by Dante
88–89. Dante’s coyness here is palpable: of course he is not being “too bold” (troppo folle) in the eyes of any just observer. At the same time he is clearly aware of the enormity of his “singing” such a “tune” to a pope. [return to English / Italian]
90–117. Dante’s great outburst of invective against Nicholas (and all simoniac popes) is based on the history of the Church, beginning with Christ’s calling of Peter, moving to Peter’s and the other apostles’ choosing Matthias by lot to take the place of Judas. After Dante alludes to Nicholas’s vile maneuvering against the Angevin king, Charles I of Sicily, he returns to the Bible, now to Rev. 17, interpreted positively as the presentation of the Roman Church as keeper of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit and the Ten Commandments. (For the relationship between the woman here [Rome as honest wife of the Caesars, free of papal constraint] and the whore of Purgatorio XXXII [Rome as the corrupted Church after the Donation of Constantine] see Davis [Davi.1998.1], p. 271.) Dante’s oration ends with a final slam at papal worship of “the golden calf,” joining the final apostrophe of the canto in rebuke of Constantine as the source of most of Christianity’s troubles when he granted the papacy temporal authority. [return to English / Italian]
115–117. The author’s apostrophe of the emperor Constantine (reigned 306–337) holds him responsible for the so-called “Donation of Constantine,” by which he granted temporal sovereignty to Pope Sylvester I (314–335)—and his successors—over Italy and the rest of the western empire. This document was considered genuine until Lorenzo Valla, in the fifteenth century, demonstrated that it was a forgery. For Dante it was genuine and a cause for excited concern. (His views on the subject are exposited forcefully in the later Monarchia [III.x.1–9]). In his view the emperor was not empowered to give over his authority; thus the document was truthful, but its legitimacy compromised.
We are perhaps meant to understand by these lines that Sylvester, who cured Constantine of leprosy and was, as a result, rewarded by him with authority over the Roman Empire, is the bottom-most pope in this hole, the “first rich Father,” a condition that was to his immediate benefit but to the eventual loss of all Christians. [return to English / Italian]
124–126. Virgil’s pleasure in Dante is indeed so great that he embraces him and carries him back out of the bolgia. [return to English / Italian]
128–130. Virgil sets Dante down upon the bridge that overlooks the fourth bolgia, in which, in the next canto, Dante will observe the diviners. [return to English / Italian]
INFERNO XX
1–3. The uniquely self-conscious opening of this canto, featuring the only explicit numeration of a canto in the poem, has caused a certain puzzlement and even consternation. One discussant, H. D. Austin, has argued that its prosaic superfluity recommends that future editors either excise it from the poem, as an addition by an overenthusiastic scribe, or at least print it in square brackets (Aust.1932.1, pp. 39–40). Its self-consciousness and difficulty, one might argue in rejoinder, are precisely signs of Dantean authorship.
The opening line portrays a poet who only unwillingly commits himself to the difficult task he now must assume. Many of the words of this first tercet have received close critical attention. Nova has either the sense (or both senses, as our translation would indicate) of “new” or “strange” (see D’Ovidio [Dovi.1926.1], p. 318). Matera is, as Chiavacci Leonardi says (Chia.1991.1), p. 599, a “technical term,” one used to denote the subject that a writer chooses to treat. Canto is here used for the first time (it will be used again only at Inf. XXXIII.90, Par. V.16 and V.139) to indicate a part of the poem; as Bara´nski (Bara.1995.3, pp. 3–4) has pointed out, the early commentators found this term strange, rendering it with Latin or Italian words for “chapter” or “book.” Canzone is a still more troubling choice of word (it is used twice more, Purg. XXXI.134, XXXII.90); in De vulgari eloquentia (e.g., Dve II.viii.2–9) it is the word (cantio in Dante’s Latin) that describes the lofty vernacular ode that Dante presents (with himself as most successful practitioner of the form) as the height of poetic eloquence in the mother tongue, and thus “tragic” in tone, because it is like the lofty style of the classical poets. Is Dante suggesting that Inferno is tragic? (For some thoughts along this line see Hollander [Holl.1980.1], pp. 137–40.) It is only in Purg. XXXIII.140 that he will finally give a part of the poem the name it now enjoys: cantica, with its religious (resonance of Solomon’s Canticle of Canticles [see Pert.1991.1, pp. 107–8]) and “comic” overtones. And finally there is the apparently strikingly inexact word sommersi, which has seemed to many commentators wrong, since the damned are not submerged in water but buried under earth. Marino Barchiesi (Barc.1973.2), p. 85, resolved this problem by finding a probable source in the Aeneid (VI.267), where Virgil asks the gods for permission “pandere res alta terra et caligine mersas” (to reveal things immersed deep in earth and darkness).
