The Divine Comedy

by Dante Alighieri

  4. my vantage point: Virgil, it will be recalled, had set Dante down on the bridge across the Fourth Bolgia.

  8. at about the pace of a litany procession: The litanies are chanted not only in church (before the mass), but sometimes in procession, the priest chanting the prayers and the marchers the response. As one might gather from the context, the processions move very slowly.

  10. And when I looked down from their faces: A typically Dantean conception. Dante often writes as if the eye pin-pointed on one feature of a figure seen at a distance. The pin-point must then be deliberately shifted before the next feature can be observed. As far as I know, this stylistic device is peculiar to Dante.

  14. loins: General usage seems to have lost sight of the fact that the first meaning of “loin” is “that part of a human being or quadruped on either side of the spinal column between the hipbone and the false ribs.” (Webster.)

  23-24. tears . . . ran down the cleft of their buttocks: Since the heads of these sinners are backwards on their necks, their tears would run down their backs, and this is the obvious track they must follow. But what a debasement of sorrow! This is the sort of detail Dante knew how to use with maximum effect.

  26-30. VIRGIL SCOLDS DANTE FOR SHOWING PITY. It is worth noting that Virgil has not scolded Dante for showing pity in earlier cases, though he might easily have done so and for exactly the same reason. One interpretation may be that Dante was not yet ready to recognize the true nature of evil. Another may be that Human Reason (despite Dante’s earlier reference to his “all-knowing Master”) is essentially fallible. Beatrice, a higher creature, is so made that she is incapable of being moved by the creatures of Hell (see Canto II), as is the Divine Messenger who springs open the Gates of Dis (Canto IX).

  34. Amphiareus: Another of the seven Captains who fought against Thebes (v. Capaneus, Canto XIV). Statius (Thebaid, VII, 690 ff. and VIII, 8 ff.) tells how he foresaw his own death in this war, and attempted to run away from it, but was swallowed in his flight by an earthquake. I have Romanized his name from “Amphiaraus.”

  40. Tiresias: A Theban diviner and magician. Ovid (Metamorphoses, III) tells how he came on two twined serpents, struck them apart with his stick, and was thereupon transformed into a woman. Seven years later he came on two serpents similarly entwined, struck them apart, and was changed back.

  46-48. Aruns: An Etruscan soothsayer (see Lucan, Pharsalia, I, 580 ff.). He foretold the war between Pompey and Julius Caesar, and also that it would end with Caesar’s victory and Pompey’s death. Luni: Also Luna. An ancient Etruscan city. Carrara’s valley: The Carrarese valley is famous for its white (Carrara) marble.

  46. that one’s: Tiresias.

  55. Manto: The text is self-explanatory. Dante’s version of the founding of Mantua is based on a reference in the Aeneid, X, 198-200.

  63 ff. Benacus: The ancient name for the famous Lago di Garda, which lies a short distance north of Mantua. The other places named in this passage lie around Lago di Garda. On an island in the lake the three dioceses mentioned in line 68 conjoined. All three bishops, therefore, had jurisdiction on the island.

  95-96. Casalodi . . . Pinamonte: Albert, Count of Casalodi and Lord of Mantua, let himself be persuaded by Pinamonte de Buonaccorsi to banish the nobles from Mantua as a source of danger to his rule. Once the nobles had departed, Pinamonte headed a rebellion against the weakened lord and took over the city himself.

  106. That one whose beard: Eurypylus, Greek augur. According to Greek custom an augur was summoned before each voyage to choose the exact propitious moment for departure (cutting the cables). Dante has Virgil imply that Eurypylus and Calchas were selected to choose the moment for Agamemnon’s departure from Aulis to Troy. Actually, according to the Aeneid, Eurypylus was not at Aulis. The Aeneid (II, 110 ff.) tells how Eurypylus and Calchas were both consulted in choosing the moment for the departure from Troy. Dante seems to have confused the two incidents.

  109. even the cradles were all but empty of sons: At the time of the Trojan Wars, Greece was said to be so empty of males that scarcely any were to be found even in the cradles.

  116. Michael Scott: An Irish scholar of the first half of the thirteenth century. His studies were largely in the occult. Sir Walter Scott refers to him in The Lay of the Last Minstrel.

  118. Guido Bonatti: A thirteenth-century astrologer of Forlì. He was court astrologer to Guido da Montefeltro (see Canto XXVII) advising him in his wars. Asdente: A shoemaker of Parma who turned diviner and won wide fame for his forecastings in the last half of the thirteenth century.

  124 ff. Cain with his bush of thorns: The Moon. Cain with a bush of thorns was the medieval equivalent of our Man in the Moon. Dante seems to mean by “Seville” the whole area of Spain and the Straits of Gibraltar (Pillars of Hercules), which were believed to be the western limit of the world. The moon is setting (i.e., it appears on the western waves) on the morning of Holy Saturday, 1300.

