Who He Is
Dante, the Pilgrim, is the character who makes the journey: the man who, in the middle of the road of life, finds himself in a dark wood without being able to say how he got there, and who crosses the whole Inferno behind Virgil until he sees the stars again in Canto XXXIV of the Inferno. The poet tells the story afterward, and the two are distinguished by time and knowledge: the pilgrim does not yet know what the poet already knows, and so he fears, weeps, errs, and is corrected, while the poet interrupts the scene to address the reader, as in Canto VIII of the Inferno, in Canto XVI of the Inferno, in Canto XX of the Inferno, and in Canto XXII of the Inferno. This entry follows the pilgrim. What defines him is his reaction: each punishment he sees asks a feeling of him, and the Inferno is also the story of how that feeling changes, from the pity that knocks him down in Canto V of the Inferno to the hardness with which he tears out Bocca's hair in Canto XXXII of the Inferno.
The journey takes place in Holy Week of 1300, the Jubilee year, and tradition places it on Good Friday.
Trajectory
In Canto I of the Inferno, the pilgrim cannot say how he entered the wood, only that he was full of sleep when he left the straight way. At the foot of the sunlit hill his fear calms and he climbs, but a leopard, a lion, and a she-wolf block his path, and the she-wolf drives him back, taking away his hope of reaching the top. When he sees Virgil appear, he asks him for help with shame on his brow, and recalls the study he made of your book:
Tu se’ lo mio maestro e ’l mio autore, / tu se’ solo colui da cu’ io tolsi / lo bello stilo che m’ha fatto onore, you are my master and my author, you alone are the one from whom I took the beautiful style that has done me honor.
In Canto II of the Inferno, at nightfall, he hesitates before entering the road. He does not doubt the journey; he doubts his right to it, and measures himself against two names who visited the afterlife with a role in history:
Ma io, perché venirvi? o chi ’l concede? / Io non Enëa, io non Paulo sono; / me degno a ciò né io né altri ’l crede, but I, why go there? Who grants it? I am not Aeneas, I am not Paul; neither I nor others believe me worthy of it.
Virgil calls the doubt cowardice and tells him that three ladies of heaven watch over him. Like a flower bent by the cold of the night that straightens in the sun, Dante recovers his strength and says that he has one will with his master. In Canto III of the Inferno he reads on the gate an inscription whose meaning is hard for him, weeps at the cries of those who lived without infamy or praise, and, before the red light that rises from the tearful earth after the crash, falls as one overcome by sleep. In Canto IV of the Inferno, awakened by thunder, he takes Virgil's pallor for fear and hesitates to follow him, and receives the correction:
L’angoscia de le genti / che son qua giù, nel viso mi dipigne / quella pietà che tu per tema senti, the anguish of the people who are down here paints in my face that pity which you feel as fear.
Among the four poets who receive Virgil, he is accepted as the sixth in their line:
e più d’onore ancora assai mi fenno, / ch’e’ sì mi fecer de la loro schiera, / sì ch’io fui sesto tra cotanto senno, and they gave me even more honor, for they made me one of their company, so that I was the sixth among such wisdom.
In Canto V of the Inferno he descends to the second circle, sees the storm of the lustful, and asks to speak with two who go together. He listens to Francesca da Rimini, and when she speaks, he changes the subject of her sentences:
Oh lasso, / quanti dolci pensier, quanto disio / menò costoro al doloroso passo, alas, how many sweet thoughts, how much desire led these two to the painful passage!
He faints with pity, as a dead body falls. In Canto VI of the Inferno he weeps for Ciacco, but the question he asks is about Florence, and afterward he wants to know where the good Florentines are. In Canto VII of the Inferno he challenges God's justice before so much punishment piled up. In Canto VIII of the Inferno, when a man covered in mud asks him who arrives before his time, he curses him, and then asks the master for the spectacle of his punishment:
Maestro, molto sarei vago / di vederlo attuffare in questa broda / prima che noi uscissimo del lago, Master, I would very much like to see him plunged into this broth before we leave the lake.