If the opening tercet causes this much difficulty, what follows will often be at least as challenging. One of the most interesting and provocative studies of the canto remains Parodi’s essay (Paro.1908.1). It is a canto that is still today renowned for its problematic nature. [return to English / Italian]
4–9. The first description of the diviners insists upon their silence and their misery, expressed by tears, the only form of expression allowed them, given the fact that their necks are twisted, thus cutting off the possibility of speech. We are probably meant to reflect on the fact that their voices, announcing their false prescriptions, were the instruments of their deception of their clients/victims. [return to English / Italian]
10–12. Hollander has suggested (Holl.1980.1, p. 141) that the image of the twisted necks of the diviners, with the resultant loss of the capacity of speech, may have been suggested by a text in Lucan (Phars. V.197), in which Apollo closes off the throat of a prophetess (Phemonoe) before she can reveal the rest of a dire prophecy, thus depriving her Roman listener of news of his unhappy destiny: “Cetera suppressit faucesque obstruxit Apollo” (Apollo closed her throat and suppressed the rest of her speech). [return to English / Italian]
13–15. The backward-looking diviners suffer this contrapasso for having looked, with wrongful intent, into the future. Biblical references have seemed apt to an occasional commentator. Pietro di Dante adduces Isaiah 44:25: “[I am the Lord] That frustrates the tokens of the liars, and makes diviners mad; that turns wise men backward, and makes their knowledge foolish.” [return to English / Italian]
19–24. The first tercet of this fourth address to the reader in this cantica (see note to Inf. VIII.94–96) is generally understood as indicating that, given the sad sight he must behold, Dante is excusing himself from blame for weeping. Benvenuto da Imola, however, has a differing view (and says that “this subtle fiction is poorly understood by many others”). According to him, Dante’s tears reveal his guilty feelings about his own involvement in astrological prediction and that “as a result he presents himself as weeping out of compassion for others, and for himself because of his own errors.” It is possible to read the passage in an even harsher light. If the reader is to “gather fruit” from reading this passage, is it not likely that its point is that Dante was wrong to weep for these creatures? What he feels is sadness at the human figure rendered so contorted, forgetting the reason for the (entirely just) punishment. [return to English / Italian]
25–27. Dante weeps and thereby earns Virgil’s rebuke (which commentators since Tommaseo have related to the words that Jesus directed to Peter and the other apostles, slow to take his meaning, found in Matthew 15:16: “Adhuc et vos sine intellectu estis?” (Are you also even yet without understanding?) A question that has exercised many readers is whether the protagonist already knows that those punished here are the diviners. While some, like Ettore Caccia (Cacc.1967.1, p. 695) and Antonino Pagliaro (Pagl.1967.1, p. 611), argue that Dante weeps only at the piteous condition of the contorted human body, and not for the lot of the diviners, others, like Marino Barchiesi (Barc.197
3.1, p. 62) reply that such distinction-making is oversubtle. Indeed, the whole context of the canto would make it seem necessary that Virgil’s rebuke is not aimed at so wide a target, but rather at Dante’s failure to react adversely to the diviners. [return to English / Italian]
28–30. Perhaps the tercet in the canto that has caused the most debate. Where is “here” (qui)? Who is indicated by the first “who” (chi)? And what does the last verse of the tercet mean? In response to the first two questions, Hollander has made the following observations (Holl.1980.1, p. 147), dividing the most plausible series of answers into two groups: “(1) If Dante weeps for lost humanity in general, qui refers to hell in general and chi almost certainly refers to Dante. (2) If Dante weeps for the diviners in particular, qui refers to this bolgia and chi almost certainly applies to the diviners.” Carlo Steiner, in his commentary to this passage, argues that it seems logically inconsistent for Virgil to call Dante “witless” at v. 27 and “impious” at v. 29, as stupidity and impiety are some stages distant one from another.
