The Inferno

by Dante

  One of the finest lyric poets of his time, Guido Cavalcanti was from six to ten years older than Dante. He was married by his family to a woman named Beatrice, in fact the daughter of Farinata. In other words, these two heretical Florentines, Guido’s father, Cavalcante, and Farinata, are in-laws; it is notable that, divided by party loyalty as they are, they do not speak to one another. Guido was an ardent Guelph, siding with the Whites (Dante’s party also) when the Guelphs divided into two factions. He had a street brawl with the leader of the Black Guelphs, Corso Donati, who had once tried to kill him. “In the summer of 1300, during Dante’s priorate (June 15–Aug. 15), it was decided (June 24), in order to put an end to the disturbances caused by the continued hostilities between the two factions, to banish the leaders of both sides,…among those who approved this decision being Dante, in his capacity as Prior. It thus came about that Dante was instrumental in sending his own friend into exile, and, as it proved, to his death; for though the exiles were recalled very shortly after the expiry of Dante’s term of office (Aug. 15), so that Guido only spent a few weeks at Sarzana, he never recovered from the effects of the malarious climate of the place, and died in Florence at the end of August in that same year; he was buried in the cemetery of Santa Reparata on Aug. 29 …” (T). One might wish to consider the fact that Farinata the Ghibelline and Guido the Guelph had been banished by the priors of Florence, Farinata in 1258, Cavalcanti in 1300. And mindful of the afterlives of these two exiles is the exiled Dante Alighieri, former prior, now himself exiled by the priors of the city. [return to English / Italian]

  58. Dante’s phrase, “cieco carcere” (dark prison), has long been considered an echo of the same words in Virgil’s Latin, carcere caeco, at Aen. VI.734. [return to English / Italian]

  59. The phrase “per altezza d’ingegno” (by virtue of your lofty genius) is clearly meant to remind us of the similar phrase we heard in Dante’s first invocation: “O Muse, o alto ingegno” (O Muses, O lofty genius—Inf. II.7). However, how we are to interpret the resemblance is not easily resolved. Those who believe that in the first passage Dante was invoking his own poetic powers see in Cavalcanti’s doting father’s reaction a simple sense of rivalry: which of these two poets is more gifted? If, on the other hand, we believe that Dante, in the invocation, calls for aid from a Higher Power (see note to Inf. II.7–9), then the father’s question indicates that he doesn’t understand, materialist that he is, the nature of true Christian poetic inspiration. His son’s genius and that inspiring Dante are not commensurable. [return to English / Italian]

  60. Cavalcanti’s mournful question about his son’s whereabouts has put some commentators (perhaps the first was Daniello, in 1568) in mind of Andromache’s equally mournful question about the whereabouts of her husband Hector, “Hector ubi est?” (Where is Hector?—Aen. IV.312). But see Durling (Durl.1981.2), p. 25n., arguing for the resonance of Genesis 4:9: “Ubi est Abel frater tuus?” (Where is Abel your brother?) Durling points out that both these “fratricidal” stories culminate in an exile, Cain sent forth from the land a fugitive (Gen. 4:12–16), while Guido was literally sent into exile by the action of Dante and the five other priors of Florence. [return to English / Italian]

  61. Dante’s words may reflect the Gospel of John (8:28) when Jesus says “a meipso facio nihil” (I do nothing of myself), but only through the Father. [return to English / Italian]

  62–63. One of the most debated passages in the poem. For a recent review, with bibliography, see Hollander (Holl.1992.2), pp. 204–6, 222–23. It should be noted that our translation is interpretive; the Italian can mean either what we have said it does or else “whom perhaps your Guido held in scorn.” The text thus either indicates that Guido at a certain point perhaps scorned the work of Virgil or else withdrew his approval of Dante’s love of Beatrice, to whom perhaps Dante is being led, as Virgil has promised him (Inf. I.122–123). [return to English / Italian]

