INFERNO III
INFERNO III
1–9. Modern editions vary in using capital or lower-case letters for this inscription over the gate of hell. Lacking Dante’s autograph MS, we can only conjecture. For the view that the model for these words is found in the victorious inscriptions found on Roman triumphal arches, sculpted in capital letters in stone, see Holl.1969.1, p. 300. In this view every condemned sinner is being led back captive to “that Rome of which Christ is Roman” (Purg. XXXII.102), “under the yoke” into God’s holy kingdom, where he or she will be eternally a prisoner. [return to English / Italian]
1–3. For the city as the poem’s centering image of political life, the hellish earthly city, resembling Florence, “which stands for the self and against the common good,” and the heavenly city, an idealized view of imperial Rome, see Ferrante (Ferr.1984.1), pp. 41–42. The anaphora, or repetition, of the phrase per me si va, as it comes “uttered” by the gate of hell itself in the first three verses, has a ring of inevitable doom about it. [return to English / Italian]
4. “Justice moved my maker on high.” Dante’s verse may seem to violate the Aristotelian/Thomist definition of God as the “unmoved mover.” Strictly speaking, nothing can “move” God, who Himself moves all things (even if He can be described in the Bible as feeling anger at humankind, etc.). Dante’s apparently theologically incorrect statement shows the importance of his sense of justice as the central force in the universe, so encompassing that it may be seen as, in a sense, God’s “muse,” as well as the primary subject of the poem. The word in its noun form appears fully thirty-five times in the poem (see Holl.1992.1, pp. 40–41). [return to English / Italian]
5–6. The three attributes of the Trinity—Power, Wisdom, and Love—are nearly universally recognized as informing these two verses. Hell is of God’s making, not an independent “city” of rebels, but a totally dependent polis of those who had rebelled against their maker. For the postbiblical concept of the Trinity, especially as it was advanced in St. Augustine’s De Trinitate, where Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is each identified by one of these attributes, respectively, see G. Fallani, “Trinità” (ED, vol. 5, 1976, pp. 718–21). [return to English / Italian]
7–8. The apparent difficulty of these verses (perhaps reflected in Dante’s difficulty in understanding the writing over the gate, Inf. III.12) is resolved once we understand that here “eternal” is used to mean “sempiternal,” that is, as having had a beginning in time but lasting ever after. Only God, who is not created but all-creating, may be considered eternal. See Mazz.1967.1, pp. 331–36. Mazzoni, in agreement with B. Nardi (Nard.1959.1), p. 17, allows this status to three classes of being: angels, prime matter (that is, the potential form of the as yet uncreated world), and the heavenly spheres. For Matthew’s description of Christ’s Judgment of the damned see Matth. 25:41, 46: “Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels … And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.” [return to English / Italian]
10. Are the letters of these words “dark in hue,” as are the inset carvings over actual gates, begrimed by time (or, as some early commentators urged, because they are hellishly menacing)? Or are they rhetorically difficult, and “dark” in that respect? The phrase “rhetorical colors” to indicate the rhetor’s stylistic techniques is familiar from classical rhetoric and is found in Dante’s Vita nuova, e.g., VN XXV.7; XXV.10. Whichever understanding one chooses, one will have to make a decision consonant with an interpretation of verse 12, below. [return to English / Italian]
12. There is a fairly serious disagreement over the most probable interpretation of the words “for me their meaning is hard.” Our translation tries to reflect both possibilities, suggesting that one is clearly present, while the second may be only latent. Are the words over the gate of hell (1) threatening to Dante? Or (2) are they hard for him to understand? It seems clear that the traveler is frightened by the dire advice tendered in verse 9, which would have him abandon all hope. Mazzoni (Mazz.1967.1), pp. 337–42, offers a lengthy gloss to this tercet. It seems impossible not to accept his basic premise, namely that the context of the scene makes the meaning immediate and moral: the traveler is afraid, and Virgil reproves him for his fear (vv. 14–15). [return to English / Italian]
13–15. The phrase “as one who understood” lends Virgil authority in two regards: he is aware of Dante’s moral shortcomings and he understands the underworld, since he has descended once before (see Inf. IX.22–27, XXI.63). [return to English / Italian]
18. The “good of the intellect” has long been understood as God. See Mazz. 1967.1, p. 343, citing Paradiso IV.116, where God is the “fonte ond’ ogne ver deriva” (the source from which all truth derives). [return to English / Italian]
21. The translation “things unknown [segrete] to man” avoids the rendering of segrete by the English cognate “secret.” The word here does not mean “secret” so much as “cut off from.” [return to English / Italian]
22–30. This first sense impression of the underworld is exclusively aural. We are probably meant to understand that Dante’s eyes are not yet accustomed to the darkness of hell. Cf. Inferno IV.25–27 and XI.11—where his olfactory capacity must become used to the stench of nether hell. [return to English / Italian]
24. This first instance of Dante’s weeping is part of a program of the protagonist’s development in hell, in which he (very) gradually overcomes the twin temptations to weep for or feel fear at the situation of the sinners in Inferno. See Holl.1969.1, pp. 301–7. [return to English / Italian]
