The Inferno

by Dante

  90. A sixteenth-century commentator, Castelvetro, paraphrases this line as follows: “it has been conceded me by God to make clear to you what I have revealed, at your insistence, but, as for the future, I say no more either to you or to anyone else until the Day of Judgment.” [return to English / Italian]

  91–93. Ciacco’s last “gesture,” his glance moving from Dante’s face and going vacant, has been a puzzle to many readers. The commentary of Bosco/Reggio is clear and to the point: “Ciacco passes from his temporarily fully-human phase to one of nearly pure animality; first he looks askance; then he continues to fix Dante with a stunned gaze in which, bit by bit, any last trace of humanity is extinguished; then his head droops, deprived of any human vitality; finally he falls headfirst into the muck, unfeeling and inert.” [return to English / Italian]

  99. In the opinion of Benvenuto da Imola (commentary) “the judgment that eternally resounds” has a biblical source, the words of Christ: “Depart from me, you cursed ones, into everlasting fire” (Matth. 25:41). For the resonance here of the angelic trumpet blast that will herald the Last Judgment see Singleton (commentary), citing I Cor. 15:51–53. [return to English / Italian]

  102. For all the interest shown in the present situation of Florence in this canto, it is clear that the future of the damned is to be understood as having greater eventual importance. This, at least, is Dante’s “official” position. [return to English / Italian]

  106–108. Mazzoni (Mazz.1967.2, p. 50) shows that this tercet derives from a passage in St. Thomas’s commentary to Aristotle’s De anima: “quanto anima est perfectior, tanto exercet plures perfectas operationes et diversas” (as the soul becomes more perfect, so it is more perfect in its several operations). La tua scïenza is thus Aristotle’s De anima, and not the Physics or the Ethics, as some have variously argued. [return to English / Italian]

  109–111. Thoroughly in accord with the penal code of hell, this “improvement” in the condition of the damned will only result in their ability to feel more pain. [return to English / Italian]

  INFERNO VII

  1. Plutus, the god of wealth in classical myth, wishes to prevent the passage of this living soul through Satan’s kingdom. That, at least, is what we must surmise from Virgil’s reaction, vv. 4–6, which assuages Dante’s fear. There is a program of demonic resistance that makes Dante fearful throughout Inferno: Charon (Inf. III.91–93), Minos (V.19–20), Cerberus (VI.22–24), Phlegyas (VIII.18), the Furies (IX.52–54), the Minotaur (XII.14–15), Geryon (XVII.25–27), Malacoda and the Malebranche (XXI.23–XXIII.57), Nimrod (XXXI.67), Satan (XXXIV.22–27). In almost all of these scenes it is Virgil’s task to quell the resistance of the infernal guardians and to reassure his charge.

  Pape Satàn, Pape Satàn, aleppe. The third verse suggests that Virgil understands these words spoken by Plutus. If that is correct, he is perhaps the only one to have done so. Over the centuries a continuing debate addresses, rather confusedly, the precise nature of these five words: whether they are part of a recognizable language or not; whether they are totally meaningless or have some meaning; whether they are an invocation of the power of Satan against invading Dante or an oath giving expression to the monster’s surprise at the presence of a living soul in hell. For a review of the question see Hollander (Holl.1992.1), who sees this and Nimrod’s similarly nonsensical five words (Inf. XXXI.67) as parodic inversions of the five words of clear speech called for by St. Paul, concerned about the overreliance of the faithful on speaking in tongues (I Cor. 14:19). Plutus’s oath may be garbled speech, but it does contain “pseudo-words” that have meaning: Pape represents either a Latin interjection (papae) of admiration, as many ancient commentators think, or/and a debased form of the Italian and Latin for “pope” (papa—see v. 47: papi); Satàn would fairly clearly seem to be a form of the Italian “Satana” or of the Latin “Sathanas” and thus “Satan”; aleppe, as some of the first commentators noticed, is the Italian form of the Hebrew word for the first letter of the alphabet, “aleph,” as in the Latin expression “alpha ed omega” (the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, signifying “the beginning and the end”), as God defines Himself in the Bible (Rev. 1:8, repeated at 21:6 and 22:13). If one had to render these nonsense words in English one might say something like “O Pope Satan, my god.” Fortunately, one does not have to. For the connection of these words in mixed language to those in the first verses of the seventh canto of Paradiso (there, naturally, totally positive in tone and meaning)—the parallelism is certainly striking—see Sarolli (Saro.1971.1), pp. 289–90. [return to English / Italian]

