The Inferno

by Dante

  Gustavo Vinay (Vina.1960.1), pp. 5–6, points out that these verses echo the opening of the Convivio (“All men naturally desire knowledge”). His insight gives support to those who have argued that Ulysses is staged as a precursor, as it were, of the venturesome younger Dante, in whose more mature view a number of positions put forward in Convivio have become something of an embarrassment. For such opinions see, among others, Valli (Vall.1935.1), Hollander (Holl.1969.1), pp. 114–18, and Holl.1975.1; Freccero (Frec.1986.1 [1973]), pp. 188–90; Gagliardi (Gagl.1994.1), pp. 330–32, resuscitating Valli’s views (his title derives from Valli’s). [return to English / Italian]

  121–123. Ulysses’ summary of the result of his speech is a masterpiece of false modesty. Once he has uttered his words, his exhausted companions are ready for anything. We now perhaps notice that one of his key words is “little,” one mark of a speaker who masks his pride in false humility: his reduced company of shipmates is picciola (v. 102); so is the time left his men on earth (picciola, v. 114); and now his oration is also but a little thing (v. 122), picciola used one more time, a total of three times in twenty-one verses. Ulysses is, in modern parlance, a con artist, and a good one, too. He has surely fooled a lot of people. [return to English / Italian]

  124–126. His men, his “brothers,” now show their real relationship to Ulysses: it is an instrumental one. They are his oars. As Carroll suggests in his commentary, “Is it not possible that this wild adventure is narrated as the last piece of evil counsel of which Ulysses was guilty?” [return to English / Italian]

  127–135. The five-month voyage, the ship’s stern to the east (the site of sunrise, perhaps the most familiar medieval image for Christ), occupies three tercets. Ulysses, abetted by his rowers, has stormed Olympus. They are the first mortals to see the mount that became purgatory since Adam and Eve left it. God’s punishment does not wait long to overcome them. [return to English / Italian]

  136. For a possible source of this verse in the Bible (John 16:20), see Chiappelli (Chia.1989.1), p. 123: “You shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice; and you shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be changed to joy.” For another, perhaps more apt, see Durling (Durl.1996.1), p. 414, citing James 4:9: “Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned to mourning, your joy to heaviness.” [return to English / Italian]

  137–138. The whirlwind is frequently associated with God’s power used in punishment. See, among others, Cassell (Cass.1984.1), pp. 90–92. [return to English / Italian]

  139–141. The final image of Ulysses’ narrative is based, as a commentator as early in the tradition as Guido da Pisa realized, on Aeneid I.116–117, where Virgil describes the only ship in Aeneas’s flotilla to be destroyed in the storm at sea: “… but a wave whirls the ship, driving it three times around in the same place, and then a sudden eddy swallows it up in the sea.” The echo is probably not without consequence for our view of the would-be hero Ulysses: “The ship in point is that which carried the Lycians and faithful Orontes and which goes down within sight of the land that would have saved its sailors, as does Ulysses’ ship. It is a ship of the damned. Aeneas, in his piety, is the hero; Ulysses, in his heroicness, is the failure” (Holl.1969.1, p. 121). [return to English / Italian]

  142. The final verse of the canto seems also to have a classical antecedent (one not previously noted), the final verses of the seventh book of Statius’s Thebaid. There, the seer Amphiaraus, the first of the “seven against Thebes” to die in that civil war, plunges into a chasm in the earth only to have the land then close back in above him (Theb. VII.821–823): “and as he sank he looked back at the heavens and groaned to see the plain meet above him, until a fainter shock joined once more the parted fields and shut out the daylight from Avernus” (trans. Mozley). Dante has referred to Amphiaraus’s descent into hell at Inferno XX.31–36. If he is thinking of it here, it would call to mind still another pagan hero who may serve as a model for Ulysses’ rash voyage and entombment. [return to English / Italian]

  INFERNO XXVII

  1–2. Ulysses’ speech ends, his tongue of fire erect (i.e., not waving about [see Inf. XXVI.85–89]) and stilled. [return to English / Italian]