As for the complicated philological problem regarding the exact reading of verse 30, this writer, along with many another, accepts the arguments of Petrocchi (Petr.1966.1, pp. 181–82) for the reading “passion comporta” (and not “compassion porta” or “passïon porta”). For a fuller exposition, based on texts in Statius and St. Augustine, see Holl.1980.1, pp. 147–57, citing, for Augustine, the earlier discussions of Filomusi Guelfi (Filo.1911.1), pp. 192–95; and now see Puccetti (Pucc.1994.1), pp. 199–206. For brief descriptions of a good half-dozen competing interpretations of the sin of the diviners see Caccia (Cacc.1967.1), pp. 688–90. [return to English / Italian]
31–39. In Canto XI Virgil has two continuous speeches of some length, vv. 15–66 and vv. 76–115. We are here involved in Virgil’s longest single speech in the poem, vv. 27–99. Having warned Dante against the sin of divination, he now proceeds to identify its exemplars, beginning with five classical diviners. The first of these derives from Statius. “Amphiaraus … was one of the seven kings who joined in the expedition against Thebes (Inf. XIV.68); foreseeing that the issue would be fatal to himself, he concealed himself to avoid going to the war, but his hiding-place was revealed by his wife Eriphyle, who had been bribed by Polynices with the necklace of Harmonia (Purg. XII.50–51). Amphiaraus, as had been foreseen, met his death at Thebes, being swallowed up by the earth, but before he died he enjoined his son Alcmaeon to put Eriphyle to death on his return from Thebes, in punishment of her betrayal of him (Par. IV.103–105)” (T). The incidents referred to here are a somewhat reinvented version of the narrative found in Statius (Thebaid VII.690–823; VIII.1–210). For Dante’s willful distortions of the story of this augur, who is portrayed with great sympathy by Statius, see Holl.1980.1, pp. 170–73. [return to English / Italian]
40–45. “Tiresias, famous soothsayer of Thebes. According to the story he once separated with his staff two serpents which he found coupled in a wood, whereupon he was changed into a woman for seven years; at the expiration of this period he found the same two serpents and struck them again, whereupon he was changed back into a man. Subsequently, Jupiter and Juno having differed as to which of the two sexes experienced the greater [sexual] pleasure, the question was referred to Tiresias, as having belonged to both sexes, and he decided in favour of woman, which coincided with the opinion of Jupiter; Juno thereupon in anger struck him with blindness, but Jupiter, by way of compensation, endowed him with the gift of prophecy (Ovid, Metam. III.316–38)” (T). For a study of Dante’s recasting of Ovid’s essentially positive presentation of Tiresias, making him a repulsive figure rather than the truthful and blameless seer he is in Ovid, with particular attention to the verga, or magic wand, that Dante contrives for him, thus associating him with Circe and Mercury, see Holl.1980.1, pp. 173–84. [return to English / Italian]
46–51. “Aruns, Etruscan soothsayer, who, according to Lucan (Phars. I.584–638) foretold the civil war, which was to end in the death of Pompey and the triumph of Caesar. Dante … describes him as having dwelt in a cave … in the Carrara hills” (T). Castelvetro, in his comment on this passage, points out that, in Lucan’s text, Aruns does not dwell in a cave but within the walls of Luni and that, furthermore, he was not an astrologer (as Dante implies) but used other means to develop his soothsaying (e.g., studying the flight of birds, the innards of animals, the course of the thunderbolt). [return to English / Italian]
52–56. “Manto, daughter of Tiresias, Theban prophetess…; Dante here puts into Virgil’s mouth an account of the founding of Mantua by Manto … which is totally inconsistent with Virgil’s own account as given in the Aeneid (X.198–200). By an oversight Dante also includes la figlia di Tiresia, who can be none other than Manto, among the persons mentioned by Statius who Virgil says are together with himself in Limbo (Purg. XXII.113)” (T). Compared with the violence done to classical texts in the preceding three examples (Amphiaraus, Tiresias, and Aruns), that done to Virgil’s tale of Manto is even more remarkable. Even her hair seems to belong to another, whether the uncombed locks of frenetic Erichtho (“inpexis … comis”—Phars. VI.518), as Benvenuto da Imola suggested, or those of the Sibyl (perhaps the “source” for Lucan’s witch’s hair), “non comptae … comes” (Aeneid VI.48), as noted by Grabher. Since the Roman poet, as surely Dante realized, had deliberately associated his birthplace (Pietola, then probably known as Andes, near Mantua) with Manto, so as to make himself, like her, a vates, or prophet (see the study by Marie Desport [Desp.1952.1]), Dante now makes his maestro ed autore recant the fiction that he himself had devised. (Virgil’s commentators themselves had wondered how the Greek Manto could have come to Italy in order to found her city, since Virgil’s poem is the only text to contain this claim.)
