Who He Is
Pier delle Vigne is the voice of the trunk that cries out when Dante breaks a small branch in the wood of the suicides, the second round of the seventh circle. The poem does not give the name: the spirit introduces himself as the one who held the two keys to Frederick's heart, and who opened and closed it with such gentleness that almost everyone was kept far from the emperor's secret. It is tradition that identifies him with Pier delle Vigne, chancellor of Frederick II, and it is by this name that the entry calls him. He speaks from inside a thornbush from which words and blood come out at the same time, and he is the soul of the wood who asks that someone comfort his memory in the world. What defines him is the defense of his own honor and the act that contradicts it: he swears he never broke faith with his lord, and confesses that he killed himself out of disdain.
Trajectory
Everything happens in Canto XIII of the Inferno. Virgil warns Dante that he is in the second round, that he will see things that would take the faith out of his speech, and tells him to break off a branch so that the thought may come undone. The trunk cries out, darkens with blood, and repeats the question about pity that Dante had to hear:
ricominciò a dir: «Perché mi scerpi? / non hai tu spirto di pietade alcuno? / Uomini fummo, e or siam fatti sterpi: / ben dovrebb’ esser la tua man più pia, / se state fossimo anime di serpi»., it began to speak again: why do you tear me? Have you no spirit of pity at all? We were men, and now we are made into stumps; your hand should be more merciful, even if we had been souls of serpents.
Dante lets go of the branch and stands like one who is afraid. Virgil apologizes for his disciple: had he been able to believe beforehand what he saw only from the verse of the Aeneid, he would not have stretched out his hand, and the incredible thing led him to induce an act that weighs on Virgil himself. He asks the spirit to say who he was, so that his fame may be refreshed in the world, to which Dante may return. The trunk allows itself to be flattered by the sweet speech and says who it was: the chancellor who lost sleep and strength in loyalty to his office, and whom envy, the harlot of the courts, inflamed against him in the minds of everyone, even the emperor's, so that honors turned to mourning. Then the confession:
L’animo mio, per disdegnoso gusto, / credendo col morir fuggir disdegno, / ingiusto fece me contra me giusto., my spirit, by a disdainful taste, believing that with death it would escape disdain, made me unjust against myself, being just.
He swears by the new roots of the trunk that he never broke faith with his lord, that he was worthy of honor, and asks that, if any of the visitors return to the world, they comfort his memory, which still lies stricken by the blow that envy dealt it. Dante cannot ask anything, so much pity grips his heart, and Virgil asks on his behalf how the souls are bound in those knots. The spirit breathes, and the breath becomes voice: the soul that tears itself from its own body is sent by Minos to the seventh mouth, falls into the wood where Fortune casts it, sprouts like a grain of spelt, and the Harpies, grazing on its leaves, give it pain and a window for the pain. And the final rule:
Come l’altre verrem per nostre spoglie, / ma non però ch’alcuna sen rivesta, / ché non è giusto aver ciò ch’om si toglie. / Qui le strascineremo, e per la mesta / selva saranno i nostri corpi appesi, / ciascuno al prun de l’ombra sua molesta», as the others will come for our spoils, but not so that any of them may clothe himself again, for it is not just to have what one has taken from oneself. Here we will drag them, and through the sad wood our bodies will be hung, each on the thorn of its troubling shade.
The noise of two naked, scratched men, pursued by black bitches, interrupts the conversation, and the canto moves to another suicide, an anonymous Florentine who made his house into a gallows. Pier does not speak again, but his request, that someone comfort his memory, is the first of a series of requests for remembrance that the seventh circle repeats with Brunetto in Canto XV of the Inferno, and with the three knights of Florence in Canto XVI of the Inferno.
Themes Embodied
Pier embodies wounded Honor and Reputation and sworn loyalty: what moves him to speak is to clear his memory, and the proof he offers is an oath upon the new roots of the trunk. The Politics of the court is in his speech, in those who are inflamed by envy and turn honors into mourning, and Sin appears with the logic of the wood: whoever tore himself from his body is left without it, and the bodies hanging from the thornbushes will not be taken up again, because it is not just to have what one has taken away. Justice and Law, from Canto XI of the Inferno, takes here the form of a rule of property, and the punishment is not an addition to the suicide; it is the exact consequence of having committed it.
The poem gives Pier the word to defend his honor and does not lift his punishment. The same speech contains what he complains of, never having broken faith, and what he did, killing himself out of disdain, and the canto does not resolve the apparent conflict between the two. Two readings: it is an innocence the poem respects, because the sworn loyalty is not contradicted in any verse, or it is the blindness of one who believes death would free him from scorn, as he himself says when he calls the act of a just man unjust.
Divergent Readings
The same scene can be read from Dante's side. The pilgrim repeats by mistake the wound that is the punishment of the place, and only afterward does the poem give voice to the one who suffers: the trunk's question about pity falls upon the only one there to hear it. In this reading, Pier is the instrument of a lesson about what the pilgrim must feel before a punishment, and Canto XIV of the Inferno opens with Dante gathering the leaves of another suicide.
In the reading that gives first place to Pier, the lesson about Dante is secondary: what the canto keeps is a voice that the poet saved from the envy that silenced it. The two planes coexist in the same canto, and the text sustains both.
Relationships
- Dante: the one who breaks the branch that makes him speak, and who, moved by pity, cannot ask him anything (Canto XIII of the Inferno).
- Virgil: the one who apologizes for his disciple and asks on his behalf how the souls are bound to the knots, drawing on the fame that Dante can return to the world.
- Brunetto Latini: another condemned man who asks Dante to remember him, in Canto XV of the Inferno.