la contradizion che nol consente
(Inf. 27.118-120)

one can’t absolve a man who's not repented,

and no one can repent and will at once;
the law of contradiction won't allow it.
[41] A final thought on Boniface VIII. As discussed in the Commento
on Inferno  19, Boniface did not die until 1303, and Dante therefore has
to go to great lengths to insert him into a Hell that the pilgrim visited in
April of 1300. In doing so, he denies Boniface the possibility of
repentance in extremis (the very possibility that he grants to Guido da
Montefeltro’s son, Bonconte, in Purgatorio 5) and flirts dangerously
with determinism. The pope promises absolution for a sin not yet
committed, and Dante in turn has promised him damnation for a life
not yet fulfilled.

[42] Nonetheless, Boniface’s sins are not the point here. They are
invoked by Guido to exculpate himself but they should not distract us,
as they do not distract the devil who arrives for Guido’s soul in the scene
described at the canto’s end. In giving Boniface the evil advice he seeks,
Guido shows that he has not really converted, that he has not really
changed his essence.

[43] In Dante’s account, Guido had abandoned his life as a warrior and

politician, and yet his sinful inclinations were so strong that he was
susceptible to the temptation posed by Boniface VIII. His conversion did
not “take”: he was tempted and he fell. In Hell he is furious at the man
who outwitted him and regretful that his brilliant plans to achieve
salvation were thwarted. But the issue is not truly Boniface; the issue is
what Boniface revealed about Guido.

[44] Guido da Montefeltro put great effort into taking the steps that he
thought would guarantee his salvation, renouncing his worldly life to
become a Franciscan. Yet he fails, because his heart did not change. His
son Bonconte, whose story Dante recounts as a counterpoint to the
father in Purgatorio 5, remained a warrior until his end, dying on the
battlefield. And yet, by uttering a genuine prayer of repentance with his
last breath, Bonconte achieves salvation.

***

[45] Inferno 27 is a touchstone for Petrarch, whose depiction of his own

struggle to achieve conversion is influenced by the episode of Guido da
Montefeltro. As shown by Augustine in the Confessions and by Dante
in Inferno 27, the logic of conversion follows the arrow of time.
While Dante goes to great lengths in Inferno 27 to embed conversion
and its causality in a temporal process that follows the arrow of time,
Petrarch deliberately subverts time and forward motion in his Rerum
vulgarium fragmenta, the lyric sequence that recounts his own failure
to achieve conversion.
[46] When Guido blames Boniface for reconsigning him to his “prime
colpe” (my former sins [Inf. 27.71]), for sending him back to the state he
was in before he became a Franciscan, he effectively acknowledges that
he did not truly convert. Had he truly converted, had he truly changed
his essence, he could not have gone backwards; he could not have
returned to his previous self.

[47] Petrarch, who writes of his “primo giovenile errore” (first youthful

error) in the first poem of the Rerum vulgarium fragmenta and tells us
repeatedly in poem after poem that he is never truly able to leave the
“primo alloro” (first laurel [Rvf 23.167]), adapts the deep logic of
Guido’s story to himself. Petrarch dramatizes himself as the protagonist
of a failed conversion, based on his inability to move forward,
from primo to something that comes later. His first sonnet, Voi
ch’ascoltate, features repentance via the same unusual form of the verb
(pentére) used by Guido da Montefeltro. In a replication of Guido’s
failed logic, Petrarch places a poem of “repentance” before a lyric
sequence that subsequently and repeatedly celebrates the very act for
which he has “already”, in sonnet 1, declared his repentance. As I note in
“The Self in the Labyrinth of Time”, Petrarch is replicating Guido’s time-
line, “repenting” before sinning:

A recantation — “’l pentérsi,” repentance (1.13) — at the outset makes no

more sense than a sinner’s attempt to repent before sinning, a logical
contradiction treated by Dante in the Guido da Montefeltro episode of
the Inferno (via the same unusual form of the verb, pentere, used in Voi
ch’ascoltate by Petrarch): “ch’assolver non si può chi non si pente, / né
pentere e volere insieme puossi / per la contradizion che nol consente”
(For he who does not repent cannot be absolved, nor can one both
repent and will at once, because of the contradiction which does not
allow it [Inf. 27.118–20]). “Forse / tu non pensavi ch’io loïco fossi”
(Perhaps you did not think I was a logician! [Inf. 27.122–23]), says the
devil to Guido as he drags him off to hell. As shown by Augustine in
the Confessions and by Dante in the Commedia, and as Petrarch well
knows, the logic of conversion follows the arrow of time: it is not logical
to renounce the “breve sogno” before engaging in it, before succumbing
to it, before representing it. (“The Self in the Labyrinth of Time: Rerum
vulgarium fragmenta,” p. 42)

***

[48] At the heart of Guido’s story are Augustinian temporal adverbs that
he weds with causal conjunctions. Boniface says “finor t’assolvo” —
“from now I absolve you” — and Guido echoes in response, making his
fatal error when he links the causal conjunction “da che” (since) with the
temporal adverb “mo” (now): “Padre, da che tu mi lavi / di quel peccato
ov’ io mo cader deggio” (Father, since you cleanse me of the sin / that I
must now fall into [Inf. 27.108-109]). The tiny particle “mo” is the crux
of matter: it signals that Guido accepts the idea that he can receive prior
absolution for the sin that he will only “now” — “mo” — commit.

[49] But, as the devil reminds us, absolution requires repentance, and it

is not possible to repent for an act that one has not yet committed: the
logic of sin and repentance, and therefore of conversion, is temporal.

[50] Guido uses the lexicon of repentance and conversion, but

he scrambles the order — fatally. If we were to take the lexicon of
repentance and conversion of Inferno 27 and unscramble it, we could
achieve what Guido did not achieve, the following proper temporal
alignment:

1) volere (verse 119: desire, in this case the desire to sin) →

2) the commission of sin (described in verses 110-11) →

3a) pentére (verse 119: repentance for the sinful act committed) →

3b) confession following repentance (as in verse 83: “pentuto e confesso

mi rendei”) →
4) absolution (as in Boniface’s “finor t’assolvo” of verse 101, but without
the incriminating temporal adverb “finor”)

[51] In the above logically sequential order, the words are not mere
shells, like poker chips in a game. They are related to authentic feelings
and they therefore unfold in time, in the only possible order: 1) first
comes the will to sin (volere); 2) then comes the commission of the sin;
3) then comes repentance (pentére) with its partner confession; 4)
finally one is absolved. In a sequence in which words are connected to
authentic feelings, we can see the absurdity of Boniface’s “finor
t’assolvo” (101).

[52] In Boniface’s impossible sequence, which Guido accepts only

because he has not lost the desire to sin, the words are robbed of
meaning and have become formal shells, to be manipulated at will.
Indeed, Boniface takes pride in his manipulation of people, announcing
“Lo ciel poss’io serrare e diserrare”: “Heaven can I lock and unlock”
(Inf. 27.103). When the words have meaning, when they correspond to
genuine sentiment, then they can proceed only in one direction, because
of the nature of desire and its unfolding in time.

[53] The theatricality of the scene in which St. Francis arrives for the
soul of one of his Franciscans, only to be dismissed by the logic-wielding
devil, is reminiscent of mystery plays and popular medieval drama. The
logic of conversion is so unassailable that not even St. Francis can
prevail. The theatricality also reminds us that conversion is
precisely not a performance art: conversion happens not outside, as
performed by Guido da Montefeltro in Inferno 27, but inside, and we
cannot read what is happening inside the soul. Not even a church
dignitary can do so: hence the archbishop of Cosenza, delegate of Pope
Clement IV, mistakenly condemned the saved Manfredi, as Dante
carefully points out in Purgatorio 3.

[54] Repentance, conversion, and salvation remain opaque, hidden in

the human heart, mysterious and known only to God, as Boccaccio
brilliantly reminds us in the first novella of the Decameron (a novella
that also owes much to Inferno 27):

Cosí adunque visse e morí ser Cepparello da Prato e santo divenne come
avete udito. Il quale negar non voglio esser possibile lui esser beato nella
presenza di Dio, per ciò che, come che la sua vita fosse scellerata e
malvagia, egli poté in su lo stremo aver sí fatta contrizione, che per
avventura Idio ebbe misericordia di lui e nel suo regno il ricevette: ma
per ciò che questo n’è occulto, secondo quello che ne può apparire
ragiono, e dico costui piú tosto dovere essere nelle mani del diavolo in
perdizione che in Paradiso. (Decameron 1.1.89)

So lived, so died Ser Cepperello da Prato, and came to be reputed a

saint, as you have heard. Nor would I deny that it is possible that he is of
the number of the blessed in the presence of God, seeing that, though
his life was evil and depraved, yet he might in his last moments have
made so complete an act of contrition that perchance God had mercy on
him and received him into His kingdom. But, as this is hidden from
us, I speak according to that which appears, and I say that he ought
rather to be in the hands of the devil in hell than in Paradise. (Trans.
J.M. Rigg, London, 1921, first printed 1903, taken from Decameron
Web, emphasis mine)

Appendix 1

Papal Absolution Offered in Advance

[55] Papal absolution was sometimes used tactically in the fraudulent

way that Boniface VIII uses to seduce Guido da Montefeltro. In other
words, popes sometimes took advantage of the gullibility of Christians
and let their delegates suggest the promise of absolution for political
advantage. The following example from a biography of Queen Elizabeth
shows on the one hand sensitivity to the need to avoid a papal
declaration of prior absolution and on the other the desireability of
implying such a promise:

The Papal nuncio in Spain gave his opinion that the Bull of Pius V
justified all her subjects in taking arms against the Queen; as regards
her assassination, the Pope would not make any declaration previously,
but would give the necessary absolutions after the deed had been done.
(Mandell Creighton, Queen Elizabeth, p. 196, The Pergamum Collection,
Kindle Edition)

Appendix 2

The Law of Non-Contradiction and Conversion in Paradiso  6

[56] Dante explicitly invokes the Aristotelian law of non-contradiction

in Paradiso 6, again à propos conversion, in this case that of the
Emperor Justinian.

