Comments, Inferno, Cantos XXIV thru XXIX

I think I made a slight mistake at the end of Canto XXIII.  The Malebranche told the pilgrims that the bridge for the sixth Bolge was out, and that was true.  What was false was they said the bridges in the other causeways (remember there are a sequence of causeways like spokes in a wheel that run toward the center) were available.  As it turns out all the bridges in all the causeways over the sixth-and as it turns out seventh as well-ditch are collapsed.  This collapse occurred with the earthquake that shook the world at Christ's crucifixion. 

It's interesting how Dante's body weight drags him down while climbing through the boulders of the collapsed bridges.  Here's a passage:

At last we made it to the point

where the outermost stone had broken off.

And there I felt my lungs so sucked of breath

that I could go no farther,

but I sat down as quickly as I could.

'Now must you cast off sloth,' my master said.

'Sitting on feather cushions or stretched out

under comforters, no one comes to fame.

'Without fame, he who spends his time on earth

leaves only such a mark upon the world

as smoke does on the air or foam on water.

'Get to your feet! Conquer this laboring breath

with strength of mind, which wins the battle

if not dragged down by body's weight. (XXIV. L. 41-54)

Virgil characterizes Dante's difficulty in climbing in terms of the sin of sloth.  For those interested in the allegory, I would say this is surely allegorical, and I think significant for the entire Comedia.  The body's flesh drags one down in sin, which makes the climb toward heaven difficult.  This will be more fully developed in Purgatorio, which is a mountain that must be ascended, and contrasted in Paradisio where the body becomes weightless for flight through the heavens.

While I'm on that passage, notice how Virgil's line of motivation is for "fame," and earthly endeavor.  Virgil is a pagan; a Christian would say that even fame is nothing but air and smoke that vanishes with respect to heavenly endeavors.  St. Thomas Aquinas called his work nothing but straw at the end of his life when confronted with a heavenly vision.

As someone with Italian ethnicity with immigrant parents from Italy, I had to smirk at the beginning of Canto XXV.  First Vanni Fucci makes some sort of obscene hand gesture as he blasphemes God.  It's not clear what the exact hand gesture is or what exactly it means, and Hollander provides some possibilities.  Italians today are known for their hand gestures.  I wonder if Italians in Dante's day also used a lot of hand gestures, and if they were similar.  Probably not similar, though profanity is profanity.

The other thing that catches my eye is the small rant that Dante has against Fucci's town of Pistoia. 

Ah, Pistoia, Pistoia, why won't you resolve

to burn yourself to ashes, cease to be,

since you exceed your ancestors in evil?  (XXV. L. 10-12)

I'm reminded of Brunetto Latini who goes off on a rant on Florence's neighboring town of Fiesole in Canto XV, calling them "blind," "greedy, envious, and proud," and then we see in Canto XXVIII Dante make a snarky comment about the Sienese and French: "Were people ever/quite so fatuous as are the Sienese?/Why, not even the French can match them!" (l. 121-123).  Hollander's note on those lines is worth quoting: "Florentines love to belittle the Sienese; Italians love to belittle the French.  Dante gets two for one."  I haven't noted it elsewhere, but this kind of anti-other city disparagement seems to be throughout the Comedia, or at least in hell.  I'll have to keep my eyes open for it in the other two cantica.  Back when I commented on Latini's smear I thought it was indicative of his character, but perhaps Dante sees this as a norm since he has his persona participate in it, and apparently frequently.  Some of this borders on what we today might call racist.

I wonder how much of this has to do with Italian city-state rivalries.  I know that Florence and Siena were at war frequently.  Italy didn't get unified into a country until 1871, so regions thought of themselves as insular.  Perhaps it's less so today with unification and easy travel and relocation.  But my mother, who is of an older generation and who under most circumstances is a kindly woman, will to this day slander people from different parts Italy, and she does it almost unconsciously.  Sicilians are a common whipping boy of the despised regions.  And I remember my father hating the French!  I don't know if he ever met a French person in his life, but he would malign them.  He said it had to do with being forced to learn French in school, but it went beyond that.  We do that today here with other countries too, especially the French!  Well, we should all be more considerate, but it's curious that someone as noble as Dante participated in this.