He sees the muddy people tear him to pieces and thanks God without reservation:
Dopo ciò poco vid’ io quello strazio / far di costui a le fangose genti, / che Dio ancor ne lodo e ne ringrazio, soon after, I saw that torment done to him by the muddy people, for which I still praise and thank God.
A few lines later, before the gates of Dis, which are closed to Virgil, it is Virgil who fears being left behind, and the poet turns to the reader, asking for compassion for himself:
Pensa, lettor, se io mi sconfortai / nel suon de le parole maladette, / ché non credetti ritornarci mai, think, reader, whether I was dismayed at the sound of those cursed words, for I did not believe I would ever return there.
In Canto IX of the Inferno he turns pale when Virgil breaks off his own sentence, imagines a guide who does not know the way, and lets his master cover his eyes before Medusa. In Canto X of the Inferno he shrinks beside his master on hearing a Tuscan voice, and is pushed forward before Farinata degli Uberti. He answers as a Guelph, with relish:
«S’ei fur cacciati, ei tornar d’ogne parte», / rispuos’ io lui, «l’una e l’altra fïata; / ma i vostri non appreser ben quell’ arte»., if they were driven out, they came back from every side, I answered him, one time and then another; but yours did not learn that art well.
He hesitates before answering the father of Guido Cavalcanti, and the hesitation, read as a verb in the past tense, knocks the old man flat on his back; he regrets it, and asks Farinata to tell the fallen man that his son is still alive. In Canto XI of the Inferno it is the disciple who asks and the master who teaches. In Canto XII of the Inferno he feels the stones move under a living body, and hears that the valley trembled when the one arrived who took the great prize from Dis. In Canto XIII of the Inferno he picks, at Virgil's command, a sprig from a thornbush, hears the trunk cry out, and stands like one who is afraid; he feels so much pity for Pier delle Vigne that he cannot ask anything, and in Canto XIV of the Inferno, out of love for his homeland, he gathers the scattered leaves of another suicide and gives them back to the trunk. In Canto XV of the Inferno he recognizes, despite the face scorched by the fire, Brunetto Latini, and his first words are of reverence:
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?
He does not dare leave the road, walks with his head bowed, and receives the prophecy of exile without surprise, as something already heard from Farinata:
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; therefore let Fortune turn her wheel as she pleases, and the peasant his hoe.
In Canto XVI of the Inferno he wants to throw himself among the three Florentine knights and is held back by the fire; he answers with his face held high over the city, and hands his cord to Virgil, who casts it into the abyss. In Canto XVII of the Inferno he goes alone to see the usurers, none of whose faces he knows, and mounts Geryon with the fear of one close to the chill of the quartan fever; what makes him climb is shame before Virgil:
Qual è colui che sì presso ha ’l riprezzo / de la quartana, c’ha già l’unghie smorte, / e triema tutto pur guardando ’l rezzo, / tal divenn’ io a le parole porte; / ma vergogna mi fé le sue minacce, / che innanzi a buon segnor fa servo forte., like one who is so close to the chill of the quartan fever that his nails are already pale, and who trembles all over just from looking at the shade, such I became at those words that were offered me; but shame made his threats strong for me, for before a good lord it makes the servant strong.
He thinks no greater fear was felt by Phaethon or Icarus. In Canto XVIII of the Inferno he recognizes and calls by name Venedico Caccianemico, and recognizes Alessio Interminei, whom he had seen with dry hair. In Canto XIX of the Inferno he speaks to the simoniacs and to a condemned pope with the anger that Virgil approves with an embrace, and he accuses the popes of making gold and silver into a god:
Fatto v’avete dio d’oro e d’argento; / e che altro è da voi a l’idolatre, / se non ch’elli uno, e voi ne orate cento? / Ahi, Costantin, di quanto mal fu matre, / non la tua conversion, ma quella dote / che da te prese il primo ricco patre!, you have made a god of gold and silver; and what is there between you and the idolaters, except that they worship one and you worship a hundred? Ah, Constantine, of how much evil was she the mother, not your conversion, but that dowry which the first rich father took from you!
