The Theme in the Work
Desire is what the Inferno punishes and what the Inferno keeps alive. The first beast Dante meets, in canto I of the Inferno, is the she-wolf, and it is the only one of the three whose meaning the poem states: Virgil describes her by her effect, a will that is never sated and that, after feeding, is hungrier than before. Almost every punishment that follows repeats this structure of a will without an object that satisfies it.
e ha natura sì malvagia e ria, / che mai non empie la bramosa voglia, / e dopo ’l pasto ha più fame che pria, and she has a nature so evil and cruel that she never fills her greedy desire, and after feeding she is hungrier than before.
The poem treats desire in three registers. The first is desire as sin. In the circles of incontinence it is the appetite to which reason submits, and Dante sums it up in canto V of the Inferno, before the lustful dragged by the wind; in the following cantos, gluttony, spending and hoarding without measure, and wrath show variants of the same error. The second is desire as punishment. In Limbo, Virgil describes the condition of his people as that of one who lives in desire without hope, and other punishments in the poem keep desire without its object: Master Adam, while alive, had what he wanted, and now he longs for a drop of water. The third is desire as the engine of knowledge and action. Ulysses' ardor to know the world and the vices of men is, in canto XXVI of the Inferno, a passion like the others the Inferno punishes, only with a lofty object, and within him it prevails over the son, the old father, and the wife.
Per tai difetti, non per altro rio, / semo perduti, e sol di tanto offesi / che sanza speme vivemo in disio, for such defects, not for any other wrong, we are lost, and offended only in this: that without hope we live in desire.
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.
Desire also measures the pilgrim. In canto VIII of the Inferno, Dante, who fainted for Francesca and wept for Ciacco, asks Virgil for the spectacle of Filippo Argenti's punishment, and he asks with the word of one who takes pleasure in seeing. In canto XXX of the Inferno, Virgil tells him the name of this same impulse: wanting to hear the quarrel is a base desire. The same poem that shows in canto III of the Inferno the fear of the souls turning into a desire to cross the river, because divine justice spurs them on, shows at the bottom of the ice a damned soul who, invited to win fame, answers that he desires the opposite. In almost every canto someone wants something, and what the Inferno does is measure, by the punishment, the distance between what he wanted and what he got.
Who Embodies It
Francesca da Rimini is the most lovable desire in the poem, a love that seizes the gentle heart and pardons no beloved from loving. Ulysses is the most lofty, the ardor to know. Dante is the one who looks, learns, and errs, and his desire to see Argenti sunk and to hear a quarrel is what the poem watches in him.
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 dipped in this broth before we leave the lake.
Where It Appears
- canto I: Dante finds himself in a dark wood, and a she-wolf, whose desire is never sated, takes from him the hope of reaching the top of the hill.
- canto III: Virgil explains that divine justice spurs on the damned, so that the fear of the souls before Charon turns into a desire to cross the river.
- canto IV: Virgil says the souls of Limbo live in desire without hope, and Dante sees himself the sixth among the poets who receive him.
- canto V: Francesca tells that Love bound her to the other's pleasure and does not abandon her, and Virgil names the lustful whom the wind drags.
- canto VI: Cerberus, with hungry throats, flays the gluttonous under the rain, and Virgil throws dirt into his mouths, using the beast's appetite against it.
- canto VII: Hoarders and spendthrifts roll weights with their chests and accuse one another, and Virgil sums up their fault in two verbs, to give badly and to hold back badly.
- canto VIII: Dante asks Virgil for the spectacle of Filippo Argenti's punishment, and the poem shows the desire fulfilled and thanked to God.
- canto XII: The poet interrupts the description of the river of blood to call the greed that punishes the violent blind, and the wrath that punishes them mad.
- canto XXVI: Ulysses says that neither the son, nor the aged father, nor Penelope overcame within him the ardor to know the world and the worth of men.
- canto XXX: Master Adam, who had in life enough of what he wanted, longs for a drop of water, and Virgil calls low the desire to hear the quarrel.
- canto XXXII: Bocca refuses Dante's offer of fame and says he desires the opposite, for whoever betrayed wants to be forgotten.
- canto XXXIII: Ugolino, after calling for his dead sons for two days, says that fasting prevailed more than grief.
Where the Readings Diverge
Ugolino's line about the hunger that overcame grief bears two readings, and desire is present in both: hunger kills, or hunger makes the father eat his sons. The poem does not decide, and the next scene, in which he gnaws the archbishop's skull again, pushes one way, while the offer of the sons pushes another. What the text makes certain is that the most elementary desire, that of eating, is also what the poem reserves for the highest punishment of pity and horror.
Between the she-wolf at the beginning and the hunger at the end there is the same structure: a will that exceeds the measure and a punishment that keeps it going. The Inferno does not teach not to desire; it teaches to see what each desire makes of the man who has it, and that is why Ulysses is the hardest to read: the object of his desire is knowing itself.