And yet Dante creates a whole ditch for the schismatics, the ninth Bolge where the sinners are split open similar with respect to the division they caused in life.  Would Dante belong in this ditch if he were conscious of his sin?  Or is he conscious that his snarky remarks are sinful and there is some underlying meaning to their inclusion?  If there is, I can't quite grasp the meaning.  It would be some sort of irony, but I can't see the greater significance.  The inclusion of Bertram de Born in that twenty-fifth canto is interesting.  He was a French troubadour poet, of which Dante had a fondness for, but Dante apparently believed de Born's  poetry caused division between father and son.  Carrying his severed head de Born is referred to as "two in one and one in two" (l. 125).  One of the commentators points out that this echoes the Trinity, "three in one and one in three."  The echo is clearly meant to be ironic, since the Trinity reflects the unity ("in the unity of the Holy Spirit") of God while de Born is not unified.

de Born's closing line, line 142 and the final line of Canto XXVIII, is of utmost importance.  "Così s'osserva in me lo contrapasso."  Hollander translates it as "In me you may observe fit punishment."  "Contrapasso" or "fit punishment" is what the entire Inferno is based on.  Either the souls choose to be locked into their sin forever, although in a degenerated manner, as in the sins of appetite, or either the souls are forced into a torture as with the sins of volition, they are all fitting punishments.  The notion of contrapasso goes back to Aristotle (contrapossum in Latin), but as Hollander points it goes back to Old Testament retribution, i.e. "taking an eye for an eye." 

I haven't discussed the fascinating sinners of the eighth Bolge, that of false counselors.  I'm going to hold off discussing Guido da Montefeltro (Canto XXVII) until we get to Purgatorio.  His son resides in purgatory and the two make an interesting comparison.  At a minimum I should say that formal repentance without a change of heart doesn't work, even if the Pope absolves your sins.  Since he is so fascinating a case, I will go into a close reading of Ulysses (Canto XXVI) later this week.

I hope you're enjoying this as much as I am.

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Canto XXVI with Ulysses residing in the bolge of the false counselors is one of those special cantos that is filled with depth.  It strikes me that there are two levels worth exploring: first on the surface, which pertains to the Ulysses testimony, and second below the surface pertaining how Ulysses resonates to Dante as poet and pilgrim.  But before I get to either, I need to provide context.

1. Context.

As probably pointed out in everyone’s notes, the notion of a false counselor being associated with flame comes from the third chapter of the Letter of James.  Let me quote the entire relevant passage, because even Hollander cuts it short.  I think all six verses from the top of the chapter have relevance.

1 Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you realize that we will be judged more strictly, 2 for we all fall short in many respects. If anyone does not fall short in speech, he is a perfect man, able to bridle his whole body also. 3 If we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we also guide their whole bodies. 4 It is the same with ships: even though they are so large and driven by fierce winds, they are steered by a very small rudder wherever the pilot’s inclination wishes. 5 In the same way the tongue is a small member and yet has great pretensions.  Consider how small a fire can set a huge forest ablaze. 6 The tongue is also a fire. It exists among our members as a world of malice, defiling the whole body and setting the entire course of our lives on fire, itself set on fire by Gehenna.  (James 3:1-6)

From the first four verses we see how those that provide information—and I would expand teachers to include counselors—have a responsibility and will be judged “strictly” for what they say.  The fourth verse takes on a nautical metaphor which is particularly germane to the Ulysses story.  “The tongue is also a fire” in that it can inspire and lead, but if it lead toward ill it is a fire that can set the whole forest ablaze.  So we can see the Divine Justice in false counselors eternally bound in a tongue of fire.  Contrast this to the tongue of fire that comes down from heaven from the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.  The malevolent tongue spews out from the inside for narcissistic ends while the benevolent tongue is a grace from outside.

More context.  Ulysses and Diomedes, his fellow prisoner in the flame, were the two characters from Greek antiquity who devised the Trojan Horse—an empty shell of a structure which tricked the Trojans and caused the fall of Troy.  Inside the belly of the horse were Greek soldiers and when the Trojans opened their gates to bring in what they was a victory offering, the Greeks came out of the horse and sacked the city.  Now Homer only alludes to that part of the story; it is not in The Iliad.  But Virgil in the Aeneid fills in the story.  Now the Romans always identified with the Trojans and did not have a high opinion of Ulysses, and that perspective filters down through the middle ages.  You can see then how Aeneas, Virgil’s hero, is more in accord with Christian values rather than the trickster, almost Machiavellian Ulysses.  In addition to Ulysses deceit, he abandoned his wife and child (although reluctantly which seems to evade Dante) and took up with many women, especially for nine years with the enchantress Circe.  Contrast that to Aeneas who saved his father and child from the burning Troy and was distraught over failing to save his wife.  Aeneas is a true family man while it could be questionable for Ulysses, and it was questioned in the middle ages.

Perhaps I should also state that Odysseus and Ulysses are one and the same.  Ulysses is the Latin name for the Greek.  Dante comes from the Latin evolved part of the Roman world, and so knows him as Ulysses.