In Canto XX of the Inferno, by contrast, he weeps before the soothsayers with twisted faces and is rebuked. In Canto XXI of the Inferno and Canto XXII of the Inferno he trembles before the Malebranche and yet still looks: in Canto XXII of the Inferno he knew the names of all the demons, because he had noticed them when they were chosen. In Canto XXIII of the Inferno he fears that the demons may come crueler, and the master carries him on his chest. In Canto XXIV of the Inferno, out of breath at the top of the crag, he feigns more strength than he feels, so as not to seem weak. In Canto XXV of the Inferno he warns the reader that he can hardly admit what he saw, and challenges Lucan and Ovid. In Canto XXVI of the Inferno, before hearing Ulysses, he says that he reins in his wit:
Allor mi dolsi, e ora mi ridoglio / quando drizzo la mente a ciò ch’io vidi, / e più lo ’ngegno affreno ch’i’ non soglio, / perché non corra che virtù nol guidi; / sì che, se stella bona o miglior cosa / m’ha dato ’l ben, ch’io stessi nol m’invidi., then I grieved, and now I grieve again when I turn my mind to what I saw, and I rein in my wit more than I usually do, so that it does not run where virtue does not guide it; so that, if a good star or something better has given me the good, I may not begrudge it to myself.
In Canto XXVII of the Inferno he answers, at Virgil's prompting, Guido's question about Romagna, city by city. In Canto XXVIII of the Inferno, before Mosca, he adds a curse to what he hears:
Ricordera’ti anche del Mosca, / che disse, lasso!, “Capo ha cosa fatta”, / che fu mal seme per la gente tosca». / E io li aggiunsi: «E morte di tua schiatta», you will also remember Mosca, who said, alas, "a thing done has a head," which was bad seed for the Tuscan people. And I added to him: "And death to your lineage."
In Canto XXIX of the Inferno he stops his ears to the laments that wound him with pity, and reads the silence of Geri del Bello as a debt the family never paid:
O duca mio, la vïolenta morte / che non li è vendicata ancor», diss’ io, / «per alcun che de l’onta sia consorte, / fece lui disdegnoso; ond’ el sen gio / sanza parlarmi, sì com’ ïo estimo: / e in ciò m’ha el fatto a sé più pio, O my guide, the violent death that has not yet been avenged, I said, by anyone who shares in the shame, made him disdainful; so he went away without speaking to me, as I believe; and in this he made me more pitying toward him.
In Canto XXX of the Inferno, rebuked for listening to the quarrel of Adam and Sinon, he turns with such great shame that the memory still turns within him, and he is forgiven:
Maggior difetto men vergogna lava», / disse ’l maestro, «che ’l tuo non è stato; / però d’ogne trestizia ti disgrava, a greater fault is washed away with less shame, said the master, than yours was; therefore free yourself from all sadness.
In Canto XXXI of the Inferno he fears Ephialtes and Antaeus. In Canto XXXII of the Inferno, on the ice, he kicks the face of a head, tells Bocca that he will make him say his name, and grabs him by the nape:
Allor lo presi per la cuticagna / e dissi: «El converrà che tu ti nomi, / o che capel qui sù non ti rimagna, then I seized him by the nape and said: you will have to name yourself, or no hair will remain on you up here.
In Canto XXXIII of the Inferno he listens to Ugolino, and with Fra Alberigo he makes a promise he does not keep:
Ma distendi oggimai in qua la mano; / aprimi li occhi». E io non gliel’ apersi; / e cortesia fu lui esser villano, but now stretch your hand this way; open my eyes. And I did not open them for him; and it was courtesy to be rude to him.