25. The adjective diverse here means either “different the one from the other” (on the model of the confused languages spoken after the construction of the Tower of Babel) or “strange,” a meaning for the adjective frequently found in Dante. In our translation we have tried to allow for both meanings. Mazzoni (Mazz.1967.1), p. 348, cites v. 123 as further evidence for the first interpretation; there those who die in the wrath of God “assemble here from every land,” a phrasing that calls attention to differing nationalities and thus suggests a plurality of tongues. [return to English / Italian]
27. E suon di man con elle (the sound of slapping hands): Boccaccio’s gloss to Inferno IX.49–51, “battiensi a palme” (strike themselves with the palms of their hands), which describes the Furies beating their breasts “as here on earth do women who feel great sadness, or who behave as though they did,” may help unravel this verse as well: the sound is that of hands striking the sinners’ own bodies as they beat their breasts, as Boccaccio had already suggested in his gloss to this verse; “as women do when they strike themselves with their open palms.” [return to English / Italian]
34–36. For the history of the interpretation of this tercet, now generally understood to indicate the presence in the “ante-inferno,” or vestibule of hell, of the neutrals, those who never took a side, see Mazzoni (Mazz.1967.1), pp. 355–67. And, for the existence of exactly such a “vestibule” in hell in the apocryphal Visio Pauli, describing St. Paul’s descent to the netherworld, see Silverstein (Silv.1937.1). In Paul’s vision (for the most recent text see Silv.1997.1) there is a river of flame separating “those who were neither hot nor cold” (Revelation 3:15–16) from the other sinners. [return to English / Italian]
37–39. There has been a lengthy dispute in the commentary tradition as to whether or not Dante has invented the neutral angels or is reflecting a medieval tradition that had itself “invented” them (since they are not, properly speaking, biblical in origin). This is presented at length by Mazzoni (Mazz.1967.1), pp. 368–76, who shows that such a tradition did exist and probably helped to shape Dante’s conceptualization. On this problem see Nardi (Nard.1960.1), pp. 331–50. See also Freccero’s 1960 essay “The Neutral Angels” (Frec.1986.1), pp. 110–18. [return to English / Italian]
40–42. To what does the adjective rei (“evil”) refer, the neutral angels or all of the damned? The neutral angels (v. 38) are the antecedent of the pronoun li in vv. 40 and 41. It seems clear that this is also true with respect to the adjective in v. 42, and thus our translation, “lest on their account the evil angels gloat.” That the adjective is to be treated as an adjectival noun for “the wicked,” i.e., the damned in general, is an idea that has only entered commentaries in our own century. [return to English / Italian]
46–48. Paraphrased: “Like all the rest, these sinners have no hope of improving their posthumous lot; but their foul condition is such that they are envious of every other class of sinners.” [return to English / Italian]
50. Misericordia e giustizia (“Mercy and justice”) are here to be understood as heaven and hell, neither of which will entertain any report of such vile creatures. [return to English / Italian]
52–57. Dante’s essential technique for indicating the crucial moral failures of his various groups of sinners is here before us for the first time. The neutrals, who never took a side, are portrayed as an organized crowd following a banner: exactly what they were not in life (e.g., the neutral angels who neither rebelled directly against God nor stood with Him, but who kept to one side). And in this respect the neutrals are punished by being forced to assume a pose antithetic to that which they struck in life. At the same time, the banner that they follow is the very essence of indeterminacy. Not only is there no identifying sign on it, it is not held in the anchoring hand of any standard-bearer; it is a parody of the standard raised before a body of men who follow a leader. Elsewhere we will encounter other such symbolic artifacts. In Dante’s hell the punishment of sin involves the application of opposites and similarities. This form of just retribution is what Dante will later refer to as the contrapasso (Inf. XXVIII.142). [return to English / Italian]
58–60. The most-debated passage of this canto, at least in the modern era. Many of the early commentators were convinced that it clearly intended a biting reference to Pope Celestine V (Pier da Morrone), who abdicated the papacy in 1294 after having held the office for less than four months. He was followed into it by Dante’s great ecclesiastical enemy, Pope Boniface VIII, and colorful contemporary accounts would have it that Boniface mimicked the voice of the Holy Spirit in the air passages leading to Celestine’s bedchamber, counseling his abdication. Mazzoni (Mazz.1967.1), pp. 390–415, offers a thorough history of the interpretation of the verse. Two factors led to growing uneasiness with the identification of Celestine: (1) in 1313 he had been canonized, (2) ca. 1346 Francesco Petrarca, in his De vita solitaria, had defended the motives for his abdication. Thus, beginning with the second redaction of the commentary of Pietro di Dante, certainty that the vile self-recuser was Celestine began to waver. The names of many others have been proposed, including those of Esau and Pontius Pilate. It seems fair to say that there are fatal objections to all of these other candidacies. For strong, even convincing, support for that of Celestine see Padoan (Pado.1961.1) and Simonelli (Simo.1993.1), pp. 41–58. Telling objections to Petrocchi’s denial that Dante would have put the canonized (in 1313) Celestine in hell (Petr.1969.1 [1955], pp. 41–59) are found in Nardi (Nard.1960.1).