More context.  Ulysses in The Odyssey does find his way home after spending a year with Circe.  But Dante either doesn’t know that part of the story—which I find hard to believe, though that’s what most critics claim—or he re-writes that story with care for the old story.  Dante did not have Homer’s stories in Greek, but had to go by anecdote.  But the return to home is such a big part of the Odyssey that I find it difficult to believe that wasn’t in the known anecdotes.  But I’m not a scholar.  In either case, Dante the author takes on the role of the epic writer and creates his own story of Ulysses after his Circe encounter.

2. Dante’s Re-Write of the Ulysses story. 

So Dante has Ulysses shun going home and go forth on further quest after the Circe encounter.  The flame-entrapped soul speaks of it with his first words.

Then, brandishing its tip this way and that,

as if it were the tongue of fire that spoke,

it brought forth a voice and said: 'When I

'took leave of Circe, who for a year and more

beguiled me there, not far from Gaëta,

before Aeneas gave that name to it,

'not tenderness for a son, nor filial duty

toward my agèd father, nor the love I owed

Penelope that would have made her glad,

'could overcome the fervor that was mine

to gain experience of the world

and learn about man's vices, and his worth.  (XXVI. l. 88-99)

That part about “duty’ to family is particularly meant to contrast Ulysses with Aeneas, and of course undermine him in our Christian eyes.  Particularly disturbing is his motivation to “gain experience of the world/and learn man’s vices.”  Christians don’t learn about vices; we’re supposed to reject them.  And on the ship he lets his tongue of fire motivate his men;

'"O brothers," I said, "who, in the course

of a hundred thousand perils, at last

have reached the west, to such brief wakefulness

'"of our senses as remains to us,

do not deny yourselves the chance to know --

following the sun -- the world where no one lives.

'"Consider how your souls were sown:

you were not made to live like brutes or beasts,

but to pursue virtue and knowledge."

'With this brief speech I had my companions

so ardent for the journey

I could scarce have held them back. (XXVI. l. 112-23)

So Ulysses may be in hell for advocating the deceit of the Trojan Horse, but he is a serial sinner of the sin.  He leads his men to where they shouldn’t go and search for things they shouldn’t know.  Ulysses travels beyond the known world, comes across a mountain that reaches the heavens, and instead of flying up to it, his ship submerges and they all perish. 

Perhaps a note on the geography is warranted.  In Dante’s day it was thought that there was no land below the equator.  The mountain they come across is Dante’s mountain of Purgatory which was supposed to be directly opposite Jerusalem on the globe.  Ulysses potential exploration of that mountain can be seen as a blasphemous endeavor. 

The poetic skill arriving to this should also be noted.  Notice how many flying allusions are interspersed throughout the canto.  Ulysses describes his adventure “as a mad flight” where the oars were turned to wings (l. 125).  So even at the beginning of the canto, previous to meeting Ulysses Dante refers to Florence as having “wings [that] beat over land and sea” (l. 2) and there are references to flies and fireflies in the bolge, and finally an allusion to “Elijah’s chariot taking flight” rising up to heaven.  That of course is a contrast.  Ulysses goes down, not up, and he is not holy like Elijah.

It’s interesting that Diomedes never says a word, and so the pairing seems to be similar to that of Francesca and Paolo in Canto V.  They are forever together to suffer from the knowledge of the sin they committed together.

3. How it resonates with Dante:

Hollander and others point out how similar Dante’s journey and poetic endeavor is similar to Ulysses’ supra-human voyage.  Dante is on a journey through the various parts of the afterlife that no single human being has ever attempted.  He will come out of hell to the other side of the world where Ulysses had traveled by ship and be washed up on the very shores of that island with the purgatorial mountain where Ulysses was capsized.  Dante will actually take flight in Paradise where Ulysses attempts flight with his ship.  His flight of poetic skill is analogous to the Ulysses’ search for knowledge and virtue and fame.  Recall back in the Canto XXIV where Dante is struggling to climb out of the sixth bolge, Virgil motivates him with the promise of fame (l. 49-51).  Is Virgil being a false counselor there like Ulysses urges his men to sail on?  The parallels are striking.  And notice too how in the early lines of the this twenty-sixth canto the pilgrim’s climb is filled with potential plummets into an abyss.

We left that place and, on those stairs

that turned us pale when we came down,

my leader now climbed back and drew me up.

