The Theme in the Work
In the Inferno, knowledge is guide, punishment, and risk. A guide, because Dante's journey can be made only with a master who knows the way and explains what he sees. A punishment, because almost every damned soul loses some form of knowing: the heretics see what comes from afar and lose the present, the soothsayers walk backward for having wanted to see too much ahead, the giant Nimrod speaks a language no one understands. A risk, because the poem places at the highest point of the desire to know, that of Ulysses, the threat of a sea that closes over.
The starting point is in Limbo. In canto IV of the Inferno, Dante is received by the great poets and the philosophers, and sees, on high in a luminous place, the master of those who know, seated among the philosophical family, whom the verse names by his role rather than by his name:
maestro di color che sanno / seder tra filosofica famiglia, the master of those who know, seated among the philosophical family.
The poem makes ancient learning the house of Virgil and, at the same time, shows that it is not enough: the house is in Limbo. It is also with this learning that Virgil orders the abyss in canto XI of the Inferno, recalling for Dante Aristotle's Ethics, and it is in this learning that the pilgrim recognizes his own study, when the guide sends him back to his science. At the same time, the master is barred at the gates of Dis, is deceived by a demon, and keeps silent about the place of the heretics in his own map, and the reader learns that Virgil's knowledge has holes.
Lo duca stette un poco a testa china; / poi disse: «Mal contava la bisogna / colui che i peccator di qua uncina». / E ’l frate: «Io udi’ già dire a Bologna / del diavol vizi assai, tra ’ quali udi’ / ch’elli è bugiardo, e padre di menzogna», the guide stood for a while with his head bowed; then he said: ill did he tell the tale, he who hooks the sinners there. And the friar: I heard said in Bologna many vices of the devil, among which I heard that he is a liar and the father of lies.
The punishment of knowledge is clearest in canto X of the Inferno, where Farinata explains that the damned see distant things and lose the present, and that when the door of the future closes, all their knowledge dies:
Noi veggiam, come quei c’ha mala luce, / le cose», disse, «che ne son lontano; / cotanto ancor ne splende il sommo duce. / Quando s’appressano o son, tutto è vano / nostro intelletto; e s’altri non ci apporta, / nulla sapem di vostro stato umano., we see, like one with poor sight, the things that are far from us, he said; so much still shines on us the supreme guide. When they draw near or are present, all our intellect is in vain; and if others do not bring them to us, we know nothing of your human condition.
In canto XX of the Inferno, Virgil puts the same idea into another punishment, that of the soothsayers with twisted faces:
Mira c’ha fatto petto de le spalle; / perché volle veder troppo davante, / di retro guarda e fa retroso calle., behold how he has made a chest of his shoulders; because he wanted to see too far ahead, he looks backward and walks backward.
The limit of human knowledge reaches its center in canto XXVI of the Inferno. Ulysses says that neither son, nor father, nor wife could overcome the ardor to know the world, the vices of men, and their worth, and the canto does not decide whether the voyage was sin, punishment, or both. Dante prepares him by saying that he reins in his wit so that it does not run without virtue to guide it.
né dolcezza di figlio, né la pieta / del vecchio padre, né ’l debito amore / lo qual dovea Penelopè far lieta, / vincer potero dentro a me l’ardore / ch’i’ ebbi a divenir del mondo esperto / e de li vizi umani e del valore, neither the sweetness of a son, nor the piety for my old father, nor the due love that should have gladdened Penelope, could overcome within me the ardor I had to become learned in the world, in human vices, and in worth.
The theme closes with the poet back before the reader, in canto XXXIV of the Inferno, when Dante says he does not know how to describe what he felt before Lucifer and bids the reader imagine it, if he has any flower of wit: the poem hands over, at the point of greatest silence, the part of knowledge that belongs to the one who reads.
Who Embodies It
Virgil is the knowledge that guides and teaches, and that the text shows to be faulty in what he could not yet know. Ulysses is knowledge as passion, the experience of the uninhabited world beyond the sun. Farinata degli Uberti is the science that sees far and loses the present, and the rule that explains the scene of Cavalcante is his.
Where It Appears
- canto IV: Dante sees in Limbo the master of those who know, seated among the philosophical family, and Socrates and Plato nearer to him than the others.
- canto IX: The poet interrupts the Medusa scene to bid those of sound intellect look at the doctrine hidden beneath the veil of the strange verses.
- canto X: Farinata explains that the damned see what comes from afar and lose the present, and that their science dies when the future closes.
- canto XI: Virgil refers Dante to Aristotle's Ethics to prove that incontinence offends God less than malice.
- canto XX: Virgil shows Amphiaraus and the soothsayers with twisted faces, who lost the power to see ahead by wanting to see too much.
- canto XXIII: A friar from Bologna contradicts Malacoda about the broken bridge, recalling that the devil is the father of lies, and the master goes on troubled with anger.
- canto XXV: Dante challenges Lucan and Ovid to be silent before the metamorphoses he now recounts, and warns the reader that he barely admits what he has seen.
- canto XXVI: Dante reins in his wit so that it does not run without virtue, and Ulysses speaks of the ardor to know the world, the vices of men, and their worth.
- canto XXXI: The poet says that where the instrument of the mind joins with ill will and force, people have no defense, and the giant is the proof of this.
- canto XXXIV: Dante says he does not know how to describe what he felt before Lucifer and bids the reader imagine it, if he has any flower of wit.
Where the Readings Diverge
Ulysses' knowledge bears two readings: a noble speech that calls men to what they are, or a counsel that leads its listeners to death. The poem gives the damned man the most admired speech of the Inferno and places it in the fire that hides him, and the same trait, intelligence in the service of something, appears in canto XXXI of the Inferno as what makes the giant terrible. The Inferno sustains both: knowledge is what man has most his own, and it is also what, poorly measured, loses him.
The poem's knowledge is not that of one who knows everything; it is that of one who knows where knowledge ends. Virgil, Farinata, and Ulysses each leave the canto with the limit in sight, and the pilgrim learns to measure his own wit.