[57] Justinian explains that he once wrongly believed that Christ

possessed only a single, divine, nature. In other words, he was a follower
of the Monophysite heresy. (For the opposite heresy, the belief that
Christ possessed only a single, human, nature, see the discussion of
Pope Anastasius II in Inferno 10, par. 28.) Justinian explains that he
was converted from that erroneous belief by Pope Agapetus I:

E prima ch’io a l’ovra fossi attento,

una natura in Cristo esser, non piùe,
credea, e di tal fede era contento;
ma ’l benedetto Agapito, che fue
sommo pastore, a la fede sincera
mi dirizzò con le parole sue. (Par. 6.13-18)
 
Before I grew attentive to this labor,
I held that but one nature — and no more —
was Christ's — and in that faith, I was content;
but then the blessed Agapetus, he
who was chief shepherd, with his words turned me
to that faith which has truth and purity.
[58] The reference to Aristotle’s law of non-contradiction comes in
Justinian’s profession of belief in Christ’s dual nature. This belief, which
he originally took on faith from Agapetus, is one that he now sees as
clearly as we humans see that in a set of two contradictory statements
one must be true and the other false. In other words he now sees
Christ’s dual nature as clearly as on earth we can grasp this elementary
principle of logic:

Io li credetti; e ciò che ’n sua fede era,

vegg’io or chiaro sì, come tu vedi
ogni contradizione e falsa e vera. (Par. 6.19-21)
 
I did believe him, and now clearly see
his faith, as you with contradictories
can see that one is true and one is false.
[59] The Aristotelian law of non-contradiction is cited by the devil
in Inferno 27 in order to prove Guido da Montefeltro’s culpability:
Guido’s non-conversion is obvious according to the most basic
principles of human logic. In Paradiso 6 Justinian’s converted bliss is
such that Christ’s mysterious dual nature is as obvious to him as though
it were the principle of non-contradiction.

Inferno 28: Tuscany’s Evil Seed

 a schematic and exemplary canto, in which the souls are
more exempla than characters
 the character because of whom this canto has become notorious
in modern times: Muhammad
 cultural disruptions from the East: in a religious context in canto
28, and in economic terms in canto 29 (the clove)
 Inferno 28 contains the first and only use of the term
“contrapasso”: the placement of this term here, with its juridical
 connotations, is well suited to the exemplary and didactic nature
of the canto
 like Inferno 25, Inferno 28 is rhetorically flashy — it opens with a
rhetorical question — and psychologically shallow
  Inferno 28 is akin to Inferno 25 in its virtuosity of gruesomeness
 an infernal genre is proclaimed: the modo sozzo or “foul style”
(Inf. 28.21)
 Dante’s post-Geryon infernal poetics: an emphasis on truth-
telling that causes social discomfort and shame
 the Geryon episode of Inferno  16 and the “Geryon principle”
of The Undivine Comedy
 vergogna — shame — is a hallmark of Dante’s authorial persona,
intriguingly enmeshed with boldness
 the concept behind this bolgia is that unity is good and division is
evil, as in the first political canto, Inferno 6

 the arc of history can bend toward evil for an entire people: the
Jews (in Inferno  23) and now the Tuscans

[1] The ninth bolgia is devoted to the “seminator di scandalo e di

scisma”: the “sowers of scandal and of schism” (Inf. 28.35). While
commentator Natalino Sapegno and others take the two terms
“scandalo” and “scisma” as roughly synonymous, not interpreting
“schism” in its specifically religious significance, Anna Maria Chiavacci
Leonardi defines “scandalo” as referring to civil discord and “scisma” as
referring to religious discord (Chiavacci Leonardi, ed., Inferno [Milan:
Mondadori, 2005], p. 826; also available through the Dartmouth Dante
Project).

[2] In other words, in the overall category — sowers of discord — there

are two sub-categories: sowers of civic discord (“scandalo”) and sowers
of religious discord (“scisma”). The ninth bolgia contains political
and religious figures who span history from antiquity to
Dante’s time. Dante views these souls as having fostered schism or
division within the body politic of the Church or of the state.

[3] These figures also span the globe geographically, as testified by the

presence of the two great figures that lend Inferno 28 its
notoriety: Muhammad/Maometto, whom Dante considers responsible
for dividing Christianity, and his son-in-law Alì (does Dante consider
him responsible for dividing Islam?). Chiavacci Leonardi notes that
Muhammad was believed to have originally been a Christian priest:
“Secondo la tradizione medievale dell’Occidente, Maometto era infatti in
origine un prete cristiano” (According to medieval tradition in the West,
Muhammad was in fact originally a Christian priest [Inferno, p. 836]).
Indeed, Dante’s former teacher, Brunetto Latini, presents Muhammad
in the Tresor as an “evil preacher, who drove the people from the faith
and cast them into error” (1.88). We note, too, how the placement of
Muhammad picks up from the previous canto’s reference to “Saracens”
and the fall of Acre to the Muslims in 1291 (Inf. 27.87-89).

[4] Inferno 28 has a didactic and exemplary quality. There is no

attempt to engage in character development, just as there is no attempt
to engage in character development in Inferno 25.
Like Inferno 25, Inferno 28 is rhetorically flashy and psychologically
shallow, with respect to the psychology of the characters in this bolgia.
In its insistence on a virtuosity of gruesomeness, the representation
of the bolgia of the sowers of discord is akin to the representation of
the bolgia of the thieves, albeit without the sexualized component.

[5] Given its gory materia, Inferno 28 ranks high in the infernal

lexicography of body parts. In a catalogue of body parts
in Inferno according to usage per canto, compiled by Grace
Delmolino, Inferno 28 ranks second after Inferno  25. In Inferno 28 the
narrator compiles a tally of 41 body parts, as compared to 63
in Inferno 25. The lexical saturation of these two canti can be compared
visually in the charts below:
    

[6] The souls in Inferno 28 are gruesomely mutilated by devils, thus

accounting for the tally of body parts. The wounds are healed and then
reopened by the devils in an eternal sadistic counterpoint. The language
has a  clinical quality, as though the mutilations are operations taking
place in a perverted and obscene hospital. Indeed, the description of the
mutilations visited upon Maometto possesses a surprising anatomical
precision, with respect to the contents of the abdomen from chin to
anus.

[7] The anatomical precision of the language of the

ninth bolgia anticipates the various diseases that characterize the
tenth bolgia. The mutilated body is emphasized from the outset,
in the opening rhetorical question regarding the “blood and wounds” of
this bolgia:

Chi poria mai pur con parole sciolte

dicer del sangue e de le piaghe a pieno
ch’i’ ora vidi, per narrar più volte?
(Inf. 28.1-3)
Who, even with untrammeled words and many
attempts at telling, ever could recount
in full the blood and wounds that I now saw?
[8] In this opening flourish, Dante highlights himself and his rhetorical
abilities, telling his readers that he is able to accomplish within the
constraints of verse what other writers would not be able to carry off
even within the relatively less constrained, and hence easier, medium of
prose. He thus underscores his rhetorical virtuosity.

[9] The comparison of verse to prose is noteworthy. It is not a

commonplace in Dante’s authorial meditations. Here prose is described
with the phrase “parole sciolte”: “loosened words”. Words are
“loosened” in prose because they are loosened from the bonds of meter
and rhythm. A distinguished user of prose, the Roman historian Livy, is
featured in verse 12: “come Livio scrive, che non erra” (as Livy writes,
who does not err). Dante seems to be self-consciously comparing
himself to the great classical writer of historical prose, as in Inferno 25
he compares himself to the great classical poets Ovid and Lucan.
In Inferno 25 Dante construes his superiority over his classical
precursors in terms of the kind of metamorphosis that he alone is able
to portray, while in Inferno 28 his superiority is measured in terms of
the ability to do in verse what his classical precursor does in prose.

[10] There follows the lengthy accumulation of Romans, Anjevins, and

other mutilated combatants who have fallen on the battlefields of
southern Italy, part of a simile that introduces the carnage of the
ninth bolgia. If all those wounded warriors were assembled and each
demonstrated his wounds, the accumulated carnage would in no way
equal the foulness of this place: “d’aequar sarebbe nulla / il modo de la
nona bolgia sozzo” (it would be nothing to equal the foul mode of the
ninth pouch [Inf. 28.20-21]).

[11] The task of Inferno is to equal in its textuality the foul mode of

infernal reality, which is labeled as though it too were a genre or style, a
“foul style”: a “modo . . . sozzo” (Inf. 28.21). In passing, we note
that Inferno 28 is the only canto in the Commedia that features two
uses of the adjective sozzo: verse 21 is followed by the “faccia sozza” of
Mosca de’ Lamberti in verse 105.

[12] The suggestive label modo sozzo could be seen as another way of

describing the special hybridity that characterizes Malebolgian poetics.
As in the pouch of the thieves, here we find a foully realistic matter
wedded to virtuosic rhetoric, conjoined in a hybrid style. The hallmark
of this style is its ability to encompass within a 20-verse span both the
erudite reference to the Roman historian Livy and the “tristo sacco / che
merda fa di quel che si trangugia” (sad sack that makes shit of what is
swallowed [Inf. 28.26-27]).

[13] Inferno 25 and 28 are also similar — and typical of a post-Geryon

infernal poetics — in their insistence on the truth of their fantastic
representations. In Inferno 25 we find the poet intervening to address
the reader:

Se tu se’ or, lettore, a creder lento

ciò ch’io dirò, non sarà maraviglia,
ché io che ’l vidi, a pena il mi consento.
(Inf. 25.46-48)
If, reader, you are slow now to believe
what I shall tell, that is no cause for wonder,
for I who saw it hardly can accept it. 
[14] Similarly, in Inferno 28 the following emphatic intervention
precedes the arrival of Bertran de Born: “Io vidi certo, ed ancor par ch’io
’l veggia, / un busto sanza capo” (I surely saw, and it still seems I see, / a
trunk without a head [Inf. 28.118-19]). Here the poet applies what
in The Undivine Comedy I call “the Geryon principle” (pp. 15,  60, 90,
98, and 271, note 33).

[15] The preamble to announcing the vision of headless Bertran de Born

is devoted to the difficulty of telling a truth that everyone will believe is a
lie. Dante would be afraid to recount what he saw, he tells us, but luckily
he has the protection of his conscience which is like a breastplate of
purity:

e vidi cosa ch’io avrei paura,

sanza più prova, di contarla solo;
se non che coscïenza m’assicura,
la buona compagnia che l’uom francheggia
sotto l’asbergo del sentirsi pura. 
(Inf. 28.113-17)
I saw a thing that I should be afraid
to tell with no more proof than my own self—
except that I am reassured by conscience,
that good companion, heartening a man
beneath the breastplate of its purity.
[16] The original Geryon sequence in Inferno  16 faced Dante with a
similar dilemma, exquisitely social in nature:

Sempre a quel ver c’ha faccia di menzogna

de’ l’uom chiuder le labbra fin ch’el puote,
però che sanza colpa fa vergogna. 
(Inf. 16.124-26)
Faced with that truth which seems a lie, a man
should always close his lips as long as he can—
to tell it shames him, even though he’s blameless.
[17] We note the stress on shame and fear: the poet’s “vergogna” at
describing the fantastic figure of Geryon in Inferno 16 is akin to his
“paura” at having to recount the appearance of Bertran de Born
in Inferno 28. Already in the Vita Nuova, Dante writes that it would be
shameful not to be able to account for his poetic practice:
grande vergogna sarebbe a colui che rimasse cose sotto vesta di figura o
di colore rettorico, e poscia, domandato, non sapesse denudare le sue
parole da cotale vesta, in guisa che avessero verace intendimento.
(VN XXV.10 [16.10])

It would be shameful for one who wrote poetry dressed up with figures
or rhetorical color not to know how to strip his words of such dress,
upon being asked to do so, showing their true sense.