  8. That Virgil refers to Plutus as a wolf ties him to the vice of avarice, since in this poem wolves are often symbols of that vice (e.g., Purg. XX.10; Par. IX.132; XXVII.55). [return to English / Italian]

  10–12. In justifying Dante’s status as visitor to the infernal regions, Virgil refers to the war in heaven (see Rev. 12:7–9), where the archangel Michael is specifically mentioned as a warrior in the battle that sent Satan down into hell with his minions, the fallen angels. Dante’s treatment makes it seem that Plutus felt his kinship with these creatures, whom the travelers will encounter at Inferno VIII.82–84. [return to English / Italian]

  13–15. Virgil’s words, telling exactly how things are with respect to demonic rebellion, are enough to crumple the irascible spirit of Plutus (vv. 13–15). [return to English / Italian]

  19. The author’s apostrophe of God’s justice reminds us of the centrality of this concern to the entire Comedy. See note to Inferno III.4. [return to English / Italian]

  22–23. Dante’s locus classicus for the description of the tumultuous meeting of the Ionian and Mediterranean seas between Sicily and the Italian mainland is found in Aeneid III.420–433. [return to English / Italian]

  24. Dante’s Italian makes it clear that this dance is the ridda, a popular dance in which the linked participants reverse the direction of their circling movement with the playing and singing of each new strophe. [return to English / Italian]

  25–30. For the relatively greater number of condemned souls devoted to avarice see Aeneid VI.608–611, the Sibyl’s description of Tartarus, which includes a description of the punishment of (unnamed) Sisyphus, eternally rolling his stone (v. 616). Dante appropriates these two details to build the details of his fourth Circle. Virgil’s brief description of those who loved riches to excess is without reference to those of the precisely opposite inclination. In Dante’s formulation, prodigality is the opposite form of the same vice. This is one of the few examples in the code of ethics found in this poem in which an Aristotelian measure seems to be at work, in which a “golden mean” locates the correct or permissible amount of affection or desire. (See v. 42 for confirmation that there is a proper measure in such things.) [return to English / Italian]

  31–35. It has not often been noted, but, seen from above, the avaricious and prodigal perform a perfect circle in their movement. Their activities in hell (as was true in the world above) mount up to exactly zero. This nullity is reflected in their nameless and unidentifiable condition here; and their circling is to be compared to that performed by Fortune’s wheel (see n. to v. 90, below). [return to English / Italian]

  36. Dante’s sympathetic responses to various of the damned usually indicate a sense of identity with them. On this occasion, it would rather seem to reveal his horror at the nature of this punishment. [return to English / Italian]

  38–39. Dante allows himself a fairly traditional anticlerical thrust. Christ had led his followers in embracing poverty and, much later, the mendicant orders took vows of poverty, some in remembrance of St. Francis’s imitation of Christ in this respect. Thus, while avarice in any person respected for a higher calling would be disgraceful, it is particularly so in a member of the clergy and becomes an easy (and popular) target. It is notable that the clergy are noticed only here—and in number—among the avaricious; none of them is pointed out among the prodigal. [return to English / Italian]

>   46–48. The insistence on the large number of clerics among the avaricious (and no other social orders are identified as being avaricious, not even bankers or moneylenders) continues, now including a plurality of popes.