And as we took our solitary way

among the juts and crags of the escarpment,

our feet could not advance without our hands. (XXVI. l. 13-18)

And then later:

Rising to my feet to look, I stood up

on the bridge. Had I not grasped a jutting crag,

I would have fallen in without a shove. (l. 43-45)

Their journey is filled with the same potential plunges as Ulysses finds in his demise.  And then Dante ties that potential plunge with his intellectual powers.

I grieved then and now I grieve again

as my thoughts turn to what I saw,

and more than is my way, I curb my powers

lest they run on where virtue fail to guide them,

so that, if friendly star or something better still

has granted me its boon, I don't misuse the gift.  (l.19-24)

He needs curb his “powers/lest they run on where virtue fail to guide.”  He uses the same word “virtue” as Ulysses uses in line 120, “to pursue virtue and knowledge.”  And it’s not a translation discrepancy; Dante uses the same Italian word, albeit in different grammatical form.  That’s not a coincidence.  Dante in this canto is rivaling Homer and Virgil with his re-write of an epic poem, and we will see in a few cantos further how attempts to surpass the classic poets Ovid and Lucan with his poetic use of metamorphosis.  (This parallel between journey and writing poetry is of course is allegory for those who look for the allegorical connections, but as I’ve said before this would be no different than a metaphorical connection in a modernist work.)  Dante is striving for the highest literary achievement.  

So what is the difference?  Why is Dante’s journey virtuous while Ulysses’ a false virtue?  First, Dante tells us in the conditional phrase modifying his concerning about misusing his gift, “if friendly star or something better still/has granted me its boon.”  “Something better still” is God—or Divine Providence—and the “boon” is another wording for grace.  So God has granted him this gift, but still it doesn’t explain why.  I think we can surmise that Dante is journeying for God’s glory while Ulysses is journeying for his egotistical satisfaction.  The distinction I think is captured with the imagery of Elijah rising in his chariot toward heaven.  Dante thinks of Elijah when he first sees the flames as he enters the seventh bolge:

And as the one who was avenged by bears

could see Elijah's chariot taking flight,

when the horses reared and rose to Heaven,

but made out nothing with his eyes

except the flame alone

ascending like a cloud into the sky (l. 34-39)

Elijah is the prophet who is an apologist for the Judaic God, who hears the God’s “small whisper” in the cave at Horeb, who is truly virtuous in the confrontation with the wicked King Ahab, who I think is the only Old Testament person to be assumed into heaven bodily in a chariot of fire and horses, within the midst of a “whirlwind,” mind you.  A whirlwind drives Ulysses under water, but lifts Elijah to heaven.  Dante too will be lifted into the heavens.  Elijah is righteous, Ulysses is not, and Dante is in a learning experience.  When Dante does rise up into the heavens, his thoughts of fame and knowledge vanish, and like St. Thomas Aquinas who thought of his work as straw when confronted with the heavenly vision, Dante desire for humanly fame and knowledge too will vanish.

Dante's Inferno, Cantos XXIV thru XXIX

Continuing on with the summary of Dante's Inferno.  First installment was here. Second installment here. Third installment here.  Fourth installment here.  

As it turns out the bridge of the seventh ditch is also out and so the pilgrims need to make their way through the boulders and terrain.  It’s a struggle for Dante to climb up the upside of the ditch but finally they reached the seventh ditch, that where thieves are placed.  The sinners here are placed to reside with snakes, and in a tour de force of poetic skill Dante describes the metamorphic exchange between the bodies of the sinners with the bodies of the snakes.  And when the exchange is complete, the pilgrims witness the beings burst into flame, be consumed to ashes, and then reconstituted back into the original form, only to go through this cycle for eternity.  They meet a man Dante recognizes from the town of Pistoia, Vanni Fucci, who reveals he is there because he stole religious articles.  Spitefully he tells Dante how his White Guelphs will be routed by the Black in the near future.  (Canto XXIV)

After Vanni Fucci made a profane hand gesture and let out a blasphemous curse, a snake curls around his neck and merges into him.  The pilgrims observe other souls being metamorphosed and scorched, the centaur, Cacus, and then a group of Florentines. Here the metamorphous is described in excruciating detail so that Dante the poet is actually outdoing the poeticism of the Roman poets Lucan and Ovid, who were known for their description of transmutation of beings.  (Canto XXV)

The pilgrims struggle on to make through the terrain of the seventh ditch until they finally reach the eighth, where they see the crevice filled with flickering lights like fireflies.  Here reside the sinners who gave false counsel, forever locked inside of flames just as their tongues on earth were flames.  One particular flame catches Dante’s interest.  It contains the Greek heroes Ulysses and Diomedes from the Trojan War who devised the notion of the Trojan Horse to bring down Troy.  Dante wants to hear their story and Virgil beseeches Ulysses, who tells of his epic quest after the war to gain supreme knowledge.  He tells how with his crew they sailed to other side of the earth to where they came across a mountain that reached the heavens, but then in a whirlwind the ship was flipped under and they all drowned.  (Canto XXVI)