[18] Susceptibility to vergogna is a hallmark of Dante’s

authorial persona, intriguingly enmeshed with his boldness.

[19] In this same bolgia Dante will see his second cousin, Geri del Bello,
and will invite us into the male world of honor codes and social shame:
the shame that accrues to a man who does not live according to society’s
codes of honor. Geri del Bello appears in the opening section
of Inferno 29. In my discussion of that episode I will return to the
question of how Dante positions himself vis-à-vis the feeling of shame.

[20] In Inferno 28 the application of the Geryon principle is further

strengthened by the use of the present tense, with the adverb “ancora”
carrying the full weight of the poet’s visionary authority. Moreover, a
variation in the Geryon strategy is introduced. Whereas in Inferno 16
Geryon was a fantastic truth — a “ver c’ha faccia di menzogna”
(Inf. 16.124) — to be assimilated by the pilgrim, now the roles are
reversed. Now the pilgrim becomes the source of wonder to the damned
souls. His living body provokes the “maraviglia” in them that Geryon
once provoked in him: “s’arrestaron nel fosso a riguardarmi / per
maraviglia, oblïando il martiro” (they stopped within the ditch and
turned / to look at me, amazed, forgetful of their torture [Inf. 28.53-
54]). Here Virgilio takes on the role of the poet, insisting on the truth of
what he has just recounted, namely the pilgrim’s remarkable itinerary:
“e quest’è ver così com’io ti parlo” (and this is true just as I say
[Inf. 28.51]).
[21] What is a man to do when he is obliged to recount an unbelievable
truth? If he is Dante, he feels the weight of social stigma but nonetheless
puts on his breastplate of purity and plows ahead, actually upping the
ante by troping the already enormous self-consciousness of the original
Geryon episode with a new variation.

[22] Years later, in the Monarchia, Dante uses a similar image in a

similar truth-telling context, an echo that I discuss in the essay “Dante
Squares the Circle: Textual and Philosophical Affinities
of Monarchia and Paradiso (Solutio Distinctiva in Mon. 3.4.17
and Par. 4.94-114)”, cited in Coordinated Reading. In the Monarchia he
specifically cites the image’s biblical pedigree. Arming himself for battle
with those who will resent his truth-telling, the author of the political
treatise puts on “‘the breastplate of faith’, as Paul exhorts us”:

But since truth from its unchangeable throne implores us, and Solomon
too, entering the forest of Proverbs, teaches us by his own example to
meditate on truth and loathe wickedness; and since our authority on
morals, Aristotle, urges us to destroy what touches us closely for the
sake of maintaining truth; then having taken heart from the words of
Daniel cited above, in which divine power is said to be a shield of the
defenders of truth, and putting on “the breast-plate of faith” as
Paul exhorts us, afire with that burning coal which one of the
seraphim took from the heavenly altar to touch Isaiah’s lips, I shall enter
the present arena, and, by his arm who freed us from the power of
darkness with his blood, before the eyes of the world I shall cast out the
wicked and the lying from the ring. (Monarchia 3.1.3; translation Prue
Shaw, emphasis mine)

***

[23] The human shapes of the sinners of the ninth bolgia are mutilated

in ways that represent their mutilation of the body politic, the corporate
body of the state or institution that they wounded and harmed. They are
guilty of rending that corporate unity which should have been kept
whole.
[24] Again, we find here the principle of the literalized metaphor
discussed in the Commento on Inferno  3. As the schismatics tore
asunder the fabric of the body politic (and consider the Old Man of
Crete in Inferno  14 as another literalizing of the metaphor of the “body
politic”), so they are now themselves literally torn asunder. Never does
Dante demonstrate more clearly — almost pedagogically — the way in
which “the punishment fits the crime” (in the phrase coined by Gilbert
and Sullivan).

[25] The didactic and exemplary nature of this canto creates the context
for the appearance of the word “contrapasso” in the canto’s last verse,
where it is spoken by Bertran de Born. The Occitan troubadour
enunciates the word “contrapasso” in Inferno 28.142, while holding his
severed head in his hand.

[26] Bertran, Viscount of Hautefort, soldier, and poet famous for his

martial verse, was born circa 1140 and died circa 1212-1215. He
accompanied King Richard I of England (known as the Lionheart), son
of King Henry II, on a crusade to Palestine. His poetry is echoed in the
long and bloody similes that open Inferno 28. Dante knew and admired
Bertran’s poetry: he cites Bertran de Born as a great poet of arms in De
vulgari eloquentia 2.2.9 and praises the troubadour in the Convivio for
his liberality (4.11.14).

[27] In the next canto Dante will look back at Bertran de Born, using a
periphrasis for the troubadour, lord of Hautefort: “colui che già tenne
Altaforte” (the one who once held Hautefort [Inf. 29.29]). Here Dante
signals his awareness of the historic process whereby heroic and feudal
norms, like blood feuds, moved from the feudal world of the lord of
Hautefort to the urban and no longer feudal world of Florence.

[28] Bertran de Born abetted the rebellions of the sons of King Henry II

against their father. Richard’s older brother, Prince Henry (known by
contemporaries as “the young king”, or “re giovane” as Dante calls him
in Inf. 28.135), nearly overthrew his father Henry II in 1173. The young
king died in 1183, before his father, who died in 1189, and so never
inherited the throne of England. Bertran wrote a planh (lament) on the
death of the young king, whose incipit Si tuit li dol is echoed in the
opening section of Inferno 28.

[29] Now, Bertran de Born explains that his sundering of father from

son in life is reflected in the sundering of his head from his torso in the
afterlife:

Perch’io parti’ così giunte persone,

partito porto il mio cerebro, lasso!,
dal suo principio ch'è in questo troncone.
Così s’osserva in me lo contrapasso. (Inf. 28.139-42)
Because I severed those so joined, I carry—
alas—my brain dissevered from its source,
which is within my trunk. And thus, in me
one sees the law of counter-penalty.
[30] The concept contrapasso is a shorthand for expressing
the principle that governs the relationship between what the
sinner did in life and what the sinner experiences in the
afterlife. While the word “contrapasso” has become a commonplace of
Dante criticism, sprinkled liberally about, it is important to recognize
that Dante uses it only this once.

[31] Alessandro Niccoli and Giovanni Diurni make the connection

between contrapasso and the culture of vendetta in the essay
“Vendetta” in the Enciclopedia Dantesca (vendetta will be discussed
further in the Commento on Inferno  29):

Dante non si sottrae a questo modo di sentire; anzi, immerso nella

realtà del suo tempo, ne percepisce con geniale intuizione i motivi più
nascosti. Se tale sentimento faccia parte della natura del poeta ovvero
venga recepito intellettualmente dallo stesso in tutta la sua complessa
struttura e nelle sue implicazioni, anche le più remote, può essere
discusso, ma è indubbio che egli ha saputo distillare quanto di più
pregnante e significativo si ricava dalla giustizia privata, applicando nel
suo poema la legge del contrapasso e creando un’opera che in ultima
analisi non rappresenta che una sublime vendetta contro i suoi
numerosi avversari. (accessed
at http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/vendetta_(Enciclopedia-
Dantesca)/)

Dante was not exempt from this manner of feeling; in fact, immersed in
the reality of his time, he perceived the hidden motivations
of vendetta with genial intuition. Whether such a sentiment is part of
the nature of the poet or whether he understood the sentiment in all its
complex structure and with its implications, can be discussed, but it is
certain that he knew how to distill the most significant aspects of private
justice, applying in his poem the law of contrapasso and creating a work
that represents a sublime vendetta against his numerous adversaries.

[32] Conceptually, this bolgia is grounded in the idea that

unity is good and division is evil, that concord is good and
discord is evil. This is the concept that undergirds the Commedia’s
first political canto, Inferno 6. We find it expressed in the biblical story
of the Tower of Babel (see Inferno 31), where the punishment for
human hubris is to be divided linguistically, and hence politically. This
is the concept that emphatically guides the thinking of Dante’s political
treatise Monarchia, where the need to justify a single ruler leads to the
explanation that what can be done by one, “per unum”, is better done by
one than by many, “per plura”: “Et quod potest fieri per unum, melius
est per unum fieri quam per plura” (Mon. 1.14.1).

[33] From this principle Dante derives another principle, namely that

for something to be done by one is good, whereas for it to be done by
many is evil: “quod fieri per unum est bonum, per plura simpliciter
malum” (Mon. 1.14.2). Proceeding to larger and larger conclusions,
Dante goes on to align oneness — “unum” — with goodness, and
multiplicity — “multa” — with evil: “unum esse videtur esse radix eius
quod est esse bonum, et multa esse eius quod est esse malum” (to be
one seems to be the root of what it is to be good, and to be many of what
it is to be evil [Mon. 1.15.2]). The polarity established in
the Monarchia between the one and the many finally allows Dante to
achieve a definition of sin as nothing but the disparagement of the one
and a consequent progression toward the many: “peccare nichil est aliud
quam progredi ab uno spreto ad multa” (Mon. 1.15.3).

[34] The hostility toward multiplicity that we see in Monarchia informs

a canto like Inferno 28. The Commedia as a whole, however, balances
this Neoplatonic privileging of unity with Dante’s Aristotelian conviction
of the value of multiplicity, as discussed in The Undivine Comedy (see
the chapters on Paradiso).

***

[35] As noted above, the souls of the ninth bolgia include sowers of civil

as well as religious discord. The contemporary Christian heretic Fra
Dolcino will be here after he dies in 1307; the classical Roman Curio, as
well as the moderns Pier da Medicina, Bertran de Born, and Mosca de’
Lamberti, are already present. Fra Dolcino was burnt at the stake for his
heretical beliefs in 1307, thus seven years after Dante’s visit to Hell in
the spring of 1300. Dolcino’s case is therefore comparable to that of
Pope Boniface VIII, in that Dante “pre-condemns” him before his death.