One of the lasting problems left by this canto is its eventual contradiction of Dante’s placement of Manto in Limbo in Purgatorio XXII.113, where Virgil tells Statius that various of the characters of whom the later poet wrote are found in that zone of the afterworld. Previous writers had resorted to various hypotheses, none particularly satisfying, in order to explain how Dante could have forgotten what he had said about Manto here when he wrote the later passage, or that, with equal failure to satisfy, “the daughter of Tiresias” of Purgatorio XXII was someone other than Manto, or even that the original text read something other than “la figlia di Tiresia.” Two Americans have argued independently that the apparent contradiction is intentional, and is based on Dante’s willful insistence that the Manto portrayed by Virgil was indeed a diviner, while the same character portrayed by Statius was not (she is rather the dutiful daughter of Tiresias, helping with the chores, as it were). See Richard Kay (Kay.1978.2) and Robert Hollander (Holl.1980.1), pp. 205–13. Kay also argues, less convincingly, that Dante thought of Virgil’s Manto as historical and of Statius’s character as fictive, thus further excusing the bilocation. [return to English / Italian]
57–60. With risible understatement, the poet has Virgil ask for a little of the protagonist’s time (his digression will continue until verse 99, occupying fully fourteen terzine). This passage begins by tacitly acknowledging the utter fictiveness of this account, since we have no source for what happened to Manto after Tiresias’s death (and the conquest of Thebes by Creon). Dante puts, into the mouth of Virgil, an account of her voyage into Italy. As is the case for that undertaken by Ulysses in Canto XXVI, there is no known source for this one, either. [return to English / Italian]
61–63. We turn our attention from the story of Manto in order to examine the landscape of Italy, to which she will repair in her wanderings. Benaco is now known as Lake Garda. [return to English / Italian]
64–69. The fresh waters of northern Italy, entering into Garda, with its island that might serve for Christian services if the various bishops of its neighboring dioceses were to gather there, since a chapel on the island was subject to the jurisdiction of all three of them, will be seen to contrast with the muddy waters surrounding Manto’s ado
ptive homeland once we arrive there. For discussion of the meaning of these geographical references see Caccia (Cacc.1966.1). [return to English / Italian]
70–72. The fortress at Peschiera, under the control of the Scaliger family of Verona, with whom Dante was on good terms by the time he was writing the Comedy, is seen as strong enough to hold off attacks from the cities of Brescia or Bergamo. [return to English / Italian]
73–78. Leaving Benaco (Garda), the waters that began in the mountains to the north now head south (in the Mincio) and finally, after reaching Governolo, east (in the Po—in which they finally reach the [Adriatic] sea). [return to English / Italian]
79–81. Here the attention of Dante turns back to a spot that the waters reach before they attain Governolo, the untilled, swampy land that will become the site of Mantua. [return to English / Italian]
85–93. Finally here is Manto. She is described as “vergine cruda” (cruel virgin [in the sense that she does not like the company of men]), a phrase that may reflect Statius’s description of her (Thebaid IV.463) as “innuba Manto” and/or Dante’s description of that other diviner, Erichtho, who is “Eritón cruda” at Inf. IX.23. Here she practiced her divinatory arts with her servants and died. Those who had fled her fearsome presence returned after her death and built Virgil’s city upon her bones, giving it her name, but not her divinatory capacity. What is at first shocking about this account is that it contradicts what we find in the Aeneid, where (X.198–203) we learn that the city was founded by Ocnus, the son of Manto. In other words, Dante has excised (indeed, has forced Virgil himself to excise) Ocnus. For if Manto had had progeny, as she did according to Virgil, then her mantic ability might have been passed on to others—the claim that Virgil was evidently himself bent upon making in his poem, only to be forced to recant it here in Dante’s. It is an extraordinary moment. [return to English / Italian]