Another flame makes his way toward the pilgrims and this one asks about the recent political developments between the northern Italian cities.  Dante the pilgrim delineates the political status of his day, and asks who the soul inside the flame.  Cunningly he never provides his name but gives enough of his personal bio for us to identify him as Guido de Montefeltro, the Ghibelline captain who was known for his devious strategies.  He tells of how toward the end of his life, he decided to give up being guileful so that he would enter heaven, and so became a Franciscan friar.  But then Pope Boneface VIII, in the middle of a war, called on Guido to provide him with a winning strategy, and he would absolve him of whatever sin he recommended.  Guido told him to lie to trick the enemy, and so it worked.  But when Guido died, despite St. Francis coming for his soul, a demon overruled St. Francis and brought Guido down to hell.  (Canto XXVII)

Having made their way upon the span once again, the pilgrims come to the ninth ditch where those who caused schisms reside.  In perfect divine justice, these souls have their anatomies cleaved apart in some fashion.  These souls forever healed but then re-severed by a demon with a sword.  They meet Mohammed (who apparently Dante believed was once a Christian) split open from the neck to the groin and his son-in-law Ali split from the head to the chin.  They meet an Italian, Pier da Medicina, who’s throat is severed, and others until finally they meet the war poet Bertran de Born who stands with his head severed, held by the hair in his hand.  (Canto XXVIII)

Virgil observes that Dante is lingering overly long in this ditch of the schismatics, and prods him to hurry since their allotted time is approaching.  Dante observes a relative there, Geri del Bello, who is upset with him, and so moves on.  The pilgrims move to the tenth ditch, that of the counterfeiters.  Here the sinners lay about in mortal agony like the dying at a hospital, lamenting from eternal ills such as malaria, plague, and leprosy.  They come to two sinners, Griffolino and Capocchio, sitting on the ground back to back, both forever picking at scabs that cover their skin and speak about their deeds.  (Canto XXIX)

Comments, Inferno, Cantos XVIII thru XXIII

Some observations about this section.  I think for the first time I finally understood the bridge structure of the Malebolge.  Dante keeps mentioning a bridge for each ditch, and yet they seem to keep walking along.  So I think there is an arched span over each ditch, which constitutes a bridge.  But each bridge butts up against its adjacent neighbor, and so the structure is similar to a causeway span.  There are a number of these causeways that run toward the center, forming a spokes in a wheel structure given that hell is circular.  Also the causeways connect at the center to a circular platform goes around Cocytus, the ninth circle and the heart of hell. 

I have to say that the Malebolge section of hell gives me the willies.  This is the brutal hell we all envision and fear.  When common slang refers to "being medieval," that is filled with torture chambers, this is a perfect example.  It seems to me that the sinners of this section are not here because they want to remain in their sin, even if it exiles them from God, but though they are not repentant in the least,  they do try to escape and get free.  And so the vicious demons are planted there as enforcers of punishment and torture.

There seems to be quite a few allusions to and actual appearances of Franciscan Friars in this section.  In Canto XIX Dante stands beside Pope Nicholas III "like a friar who confesses a treacherous assassin."  In Canto XXII the Navarrese soul, some have identified him as a man named Ciampolo, names Fra Gomita of Gallura as one of the residents of the ditch.  At the very first terza rima of Canto XXIII Dante describes he and Virgil as walking like two "Friars Minor walk along the roads."  Indeed, the pilgrims meet two Franciscans just a little further in that very Canto, Catalano and Loderingo, who in life were Jovial Friars, which are not Franciscans but of the Order of Blessed Virgin Mary.  Still they are friars.  Even the cord that Dante takes off his vestment and drops into the pool that summons (or forms, I can't tell which) Geryon (Canto XVI) suggests a Franciscan vestment. 

So what's going on?  Clearly alluding to Virgil and he as friars and then coming across two friars is meant for us as a comparison.  But what exactly are we to draw from the comparison?  I can't figure it out.  Perhaps he and Virgil are supposed to be honest while the others were frauds?  Perhaps the fair number of allusions to friars (and remember Brunetto said that there were quite a number of clerics and scholars, which I take as Dominican Friars, in his circle.  Now there will be positive friars in Purgatorio and Paradisio, so I don't think Dante is picking on them.  But there does seem to be a fair number of references for friars in hell, and I can't recall a single Benedictine Monk in hell.  There will be monks in heaven; in fact St. Bernard of Clairvaux will be his final guide.  Perhaps it has to do with Dante himself being a Third Order Franciscan, which is the Lay Order of the Franciscans.  Perhaps it has to do with Dante having been taught by the Dominicans as a youth.  Perhaps as a city person he has come in contact with friars much more so than monks, who are usually more detached from society.  Perhaps familiarity gave him knowledge of particular friars and prodded the imagination.