[36] The pilgrim learns that Dolcino will be joining the souls of the
ninth bolgia through a prophecy that the poet assigns to the figure of
the prophet Muhammad, who announces Dolcino’s future arrival in
verses 55-60. This sardonic announcement takes the form of Maometto
urging Dolcino to stock up well on food and supplies if he doesn’t want
to follow him speedily to the ninth bolgia: “s’ello non vuol qui tosto
seguitarmi” (if he doesn’t want to follow me soon [Inf. 28.57]). Dante
here aligns Maometto and Fra Dolcino: two religious
schismatics, as he sees them. Urging Fra Dolcino to arm himself so
that he may withstand the wintry siege that eventually led to his fateful
surrender, Dante’s Maometto might be construed as inciting Dolcino to
schism even now.
[37] Mosca de’ Lamberti, who died in 1242, is on the list of famous
Florentines of the previous generation about whom Dante quizzed
Ciacco back in Inferno 6. He claims responsibility for having created the
factional discord that plagues Florence (and that caused Dante great
personal affliction, in the form of his exile). The city’s factional discord
was believed to have originated in the murder of Buondelmonte de’
Buondelmonti in 1216, a murder that was precipitated by
Buondelmonte’s jilting of a woman of the Amidei family in favor of a
Donati. We note here, immediately before the encounter with Geri del
Bello in Inferno 29, how the fixation on a family’s honor leads to
nefarious consequences for the city as a whole. In the case of the
Buondelmonte murder, family honor is perceived as invested in its
women, as frequently is the case in honor societies.

[38] Mosca’s sin was to have counseled the Amidei to take their revenge
not in the form of a beating or a mutilation, but to kill Buondelmonte
and have done with it. Mosca’s argument for murdering Buondelmonte
is the proverbial “Capo ha cosa fatta” (Inf. 28.107), where he indicates
the wisdom of resorting to full rather than half measures: a thing that
has been done cannot be undone. In other words, it comes to a head, it
is brought to a conclusion, it has its effect (“capo”). See the Treccani
online Vocabolario: “cosa fatta capo ha: Frase storica, propr. «una cosa
fatta non può essere disfatta», cioè riesce al suo capo, al suo effetto”
(historical expression: a thing that is done cannot be undone, that is, it
comes to a head, to its effect).

[39] Mosca’s counsel, intended to avoid further evil repercussions for

his faction, brought evil repercussions on the entire Tuscan race, for his
counsel “was the seed of evil for the Tuscans”: “fu mal seme per la
gente tosca” (Inf. 28.108). The phrase “mal seme” is particularly telling
because it draws on the metaphor of sowing seeds that is built into the
sin of this bolgia: these are the sowers of discord — “seminator di
scandalo e di scisma”. Now we truly see what
evil semi these seminatori have sown.
[40] Dante and his peers believed that the Buondelmonte murder of
1216, precipitated by Mosca de’ Lamberti, unleashed the factional strife
that still afflicted the city in Dante’s day. In other words, the strife that
afflicts his Florence, and that has cost him dearly in his own life, is for
Dante the bitter fruit grown from the seed sown by Mosca de’ Lamberti.

[41] The encounter with Mosca de’ Lamberti must be added to previous

encounters with Florentines who speak to Dante of civic strife and
turmoil, going back to Ciacco in Inferno 6. We do not find here the
character development that we found in the encounter with Farinata,
although we find key elements of that earlier interaction. The bitter
exchange between the two Florentines in Inferno 10 is echoed in the
pilgrim’s mordant one-line rejoinder to Mosca: “E io li aggiunsi: «E
morte di tua schiatta»” (I added: “and brought death to your own
kinsmen” [Inf. 28.109]). Just as Farinata experiences greater suffering
as a result of the news that Dante gives him about his own family, Mosca
is additionally grieved by what Dante tells him of the desolate fate of his
own tribe or schiatta: he goes off “accumulando duol con duolo”
(heaping grief on grief [Inf. 28.110]).

[42] The connection established here between Farinata and Mosca

therefore includes the theologically untenable idea that suffering in Hell
can be increased as a result of information received after damnation.

[43] The death of Mosca de’ Lamberti’s kin is emblematic of the ruin

brought on Florence through factionalism. Mosca concludes his self-
presentation with a chilling verse that captures the arc of history
bent toward evil for an entire people. In Inferno 23 we learned
that the counsel of the Pharisees that led to the killing of Christ “was an
evil seed for the Jews”: “fu per li Giudei mala sementa” (Inf. 23.123).
Now in Inferno 28 we learn that the counsel of Mosca de’ Lamberti that
led to the killing of Buondelmonte de’ Buondelmonti “was the seed of
evil for the Tuscans”: “fu mal seme per la gente tosca” (Inf. 28.108). It is
hard to imagine what political assessment could be more devastating,
from Dante’s perspective, than the link that he establishes here between
the Tuscans and the Jews.
Inferno 29: Masculinity: Vendetta, Shame,

Honor, and Cloves

 family honor and male codes of behavior now take a personal
twist through the encounter with Dante’s own kinsman, Geri del
Bello
 the definition of a kinsman as a “consort in shame” (Inf. 29.33):
Dante’s term “consorte” echoes the contemporary
term consorteria
 from Bertran de Born, “lord of Hautefort”, to Geri del Bello: what
sense do feudal honor codes have in mercantile Tuscany? A
critique of mercantile Tuscany that picks up from the
canzone Poscia ch’Amor (circa 1295)
 the culture of vendetta in Dante’s world
 an analysis of Dante’s personal and moral reading of vendetta,
based on my observation that vendetta is featured in the
definition of anger in Purgatorio 17
 the evolution of Dante’s sense of personal honor, and his learning
to move beyond society’s codes for what is honorable and what is
shameful: the canzone Tre donne and Dante’s
proclamation “l’essilio che m’è dato onor mi tegno” (Tre donne,
76)
 the perils of mimesis: mimesis is viewed as a form of
Daedalan/Ulyssean trespass
 magic and the paranormal as instruments of fraud: alchemy and
the magic arts (“teaching someone how to fly like Daedalus”) pick
up from false prophecy and astrology in Inferno 20
 greed and fraud and financial intemperance are forms of vanity
and triviality that here are satirized within a generalized
indictment of male codes of behavior (see the canzone Poscia
ch’Amor)
 the codes of honor centered on lordly largesse and deriving from
the feudal and heroic context of a Bertran de Born are trivialized
in the brigata spendereccia and in Duecento Tuscan consumer
culture (a culture also memorialized by Dante in his
youthful tenzone with Forese Donati)
  cultural disruptions from the East: from the religious context in
canto 28 to an economic context in canto 29 (“the luxurious
custom of the clove”)

[1] In Inferno 29 we reach the tenth and final bolgia of the eighth circle.

The tenth is a catch-all bolgia: it contains four different kinds of
falsifiers, culminating in the falsifiers of words.

[2] However, before we proceed to the tenth bolgia, verses 1-36

of Inferno 29 offer a final episode pertaining to the ninth bolgia, that of
the sowers of discord. Introducing his father’s cousin Geri del Bello,
Dante now develops the theme of family honor and blood feuds as cause
of prolonged civic torment and the “seed” of the self-destruction of
Florence. This theme is attested in Inferno 28 by Mosca de’ Lamberti’s
claim to have sown the “evil seed for the Tuscan people”: “mal seme per
la gente tosca” (Inf. 28.108).

[3] Mosca sows the evil seed that will grow into an evil fruit that will be
meted out to all Tuscans. In Inferno 29’s coda to Mosca de’ Lamberti
and to Inferno 28, Dante dramatizes the personal origins from
which public devastation springs. He draws attention to the
personal origins of public discord and strife by relating these issues to
himself — in the most personal possible terms, by way of a kinsman.

[4] We come, thus, to the complex issue of vendetta, revenge. Andrea

Zorzi has written compellingly on the normative aspects of vendetta in
Dante’s world, urging us not to impose an anachronistic moral
judgment on a behavior that was “an ordinary element of political
relations” (“un elemento ordinario delle relazioni politiche”; see Zorzi,
“La cultura della vendetta nel conflitto politico in età comunale”, cited in
Coordinated Reading, p. 159).
[5] Zorzi notes that refutations of vendetta in the didactic literature of
the period were motivated by practical considerations, not univocally
moral ones:

Il sentimento di rifiuto della vendetta che ritroviamo in molta

letteratura didattica non originava dunque soltanto da motivazioni
morali ma anche da considerazioni di ordine utilitaristico e di prestigio
sociale. (Zorzi, “La cultura della vendetta nel conflitto politico in età
comunale”, p. 156)

The refutation of vendetta that we find in much didactic literature

therefore did not originate solely from moral concerns but also from
utilitarian considerations related to social prestige.

[6] Similarly, writing about the Geri del Bello episode in Inferno 29,

Enrico Faini wonders whether Dante was ideologically opposed
to vendetta or was unable to prosecute vengeance because of his own
scarce financial resources. (See Faini, “Ruolo sociale e memoria degli
Alighieri prima di Dante,” cited in Coordinated Reading.)

[7] I will argue that, in the Geri del Bello episode, Dante
mounts a moral argument against vendetta: one that he
subsequently sustains in later parts of the poem, such
as Purgatorio 17. 

[8] Attending to the complexity and nuance of history, Dante mounts

his moral argument against vendetta while at the same time
acknowledging, in Inferno 29, that he himself was personally steeped in
the communal culture of vendetta described by Zorzi. He also concedes
that he was not immune from susceptibility to the logic of vendetta,
admitting his own personal sense of pietas for his relative’s unavenged
murder. In this commentary I will make the case that, in order to unlock
Dante’s moral argument on vendetta, we need to turn to Purgatorio 17
and to the definitions of the seven cardinal vices offered there.
[9] Let us pick up now from Inferno 28 and from Dante’s indictment of
Mosca de’ Lamberti. As noted above, blood feuds are at the core of the
tragedy caused by Mosca de’ Lamberti, the Ghibelline whose advice to
kill Buondelmonte de’ Buondelmonti gave rise to the factional hatred
and strife between Guelphs and Ghibellines in Florence. We remember
that Buondelmonte was killed in 1216. Dante believed that the
factionalism unleashed by Buondelmonte’s murder was at the root of his
own exile in 1302, almost one-hundred years after the initial “seed”
event. Given the duration of the suffering here invoked, we can better
understand why Dante can say that Mosca’s actions were the “evil seed
for the Tuscan people”: “mal seme per la gente tosca” (Inf. 28.108).

[10] This remarkable indictment, the sentiment that factional behavior

was a seed of evil for an entire people, cannot be overlooked in assessing
Dante’s views on vendetta. The tragedy of Buondelmonte’s murder and
its repercussions was not rooted only in Mosca’s scandalous advice. It
was a product of the social norms of the time, social norms that Dante
examines in the Geri del Bello episode of Inferno 29. Here he asks the
questions: Is it right for every man to carry the burden of his
family’s honor and the “shame” that comes with it? And is it
right for every man to be obliged to act on that shame,
carrying out a vendetta that is required of him?