  67–69. The father’s premature lament for his living son (but he will be dead in four months) in this searing tercet obviously collects the difficult thoughts and feelings of the poet as well. There has been a great deal written about the use of the past definite (“elli ebbe” [he had]) and its possible consequences. Why did Dante say that (v. 63)? Had Guido scorned someone habitually, the use of the imperfect would have been more likely. Those who believe that his scorn was for Virgil (roughly half of those who involve themselves in this quarrel) are right to be puzzled, for such a scornful view of the Latin poet would not seem to have been a sudden shift of attitude (and, in fact, there is no Virgilian element in any of Guido’s poems). An attractive alternative explanation is given by Siro Chimenz in his commentary: at a certain point in his relations with Dante, and at least after Beatrice’s death, when Dante continued to write of her, Guido did come to have disdain for Dante’s loyalty to Beatrice. In short, Dante the protagonist is thinking of Guido’s climactic “rejection” of Beatrice as a definite past event, one perhaps precisely reflected in a sonnet Guido wrote to Dante expressing his disgust with his former friend. [return to English / Italian]

  70–72. Cavalcante’s sudden disappearance rounds out his version of “resurrection,” one that fails. In his first line he came up (surse) but in his last he falls back (ricadde) into his eternal tomb. [return to English / Italian]

  73–75. Farinata’s stoic restraint is evident once again; he has been waiting for Dante’s attention to return to him in order to continue their difficult conversation about Florentine politics. Unmoved and unmoving, he is the exemplification of the “stone man” admired by Stoic philosophers. He is “great-souled” (magnanimo), a quality of the highest kind in Aristotle’s formulation in the Ethics, but connected, even in classical times, with a fear that such a man may also be prideful. See Scott (Scot.1977.1), pp. 13–45, for the double valence of the term, which becomes still less even potentially positive in the works of Christian writers. [return to English / Italian]

  76–78. Farinata, more human in his second conversation, admits his sense of frustration in his family’s political misfortune; it is, he says, worse torment even than damnation. We may reflect that, in the universe of this poem, there is no worse torment than damnation. Nonetheless, Farinata exudes a certain selfless concern for his family. [return to English / Italian]

  79–81. Bested by Dante’s last riposte, Farinata now gets even with a prophecy: within fifty months (fifty moons; Proserpina, the moon, is traditionally referred to as queen of hell) Dante himself will know the pain of exile. There surely seems to be fellow-feeling joined to the bleak promise. By July 1304—roughly fifty months from March 1300—the last efforts of the Whites to reenter the city were over and done with (Dante had already given up on their efforts), and Dante knew his exile was, for all intents and purposes, limitless. [return to English / Italian]

  82–84. Having characterized Dante as a fellow-sufferer at the hands of their fellow citizens, Farinata wants to know why his Ghibelline family seems singled out by the actions of the priors. [return to English / Italian]

  85–87. Dante’s answer offers the perhaps sole locus in this canto that directly relates heresy and politics—and surely the reader has wondered what the connection must be. The “prayers” in the church that he refers to are words uttered in vituperative political councils, thus creating an image of political intrigue, even if of Guelph against Ghibelline, as a form of deformed “religious” activity. Florence seems a city in which politics has become the state religion.

  The Arbia is a river near the site of the battle of Montaperti. [return to English / Italian]

  89–93. Farinata’s last words on the subject of the Florentine past remind his auditor that he was no more guilty than the rest of the Ghibellines (and many of them have been allowed to return) and that, further, at the council of Empoli (see note to vv. 22–24), he was alone in defending the city from destruction. There is no question but that Dante’s view of Farinata is complex. As hard as he is on him, there is also great ad
miration for some of his qualities as leader, and for his having stood alone, and successfully, in defense of the city. The drama of Ghibellinism for Dante is a central one; what these people want to accomplish politically is not in itself anathema to him—far from it; that they wish to achieve their aims without God is what destroys their credentials as politicians and as human beings. [return to English / Italian]

  94–99. Having realized that Cavalcanti does not know that his son is alive, while Farinata seems to know the future, Dante asks for clarification. [return to English / Italian]

  100–108. Farinata explains that the present and the near future are not known by the sinners, only the time to come. Most believe that what he says applies to all the damned, e.g., Singleton in his commentary to this passage. On the other hand, for the view that this condition pertains only to the heretics see Cassell (Cass.1984.1), pp. 29–31. But see Alberigo, his soul already in hell yet not knowing how or what its body is doing in the world above (Inf. XXXIII.122–123). And see note to Inf. XIX.54.