  Canto XXI

  CIRCLE EIGHT: BOLGIA FIVE

  The Grafters

  The Poets move on, talking as they go, and arrive at the FIFTH BOLGIA. Here the GRAFTERS are sunk in boiling pitch and guarded by DEMONS, who tear them to pieces with claws and grappling hooks if they catch them above the surface of the pitch.

  The sticky pitch is symbolic of the sticky fingers of the Grafters. It serves also to hide them from sight, as their sinful dealings on earth were hidden from men’s eyes. The demons, too, suggest symbolic possibilities, for they are armed with grappling hooks and are forever ready to rend and tear all they can get their hands on.

  The Poets watch a demon arrive with a grafting SENATOR of LUCCA and fling him into the pitch where the demons set upon him.

  To protect Dante from their wrath, Virgil hides him behind some jagged rocks and goes ahead alone to negotiate with the demons. They set upon him like a pack of mastiffs, but Virgil secures a safe-conduct from their leader, MALACODA. Thereupon Virgil calls Dante from hiding, and they are about to set off when they discover that the BRIDGE ACROSS THE SIXTH BOLGIA lies shattered. Malacoda tells them there is another further on and sends a squad of demons to escort them. Their adventures with the demons continue through the next Canto.

  These two Cantos may conveniently be remembered as the GARGOYLE CANTOS. If the total Commedia is built like a cathedral (as so many critics have suggested), it is here certainly that Dante attaches his grotesqueries. At no other point in the Commedia does Dante give such free rein to his coarsest style.

  Thus talking of things which my Comedy does not care

  to sing, we passed from one arch to the next

  until we stood upon its summit. There

  we checked our steps to study the next fosse

  and the next vain lamentations of Malebolge;

  awesomely dark and desolate it was.

  As in the Venetian arsenal, the winter through

  there boils the sticky pitch to caulk the seams

  of the sea-battered bottoms when no crew

  can put to sea—instead of which, one starts

  to build its ship anew, one plugs the planks

  which have been sprung in many foreign parts;

  some hammer at a mast, some at a rib;

  some make new oars, some braid and coil new lines;

  one patches up the mainsail, one the jib—

  so, but by Art Divine and not by fire,

  a viscid pitch boiled in the fosse below

  and coated all the bank with gluey mire.

  I saw the pitch; but I saw nothing in it

  except the enormous bubbles of its boiling,

  which swelled and sank, like breathing, through all the pit.

  And as I stood and stared into that sink,

  my Master cried, “Take care!” and drew me back

  from my exposed position on the brink.

  I turned like one who cannot wait to see

  the thing he dreads, and who, in sudden fright,

  runs while he looks, his cu
riosity

  competing with his terror—and at my back

  I saw a figure that came running toward us

  across the ridge, a Demon huge and black.

  Ah what a face he had, all hate and wildness!

  Galloping so, with his great wings outspread

  he seemed the embodiment of all bitterness.

  Across each high-hunched shoulder he had thrown

  one haunch of a sinner, whom he held in place

  with a great talon round each ankle bone.

  “Blacktalons of our bridge,” he began to roar,

  “I bring you one of Santa Zita’s Elders!

  Scrub him down while I go back for more:

  I planted a harvest of them in that city:

  everyone there is a grafter except Bonturo.

  There ‘Yes’ is ‘No’ and ‘No’ is ‘Yes’ for a fee.”

  Down the sinner plunged, and at once the Demon

  spun from the cliff; no mastiff ever sprang

  more eager from the leash to chase a felon.

  Down plunged the sinner and sank to reappear

  with his backside arched and his face and both his feet

  glued to the pitch, almost as if in prayer.

  But the Demons under the bridge, who guard that place

  and the sinners who are thrown to them, bawled out:

  “You’re out of bounds here for the Sacred Face:

  this is no dip in the Serchio: take your look

  and then get down in the pitch. And stay below

  unless you want a taste of a grappling hook.”

  Then they raked him with more than a hundred hooks

  bellowing: “Here you dance below the covers.

  Graft all you can there: no one checks your books.”

  They dipped him down into that pitch exactly

  as a chef makes scullery boys dip meat in a boiler,

  holding it with their hooks from floating free.

  And the Master said: “You had best not be seen

  by these Fiends till I am ready. Crouch down here.

  One of these rocks will serve you as a screen.

  And whatever violence you see done to me,

  you have no cause to fear. I know these matters:

  I have been through this once and come back safely.”

  With that, he walked on past the end of the bridge;

  and it wanted all his courage to look calm

  from the moment he arrived on the sixth ridge.

  With that same storm and fury that arouses

  all the house when the hounds leap at a tramp

  who suddenly falls to pleading where he pauses—

  so rushed those Fiends from below, and all the pack

  pointed their gleaming pitchforks at my Guide.

  But he stood fast and cried to them: “Stand back!

