Who He Is
Brunetto Latini is the Florentine master whom Dante meets in the third round of the seventh circle, the wasteland of burning sand on which the rain of fire falls, and to whom the poem grants the title he held in life, Ser. He seizes the pilgrim by the hem of his robe, cries out in wonder, and is recognized despite the face scorched by the fire. He walks on the sand, below the embankment on which Dante walks, because whoever stops for an instant in the throng stays a hundred years without shelter from the flames, and he talks with him for as long as the punishment allows. What defines him is the bond between the two: he was the one who, in the world, taught Dante how a man makes himself eternal, and it is the paternal image that the pilgrim says he carries fixed in his mind. At the same time he is a condemned man whom the poem places among clerics and men of great learning, stained by a single sin that the canto does not name, and the tenderness of the scene is the measure of what the place costs.
Trajectory
Everything happens in Canto XV of the Inferno. The recognition takes effort: Dante fixes his eyes on the scorched face until his intellect reaches him, and lowers his hand to the face to ask:
e chinando la mano a la sua faccia, / rispuosi: «Siete voi qui, ser Brunetto?»., and lowering my hand to his face, I answered: are you here, Ser Brunetto?
Brunetto asks him to go back a little with him, letting his people go on, and says that Dante should walk, and that he will go at the hem of his cloak. Dante does not dare leave the road to walk alongside and keeps his head bowed, as one who goes in reverence. Brunetto asks what fortune or destiny brings him before his last day, and who it is that shows him the way. Dante answers that he lost himself in a valley in his serene life, and that Virgil appeared to lead him back. Brunetto tells him that if he follows his star he cannot fail to reach a glorious port, and that, had he not died so early, seeing heaven so kind to him, he would have given him comfort in his work:
Se tu segui tua stella, / non puoi fallire a glorïoso porto, / se ben m’accorsi ne la vita bella; / e s’io non fossi sì per tempo morto, / veggendo il cielo a te così benigno, / dato t’avrei a l’opera conforto., if you follow your star, you cannot fail to reach a glorious port, if I rightly noticed it in your beautiful life; and if I had not died so early, seeing heaven so benign to you, I would have given you comfort in your work.
He then announces what awaits him: the ungrateful and malicious people who came down from Fiesole will be his enemies because he did good, for among the sour sorb trees the sweet fig should not bear fruit, and Dante must cleanse himself of the habits of that greedy, envious, and proud people. Dante answers with gratitude: the paternal image of the master, from when he taught him how a man makes himself eternal, is fixed in his mind and afflicts him now, and as long as he lives it will be seen in his language. He promises to write down what Brunetto tells of his destiny and keep it, to be glossed with another text by a lady who will know, if he reaches her. And he declares himself ready for whatever Fortune wishes:
Non è nuova a li orecchi miei tal arra: / però giri Fortuna la sua rota / come le piace, e ’l villan la sua marra, such a pledge is not new to my ears; so let Fortune turn her wheel as she likes, and the peasant his hoe.
Virgil looks back and approves from the side. Dante asks who Brunetto's companions are, and he names two, Priscian and Francesco d'Accorso, and falls silent about the rest because time is short and a new smoke rises from the sand, of people with whom he should not be. What he asks is only this:
Sieti raccomandato il mio Tesoro, / nel qual io vivo ancora, e più non cheggio». / Poi si rivolse, e parve di coloro / che corrono a Verona il drappo verde / per la campagna; e parve di costoro / quelli che vince, non colui che perde., let my Tesoro be commended to you, in which I still live, and I ask nothing more. Then he turned, and he seemed like those who run at Verona for the green cloth across the fields; and among them he seemed the one who wins, not the one who loses.
He turns and vanishes, and the poem compares him to the runner who, in Verona, contests the green cloth: he seems the one who wins, not the one who loses. The same scene has an echo in the next canto, where three other Florentines from the same wasteland ask Dante to speak of them when he sees the stars again.
Themes Embodied
Brunetto is Honor and Reputation carried over into the survival of the book. All he asks is that his Tesoro be commended, and the poem lets him win in the last verse, at the same time that it condemns him. Politics is in the prophecy of Fiesole and in the lesson of cleansing oneself of the city's customs, and knowledge, the theme of Knowledge and Wisdom, is in the memory that he taught Dante how a man makes himself eternal, which the scene places beside the punishment. The poem does not name the sin of the group; what situates him there is the design of Canto XI of the Inferno, in which the third round of the seventh circle punishes violence against God, against nature, and against art.
The canto brings gratitude and judgment together, and neither cancels the other. Dante calls him ser and answers with the voice of a disciple, and the master answers with the counsel of one who read the sky for him. Two readings: sincere encouragement, or the last gesture of one who does not want to leave the stage.
Divergent Readings
Dante's settling of accounts with the city is part of the poem's design, and Brunetto's prophecy about Fiesole is one of the cases in which the city is laid bare.
The poem condemns Brunetto and, in the last verse, shows him winning, and the memory he asks Dante to keep is the one the poem keeps for him. Whoever reads the ending as victory reads the verse of the runner at Verona; whoever reads it as loss reads the fire that awaits him, and the text sustains both.
Relationships
- Dante: the disciple who recognizes him, who calls him ser, and who writes down what he narrates of his destiny (Canto XV of the Inferno).
- Virgil: Dante's master, who approves the answer to the other master with a proverb.
- Farinata degli Uberti: the other condemned Florentine who foretells Dante's future in Canto X of the Inferno, and to whose prophecy Dante adds that of Brunetto.