One other thing I'd like to discuss is the state of Pope Nicholas III in Canto XIX in the circle of simony.  Notice the number of inversions that make up for the irony of the punishment.  The sinners there are stuck upside down in what resembles a baptismal font, the very means of Christian initiation.  Their feet are lacquered with oil, which alludes to the anointing chrism placed on the head of the heads of those receiving baptism and holy orders.  Only for the sinners, the oil is on their feet, not their heads.  And their feet are further afflicted with a constant application of flame.  Here too is a Christian inversion.  The Apostles received the Holy Spirit in the form of a fire on their heads, a fire which filled them with inspiration, while these sinners are burned in torment on their feet.  And notice the inversion of roles when Dante goes up to the Nicholas, who can't see him and draws out a confession.  The Pope is confessing to a lay person.

I think it's unfortunate that at the end of Canto XIX Dante goes off on a rant decrying Popes.  He even alludes to the Papacy as the beast in Revelations with seven heads, which I think is a misreading of Revelations.  Protestants call up the same sort of nonsense to rip the Catholic Church.  Still it's sobering to know there have been bad popes, but rest assured there will be some good ones in Paradisio. 

Four Popes were mentioned or alluded to in Canto XIX.  Let me just list them for you with the years of their papacy.  You can look them up if you wish.

Pope Nicholas III, 1277-1280

Pope Celestine V, 1294

Pope Boniface VIII, 1294-1303

Pope Clement V, 1305-1314

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I did want to revel in the Malebranche scenes, which start in Canto XXI and extend even into the beginnings of Canto XXIII.  Hollander says that this is the longest extended scene in the entire Comedia.  No other scene actually touches three cantos.  Let’s just enjoy them too, so here is Hollander’s translation of the last third of Canto XXI.  Virgil has assured safe passage he and Dante, and so calls Dante out of his hiding spot.  But the Malebranche are devilishly provocative and constantly instigating.  Let’s start with the feint jab at Dante’s rear and end with the blast from the demon’s rear.

They aimed their hooks, and one said to another:

'How about I nick him on the rump?'

And the other answered: 'Sure, let him have one.'

But the demon who was speaking with my leader

turned round at once and said:

'Easy does it, Scarmiglione!'

And then to us: 'You can't continue farther

down this ridge, for the sixth arch

lies broken into pieces at the bottom.

'If you desire to continue on,

then make your way along this rocky ledge.

Nearby's another crag that yields a passage.

'Yesterday, at a time five hours from now,

it was a thousand two hundred sixty-six years

since the road down here was broken.

'I'm sending some men of mine along that way

to see if anyone is out to take the air.

Go with them -- they won't hurt you.'

'Step forward, Alichino, Calcabrina,'

he continued, 'and you Cagnazzo,

and let Barbariccia lead the squad.

'Let Libicocco come too, and Draghignazzo,

Ciriatto with his tusks, and Graffiacane,

Farfarello, and madcap Rubicante.

'Have a good look around the boiling glue.

Keep these two safe as far as the next crag

that runs all of a piece above the dens.'

'Oh, master,' I said, 'I don't like what I see.

Please, let us find our way without an escort,

if you know how. As for me, I do not want one.

'If you are as vigilant as ever,

don't you see they grind their teeth

while with their furrowed brows they threaten harm?'

And he to me: 'Don't be afraid.

Let them grind on to their hearts' content --

they do it for the stewing wretches.'

Off they set along the left-hand bank,

but first each pressed his tongue between his teeth

to blow a signal to their leader,

and he had made a trumpet of his asshole. (XXI. l. 100-139)

LOL, their salute is a razz with their tongues, and his commanding bugle blow is a fart.  This is farcical, low comedy.  Hollander points out that Italian critic Gian Roberto Saroli identifies these sounds as the only musical notes in all of hell.  Paradisio is filled with music, and I recall that Purgatorio too has hymns, but hell has razzes and farts for music.  Malacoda, the leader, tells his minions to guide them so no one will hurt them and to keep them safe. Yeah sure.  They are going to anticipate the pilgrims fouling up. 

