The Theme in the Work
In the Inferno, the name is the last thing left, and what the damned ask of Dante is almost always that their name survive. The request is so constant that the poem uses it to measure the cantos: Ciacco wants to be remembered by the living, Pier delle Vigne wants someone to comfort his memory, Brunetto Latini recommends his book, the three Florentine knights ask that people speak of them, and Mosca wants his phrase remembered. On the other side are those who have not even that: the Ignavi, to whom the world leaves no fame, and the usurers, known only by the coat of arms on their purses.
The first case is in the vestibule, in Canto III of the Inferno. Virgil refuses to name the Ignavi, because their punishment is exactly that, and gives his disciple a way of looking:
Fama di loro il mondo esser non lassa; / misericordia e giustizia li sdegna: / non ragioniam di lor, ma guarda e passa, the world does not allow them to have fame; mercy and justice disdain them: let us not speak of them, but look and pass.
The reverse appears in Canto VI of the Inferno, in Ciacco's only request, which asks to leave a trace among those who called him by name:
Ma quando tu sarai nel dolce mondo, / priegoti ch’a la mente altrui mi rechi: / più non ti dico e più non ti rispondo, but when you are in the sweet world, I beg you to bring me to the memory of others: no more do I tell you, and no more do I answer you.
And the supreme case is in Canto XV of the Inferno, when Dante's master reduces his whole existence as a man of letters to a single recommendation, that of the book in which he still lives:
Sieti raccomandato il mio Tesoro, / nel qual io vivo ancora, e più non cheggio». / Poi si rivolse, e parve di coloro / che corrono a Verona il drappo verde / per la campagna; e parve di costoro / quelli che vince, non colui che perde., let my Tesoro be commended to you, in which I still live, and I ask nothing more. Then he turned, and he seemed like those who run at Verona for the green cloth across the fields; and among them he seemed the one who wins, not the one who loses.
Honor has a counterpart in the poem, which is shame. Vanni Fucci, in Canto XXIV of the Inferno, says it grieves him more to have been seen by Dante in the misery he is in than to die. Dante is ashamed, in Canto XXX of the Inferno, of having listened to the quarrel of Adam and Sinon, and Virgil forgives him because a greater fault is washed away with less shame. At the bottom of the ice the reversal is complete: Bocca refuses the only coin the damned were asking for, the fame of a name, and Dante answers with violence.
Del contrario ho io brama. / Lèvati quinci e non mi dar più lagna, / ché mal sai lusingar per questa lama, I desire the opposite. Get away from here and stop pestering me, for you flatter poorly in this mire.
What the poem maintains, among these positions, is a distinction about what fame is. Virgil lifts Dante from his weariness in Canto XXIV of the Inferno, saying that one does not reach fame sitting on feathers or under a blanket, and that without it, whoever spends his life leaves behind on earth a trace like smoke in the air or foam on the water:
ché, seggendo in piuma, / in fama non si vien, né sotto coltre; / sanza la qual chi sua vita consuma, / cotal vestigio in terra di sé lascia, / qual fummo in aere e in acqua la schiuma., for sitting on feathers one does not come to fame, nor under a blanket; without it, whoever consumes his life leaves such a trace of himself on earth as smoke in the air and foam in the water.
Fame as trace, then, and fame as the reward of conduct, and the two senses touch in the types the poem chooses. Farinata is, in the poet's words, magnanimous. Brunetto, damned, is shown winning in the last line of the canto. What the Inferno shows is that a man's honor is measured in many places, the city, the family, the work, and that the punishment which places him there may leave it intact.
Who Embodies It
Farinata degli Uberti is honor as bearing: standing in his tomb, he does not change his expression even when the other collapses. Brunetto Latini is honor as work, the Tesoro in which he still lives. Pier delle Vigne is wounded honor, which asks the visitor to comfort it. Dante, the Pilgrim, is the listener to whom all of this is entrusted, and the poet who makes it.
Where It Appears
- Canto III: The Ignavi have no fame in the world; neither mercy nor justice wants them, and Virgil tells Dante to look and pass.
- Canto IV: The poets receive Virgil with honor and make Dante the sixth in their line, among Homer, Horace, Ovid, and Lucan.
- Canto VI: Ciacco asks Dante to remind the living of him when he returns to the sweet world, and then lowers his head and falls back among the other blind.
- Canto X: Farinata does not change his expression even when Cavalcante falls on his back, and the poet calls him magnanimous.
- Canto XIII: Pier delle Vigne swears he never broke faith with his lord and asks Dante to comfort his memory, wounded by envy.
- Canto XV: Brunetto recommends his Tesoro to Dante, in which he still lives, and vanishes like the runner who wins at Verona.
- Canto XVI: The three Florentine knights ask Dante to speak of them when he sees the beautiful stars again.
- Canto XVII: The usurers have no face anyone knows, only a purse with the family coat of arms, and none of them has a name to ask for.
- Canto XXIV: Virgil tells Dante that one does not reach fame sitting on feathers, and Vanni Fucci says it hurts him more to be seen than to die.
- Canto XXVIII: Mosca asks Dante to remember him with the phrase that was bad seed, and Dante answers with the death of his lineage.
- Canto XXXI: Virgil asks Antaeus to lower them to the bottom, promising that Dante, who is alive, can give him fame in the world.
- Canto XXXII: Bocca refuses Dante's offer of fame and says he desires the opposite, and Dante pulls his hair to learn his name.
Where the Readings Diverge
The offer of fame divides the poem into two positions that the text sustains without deciding between them. In one, fame is the currency that Hell accepts: Virgil offers it to Antaeus, Dante offers it to Bocca, and almost every damned soul asks for it. In the other, it is the currency that the ice refuses: Bocca refuses it, and the poem lets him refuse, so that the bottom is the place where being remembered is worse than being forgotten. Virgil's formula to Antaeus may be legitimate courtesy from one who asks help of a strong man, or flattery of the kind the poem punishes in the ditch of the flatterers.
The contrast is the point of greatest unity in the theme. Ciacco, Pier, Brunetto, and the three knights ask for the same thing, and Bocca refuses the same thing, and the difference between them is that of the bond each one broke: whoever broke the deepest bond prefers oblivion.