[11] Virgilio sharply questions Dante as to what he is staring at in the

ninth bolgia, pointing out that he did not remain thus fixated over the
previous ditches and reminding him that their time is limited and that
they must move on: “lo tempo è poco omai che n’è concesso” (the time
alloted to us now is short [Inf. 29.11]). Dante explains that he believes
he saw a kinsman, a spirit of his own blood: “credo ch’un spirto del mio
sangue pianga / la colpa che là giù cotanto costa” (I think a spirit born of
my own blood laments / the guilt which, down below, costs one so
much [Inf. 29.20-21]).

[12] The words “del mio sangue” (of my blood) in verse 20 will be

echoed in the Latin words “O sanguis meus” (O my blood [Par. 15.28])
in Paradiso 15. These are the words with which Dante’s great-great-
grandfather, Cacciaguida, addresses the pilgrim, echoing Anchises’
“sanguis meus”, spoken to Aeneas in Aeneid 6.835. Dante’s reference to
his own bloodline, “mio sangue”, is the sign that we have entered the
domain of the autobiographical.

[13] Whereas the bloodline in Paradiso 15 is  a source of pride, given

that Cacciaguida is revelling in the unique privilege that brings his
descendant to Paradise before his death, here in Inferno 29 the shared
bloodline is a burden and a danger. The issue of blood feuds as featured
in Inferno 28 and 29 is not simply one that is historical, one that applies
to others. It is an issue of which Dante had personal experience.

[14] Virgilio tells Dante that he saw the soul point at Dante

threateningly and heard him named “Geri del Bello” (Inf. 29.27), all
while Dante was intent on the headless Bertran de Born: “colui che già
tenne Altaforte” (the one who once was lord of Hautefort [Inf. 29.29]).
The text thus moves seamlessly from the naming of Dante’s close
kinsman Geri del Bello, a cousin of Dante’s father, to the invocation by
feudal periphrasis of Bertran de Born of the previous canto, here
referenced in terms of his feudal landholdings, as the lord of Hautefort.

[15] The transition from “Geri del Bello” in verse 27 to “colui che già
tenne Altaforte” in verse 29 allows Dante to signal the connection that
he posits between the heroic and feudal norms of the lord of Hautefort
and the urban and no longer feudal world of Geri del Bello. What
sense do the codes of a martial, feudal, and honor-based
society, like the courtly society sung by Bertran de Born, lord
of Hautefort in southern France, have in the mercantile and
consumerist culture of Tuscany at the end of the Duecento?

[16] The mercantile and consumerist culture of Tuscany is a key theme

of this canto, one to which Dante will return in his presentation of
the brigata spendereccia at the end of Inferno 29. Dante has a long
history of being willing to savage the very mercantile culture from which
he sprang. In the canzone Poscia ch’Amor (circa 1295), he satirizes the
wealthy Florentines who spend their money on frivolous ornamentation,
using language that is wonderfully pungent with respect to mercantile
Florence, which he calls “the marketplace of the ignorant” (Poscia
ch’Amor, 35). Wealthy Florentine social-climbers seek ornamentation in
order to sell themselves in that marketplace: “ornarsi come vendere / si
dovesse al mercato d’i non saggi?” (Poscia ch’Amor, 34-5).

[17] In his reply to Virgilio, Dante explains that Geri del Bello is angry
(“disdegnoso”) at him due to the violent death that he suffered (“la
vïolenta morte”) and that has not yet been avenged: “che non li è
vendicata ancor” (for which he still is not avenged [Inf. 29.32]).
Geri’s disdegno is now provoked by the presence of a kinsman, that is,
by the presence of someone who should have avenged him.

[18] Although Dante does not take upon himself any obligation to

perform the act of vendetta that Geri craves, he feels sympathy for his
unavenged cousin. Indeed, the encounter with Geri has made Dante feel
more pity (“m’ha fatto a sé più pio”):

«O duca mio, la violenta morte

che non li è vendicata ancor», diss’io,
«per alcun che de l’onta sia consorte,
fece lui disdegnoso; ond’el sen gio
sanza parlarmi, sì com’io estimo:
e in ciò m’ha el fatto a sé più pio».
(Inf. 29.31-36)

“My guide, it was his death by violence,

for which he still is not avenged,” I said,
“by anyone who shares his shame, that made
him so disdainful now; and — I suppose —
for this he left without a word to me,
and this has made me pity him the more.”
[19] In the above passage, Dante opens a window onto the social system
of vendetta, honor killing, and blood feuds. We note Dante’s periphrasis
for kin. Kin is defined as anyone who shares one’s shame: “alcun che de
l’onta sia consorte” (anyone who is consort in one’s shame
[Inf. 29.33]). Dante’s use in Inferno 29.33 of the word “consorte”,
which literally means someone who shares one’s fate (sorte), echoes
contemporary usage, in which the Latin consortes gave rise to the
term consorteria: “The term consorteria reflects the common use in the
thirteenth century of consortes to refer to kinsmen” (Carol Lansing, The
Florentine Magnates, p. 30).

[20] Besides “consorte”, the other key term in Dante’s redolent

periphrasis for kinsman is “onta”. An exceptionally harsh word for
shame, onta has a more public frame of reference than vergogna and
shades into “dishonor”. Because of the connection to dishonor, the idea
of onta links easily to vendetta. Thus, onta is linked with that which
needs to be avenged in the Hoepli on-line dictionary, where we find this
usage: “vendicare l’onta subita” (to avenge one’s dishonor).

[21] The feeling of onta is socially constructed, connected to political

and social disgrace and misfortune. In his philosophical
treatise, Convivio, Dante talks of the disgrace — “infamia” — of
Boethius’ exile and of his own exile from Florence (Convivio 1.2.13 and
1.2.15). Dante uses the word onta for the disgraced White party
in Inferno 6, where the Bianchi weep and feel ashamed — feel onta
— as a result of their treatment at the hands of the Neri. Here Dante
uses the verb aontare: “come che di ciò pianga o che n’aonti” (however
much they weep or feel ashamed [Inf. 6.72]).

[22] The culture of onta and its consequence, vendetta, was strong in

Dante’s time and place. Dante signals the pervasiveness of this
malign cultural matrix in his characterization of anger
in Purgatorio 17. In his analysis of the seven deadly vices as generic
impulses, Dante characterizes an irascible person in a way that is not at
all generic. He offers a concise but complex and socially embedded
characterization of ira, comprising two discrete steps. An angry man is
one who has 1) been shamed as a result of an injury, and who then 2)
waxes greedy for revenge:

ed è chi per ingiuria par ch’aonti,

sì che si fa de la vendetta ghiotto,
e tal convien che ’l male altrui impronti.
(Purg. 17.121-23)
And there is he who, over injury
received, resentful, for revenge grows greedy
and, angrily, seeks out another’s harm.
[23] In this characterization of anger in Purgatorio 17, Dante includes
the verb aontare (to take offense as a result of onta received), the same
verb used for the disgraced Bianchi in Inferno 6.72 cited above. The
lexical linkage — these are the only two uses of aontare in
the Commedia — tracks the conceptual linkage between these two
passages, a linkage not heretofore noted. Purgatorio 17’s
characterization of ira also includes the noun vendetta, as well as the
noun ingiuria, which Zorzi’s documentation shows to be fundamental to
contemporary discussions of vendetta.

[24] The logic embedded in Purgatorio 17’s description of anger is

complex, and begins with ingiuria: the person who acts out in anger
begins as the injured party. There are many emotions packed into this
one tercet. From the ingiuria comes the experience of shame. The
shame leads to the craving for vengeance. Thus, the injured party
experiences shame as a result of the injury received — “chi per ingiuria
par ch’aonti” (Purg. 17.121) — and the shame leads to a craving for
vengeance that explodes in anger and in a willingness to hurt others.

[25] There is a circularity to Dante’s analysis of this cultural

phenomenon: injury leads to shame and thence to anger, which leads to
more injury, and so on in perpetuity. Purgatorio 17’s profound analysis
of a cultural context that enables and indeed supports anger is already
on view in the Geri del Bello episode, where we see Dante turn his back
on the social and cultural norms, inherited from feudal and courtly
culture, which exacerbated the factionalism that tore Tuscany apart.

[26] The Geri del Bello episode of Inferno 29 tells us that Dante, while
he still feels pietas toward Geri as a kinsman who died violently (“m’ha
el fatto a sé più pio” [Inf. 29.36]), categorically refuses to be enmeshed
in the male codes of honor that define him as “consort in Geri’s shame”
(Inf. 29.33). He refuses to play the part that society has scripted
for him as male kin. He refuses to take on the role of the injured
party: one who feels onta as a result of the injury inflicted upon his
kinship group, and who subsequently turns, in anger, to vendetta.

[27] Dante had witnessed such behavior and had thought long and hard
about such behavior, as we can see from the analysis of anger
in Purgatorio 17.121-23. He chose not to participate. He does not seem
to have experienced in himself the consortial shame that is the trigger to
the anger that allows one to kill. Whether or not he experienced it, he
did not act on it.

[28] In the Geri del Bello episode Dante dramatizes his resistance to the
essentializing social dictates of his time and place. He resists defining
himself as a “con-sort” in the family “shame”. He resists, especially,
the psychological and moral toll of avenging Geri’s violent
death by becoming a murderer himself.

[29] Dante in his youthful poetry was not immune from the rivalries of
male honor, as described in the commentaries on the tenzoni with
Dante da Maiano and in the essay “Amicus eius: Dante and the
Semantics of Friendship” (cited in Coordinated Reading). As a person
he seems to have been quite susceptible to social vergogna. See
the Commento on Inferno  28 on vergogna and truth-telling and
the Commento on Inferno  30 on Virgilio’s rebuke and Dante’s shamed
response.

[30] And yet, the point of the Geri del Bello episode is to communicate
that Dante has evolved into someone who is not moved by a societally
scripted feeling of shame. He is able to make a moral calculation rather
than behave reactively and reductively as required by social codes. He
has not bought into the code that prescribes shame on a man who does
not avenge a killing of his kin. For Dante this is a code that was in great
part responsible for the devastation of Florence, as attested by the
presence of Mosca de’ Lamberti in Inferno 28.

[31] Dante’s evolution is already visible in his lyric poetry. Dante

proclaims his hard-won freedom from societal norms and codes in his
magnificent canzone of exile, Tre donne. He tells us in the canzone that
he now participates in a higher code of ethics and justice. He refashions
the social shame and dishonor of his exile and makes it into something
of immense value: his own personal justice-affiliated honor. Through
the alchemy of his conscience and his poetry, he literally makes his
dishonor into his honor, writing that “the exile that is given me I hold as
honor”: “l’essilio che m’è dato onor mi tegno”  (Tre donne, 76).

[32] The man who wrote the Geri del Bello episode

of Inferno 29 had learned to reject the dishonor that was
prescribed by others and, painfully, to define honor for
himself.