In Canto XXXIV of the Inferno, before Lucifer, he tells the reader that he cannot say what he felt, and bids him imagine it:
Io non mori’ e non rimasi vivo; / pensa oggimai per te, s’hai fior d’ingegno, / qual io divenni, d’uno e d’altro privo, I did not die, and I did not remain alive; now think for yourself, if you have a flower of wit, what I became, deprived of both.
He climbs after Virgil through a round hole and sees, from the mouth of the cleft, the beautiful things that heaven carries.
Themes Embodied
The pilgrim is the instrument with which the poem measures punishment: each punishment demands a reaction from him, and the reaction is the point at which the reader decides what he thinks. He faints with pity before Francesca, weeps for Ciacco and for the soothsayers, desires the punishment of Argenti, tears out Bocca's hair, and denies his eyes to Alberigo. Sin appears in him as a question: what is owed to the sinner? Justice and Law appears as the correction he hears from Virgil, who embraces him when he rages against the simoniacs and rebukes him when he weeps for the soothsayers. Desire is in the wood at the beginning, in the will to see Argenti's punishment and in the wish to know and to see, which leads him from canto to canto. Honor and Reputation runs through his conversations with Brunetto, with the three Florentine knights, and with Mosca, all of them asking that he remember them in the world above.
The pilgrim wants to know about Florence in almost every encounter with a Florentine, and the motive is the same one that exile gives the poem: the politics of the city, divided between those who return and those who do not learn how to return. What he learns, over the course of the canticle, is how to measure pity. At the bottom of the ice, the pity that knocked him down in Canto V of the Inferno no longer counts as a virtue, and the guide who rebuked him for weeping does not rebuke him for tearing out hair.
Divergent Readings
The poem gives two readings of the pilgrim's change, from pity to a taste for punishment, and does not choose between them. It may be learning: he sees that suffering with the condemned is putting one's own pain in the place of the sentence, as Virgil tells him in Canto XX of the Inferno, and so he hardens where the place demands hardness. It may be danger: the desire to see Argenti sunk, the applause to God for seeing him torn apart, and the violence against Bocca are movements of one who already enjoys what he sees, and Virgil himself, in Canto XXX of the Inferno, calls low the desire to hear the vulgar quarrel. From Canto VIII of the Inferno on, the text sustains both.
The Inferno can also be read as a settling of accounts with exile.
Erich Auerbach reads Canto X as a scene in which the human figure comes before the divine order, and the effect on the pilgrim who listens is what the critic asks of the reader:
Devemos admirar Farinata, e chorar com Cavalcante.
Dante looks at Farinata standing and at Cavalcante on his back with two opposite reactions, and the second is the one that makes him repent. Between the admiration of Canto X of the Inferno and the shame of Canto XXX of the Inferno, the pilgrim learns that what one admires and what one listens to with pleasure call for different measures.
Relationships
- Virgil: the master and author he has followed since Canto I of the Inferno, from whom he receives an embrace in Canto VIII of the Inferno and in Canto XIX of the Inferno, and rebuke in Canto XX of the Inferno and in Canto XXX of the Inferno, and to whom he surrenders his fear in Canto XXIII of the Inferno and in Canto XXXIV of the Inferno.
- Francesca da Rimini: the shade before whom he faints, in Canto V of the Inferno, and whom he listens to without condemning.
- Farinata degli Uberti: the Ghibelline with whom he argues, in Canto X of the Inferno, as a Guelph.
- Pier delle Vigne: the trunk that rebukes him for his pity, in Canto XIII of the Inferno.
- Brunetto Latini: the Florentine master whom he addresses as lord, in Canto XV of the Inferno, and from whom he receives the prophecy of exile.
- Ulysses: the counselor whom he lets Virgil address, in Canto XXVI of the Inferno, after reining in his wit.
- Guido da Montefeltro: the condemned man to whom he answers about Romagna, in Canto XXVII of the Inferno.
- Ugolino: the traitor whose entire story he hears in Canto XXXIII of the Inferno, after whom the curse against Pisa is hurled.
- Lucifer: the figure before whom he says he cannot say what he felt, in Canto XXXIV of the Inferno.