  The anonymous plurality of popes mentioned in v. 47 leaves the reader free to supply any number of such pontiffs. The essential impression left by the poem as a whole is that more popes are damned than saved. This is probably true, but Dante does insist that a number of popes are in fact saved. The first and foremost is of course St. Peter, considered by Dante and medieval writers in general as being the first pope. He is seen in paradise by Dante in the heaven of the Fixed Stars, where he has a major role as speaker, but he is referred to from the beginning of the poem to its end (Inf. II.24; Par. XXXII.133). And Peter himself is the one who tells of the salvations of six other early popes: his two immediate successors Linus and Cletus, both martyred in the first century (Par. XXVII.41), as well as four other popes martyred, according to a tradition that Dante followed, in the second and third centuries: Sixtus I, Pius I, Calixtus I, and Urban I (Par. XXVII.44). Also mentioned as being saved are Agapetus I (Par. VI.16) and Gregory I (Par. XXVIII.133–135). We see Pope Adrian V purging his avarice on the road to heaven (Purg. XIX.99) and Pope Martin IV repenting his zest for eating eels also on his way to paradise (Purg. XXIV.22). And there is Pope John XXI, seen as present in the heaven of the Sun and hence among the blessed (Par. XII.134). Thus, twelve popes are indicated as being among God’s chosen.

  Several other popes are referred to, but without having their eventual destinations under God’s justice made plain. Such is the case with respect to Sylvester I (Inf. XXVII.94), Clement IV (Purg. III.125), Innocent III (Par. XI.92), and Honorius III (Par. XI.98).

  The case of the popes who are damned is more complex. Here is an attempt to list the fallen pontiffs referred to in the poem. If the one “who made the great refusal” (Inf. III.60) is, as many believe, Pope Celestine V, he would be the first damned pope whom we see. He is followed by the unnamed pontiffs of Canto VII and then by Anastasius II (Inf. XI.8). Many believe that Innocent IV is the most certain presence in the unnamed line of precursors alluded to by Nicholas III (Inf. XIX.73)—a second instance of a plurality of damned popes, while the saved ones are never referred to in this way. Those that are confirmed as damned are Nicholas himself (Inf. XIX.70), Boniface VIII (Inf. XIX.53), Clement V (Inf. XIX.83), and, a last for good measure, John XXII (Par. XXVII.58). Thus at least five popes are definitively damned. In two cases, as we have seen, Dante opens the door to other possibilities. As a result, the absolute possible low is nine (five plus the plural “papi” at Inf. VII.47 and “altri” at Inf. XIX.73—there must be at least two in each case to account for the plural). Celestine would bring the total to ten. In short, Dante probably did mean to encourage his readers to believe exactly what most of them seem to believe—that more popes were damned than were saved. [return to English / Italian]

  57. That is, the avaricious will have their fists clamped in remembrance of their grasping behaviors, while the prodigal will have their hair shorn to remind them of their lack of care for their possessions (and themselves). Sinclair, in his note to this verse (Sinc.1939.1, p. 105), cites an old Italian proverb: a prodigal spends “even to the hair of his head.” [return to English / Italian]

  62–96. Virgil’s discourse on the nature and effect of Fortune on mortal lives is notable for its sunniness and equability. The usual and necessary citation among commentators is of Boethius, whose Consolation of Philosophy is the standard medieval text on the subject and was well known to Dante. The Lady Philosophy explains to complaining Boethius that humans who suffer like to blame their misfortune on bad luck, expressed by the fortune that turns its back on them. What philosophy makes plain is that the fault lies in ourselves, in that we pitch our hopes on things we should recognize as fallible, fleeting, and of ultimately little importance. What Dante adds to this stern message is a sense of calmness about and even positive acceptance of these facts of human existence. Fortune may be understood as, in the happy formulation of Charles Grandgent (in his proem to this canto), “the Angel of Earth.” Nothing that she does should be unexpected; everything that she does is “right.” Exactly such an understanding may be found in Dante’s own words in his Monarchia (II.ix.8), where he says that the force that distributes the goods of the world, victory or defeat in battle, which the pagans attributed to their gods, “we call … by the more appropriate and accurate name ‘divine providence.’ ” Particularly helpful discussions of Dante’s understanding of fortune may be found in Cioffari’s book (Ciof.1940.1), Toja’a article (Toja.1965.1), and Padoan’s various remarks on this passage in his commentary.