[33] If we apply to Dante himself the analysis of Purgatorio 17.121-23,

we could say the following: Dante had learned not to be triggered by
shame and therefore not to respond in anger, by means of vendetta. In
the Commedia Dante consciously rejects the culture of vendetta that
prevailed in his time and place. At the same time he makes it clear that
he is indeed, as critics have noted, steeped in that culture and that he is
not immune from its claims (indeed, he feels pietas for his kinsman).
But his acknowledgement of that culture, as one that he understands
and can still feel, does not mean that he endorses it.

***

[34] After Geri del Bello, Inferno 29 transitions to the tenth and

last bolgia, belonging to the falsifiers. There are four categories of
falsifiers. Their punishments are not inflicted by sadistic devils like the
mutilations of Inferno 28, but are based on human illness: the body
turns upon itself. At the transition to the tenth bolgia, in verse 46, we
encounter an “accumulative” simile of the type we found at the
beginning of the previous canto. In Inferno 28 the poet accumulates all
the wounds of centuries of battles in southern Italy. Now Dante has us
consider all the sufferings accumulated in the hospitals of the most
insalubrious parts of Italy in the months most prone to illness
(Inf. 29.46-51).

[35] The first sub-group of the tenth bolgia are the falsifiers of metals or

alchemists. Dante sees two alchemists, Griffolino and Capocchio, who
suffer from leprosy. The lead-in to the dialogue between Dante and
Griffolino features a brilliantly repellent domestic realism that portrays
the two sinners scratching their scabs with the fury of a stable-boy
currying a horse while his master awaits. Moving from horse to fish, the
poet tells us that they deploy their nails on their scabs “just as a knife
scrapes off the scales of carp / or of another fish with scales more large”:
“come coltel di scardova le scaglie / o d’altro pesce che più larghe
l’abbia” (Inf. 29.83-84).

[36] Dante uses alchemy as an opportunity to focus on the perils of

mimesis, viewed as a form of Ulyssean/Daedalan trespass: a
going beyond the limits set by God. Alchemy is the art through which
some claimed to be able to turn base metals into gold, thus arrogating to
themselves more than human powers. In the last verses of Inferno 29
the alchemist Capocchio declares that he falsified metals through
alchemy — “falsai li metalli con l’alchìmia” (Inf. 29.137) — and
emphasizes his remarkable mimetic powers, his ability to “be an ape of
nature”: “com’io fui di natura buona scimmia” (how apt I was at aping
nature [Inf. 29.139]). With the trope “ape of nature” Dante reminds us
that he classifies human art as imitation of nature. (See the Commento
on Inferno 11 for the discussion of God’s “possessions”: nature and art.)

[37] In the encounter with the alchemists, Dante comments on

misrepresentation, imitation for false purposes. While the tone of the
episode is one of mundane triviality, the issues are of profound
importance. Thus, Griffolino explains that he was not burned at the
stake for his alchemy, as he “should” have been, but for jokingly telling
Albero di Siena that he knew how to fly: “Vero è ch’i’ dissi lui, parlando a
gioco: / ‘I’ mi saprei levar per l’aere a volo’” (It’s true that I had told him
— jestingly — “I’d know enough to fly through air” [Inf. 29.112-13]).
Albero, who had much desire but little wisdom — “vaghezza e senno
poco” (Inf. 29.114) — wanted to learn the art of flying, and therefore had
Griffolino burnt for not “making him Daedalus”:

volle ch’i’ li mostrassi l’arte; e solo

perch’ io nol feci Dedalo, mi fece
ardere             
(Inf. 29.115-17)
He wished me to show that art to him and, just
because I had not made him Daedalus
had me burned
[38] The idea of “being Daedalus” is an important one for
Dante, as we know from Dante’s comparison of himself to Icarus in the
Ovidian simile of Inferno 17, which features Daedalus’ distraught cry to
his falling son (Inf. 17.111). The Ulysses episode of Inferno 26 shows the
Greek hero — like Daedalus — “making wings of his oars for the mad
flight” (Inf. 26.125), using a metaphor with a classical pedigree:

Dante is referring to a consummate mimesis that can transgress the

boundaries between art and nature, permitting men to do what they
were not endowed by nature to do: to fly, as Vergil puts it of Daedalus in
the Aeneid 6.10, on “the rowing of his wings” (“remigium alarum”), as
Dante’s Ulysses is able to fly “on the wings of his oars” (Inf. 26.125). To
be Daedalus is, according to the Ovidian account, to be able to set your
mind upon unknown arts and change the laws of nature (“ignotas
animum dimittit in artes / naturamque novat”), to create by imitation
wings that look and work like real birds’ wings (“ut veras imitetur
aves”), to possess fatal arts (“damnosas . . . artes”) that enable one to be
taken for a god (“credidit esse deos”), and that one ends by cursing
(“devovitque suas artes”). (The Undivine Comedy, pp. 91-92; the verses
from the Metamorphoses are, in order of
citation: Metamorphoses 8.188-89, 195, 215, 220, 234)

[39] At the end of the canto we move from the representational key back
to the social-historical key, and to other issues of masculinity in
Dante’s social milieu. Dante’s response to Griffolino’s story is to
point to the fatuous vanity of the Sienese: “Or fu già mai / gente sì vana
come la sanese?” (Was there ever / so vain a people as the
Sienese? [Inf. 29.121-22]). His remark segues into the theme of
masculine social life via a “brigata” (130), or social group, of rich Sienese
youth who were notorious as the brigata spendereccia:
a brigata famous for its intemperate spending habits.

[40] This passage reminds us of Dante’s tenzone with Forese Donati, a

set of sonnets also deeply imbued with masculine social codes.
The tenzone with Forese Donati, like this passage, evokes the reckless
spending habits and gluttonous inclinations of the gilded youth of the
age. I discuss the connections between the brigata spendereccia and
the tenzone with Forese in the essay “Sociology of the Brigata”:

In Inferno 29 Dante sets the brigata spendereccia within a socio-

economic meditation that has many commonalities with
the tenzone with Forese — including a male family relation, Geri del
Bello, named in the early part of the canto: in common are the male
names, extravagant eating habits, squandering of resources, and
sarcastic language. Inferno 29’s vignette of the brigata spendereccia is
focused on excess consumption, a social and economic ill that is given
immediate ethical focus through the sarcastic reference to Stricca’s
“temperate spese” in verse 126, and is then linked to trade as a promoter
of immoderate social habits through the discovery of “la costuma ricca /
del garofano” (127–28). (“Sociology of the Brigata”, pp. 10-11)

[41] Although the social customs of the male brigata spendereccia are

less serious and oppressive than vendetta, the two issues are not
unrelated, for the bands of young men that roamed the streets
in brigate were responsible for much of the urban and factional
violence. For more on this topic, see the historians cited in “Sociology of
the Brigata”.
[42] Indicted in this last section of Inferno 29 is the
mercantile and consumerist culture of Dante’s
Tuscany. Griffolino’s phrase “parlando a gioco” — speaking in jest — is
an excellent rubric for the vanity and triviality conjured in the treatment
of the alchemists and distilled in the description of the brigata
spendereccia.

[43] Greed and fraud and financial intemperance (“le temperate spese”

of verse 126 is heavily sarcastic) are here expressed in vanity and
triviality: the codes of honor imported from the feudal and heroic
context of a Bertran de Born are now trivialized in Duecento Tuscan
consumer culture. This mercantile and consumerist culture is subtly
analyzed, for instance in its promotion of trade with the East, which
supports the profligacy of using cloves in cooking: “la costuma ricca /
del garofano” (the luxurious custom of the clove [Inf. 29.127-128]).
Trade and commerce are the engines that fuel the male brigata’s
gluttony and prodigality.

[44] There is a commentary here with respect to the cultural disruptions

and even moral dangers that flow from trade and commerce with the
East, a commentary that cannot be divorced from the ideological
challenge posed by Islam in the preceding canto. But the most
significant contribution of Inferno 29 is its profound analysis of and
resistance to society’s construction of masculinity, particularly as
evidenced in honor codes that bind men to a cycle of violence.

Inferno 30: To Dream That One Is Dreaming

 the exordium of Inferno 30 emphatically transitions from the
high style — “l’altezza de’ Troian che tutto ardiva” (Inf. 30.14)
— to the low style: “di quel modo / che ’l porco quando del porcil
si schiude” (Inf. 30.26-27)
 in this way Dante signals again the creation of a hybrid mixed
discourse that typifies comedìa and that is distilled in the
hybridity of verse 128, which combines high and low: “e per leccar
 lo specchio di Narcisso”

 the last bolgia of Malebolge features two sets of the

classical/contemporary pairings of souls that are so important in
the eighth circle, and that are another way of combining high and
low
 impersonation, a performance art, and its deployment in order to
circumvent the law
 representational and economic fraud are intertwined in this
canto, as in Inferno 29
 the Gianni Schicchi episode impugns Forese Donati’s father
Simone Donati, much as Forese Donati had impugned Dante’s
father in the tenzone of scurrilous sonnets that the two exchanged
(circa 1296)
 this canto is connected also to other moments of Dante’s lyric
past: the sonnet O voi che per la via d’Amor passate and
the longue durée of Lamentations in Dante’s poetry
 ver versus falso in the altercation between Maestro Adamo and
Sinon
 Virgilio’s rebuke and the issue of narrative voice
 the theme of vergogna is reprised
 to dream that one is dreaming = to dream the truth

[1] The tenth bolgia, devoted to four different types of

falsifiers, continues. Inferno 30 begins with elaborate classically
inspired similes that led the great philologist Gianfranco Contini to
speculate that Dante wrote this passage with Ovid open on the desk in
front of him. In Dante’s Poets I describe in detail the cascading effect of
the first 27 verses of Inferno 30, which opens with a great mythological
panorama. Here Dante moves from the “high” Ovidian sonority
of the tragic madness of Athamas and Hecuba to the “low”
simile that describes two souls running through Hell, like pigs
freed from a pigsty.
[2] As discussed in Dante’s Poets, the effect of the opening 27-verse
cascade of Inferno 30 is to persuade the reader that, when we reach the
description of the first two sinners of this canto — when we reach the
pigs freed from the pigsty, when we reach Dante’s Hell — we have in
effect reached “reality”:

Dante devotes the first twenty-one lines of canto XXX to two classical
examples of madness, one Theban and the other Trojan. The first is
Athamas who, driven insane by Juno as part of her revenge on Semele,
is responsible for the deaths of his wife Ino, Semele’s sister, and their
two sons (1-12); the second is Hecuba, reduced to barking like a dog by
the loss of her home, husband, and children (13-21). These exempla are
executed in a deliberately high style: in each case the protagonist,
Athamas or Hecuba, is presented only in the fourth line of the
exemplum, after an initial terzina of background material. Thus, the
canto opens with a great mythological panorama, which sets the
madness of Athamas within the ongoing narrative of Jove’s amours and
Juno’s anger: “Nel tempo che Iunone era crucciata / per Semelè contra ’l
sangue tebano” (In the time when Juno was irate because of Semele
against the Theban blood [1-2]); and Hecuba is preceded by a sweeping
evocation of the fall of Troy: “E quando la fortuna volse in basso /
l’altezza de’ Troian che tutto ardiva” (And when Fortune brought low the
pride of the Trojans that dared all [13-14]).