The word viltà (cowardice) is the very opposite of nobility of character. See Convivio IV.xvi.6 for Dante’s own statement of this commonplace: “ ‘nobile’ […] viene da ‘non vile’ ” [“noble” derives from “not vile”]. And we should remember that Dante himself has twice been accused by Virgil of viltà because of his cowardice in not immediately accepting his Heaven-ordained mission (Inf. II.45, II.122). [return to English / Italian]
64–69. The second descriptive passage that indicates the condition of these sinners continues the contrapasso. Now we see that these beings, who lacked all inner stimulation, are stung (stimolati) by noxious insects. Their tears mix with the blood drawn by these wounds only to serve as food for worms. Dante’s personal hatred for those who, unlike him, never made their true feelings or opinions known irradiates this canto. There is not a single detail that falls short of the condition of eternal insult. [return to English / Italian]
64. M. Barbi (Barb.1934.1), p. 261: sciaurati must be understood as “vile, abject, worthless,” as a bitterly negative term with no softness in it. Similarly, the phrase che mai non fur vivi (who never were alive) is darkened by its probable source, cited by several modern commentators (perhaps first by Sapegno) in Rev. 3:1: “Nomen habes quod vivas, et mortuus es” (you have a name that you are alive, and are dead), a fitting castigation for Dante to have had in mind for the neutrals. [return to English / Italian]
70–71. These verses mark a split between the second and third scenes of the canto, the neutrals and those other sinners, of all kinds, who are destined to begin their travel to their final destinations in Charon’s bark. From this point on the action of the canto moves to the near bank of the Acheron. The next canto will begin on the other side of the river. [return to English / Italian]
75. The “dim light”: Dante’s first experience of hell proper was one of utter darkness. Indeed, his first sense impressions of the neutrals are entirely auditory (vv. 22–33). Now the character himself assures us that he has begun to see at least a little (starting at v. 52). [return to English / Italian]
76–78. Virgil’s rather clipped response, in marked contrast with his ready response to Dante’s question about the identity of the neutrals (vv. 34–42), causes Dante to feel ashamed (vv. 79–81). The exact reason for Virgil’s reproof is a matter of some debate. One might argue that his point is that Dante has gotten ahead of himself. In the first instance, he asked about the nature of those he saw displayed just before him. Now he is anticipating, literally looking ahead, and Virgil warns him against such behavior. [return to English / Italian]
88. Charon’s insistence on Dante’s difference—he is alive, the others dead—will find frequent repetition as the protagonist’s extraordinary presence in hell is noted by various guardians and damned souls. [return to English / Italian]
91–93. Most today take Charon’s formulation to refer to Dante’s eventual passage to purgatory aboard the angel-guided ship that we see in Purgatorio II.41. [return to English / Italian]
94. Charon, introduced first (vv. 82–83) only by his characteristics (in a typical Dantean gesture, making us wonder who this imposing figure might be), is now named, and will be twice more (vv. 109, 128). This highly insistent naming should make it plain that Dante is serious about proposing the notion that the guardian of hell is derived from the Sixth Book of Virgil’s poem. It is fascinating, however, to watch the early commentators, so used to reading any fiction as though it were “allegorical,” “dehistoricizing” Charon. Among the early commentators Charon is variously understood as “fleshly desire,” “disordered love,” “ancient sinfulness,” “vice,” “time,” etc. It is surely better to understand him first and foremost as himself. [return to English / Italian]
95–96. These two verses are repeated, word for word, at Inferno V.23–24. This is the longest example of a word-for-word repetition that we find in the entire poem. [return to English / Italian]
104–105. Our translation is in accord with the literal interpretation of Padoan’s comment to this verse, against those who understand seme to refer to their ancestors, semenza to their parents. For an apposite citation of Job 3:3 (“Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said: A man child is conceived”) see Fron.1998.1, p. 47. [return to English / Italian]