  3. This innocent detail—Virgil’s dismissal of Ulysses—will resurface at v. 21 with the addition of rather striking information about the language of Virgil’s last words to Ulysses, uttered but not recorded here. [return to English / Italian]

  4–6. The next flame-enclosed shade, who will turn out to be a modern-day Ulysses, Guido da Montefeltro, was well known enough that he never has to be identified in more than indirect ways (vv. 67–78). Born ca. 1220, Guido was one of the great Ghibelline captains of the last third of the thirteenth century, winning a number of important victories for the nonetheless eventually unsuccessful Ghibelline cause. He was reconciled to the Church in 1286, but then took up his soldiering against the Guelphs once again, finally desisting only in 1294. In 1296 he joined the Franciscan order (v. 67). However, in the following year Pope Boniface VIII cajoled him into reentering the world of military affairs, this time working against the Ghibellines (the Colonna family, which held the fortress of Palestrina, Roman Praeneste, as detailed in the text [vv. 85–111]). Guido died in 1298 in the Franciscan monastery at Assisi.

  While other pairs of preceding cantos contain those who had committed the same sin (VII–VIII [the wrathful]; X–XI [heretics]; XV–XVI [sodomites]; XXIV–XXV [thieves]), only XXVI and XXVII treat two major figures guilty of the same sin, perhaps suggesting how closely Guido and Ulysses are related in Dante’s imagination. [return to English / Italian]

  7–15. This simile is derived either from various histories (Pietro di Dante mentions Orosius and Valerius Maximus) or from Ovid, Ars amatoria I.653–656. The ancient tyrant of Agrigento (in Sicily), Phalaris, had the Athenian Perillus construct for him a brazen bull in which he could roast his victims alive. Their screams were transformed into what resembled the bellowings of a bull. Once the instrument of torture was finished, Phalaris ordered that Perillus be its first victim, thus testing his handicraft. It worked. Ovid’s moral to the story (Ars I.655–656) seems to be echoed in Dante’s verse 8: “there is no law more just than that the craftsman of death should die by his own handicraft.” [return to English / Italian]

  16–18. These verses make clear for the first time how the mechanics of speech of the fraudulent counselors work; their words are formed by their tongues, within their fires, and then produced by the tips of their flames. When Guido first appeared (v. 6) he was apparently only mumbling about his pain within his flame. [return to English / Italian]

  19–21. Guido’s address to Virgil not only insists that the Roman poet was speaking his (native—see Inf. I.68) Lombard, i.e., north Italian, dialect, but then offers in evidence his exact words. What are we to understand about the language in which Virgil first addressed Ulysses (Inf. XXVI.72–75)? Was it the same as this? Or is this, as seems more likely, the colloquial manner in which he sends him away? The entire problem has vexed many a commentator, and no simple resolution has as yet emerged. [return to English / Italian]

  25–27. Perhaps because he cannot see clearly from within his flame, Guido cannot tell whether Virgil (or Dante, for that matter) is a living soul or a dead fellow-sinner, just now come down from Italy to spend eternity here. The reason for Dante’s insistence on this detail will be made plain when Guido reveals himself only because he does not believe that Dante will ever resurface to tell his miserable story. [return to English / Italian]

  28. When Guido died (1298), the peace in Romagna had not yet been confirmed, as it was the following year. The region of Romagna is situated in the eastern north-central part of Italy. [return to English / Italian]

  33. Not only is Guido an Italian (latino), he is that Italian whom Dante had designated as most noble (lo nobilissimo nostro latino) in Convivio IV.xxviii.8. Commentators have been concerned about this apparent contradiction (for an attempt to mitigate it see Pertile [Per
t.1982.1], pp. 171–75). If, however, Dante had changed his mind about a number of his positions in Convivio, as others believe, there is no reason to find the contradiction anything less than intentional. Further, he may not have known of Guido’s involvement with Boniface when he wrote the passage praising him in Convivio. See note to vv. 106–111.