The canto thus moves progressively forward in time: from remote

Thebes, to less distant Troy, and finally to the present, in which the
pilgrim sees “due ombre smorte e nude, / che mordendo correvan di
quel modo / che ’l porco quando del porcil si schiude” (two pale and
naked shades, who were running and biting like the pig when it is let out
of the pigsty [25-27]). Here Dante presents the bolgia’s first sinners in
a terzina whose style is in intentional opposition to the canto’s
extraordinarily literary exordium; the unmediated realism of the brief
simile of the pig loosened from the pigsty contrasts sharply with the
elaborate Ovidian exempla. We note, moreover, that the introduction of
low language, such as porco and porcil, corresponds to the moment in
which the canto reaches “reality”: i.e. the sinners, the events of
this bolgia. (Dante’s Poets pp. 235-236)

[3] After the exordium, Inferno 30 presents the three types of falsifiers

that remain in the tenth bolgia. We remember that there are four
categories of falsifiers: 1) the falsifiers of metal, or alchemists, whom
Dante met in the previous canto; 2) the falsifiers of persons, or
impersonators; 3) the falsifiers of money, or counterfeiters; 4) the
falsifiers of words, or liars. 

[4] This tenth and last bolgia of Malebolge includes two pairings of

classical and contemporary figures. These pairings, a feature of
Malebolge, are another signal of the combining of high and low in a
mixed style.

[5] Thus, both the first canto of Malebolge, Inferno 18, and the

last, Inferno 30, contain two sets of classical/contemporary pairings.
In Inferno 18 the two sets are divided between the two bolgie that are
packed into canto 18. Here, in Inferno 30, the two sets of
classical/contemporary couples are divvied among the three remaining
categories of falsifiers. The impersonators, who are afflicted with
madness, include the contemporary Florentine Gianni Schicchi and the
classical figure Myrrha (Inf. 30.32-41). Later in the canto we will
witness the quarrel between the contemporary Maestro Adamo of
Brescia — a counterfeiter — and Sinon, a protagonist of Book 2 of
the Aeneid, perhaps the most notorious liar of antiquity (Inf. 100-129).

[6] Let us begin with the two impersonators, described in verses 37-

48. The sinners in this category are performance artists who
take on other identities for sinful purposes. Classical Myrrha —
“l’anima antica / di Mirra scellerata” (the ancient soul / of wicked
Myrrha [Inf. 30.37-38]) — took on a form other than her own in order
to consummate her incestuous erotic passion for her father: “Questa a
peccar con esso così venne, / falsificando sé in altrui forma” (She came
to sin with him by falsely taking / another’s shape upon
herself [Inf. 30.40-41]).
[7] The second impersonator is Florentine Gianni Schicchi, whose acting
skills are motivated by greed rather than by lust. Instead of
impersonation to achieve a forbidden sexual act, Gianni Schicchi
engages in impersonation to circumvent the law. Gianni Schicchi was
prompted by Simone Donati — the father of Dante’s friend Forese
Donati — to disguise himself as Simone’s dying uncle, Buoso Donati:
“falsificare in sé Buoso Donati” (he disguised himself as Buoso Donati
[Inf. 30.44]). The goal was to ensure that Buoso’s estate be left to
Simone, with a cut of the proceeds (a prize mare) going to the
impersonator.

[8] Gianni Schicchi’s skills of impersonation were such that, upon taking

Buoso’s place in his deathbed, he was able  to deceive the notary and the
witnesses and thus to have them ratify the will. Dante’s language is legal
and precise. Gianni Schicchi, pretending to be Buoso Donati, drew up a
will (“testando”) and gave to it all requisite legal norms: “testando e
dando al testamento norma” (Inf. 30.45).

[9] Impersonation — a form of identity theft — as a means of

securing fraudulent gain continues to attract the attention of law
enforcement. Here is an example of a debt collection scam that was
closed by the FBI in 2014 because of false representations
(impersonations) on the part of the debt collectors, who in effect were
engaged in the kind of “falsificare in sé” practiced by Gianni Schicchi:

According to the joint press release by the offices of U.S. Attorney Preet
Bharara and the Assistant FBI Director George Venizelos, the scam
unfolded in 2009 and continued well into 2014. Employees working for
WSA would routinely coerce victims into paying consumer debts
through a variety of false statements and threats. Typically, the WSA
employees would use aliases, sometimes referring to themselves as a
“Detective” or “Investigator,” and falsely advise consumers they had
committed crimes such as “check fraud” or “depository check fraud.”
They then told the victims that a warrant would be issued for their
arrest if they failed to make an immediate payment to WSA.
WSA employees also falsely claimed that the debt collection company
had contracted with, or was otherwise affiliated with, certain federal or
local law enforcement agencies, including the Department of Justice and
the United States Marshals Service. Alternatively, they might say that
they represented non-existent government agencies like the “Federal
Government Task Force” and the “DOJ Task Force.” To further create
the appearance that it was affiliated with the federal government, WSA
would send victims correspondence containing the seal of the United
States Department of State and the following language: “Warrant
Services Association, A Division of the Federal Government Task Force.”
(Story by Ken Berry, columnist in Accounting Web, dated 12/1/2014,
accessed at http://www.accountingweb.com/crime-story-defendants-
charged-in-massive-debt-collection-scam)

[10] In the Myrrha-Gianni Schicchi passage we encounter the rare

rhyme forma/norma. The word “forma” applies to Myrrha, who
falsifies her form to have sex with her father: “falsificando sé in
altrui forma” (Inf. 30.41). The word “norma” instead describes the
legally ratified but deceptive will achieved by Gianni Schicchi: “testando
e dando al testamento norma” (Inf. 30.45). The forma/norma rhyme
will achieve full philosophical dignity in the divine form and shape of
the universe (see Paradiso 1.103-08). It appears, in the
plural forme/norme, on one other occasion, in Inferno  25. The shared
presence of the forma/norma rhyme in Inferno 25 and Inferno 30
signals the common theme of perverse transmutation of self:

ché due nature mai a fronte a fronte

non trasmutò sì ch’amendue le forme
a cambiar lor matera fosser pronte.
Insieme si rispuosero a tai norme . . .
(Inf. 25.100-03)
he never did transmute two natures,
face to face, so that both forms
were ready to exchange their matter.
Together they answered to such norms 
[11] The fraudulent lengths to which Gianni Schicchi will go in order to
secure Buoso Donati’s prize mare — “per guadagnar la donna de la
torma” (that he might gain the lady of the herd [Inf. 30.43]) — and the
greed and deceit of Simone Donati once more underscore the economic
motivations that compete with representational issues as the key theme
of the bolgia of the falsifiers. In Inferno 30 economic and
representational matters are intertwined, as they are in Inferno 29.
Economic issues are foregrounded in the treatment of two of the four
sinners of this canto, the impersonator Gianni Schicchi and the
counterfeiter Maestro Adamo.

[12] It is worth noting that trivial and non-heroic desire, like Gianni’s
desire for the prize mare, “the lady of the herd”, is very much in the
spirit of the earthy and quotidian personal accusations that sprinkle the
six sonnets that make up Dante’s tenzone with Forese Donati. This
scurrilous sonnet-exchange features as well the mutual denigration of
family members. The Gianni Schicchi episode seems therefore to be a
direct reprise of the tenzone with Forese Donati, for the episode indicts
not only Gianni Schicchi but also Forese Donati’s father, Simone Donati.
Simone Donati’s greed set the whole preposterous (but successful) plot
against Buoso Donati into motion.

[13] By directing so strong an accusation at Forese Donati’s

father, the Gianni Schicchi episode of Inferno 30 seems to
respond to Forese’s denigration of Dante’s own father,
Alighieri, in the tenzone. In the sonnet L’altra notte Forese
imagines that he has come across the ghost of Dante’s father among the
graves: “ch’io trovai Alaghier tra le fosse” (I found Alighieri among the
graves [L’altra notte, 8]). Forese’s sonnet L’altra notte paints Dante’s
father in a sinister and unflattering light, and Dante’s retort is the
unflattering indictment of Forese’s father in the Gianni Schicchi episode
of Inferno 30. For more analysis of the hold of Forese’s sonnet L’altra
notte on Dante’s imagination, see the Commento on Inferno  10,
especially paragraph 24.

[14] In the tenzone between himself and Forese Donati, Dante practiced

the very art of altercation in language that is featured in the latter part
of Inferno 30, an art called “botta e riposta” in Italian (tit for tat or cut
and thrust in English). The tenzone has long been considered by critics
the developmental backdrop for the quarrel between Maestro Adamo, a
famous contemporary counterfeiter, and Sinon, the Greek liar who
according to the account of Aeneid 2 helped bring about the fall of Troy.
For more on the tenzone and the Commedia, see my essay “Amicus
eius: Dante and the Semantics of Friendship,” cited in Coordinated
Reading.

[15] Before getting to the quarrel at the canto’s end, I will briefly

consider other lyrical moments in Inferno 30. The presence of such
moments in these lower reaches of Hell points again to the stylistic
incongruity that we have been tracking through Inferno. A perfect
example of stylistic hybridity is verse 128, where Dante weds the crude
verb “leccar” (to lick) to a precious periphrasis for water, “the mirror of
Narcissus”, and creates “e per leccar lo specchio di Narcisso” (to have
you lick the mirror of Narcissus [Inf. 30.128]). This verse is rightfully
singled out by Battaglia Ricci as emblematic of the poetics that govern
these cantos. (See Dante e la tradizione letteraria medievale [Pisa:
Giardini, 1983], pp. 28-29.)

[16] The words with which Maestro Adamo greets Dante and Virgilio
echo, as commentators note, Lamentations 1:12: “O vos omnes qui
transitis per viam, attendite et videte si est dolor sicut dolor meus” (Is it
nothing to you, all ye that pass by? behold, and see if there be any
sorrow like unto my sorrow [King James Version]). Here Maestro
Adamo greets the travelers “qui transitis per viam”, who pass by on this
road, and asks them to witness his sorrow. Decades previously, Dante
had begun a sonnet in the Vita Nuova with an echo of the same words
from Lamentations. However the young Dante had, quite daringly,
inserted the words “d’Amor” into his citation of the Bible, so that the
passers-by are now on “the road of Love”:

O voi che per la via d’Amor passate,

attendete e guardate
s’egli è dolor alcun quanto ’l mio grave (1-3)
O you who walk along the path of Love,
behold and see
if there be any grief as deep as mine (Lansing trans.)
[17] The sonnet O voi che per la via is, moreover, a sonnet that exists in
a pre-Vita Nuova redaction, offering us an opportunity to consider the
truly longue durée of Lamentations in Dante’s poetry: used first in a
courtly sonnet that predates the Vita Nuova, Lamentations then
migrates to the Vita Nuova, whose theologized prose-frame draws
attention to the biblical textuality that hybridizes the early courtly poem,
and ultimately resurfaces in Inferno 30. For more on the sonnet O voi
che per la via, see my commentary to the sonnet in Dante’s Lyric
Poetry, cited in Coordinated Reading.