109. For Dante’s possible reliance, in his description of Charon’s eyes, on the Roman d’Enéas, v. 2449 (“roges les oitz come charbons” [his eyes were red as coals]), see Spag.1997.1, pp. 120–22; 134–35. [return to English / Italian]
111. The verb s’adagia has been variously interpreted, either to mean that the souls delay entering Charon’s skiff, or that, once in it, they seat themselves in so self-indulgent a manner as to draw Charon’s wrath. [return to English / Italian]
112–120. Where each of the first two cantos has had two major similes (Inf. I.22–27; I.55–60; II.37–42; II.127–132), the third canto has only this double simile that describes the final action of the canto, the departure of the sinners in Charon’s skiff. It is a commonplace that the third canto is the most “Virgilian” canto of the Commedia. In fact, study has shown that it has more than twice as many Virgilian citations than any other canto in the poem (see Holl.1993.1, pp. 250–51). This double simile has long been recognized as involving an amalgam of two Virgilian passages (Aen. VI.309–312 and Georg. II.82). It has also been understood as comprising the “controlling simile” for the entire poem, combining pagan and Christian elements: see the article by M. Frankel (Fran.1982.1). [return to English / Italian]
125–126. Virgil now is willing to answer the question that Dante posed earlier (vv. 73–74): divine justice spurs these sinners so that they are eager to cross the river and find their perdition. [return to English / Italian]
130–134. For the Aristotelian/Thomist sources of Dante’s meteorology, the subterranean winds that cause earthquakes, see Mazzoni (Mazz.1967.1), pp. 446–52. [return to English / Italian]
136. Dante’s falling into unconsciousness indicates his inability to deal with the overwhelming experience of his crossing into the realm of hell proper, an “inability” apparently shared by the poet, who simply does not tell us how he crossed the river. The protagonist will suffer a similar lapse at the conclusion of the fifth canto (Inf. V.142).
The question of how Dante crosses Acheron is much debated. The pointed lack of concrete reference to how he is transported is a sign either of the poet’s reticence or confusion or of his having set a little problem for his readers. It has become acceptable, on the heels of the lengthy gloss offered by Mazzoni (Mazz.1967.1), pp. 452–55, to suggest that the poet has deliberately left the issue unresolved. Yet that does not seem a likely hypothesis. The moment is too important, supported by too many details, to be dealt with as anything less than a problematic mystery that the poet asks us to solve. Mazzoni registers the various theories that account for his transporter (Charon, an angel, Virgil, Beatrice, Lucia, some unnamed supernatural force). But see the countering argument of Hollander (Holl.1984.1), p. 292: We are in fact meant to understand that it is Charon who takes Dante across and that this crux is entirely the result of interpretive overexertion that has made the self-evident confusing. Charon indeed does wish to refuse Dante passage in his skiff (vv. 88–93); to his protestations Virgil responds as follows (vv. 94–96): “Charon, do not torment yourself. It is so willed where will and power are one, and ask no more.” Daniello, commenting on these verses, says that Virgil’s words have the same effect on Charon that the Sibyl’s display of the golden bough had on him. For Charon to be able to resist such a command would involve Dante in a theological or at least a poetic absurdity. Cf. the similar moment at Inferno V.16–24, where Minos likewise would resist Dante’s passage through his realm and where Virgil employs the same incantatory phrase that he had uttered in Canto III to achieve the same result. Would Virgil have uttered the spell again had it not previously proved efficacious? That seems a most doubtful proposition. It seems likely that Dante’s reason for not permitting us to witness the first scene being played out (we are given another version of the scene upon which it is modeled a bit later at Inf. VIII.25–27) is that he found that poetic choice an excessive one, too self-consciously reminiscent of Aeneas’s fanciful entrance into the underworld for him to make evident reference to it at this important moment, the threshold of his Christian afterworld. If this argument has merit, it accounts for the poet’s reticence on poetic grounds. Dante easily could have told us what he wants us to make ourselves responsible for; but that is not his way. Rather, he makes us his partners in taking responsibility for such incredible details as these all through this incredible poem. [return to English / Italian]