  The “portals of the future close” at Judgment Day, after which there shall be “no more time” (Rev. 10:6). [return to English / Italian]

  109–114. Dante excuses his “fault”: until Farinata explained things, he assumed the damned were aware of present events. Given the historical situation between the poet and Cavalcanti, it is not surprising that the author stages the drama of his understandable guilt at his role in Guido’s death in this somewhat strained way. [return to English / Italian]

  119. Frederick II (1194–1250), king of Sicily and Naples (1197–50), known in his own day as stupor mundi (the wonder of the world) for his extraordinary verve and accomplishments, presided over one of the most glorious courts in Europe. His political battles with the papacy marked nearly the full extent of his reign (he was the victorious leader of the Sixth Crusade [1228–29], “won” by treaty, while he was under interdict of excommunication). [return to English / Italian]

  120. “Cardinal Ottaviano degli Ubaldini, member of a powerful Tuscan Ghibelline family, known to his contemporaries as ‘the Cardinal’ par excellence, was brother of Ubaldino della Pila (Purg. xxiv.29) and uncle of the Archbishop Ruggieri (Inf. xxxiii.14); he was made Bishop of Bologna in 1240, when he was under thirty, by special dispensation of Pope Gregory IX, and in 1244 he was created Cardinal by Innocent IV at the Council of Lyons; he was papal legate in Lombardy, and died in 1272. [He] was suspected of favouring the imperial party, and is credited with a saying: ‘If I have a soul, I have lost it a thousand times for the Ghibellines’ ” (T). [return to English / Italian]

  123. Dante is considering the dire event, his exile, that Farinata has predicted, vv. 79–81. [return to English / Italian]

  125. The word used by Virgil to describe Dante’s difficulty is smarrito, a word that has been associated with the protagonist’s initial lost and perilous condition (Inf. I.3) and then occurs again (Inf. XV.50) with specific reference to his lostness at the outset of the journey for the last time in the poem. It is also used in such a way as to remind us of his initial situation in Inf. II.64, V.72, and XIII.24; in the last two of these scenes the protagonist is feeling pity for sinners, emotion that the poet fairly clearly considers inappropriate. [return to English / Italian]

  130–132. Virgil’s promise that Beatrice (it can only be she) will lay bare to him the story of his life to come is not fulfilled, even though it is referred to again at Inf. XV.88–90. That role, so clearly reserved for Beatrice, is eventually given to Cacciaguida in Par. XVII.46–75. The apparent contradiction has caused much consternation. An ingenious solution has been proposed by Marguerite Mills Chiarenza (Chia.1985.1): just as in the Aeneid Helenus promises Aeneas that the Sibyl will reveal his future to him (Aen. III.458–460) only to have her instead lead him to Anchises, who performs that promised task (VI.756–886), so in the Comedy also the promised female “prophet” is replaced by a male. In Chiarenza’s view, the “contradiction” is deliberate. [return to English / Italian]

  133–136. Virgil now returns to his accustomed leftward direction in his guidance of Dante. See note to Inf. IX.132. [return to English / Italian]

  INFERNO XI

  3. The word stipa (“throng”—from the verb stipare or stivare) in Dante (see Inf. VII.19; XXIV.82) seems to refer to animals or people crowded together as in a pen or in the hold of a ship (cf. the English “steerage”). Here the term refers to those crowded together in the more restricted area of the narrowing lower three circles of hell, i.e., the subject of Virgil’s discourse throughout this canto, the shortest (along with Inf. VI, which also has but 115 lines) of the poem. [return to English / Italian]