[18] There are further echoes of Dante’s lyric poetry in this section

of Inferno 30. Maestro Adamo’s poigant recall of the “verdi colli / del
Casentin” (green hills of the Casentino [Inf. 30.64-65]) reminds us of
the lover’s location in Dante’s canzone montanina. Maestro Adamo’s
reference to the castle of Romena “where I counterfeited / the currency
that bears the Baptist’s seal” (“là dov’ io falsai / la lega suggellata del
Batista” [Inf. 30.73-74]) is a reference to the castle in the Casentino that
belonged to the Conti Guidi, and thus takes us back to the tenzone with
Forese, where the Conti Guidi are mentioned as good marriage
prospects because of their great wealth. In Maestro Adamo’s more
jaundiced description they are the powerful lords who hired him to
counterfeit the Florentine florin.

[19] All the sins of the tenth bolgia are a form of falsificare, and Dante

in the last sequence of this bolgia gives heightened resonance to the
idea of falsification by staging a quarrel between Maestro Adamo, the
falsifier of the florin, and Sinon, the falsifier of words. The
intertwining of economic and representational fraud, a
central theme of Malebolge, literally takes central stage, and
is performed in the quarrel between the counterfeiter and the
liar.

[20] The altercation between Sinon and Maestro Adamo features and

repeats the words ver (truth, true) and falso (falsehood, false). As
analyzed in Dante’s Poets, the exchange of insults thus becomes a mise-
en-abyme of Malebolge’s deepest thematics:

Within the sequence of insults exchanged by Sinon and maestro Adamo,

we shall focus on the passage in which ver and its opposite — here
not menzogna, but falso — are featured, since these terms are
connected to the issue of genre throughout the Inferno. In response to
Sinon’s taunt that maestro Adamo’s hands were less agile while he was
being led to the stake than while he was coining money, the
counterfeiter replies first by acknowledging that the Greek speaks the
truth in this — “Tu di’ ver di questo” (112) — and then by reminding
Sinon of his great untruth, that most notorious of literary lies, the lie
that drove Hecuba mad, to the very condition in which we find her at
this canto’s beginning: “ma tu non fosti sì ver testimonio / là ’ve del ver
fosti a Troia richesto” (but you were not so true a witness / there at Troy
where the truth was requested from you [113-114]). To this insistence on
the ver that he did not tell, and on his role as a non-true witness, Sinon
throws back the generic falsification for which both are damned, further
noting that maestro Adamo’s crimes, unlike his own, were multiple.
While maestro Adamo stresses the word ver, Sinon stresses falso.
(Dante’s Poets, p. 236)

[21] The foundational binary ver versus menzogna — the very

binary that is inherited from Inferno 16’s baptism
of comedìa as “ver c’ha faccia di menzogna” (truth that has
the face of a lie [Inf. 16.124]) — is now recast as the
binary ver versus falso. In the form of tagged insults, “truth” versus
“falsehood” is the sing-song refrain that seals and concludes Hell’s circle
of fraud. As I noted in Dante’s Poets, these alignments suggest that,
whereas Sinon from the tragedìa is related to falsehood, Maestro
Adamo from the comedìa is related to truth. Such alignments are not
moral, but ways of restating the foundational meditation on genre, style,
and truth value that runs through Inferno and Malebolge in particular,
as featured in the treatment of Ulysses and Guido da Montefeltro:

Such correspondences, it should be noted, have nothing whatever to do

with a hierarchy of moral values; I am not suggesting that the
counterfeiter is less evil than the liar, but that Dante has structured into
the quarrel between these souls a metaphorical statement regarding the
status of the genres comedìa and tragedìa. Maestro Adamo is related to
”truth” in the same way as is Guido da Montefeltro, not because he is
“better” than Sinon, but because he is “comedic”: drawn not from the
literary world of the classical tragedìa, but from the observed world of
contemporary reality. (Dante’s Poets, p. 237)

[22] At the end of Inferno 30 Virgilio severely rebukes Dante for

watching, with such avidity, the squabble between Maestro Adamo and
Sinon:

 
Ad ascoltarli er’ io del tutto fisso,
quando ’l maestro mi disse: «Or pur mira,
che per poco che teco non mi risso!».
Quand’ io ’l senti’ a me parlar con ira,
volsimi verso lui con tal vergogna,
ch’ancor per la memoria mi si gira.
Qual è colui che suo dannaggio sogna,
che sognando desidera sognare,
sì che quel ch’è, come non fosse, agogna,
tal mi fec’ io, non possendo parlare,
che disiava scusarmi, e scusava
me tuttavia, e nol mi credea fare.
(Inf. 30.130-141)

I was intent on listening to them

when this was what my master said: "If you
insist on looking more, I'll quarrel with you!"
And when I heard him speak so angrily,
I turned around to him with shame so great
that it still stirs within my memory.
Even as one who dreams that he is harmed
and, dreaming, wishes he were dreaming, thus
desiring that which is, as if it were not,
so I became within my speechlessness:
I wanted to excuse myself and did
excuse myself, although I knew it not.
[23] The traditional reading of this passage assumes that Virgilio is
correct to rebuke Dante. This reading assumes that Virgilio speaks as
the mouthpiece of the author and does not consider Virgilio as a
character who is frequently corrected in the Commedia. In other words,
the traditional reading does not take the issue of narrative voice into
account.

[24] In Dante’s Poets, I argue that Virgilio is wrong, and that “the

pilgrim’s wish to listen is right, for his is the comedic desire to confront
evil and to bear witness to all of reality, including hell” (p. 238). As
further support of the position that I took in Dante’s Poets, I would
adduce the events of Inferno 32, in which Dante not only watches a
quarrel, as he does in Inferno 30, but actually participates in it.
In Inferno 32, Dante pulls Bocca degli Abati’s hair from his head,
causing Bocca to howl in pain; Virgilio at that point does not rebuke
Dante, nor does Dante apologize. Rather, another sinner certifies Dante
as a minister of divine vengeance, asking Bocca “what devil’s touching
you?”: “qual diavol ti tocca?” (Inf. 32.108).

[25] In conclusion, we come back to the theme of shame, discussed also

in the commentaries on Inferno 28 and to Inferno 29.
In Inferno 30.136-41 Dante describes his experience of shame at being
rebuked by Virgilio. He compares his feeling to that of a man who
dreams of his suffering and in his dream wishes that he were dreaming.
This passage is fascinating both for what it tells us of Dante’s feelings
about shame and for what it suggests about the experience of dreaming.
Let us look at both issues.

[26] Dante was always susceptible to feeling social shame, as we can see

from the Vita Nuova, and as is evidenced as well in the Geri del Bello
episode of Inferno 29. Here his great vergogna at being corrected by his
guide reminds us that Dante did not reject authority lightly and that the
feelings of social inadequacy incurred by Virgilio’s displeasure did not
pass easily. In fact, in this passage Dante insists on the intensity of his
feeling of shame, telling us that he still now — in the present tense, after
the cessation of his vision — can conjure the feeling in his memory:

Quand’io ’l senti’ a me parlar con ira,

volsimi verso lui con tal vergogna,
ch’ancor per la memoria mi si gira.
(Inf. 30.133-35)
And when I heard him speak so angrily,
I turned around to him with shame so great
that it still stirs within my memory.
[27] The shame that Dante scripts for himself in this passage
confirms that his refusal to feel onta at not having avenged
Geri del Bello is an acquired, not an innate, skill. In other
words, Dante was naturally susceptible to the societal shame of family
dishonor, as he was susceptible to the shame of being rebuked by his
teacher. He was able to learn, through moral analysis and deployment of
reason, to resist the feeling of onta and the actions that it could trigger
(e.g. the desire for vendetta, as discussed in the Commento
on Inferno  29).

[28] Most fascinating in the concluding section of Inferno 30 is Dante’s

comparison of himself to “one who dreams that he is harmed / and,
dreaming, wishes he were dreaming, thus / desiring that which is, as if it
were not”:

colui che suo dannaggio sogna,

che sognando desidera sognare,
sì che quel ch’è, come non fosse, agogna
tal mi fec’io
(Inf. 30.136-39)
Even as one who dreams that he is harmed
and, dreaming, wishes he were dreaming, thus
desiring that which is, as if it were not,
so I became
[29] Dante feels ashamed and wishes he were no longer experiencing
shame. He does not know that Virgilio has already forgiven him, and
that his desire has therefore already become reality. His desire to no
longer feel ashamed is compared to the desire of a dreamer who dreams
that he is experiencing harm and, while dreaming, wishes for release
from harm — and, thus, while dreaming wishes to be dreaming.

[30] The dreamer to whom Dante compares himself is someone who

craves the reality that is already his. His reality is that he is dreaming.
He craves that reality as though it were not his reality: in his dream he
wishes he were dreaming. In conclusion to this comparison, Dante
compresses and ends up with a profoundly existential statement: he is
one who craves that which is — “quel ch’è” — as though it were not:
“come non fosse” (138).

[31] The simile at the end of Inferno 30 therefore depicts someone who

craves a reality of which he is already in possession, if he could but
recognize the reality of his dream. As I write in Chapter 7 of The
Undivine Comedy, which treats true dreams:

Here the dream is reality; the dreamer need dream no more. All the
while that he craves reality, “what is” — “quel ch’è” — he is in possession
of it, if he could but recognize the reality of his dream, the truth —
nonfalsity — of his error.  (The Undivine Comedy, p. 164)

[32] To dream and to wish that one were dreaming is to dream

the truth. One is dreaming of what one already possesses, although
one does not know it. Hence, one is dreaming reality: one is dreaming
what is. We have here another mise-en-abyme of
the Commedia itself. Here, at the end of Malebolge, we encounter a
final definition of comedìa, completing the meditation that began with
the encounter with Geryon in Inferno 16. Comedìa is a true dream,
a dream that is the truth.
[33] And, finally, for those like my son who saw and loved the
movie Inception, in which dreams nest within dreams, we note the
fascinating modernity and psychological suppleness of Dante’s
extraordinary comparison, and of the very idea of one who “sognando
desidera sognare” (dreaming, wishes he were dreaming [Inf. 30.137]).