The Theme in the Work
Politics runs through the Inferno as a topic of conversation: almost every Florentine that Dante meets speaks to him of the city, and the city speaks through him. Dante does not write about Florence from the outside. He places its dead in the poem and lets them judge the living who still govern, and that is why the Inferno is read in part as a settling of accounts with exile.
Otto Maria Carpeaux goes further and sees in the infernal city that appears behind the imagined landscape of mountains and ravines Florence itself, named inside the Inferno by the poet who was exiled from it:
Godi, Fiorenza, poi che se’ sì grande / che per mare e per terra batti l’ali, / e per lo ’nferno tuo nome si spande!, rejoice, Florence, since you are so great that you beat your wings over sea and land, and through your Inferno your name spreads!
The political matter of the canto has three layers. The first is the city split into factions: Ciacco, in canto VI of the Inferno, prophesies the long strife, the blood, and the expulsion of one part by the other, and sums up the causes of discord as pride, envy, and avarice; Farinata, in canto X of the Inferno, and Dante exchange the accusations proper to one who was expelled and returned; Vanni Fucci, in canto XXIV of the Inferno, prophesies the defeat of the Whites only so that Dante will suffer.
sì ch’ogne Bianco ne sarà feruto. / E detto l’ho perché doler ti debbia!, so that every White will be wounded by it. And I have said it so that it will grieve you!
The second is the criticism of the new city, of recent people and sudden gain. Dante, who refuses to say whether courtesy and worth still dwell in Florence, points to the cause:
«La gente nuova e i sùbiti guadagni / orgoglio e dismisura han generata, / Fiorenza, in te, sì che tu già ten piagni»., new people and sudden gains have engendered pride and excess in you, Florence, so that you already weep for it.
The third is greater politics, that of the Church and the Empire. In canto XIX of the Inferno the pilgrim accuses the simoniac popes of having made a god of gold and silver, and lays the blame on Constantine for the dowry; in canto XXVII of the Inferno, Guido da Montefeltro tells how the pope, whom the tradition reads as Boniface VIII, at war with Christians, asked him for counsel to take Palestrina and offered him forgiveness before the sin. In canto XXXIV of the Inferno the poem joins, in Lucifer's three mouths, Judas, who betrayed Christ, and Brutus and Cassius, who betrayed Caesar. What the Inferno adds to this matter is the distance between what each politician says and what the punishment shows of him, and Dante's readiness to name the city and the party that expelled him, in the same breath in which he names his own faults. Pisa and Genoa, in canto XXXIII of the Inferno, receive the poet's curse, and the voice he uses against an entire city is that of one who speaks in the name of the neighbors who are slow to punish it.
Ahi Pisa, vituperio de le genti / del bel paese là dove ’l sì suona, / poi che i vicini a te punir son lenti, Ah, Pisa, disgrace of the peoples of the fair land where the sì resounds, since your neighbors are slow to punish you.
Who Embodies It
Farinata degli Uberti is the politician the Inferno cannot diminish: standing in his tomb, he speaks of the city and the party as if they were all he has left. Brunetto Latini is the master who, in canto XV of the Inferno, reads Dante's fate in the stars and tells him that the ungrateful and malicious people who came down from Fiesole will be his enemy. Guido da Montefeltro is the counselor of popes and tyrants, cleverness put to the service of power.
Where It Appears
- canto VI: Ciacco, a Florentine, prophesies to Dante the long strife of Florence and says there are only two just men and they are not heard, because pride, envy, and avarice inflame hearts.
- canto X: Farinata says he twice scattered Dante's ancestors, and Dante answers that they came back and that those on the other side did not learn that art.
- canto XV: Brunetto Latini announces to Dante that the ungrateful and malicious people who came down from Fiesole will be his enemy because he did good.
- canto XVI: Dante tells three Florentine knights that the new people and sudden gains have engendered pride and excess in Florence.
- canto XIX: Dante accuses the popes of having made a god of gold and silver, and lays on Constantine the blame for the dowry the Church received.
- canto XXIV: Vanni Fucci prophesies that every White will be struck, and says he does so that the news will grieve Dante.
- canto XXVI: Dante opens the canto with an invective against Florence, which among the thieves has found five Florentines and earned a name even in the Inferno.
- canto XXVII: Guido da Montefeltro tells that the pope called him as a doctor for his own pride and asked him for counsel to bring down Palestrina.
- canto XXVIII: Mosca shows Dante the phrase that was bad seed for the Tuscan people, and Dante answers him with the death of the lineage.
- canto XXXII: Dante tears the hair of Bocca to learn his name, and Bocca, denounced, says that Buoso da Duera weeps there for the French money and names other traitors.
- canto XXXIII: Dante calls Pisa a disgrace to the peoples and asks that Capraia and Gorgona close the mouth of the Arno and drown all its people.
Where the Readings Diverge
The politics of the Inferno bears two readings. In one, it is exile that speaks: the poem settles accounts with Florence, with the popes who shaped it, and with the rivals who defeated it, and the greater interest of the canto is the reckoning. In the other, it is doctrine that makes use of exile: the poem orders the political world by the same moral measure it uses for the rest, and the Florentine, the pope, and the tyrant weigh by the use they made of intelligence, not by the faction to which they belonged. Canto XXVII of the Inferno is the canto in which the two readings most touch, for Guido weighs for his cleverness and the pope for his pride, but the question with which he opens is about the land left behind.
Between the two, the text sustains both, and it is the presence of Dante himself, who answers, curses, and is ashamed, that keeps them together. The Inferno is political because the pilgrim has a city, and the city is what he carries with him in every canto.