  Before those hooks and grapples make too free,

  send up one of your crew to hear me out,

  then ask yourselves if you still care to rip me.”

  All cried as one: “Let Malacoda go.”

  So the pack stood and one of them came forward,

  saying: “What good does he think this will do?”

  “Do you think, Malacoda,” my good Master said,

  “you would see me here, having arrived this far

  already, safe from you and every dread,

  without Divine Will and propitious Fate?

  Let me pass on, for it is willed in Heaven

  that I must show another this dread state.”

  The Demon stood there on the flinty brim,

  so taken aback he let his pitchfork drop;

  then said to the others: “Take care not to harm him!”

  “O you crouched like a cat,” my Guide called to me,

  “among the jagged rock piles of the bridge,

  come down to me, for now you may come safely.”

  Hearing him, I hurried down the ledge;

  and the Demons all pressed forward when I appeared,

  so that I feared they might not keep their pledge.

  So once I saw the Pisan infantry

  march out under truce from the fortress at Caprona,

  staring in fright at the ranks of the enemy.

  I pressed the whole of my body against my Guide,

  and not for an instant did I take my eyes

  from those black fiends who scowled on every side.

  They swung their forks saying to one another:

  “Shall I give him a touch in the rump?” and answering:

  “Sure; give him a taste to pay him for his bother.”

  But the Demon who was talking to my Guide

  turned round and cried to him: “At ease there,

  Snatcher!”

  And then to us: “There’s no road on this side:

  the arch lies all in pieces in the pit.

  If you must go on, follow along this ridge;

  there’s another cliff to cross by just beyond it.

  In just five hours it will be, since the bridge fell,

  a thousand two hundred sixty-six years and a day;

  that was the time the big quake shook all Hell.

  I’ll send a squad of my boys along that way

  to see if anyone’s airing himself below:

  you can go with them: there will be no foul play.

  Front and center here, Grizzly and Hellken,”

  he began to order them. “You too, Deaddog.

  Curlybeard, take charge of a squad of ten.

  Take Grafter and Dragontooth along with you.

  Pigtusk, Catclaw, Cramper, and Crazyred.

  Keep a sharp lookout on the boiling glue

  as you move along, and see that these gentlemen

  are not molested until they reach the crag

  where they can find a way across the den.”

  “In the name of heaven, Master,” I cried, “what sort

  of guides are these? Let us go on alone

  if you know the way. Who can trust such an escort!

  If you are as wary as you used to be

  you surely see them grind their teeth at us,

  and knot their beetle brows so threateningly.”

  And he: “I do not like this fear in you.

  Let them gnash and knot as they please; they menace

  only

  the sticky wretches simmering in that stew.”

  They turned along the left bank in a line;

  but before they started, all of them together

  had stuck their pointed tongues out as a sign

  to their Captain that they wished permission to pass,

  and he had made a trumpet of his ass.

  NOTES

  A GENERAL NOTE ON DANTE’S TREATMENT OF THE GRAFTERS AND THEIR GUARDS (CANTOS XXI and XXII).

  Dante has been called “The Master of the Disgusting” with the stress at times on the mastery and at times on the disgust. The occasional coarseness of details in other Cantos (especially in Cantos XVIII and XXVIII) has offended certain delicate readers. It is worth pointing out that the mention of bodily function is likely to be more shocking in a Protestant than in a Catholic culture. It has often seemed to me that the offensive language of Protestantism is obscenity; the offensive language of Catholicism is profanity or blasphemy: one offends on a scale of unmentionable words for bodily function, the other on a scale of disrespect for the sacred. Dante places the Blasphemous in Hell as the worst of the Violent against God and His Works, but he has no category for punishing those who use four-letter words.

  The difference is not, I think, national, but religious. Chaucer, as a man of Catholic England, took exactly Dante’s view in the matter of what was and what was not shocking language. In “The Pardoner’s Tale,” Chaucer sermonized with great feeling against the rioters for their profanity and blasphemy (for the way they rend Christ’s body with their oaths) but he is quite free himself with “obscenity.” Modern English readers tend to find nothing
whatever startling in his profanity, but the schoolboys faithfully continue to underline the marvels of his Anglo-Saxon monosyllables and to make marginal notes on them.

  7. the Venetian arsenal: The arsenal was not only an arms manufactory but a great center of shipbuilding and repairing.

  37. Blacktalons: The original is Malebranche, i.e., “Evil Claws.”

  38. Santa Zita: The patron saint of the city of Lucca. “One of Santa Zita’s Elders” would therefore equal “One of Lucca’s Senators” (i.e., Aldermen). Commentators have searched the records of Luccan Aldermen who died on Holy Saturday of 1300, and one Martino Bottaio has been suggested as the newcomer, but there is no evidence that Dante had a specific man in mind. More probably he meant simply to underscore the fact that Lucca was a city of grafters, just as Bologna was represented as a city of panderers and seducers.