  Virgil’s passing the questioning of Guido (a modern) over to Dante reminds us of his insisting on it for Ulysses (an ancient) in the previous canto. [return to English / Italian]

  37–39. Dante’s reference to Romagna answers Guido’s first question: there is peace—of a sort—there now. [return to English / Italian]

  40–54. Dante now enlightens Guido (and only an expert in the political and geographical lore of the region would understand his elliptical speech) about the condition of eight cities and fortified towns of Romagna, governed by various tyrants: Ravenna, Cervia, Forlì, Verrucchio, Rimini, Faenza, Imola, and Cesena. Guido had been in military action in many of them, with mixed results. [return to English / Italian]

  55–57. Having answered some of the concerns of Guido (whom he as yet does not recognize), Dante asks for a similar favor, offering fame in the world as a reward. [return to English / Italian]

  61–66. Guido’s response, made familiar to English readers by T. S. Eliot as the epigraph to The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, makes it clear that, for him, report among the living would bring infamy, not fame. Since he believes that Dante is a damned soul, and thus unable to regain the world of the living, he will speak. [return to English / Italian]

  67. Guido sums up his life in a single line: he went from bad to good. In fact, he went from bad to good to bad again. Dante may have reflected that his own life was exactly the opposite in its movements, from good to bad, but then from bad to good. Guido did not have a Beatrice to lead him back to the true path, only a Boniface. [return to English / Italian]

  70–72. Boniface VIII, according to Guido, led him from his life of religious retreat back into political machinations. Like Francesca da Rimini, Guido da Montefeltro blames his fall upon another; like her, he will tell Dante the reasons for it. See Inf. V.119, where Dante asks Francesca to tell “a che e come” (how and by what signs) she came into Love’s power; Guido will tell Dante “e come e quare” (Latin “why,” more precisely “in what respect” [how and why]) the reasons for his fall into perdition. [return to English / Italian]

  75. According to contemporary documents, Guido was actually referred to as “the fox.” His quality of astutia, or “cunning,” further identifies him with Ulysses (see note to Inf. XXVI.58–63). [return to English / Italian]

  79–81. Guido’s nautical metaphors clearly relate him, perhaps more plainly than before, to Ulysses. For the curious notice on the part of Filippo Villani (in his life of Guido Bonatti) that Guido da Montefeltro was “full of all cunning [astutia]” and that he was known among the Italians as “the new Ulysses” see Hollander (Holl.1980.1), p. 142. This would suggest either that, in Dante’s day, Guido was actually referred to in this way, or that Filippo, a great reader of Dante, is freely interpreting the reason for the juxtaposition of these two great figures in Inferno. [return to English / Italian]

  82–84. Guido speaks of his contrition, confession, and satisfaction as though they were the merest of conveniences to attain an end. Do we believe, on the strength of this account, that he had actually fooled God? [return to English / Italian]

  85–93. Guido’s vicious slam of Boniface, with its concomitant enthusiasm for the abandoned devotion to crusading, is not in any respect at odds with Dante’s own thoughts. Boniface is attacking Palestrina and its Christian inhabitants, none of whom had joined the Saracens in their retaking of Acre in 1291, until then the only remaining Christian possession in the Holy Land, or gone there only to do business with the enemy. Instead of attacking the infidel (or backsliding Christians) he moves against his coreligionists.

  Boniface cares nothing for Christians, according to Guido (and Dante). Not only does he not oppose the heathen in order to make war on his own, he does not honor his own holy orders, nor those of Guido the friar. The use of the term capestro (cord) here has implications for those who believe that the corda at Inferno XVI.106 is a reference to Dante’s status as a Franciscan. (See note to Inf. XVI.106–108.) [return to English / Italian]

  94–97. In the fourth century, Constantine, suffering from leprosy, had Pope Sylvester I brought to him from his cave on Soracte (where he was in hiding because of Constantine’s persecution of Christians) to cure him. When the pontiff did so, Constantine converted to Christianity (and ended up in paradise, according to Dante [Par. XX.55–60]); but he also out of gratitude was reputed to have given Sylvester authority over the western empire, centered in the city of Rome. (See note to Inf. XIX.115–117.) [return to English / Italian]