But look at how Dante the author goes to such an extent to name the demons.  Scarmiglione, Alichino, Calcabrina, Cagnazzo, Barbaricci, Libicocco, Draghignazzo, Ciriatto, Graffiacane, Farfarello, and Rubicante.  To really appreciate it, you have to hear it in Italian with its long drawn out vowels.  I have had the good fortune of being Caaaahl-caaah-bree-na, Baah-baah-ree-zioh, Leee-beee-coooh-coh, Farrr-faah-reee-loh, Ruuu-bee-cahn-teh.  Hollander is spot on in keeping the names in Italian.  Esolen in his translation makes a huge mistake in my opinion by translating the names into English.  Dante is taking joy in the creative sounds of his Italian.  But we also should note in what the names mean.  Here’s how Esolen translates them.

Malacoda – Eviltail; Scarmiglione – Crumplehead; Alichino – Tramplefrost; Calcabrina – Harlequin; Cagnazzo – Larddog; Barbaricci – Curlybeard; Libicocco – Stormbreath; Draghignazzo – Dragonsnout; Ciriatto – Swinetooth; Graffiacane – Dogscratcher; Farfarello – Gobgoblin; Rubicante – Redfroth.  Somehow, the English doesn’t have the same comedic vigor.

Notice in the next canto how the Malebranche handle the one sinner who tries to rise out ot the pitch. 

On we went, escorted by ten demons.

What savage company! But, as they say,

'in church with saints, with guzzlers in the tavern.'

My attention was fixed upon the pitch

to note each detail of this gulch

and of the people poaching in it.

Like dolphins, when they arch their backs

above the water, giving sailors warning

to prepare to save their ship,

so from time to time, to ease his pain,

one of the sinners would show his back

and, quick as lightning, hide it once again.

And just as in a ditch at water's edge

frogs squat with but their snouts in sight,

their bodies and their legs all hidden,

so were the sinners scattered everywhere.

But they, at the approach of Barbariccia,

withdrew back down beneath the boiling.

There I saw -- and my heart still shudders at it --

one who lingered, as it can happen

that one frog stays while yet another plunges,

and Graffiacane, who was nearest him,

caught a billhook in his pitchy locks

and hauled him out, looking like an otter.

By now I knew their names,

since I had noted these when they were chosen

and when they called to one another.

'Set your claws to work, Rubicante,

see you rip his skin off,'

shouted all the accursèd crew together.  (XXII. l. 13-42)

The Malebranche are walking along menacingly, looking at the frog-like sinners submerged beneath the pitch when Grafficane hauls one up by the hair – like he’s pulling out an creature from a lake and tells Rubicante to set his claws to rip the sinner’s skin off.  But it’s Ciriatto who rips at him and Barbiriccia who wants to get into the action by crying out, “Stand back and let me jab him.”  But it’s Libicoco who gets pride of place.

Then Libicocco said: 'This is just too much,'

caught him with his grapple by the arm

and, ripping, gouged out a hunk of flesh. (XXII. l. 70-72)

They’re all fighting over each other to get the prime cut.  This and the closing vignette of the canto where the two demons fight with each other and in doing so both fall into the boiling pitch and get burnt to a crisp border on slapstick.  From what I understand, the medieval plays that featured demons all portrayed the demons as bumbling torturers or stumbling cops.  Dante is continuing a tradition, but he just seems to love the art of it.  This may be the funniest scene of the entire Comedia..  

Faith Filled Friday: Dr. Jérôme Lejeune

With the horror of aborting those innocent little ones simply because they have Downs Syndrome, I offer this quote I came by Magnificat (Feb 2018) by the discoverer of the chromosome abnormality that causes it, Dr. Jérôme Lejeune.  I take the quote from Anthony Esloen’s article there titled, “The Least of These.”

For millennia, medicine has striven to fight for life and health and disease and death.  Any reversal of the order of these terms of reference would entirely change medicine itself. 

         ~ Jérôme Lejeune

Without question his discovery of the Trisomy 21 abnormality should have warranted a Nobel Prize in Medicine.  But when he spoke out against the horrific practice of using his detection method for identifying and then aborting Downs Syndrome children, he went on to say to his wife, “Today I lost the Nobel Prize.”  And that is exactly what happened.

Dr. Lejeune was a French Catholic, most definitely pro-life, and has been recognized as a Servant of God by the Church.

Dante's Inferno, Cantos XVIII thru XXIII

Continuing on with the summary of Dante's Inferno.  First installment was here. Second installment here. Third installment here.  