  6. This lid of a second funerary monument is similarly not fully described. Are these lids suspended in air or do they rest on the ground, tilted against the sides of the tombs? See note to Inferno X.8–9. [return to English / Italian]

  8–9. Dante may have confused Pope Anastasius II (496–98) with the emperor Anastasius I (491–518). In the commentaries there is also a question as to whether Dante’s Photinus was a deacon of Thessalonica or the bishop of Sirmium. Further, the grammatical structure of the passage would allow us to understand either that Photinus misled Anastasius into heresy or was himself thus misled by the pope. A passage in Isidore of Seville, if it happens to be Dante’s direct or indirect source, resolves two of these three issues. Isidore is speaking of the various kinds of heresy (Etymologiae VIII.v.37). According to him, the Photinians are named after Photinus the bishop of Sirmium, who followed the Ebionite heresy (see Etym. VIII.v.36) in promulgating the notion that Jesus was born from the natural union of Joseph and Mary. And thus it was Photinus who misled the pope, since this very heresy is named after him. The more usual view in the commentaries is that the Photinus in question was the deacon of Thessalonica, a follower of Acacius, but this is probably not the better interpretation. [return to English / Italian]

  10–15. Dante, as though speaking through Virgil to his reader, would seem to be admitting that this canto is not nearly as exciting as those that have gone before (and those that will come after), since it involves nothing but pedantic lecturing. In his little joke the excuse for his reader-unfriendly behavior is that the protagonist’s olfactory powers required a rest so that they might become accustomed to the stench of lower hell. No experiential learning being possible, the class had to retire to the schoolroom. Virgil’s discourse is thus presented as little more than filler—even if the reader realizes that the canto has no lesser purpose than that of establishing a system for the organization of the sins of humankind. [return to English / Italian]

  22–27. Perhaps the key passage for our understanding of the organization of lower hell. All sins punished therein are sins of malizia, malice, in the sense that these sinners all willfully desire to do harm (the incontinent may indeed end up doing harm to others or to themselves, but their desire is for another kind of gratification altogether). Heresy, because it lies within the iron walls of Dis, and is thus also punished as a sin of the will rather than of the appetite (surely it seems closer to malice than to appetite), is perhaps less readily considered a desire to harm others (even though it assuredly, to Dante’s mind, does so). Ingiuria has thus both its Latin meaning, injustice, acting in opposition to the law (iniuria), and its other meaning, the doing of harm. As Mazzoni (Mazz.1985.1, p. 14) points out, Daniello was the first commentator explicitly to link this passage with its almost certain source in Cicero (De officiis I.xiii.41), a passage that defines iniuria as having two modes, force or fraud, with fraud meriting the greater hatred.

  Here malice is divided into two subgroups, force (violence) and fraud. Fraud itself will shortly be divided into two subgroups (see note to vv. 61–66); but for now Dante has only divided the sins of violence (Cantos XII–XVII) and fraud (Cantos XVIII–XXXIV) into these two large groups. On malizia see Mazzoni, pp. 10–14; he demonstrates that for Dante, following St. Thomas, malice reflects voluntas nocendi, the will to do harm. For a revisionist
view of the entire question see Cogan (Coga.1999.1). [return to English / Italian]

  28–33. Virgil divides the sins of violence (synonymous with those of force) into three subsidiary “rings” (gironi). These are, in order of their gravity, violence against God (Cantos XIV–XVII), against one’s self (Canto XIII), and against one’s neighbor (Canto XII). [return to English / Italian]

  34–39. Now, in the order in which we witness them, Virgil describes the three categories of the sin of violence more fully, here violence against others, whether directed against their persons or their property (Canto XII). [return to English / Italian]

  40–45. Those violent against themselves or their own property are in the second ring (Canto XIII). [return to English / Italian]