  102. Penestrino is modern Palestrina, not far from Rome, and was ancient Praeneste. The Colonna family were in rebellion against Boniface’s authority and had defended themselves in this fortress. [return to English / Italian]

  103–105. Boniface’s claim is utterly false, as Guido will learn. His reference to Celestine V here makes it seem all the more likely that it is he who is referred to in Inferno III.59–60. [return to English / Italian]

  106–111. Silence as a defensive weapon against this pope was probably the only way out; but his imposing insistence was too much for Guido, and he makes his bargain.

  A continuing debate follows verse 110. Did Dante read these words in chroniclers who preceded him (e.g., Riccobaldo of Ferrara, Francesco Pipino of Bologna, both of whom wrote before 1313, if we are not sure exactly when), or did they get them from Dante? Some contemporary commentators (e.g., Bosco/Reggio) favor the precedence of Riccobaldo’s chronicle, perhaps written between 1308 and 1313, and believe that Dante’s account (and revision of his former positive view of Guido) derive from it. [return to English / Italian]

  112–114. Markulin (Mark.1982.1) considers the possibility that Guido has invented the battle between St. Francis and the black Cherub (a member of the second highest rank of angels, associated with knowledge). Discomfort with the scene has been abroad for a while. Castelvetro did not hide his annoyance, seeing that Dante had portrayed the soul of Francis as having made an error in thinking that Guido was to be saved and thus could not possibly have been sent from heaven by God (and was consequently wasting his time), for which reasons he criticizes Dante for not speaking with greater reverence.

  Guido’s son Buonconte will be caught up in a similar struggle between devil and angel, with the angel winning (Purg. V.104–105). Such a scene may find justification in medieval popularizing art, but Castelvetro is right to complain about its theological absurdities. On the other hand, Dante is writing a poem and not a treatise. That he repeats the motif would seem to indicate that we are meant to take it “seriously.” See note to Inferno XXIII.131. [return to English / Italian]

  116. Perhaps the most discussed issue in these cantos is developed from this verse. What is “fraudulent advice” (consiglio frodolente) precisely? Is it the sin that condemns Guido? Is Ulysses condemned for the same sin? Fraudulent counsel is giving someone evil advice (whether or not it is effective advice) or acting in such fraudulent ways as to lead others into harming themselves. Since Virgil, in Canto XI.52–60, leaves the sins of the eighth and ninth bolgia unnamed, this is the only indication we have for a clear determination of the sin punished in these two cantos. Any other solution seems less satisfactory, if there have been many who have been eager to try to find one. [return to English / Italian]

  118–120. While Dante, in Convivio III.xiii.2, clearly states that fallen angels cannot philosophize, since love is a basic requirement of true philosophizing and they are without love, it is clear that they can use logic, one of the tools of philosophy. [return to English / Italian]

  124. This fallen angel does the “right thing” and stops his descent with his victim at Minos. See note to Inferno XXI.39. [return to English /
Italian]

  128–132. Unlike Ulysses, who ends his speech with a certain majesty, Guido insists upon his bitterness, realizing eternally his foolishness in his having given over his chance for love and salvation when he did the bidding of Boniface. The canto opens with Ulysses’ flame calm and steady (vv. 1–2) and ends with that of Guido writhing. [return to English / Italian]

  INFERNO XXVIII

  1–6. For Dante’s disclaimer of the ability to describe the blood and wounds that surpass both words and memory (even were he to revert to prose to do so), see Virgil’s similar disclaimer in Aeneid VI.625–627: “And if I had a hundred tongues and as many mouths, along with a voice of iron, I could not put together all the shapes of crime nor run through all the catalogue of torments.” The passage was first cited by Pietro di Dante and is now a commonplace in the commentaries. [return to English / Italian]