Having landed in Malebolge, Dante describes its structure as having ten concentric ditches or pockets, each for a different sin type of fraud.  Horned demons, stationed at each ditch, prevent the souls from escaping through harsh weapons and violence.  The ditches are connected by a series of bridges running toward the center.  The first ditch belongs to the pimps and seducers, where the sinners are whipped and where the pilgrims meet a Bolognese man who pimped sister and Jason the Argonaut, who in his adventures had seduced several women.  In the second ditch, the residence for flatterers, submerged in human excrement, the pilgrims meet a man from Lucca and Thais from classical literature.  (Canto XVIII)

The pilgrims come to the third ditch, where those who have sinned of simony.  Here the sinners are placed upside down in a hole that resembles a baptismal font, where only their legs stick up outside and the bottoms of their feet are flicked with flame.  This piques Dante's curiosity from above on the bridge and Virgil offers to take him down.  On the ground Dante stops to talk to one sinner, who submerged can't see who Dante is but confuses him with Pope Boniface VIII, who is expected to replace him by pushing him further down into the ground.  The sinner turns out to be a previous Pope, Nicholas III, who speaks of his sin.  Dante then rants against him telling him how all such Popes have made the world worse by their greed.  (Canto XIX)

They come to the fourth ditch, for sinners who have tried to divine the future.  Here the souls are twisted so that their heads face their back, forced ironically to walk with their heads backwards, and tears flow from their eyes and drip into their buttocks.  Virgil points out a number of sinners, but elaborates on a woman named Manto, a soothsayer, who was the legendary founder of Virgil's home city of Mantua.  In describing how Manto founded the city, Virgil gives a loving description of the natural milieu, suggestive of the poet's lyric poetry and offers a contrast to the hideous and repulsive nature of hell.  More sinners are identified and the pilgrims move on.  (Canto XX)

The pilgrims enter the fifth ditch, where those who committed barratry and other grafters reside.  The ditch is filled with boiling tar in which the sinners submerged.  A squad of demons with grappling hooks jab and carve the sinners if they try to rise up.  One demon has just arrived with a new resident, carrying him on his shoulder like a side of meat.  Virgil has Dante hide while he engages the demon, and tells him when demon is about to hook him that he's is there by the will of God.  The demon relents, Virgil has Dante come out, and the squad gathers threateningly around them.  They will let them go, but the demon tells them the next bridge is down and they will have to take a circuitous route onward.  They move on but Dante is afraid as the demons follow behind.  The squad gathers before their leader for a salute, and the leader acknowledges with a fart for a trumpet sound.  (Canto XXI)

Still in the fifth ditch the pilgrims look down into the pitch and see the sinners' nostril's as if they were frogs beneath the surface of a pond.  They scatter when the demons pass by except for one, and one of the demons grab him by the head and lift him out.  The pilgrims wish to talk to him and find out he's from Navarre, someone who had worked for the king and took bribes.  The demons slash at his being, ripping flesh off him.  He tells the pilgrims about others that reside there, and he plays a trick on the demons by leaping off to escape them.  Two of them chase him, argue and brawl, and fall themselves into the boiling tar.  While the other demons try to pull them out, the pilgrims run ahead.  (Canto XXII)

The pilgrims make an escape from the Malebranche by climbing and sliding down the back that separates the ditches, with Virgil holding Dante in his arms.  They make it over to the sixth ditch just in time as the squad of demons reach the edge of their ditch and can go no further.  The sixth ditch is where the hypocrites reside, painted souls who wear glittery vestments but filled with lead inside so that it wears them down.  They meet a pair of friars who walk and talk with them, reaching a soul staked in a crucified position on the ground.  We learn he is Caiaphus, the Jewish high priest who contrived to have Jesus crucified.  The pilgrims ask for directions to move to the next ditch and find out the Malebranche lied about the bridge being out.  (Canto XXIII)

An Interview with Rod Dreher on Dante’s Divine Comedy

I was thrilled to find that at Discerning Hearts website, Kris McGregor in a podcast interviewed Rod Dreher on his book, How Dante Can Save Your Life:The Life-Changing Wisdom of History's Greatest Poem which is a personal memoir on how Rod found himself in a similar dark place that Dante finds himself, and how reading Dante’s great work pulled him out of his dark place to find God’s grace.  It’s a wonderful interview.

I have not read Rod’s book, but I’m getting it.  Right now it's only 99 cents on Kindle, so it's a great bargain.  You can find it on Amazon here. 

Here is the inteview.  It won't embed, so you'll have to go here.  

Rod leaves the interview with a really great quote, worthy of a Notable Quote entry. 

“If you surrender yourself to Dante, he will show you to the Lord.”

Discerning Hearts is such a great web site.  If you’re Catholic it should be a go to place for great podcasts, prayers, and meditations.