  The distance that Dante has traveled from the position he took in his Convivio (IV.xi.6–8), where the unequal distribution of goods among humans is seen as a defect of Fortune’s agency, is manifest. In that passage Fortune is seen as acting randomly; here she is provident (v. 86)—and we should remember that she was traditionally portrayed as blindfolded, unseeing as she acts. In this passage, as one of the angelic hierarchy, she turns her famous “wheel” in knowledge and in bliss. God’s in His heaven, Fortune turns her wheel, all’s right with the world, which is only and absolutely as it should be. [return to English / Italian]

  70–72. Virgil’s desire to “feed” his confused “offspring” so that he may give over his foolish view of Fortune will mark a turning point in the protagonist’s understanding of her. [return to English / Italian]

  84. Dante’s “serpent hidden in the grass” has been seen, at least from the sixteenth century on, as being a translation of Virgil’s third Eclogue, verse 93: “latet anguis in herba.” [return to English / Italian]

  87. The altri dèi, literally “other gods,” translated as “other heavenly powers,” are the other nine orders of angels. [return to English / Italian]

  90. The rapid tranformations of human states are summarized by the Casini/Barbi commentary to v. 96 as follows: a given human being may typically move, along eight points on Fortune’s wheel, from humility, to patience, to peace, to riches, to pride, to impatience, to war, to poverty. This is a typical “ride” of anyone tied to Fortune’s wheel, ending back at the starting point. See note to vv. 31–35, above. [return to English / Italian]

  98–99. Virgil’s indication of the time reveals that it is now after midnight, some six hours after the travelers set out at 6 PM on Friday evening. [return to English / Italian]

  106. The river Styx has a classical history, most notably in the Aeneid (VI.323). [return to English / Italian]

  109–114. Clearly the protagonist, gazing upon the inhabitants of the fifth Circle, is looking at the wrathful. The problem for interpreters is that wrath, or anger, is a sin of violence, not one of incontinence; yet the poem has not yet left the realm of incontinence behind. Without reviewing the fairly vast literature upon this problem, one can offer some uncomplicated solutions, based on the thirteenth chapter of St. Thomas’s commentary on Aristotle’s Ethics (IV.5). Aristotle, in Thomas’s paraphrase, distinguishes three kinds of anger: choleric (which comes upon one quickly and quickly departs), bitter (which lasts long in the heart of the afflicted person, and is not released easily), difficult (which is more hostile, longer-lasting, and directed against those it should not be, and which is not released until the one experiencing this kind of wrath inflicts injury upon an enemy). It seems clear that Dante here shows the punishment of the first sort of wrath in the choleric, who are not guilty of sins of violence, but of intemperance. (For the second set of sinners punished here, see the next note.) In this interpretation, the third form of anger, which has as its intention physical harm to another, is punished only in the realm of the violent against others, in Canto XII—where it should be, and not as a sin of intemperance, which these first two are. [return to English / Italian]

  118–126. Those who are punished under the surface of the Styx are, in this formulation (see n. to vv. 109–114),
what St. Thomas characterizes as Aristotle’s second set of the wrathful, the amari, or “bitter.” These people kept their anger in, suffering gravely within themselves (as opposed to the choleric, quick to vent their anger in insults and blows). Dante’s inventive representation of this kind of wrath shows its exemplars as experiencing the “muddy” or “smoky” sensation of stifled anger. [return to English / Italian]

  INFERNO VIII

  1. For the first time the poet interrupts the chronological flow of his narrative, interpolating events that occurred before the situation described in the very last verse of the preceding canto (for a briefer but similar interpolation see the first tercet of the thirteenth canto). The first 81 lines of Canto VIII relate what occurred between the travelers’ first experience of the wrathful sinners in the Styx (VII.129) and their arrival at the foot of a tower of the walled city of Dis (VII.130). The self-conscious interruption of the narrative may be enough to account for the self-conscious opening verse: “To continue, let me say …” However, Boccaccio, in his commentary to this canto, was the first to sponsor the idea that in fact Dante only now, in Lunigiana in 1306, took up again the composition of his poem, begun in Florence before his exile and left behind when he could not return to the city. According to Boccaccio, a friend brought him the text of the first seven cantos, which had lain fallow for some six or seven years. While most do not credit this version of the history of composition of the Comedy, it has some support. See Ferretti (Ferr.1935.1) and Padoan (Pado.1993.1). The latter’s book is devoted to a reassessment of the problem of the compositional history of the entire poem. In his view, Inferno was composed between 1306 and 1315, while most students of the problem argue for a completion of the first cantica around 1310. [return to English / Italian]