What It Is
Before the tower of Dis, in Canto IX of Inferno, three Furies rise up suddenly, with women's limbs and very green serpents in place of hair. They are the Erinyes, the servants of the queen of eternal lament, and they tear their breasts with their nails, beat themselves, and cry out for Medusa, who would turn Dante to stone. They lament not having avenged on Theseus the assault on the kingdom of the dead. The Gorgon never appears: there is only her name, shouted from the top of the tower, and the order that Virgil gives his disciple that he not look at her.
Where It Appears
Medusa appears only in Canto IX of Inferno, and the scene has three moments. First, Virgil's order, which gives the reason for the order: the risk of never returning to the heights:
«Volgiti ’n dietro e tien lo viso chiuso; / ché se ’l Gorgón si mostra e tu ’l vedessi, / nulla sarebbe di tornar mai suso». / Così disse ’l maestro; ed elli stessi / mi volse, e non si tenne a le mie mani, / che con le sue ancor non mi chiudessi, turn yourself backward and keep your face shut; for if the Gorgon shows herself and you were to see her, there would be no return ever upward. Thus said the master; and he himself turned me, and did not trust to my hands alone, but closed my eyes with his own as well.
Then, the poet's interruption, which breaks the scene at its most charged point to address whoever reads:
O voi ch’avete li ’ntelletti sani, / mirate la dottrina che s’asconde / sotto ’l velame de li versi strani, O you who have sound understandings, look at the teaching that is hidden beneath the veil of the strange verses.
Otto Maria Carpeaux cites this same tercet as the poem's own warning that a hidden meaning lies beneath the veil of the verses, and uses it to reject the reading that reduces the Comedy to satire:
O voi ch'avete gl'intelletti sani, / Mirate la dottrina che s'asconde / Sotto 'l velame delli versi strani.
Finally, the arrival of the angel, who opens the gate of Dis with a wand and reminds the demons of the price already paid for resistance, Cerberus's chin and throat still stripped bare:
Che giova ne le fata dar di cozzo? / Cerbero vostro, se ben vi ricorda, / ne porta ancor pelato il mento e ’l gozzo, what good is it to butt against the fates? Your Cerberus, if you remember well, still bears the chin and the throat stripped bare for it.
What It Means
Medusa is the danger from which one escapes only by not looking. Virgil's order is concrete, the stone that would prevent the return, and the gesture of covering the disciple's eyes with his own hands shows what human reason, which Virgil represents in the common reading, can do: it protects up to the gate, and what comes after does not come from it. The allegorical reading sees in Medusa the soul that hardens and closes itself to grace.
The poet's interruption is the reason the symbol is in this book. The tercet orders us to look at the teaching beneath the veil, and the veil is the episode just told, the Furies, Medusa, Virgil's hands. Two readings coexist: the warning holds only for this scene and for the allegory it carries, or it is the key to reading the whole poem. What the text gives is that the warning comes precisely when Dante is asked to close his eyes.
Relationships
- Standard themes: Knowledge and wisdom, Sin.
- Themes of the work: Knowledge and wisdom, Sin.
- Characters: Dante, Virgil.
- Neighboring symbols: the gate and the inscription, whose second gate opens in the same canto, and the ice of Cocytus, the other element that holds the gaze and the body.