INFERNO XV
INFERNO XV
1–3. Both the words margini (borders) and ruscello (stream) appear in the passage at which the forward motion of the journey was arrested in the previous canto (XIV.79–84). The action, interrupted by Virgil’s discourse about Crete and the gran veglio, now continues. The poets walk along one of the two “banks” that rise above the barren plain of sand and border the red stream as it heads for the lower regions. Thus we know that all their movement until they reach the edge of the next boundary (XVI.103) is on a downward gradient, headed toward the center of the pit. This revision in their usual procedure (a leftward, circling movement) is necessitated by the topography of the ring of violence against God, the sand where flakes of fire fall and which admits no mortal traversal. [return to English / Italian]
4–12. The double simile compares the construction made by God to carry the “water” of hell toward its final destination to the huge earthworks engineered in Flanders and in northern Italy to protect farmland and human habitations from flood. “Carentana” probably refers (the exact reference is debated in the commentaries) to the mountains north of Padua from which in spring the snows release their torrents. [return to English / Italian]
13–21. Another double comparison. As the poets move away from the wood of the suicides and down across the sand along their dyke, they approach a group of the damned. Its members examine them as men look at one another under a new moon and as an aging tailor concentrates upon threading his needle. The first comparison may suggest the image of homosexual “cruising” in the darkest of moonlit nights (it is difficult for modern readers to imagine how dark the nighttime streets of medieval cities were); the second conveys the intensity of such gazing. For this way of reading many of the words and images of the canto see Pequigney (Pequ.1991.1). And see the endnote after Canto XVI. [return to English / Italian]
23–24. The sinner, standing below Dante, must reach up to touch the hem of his garment. His words of recognition capture the tone of an elderly teacher recognizing his former star pupil and, some would argue, of his effeminacy. [return to English / Italian]
28–30. Dante recognizes his old “teacher,” Brunetto Latini (ca. 1220–94). He probably taught Dante by the example of his works rather than in any classroom, but the entire scene is staged as a reunion between teacher and former student.
Brunetto, whose life has a number of similarities to Dante’s, was a Florentine Guelph, a man of letters who was much involved in politics, and, not least in importance, he wrote narrative verse in the vernacular; he was also a notary, which accounts for his title, ser. He became a de facto exile when he learned about the battle of Montaperti (1260) and the triumph of the Ghibellines while he was in France. He stayed there for six years and, wrote his French encyclopedic treatise, the Livre dou Tresor, or Treasure. Before his voluntary exile, Brunetto had previously written a major portion of an allegorical poem in Italian rhymed couplets, referred to within the work itself three times as Il Tesoro but which became known as the Tesoretto (“Little Treasure”—one supposes because it was both incomplete and did not seem as “weighty” as the Tresor [referred to as Tesoro in Bono Giamboni’s abbreviated Italian version of the prose work]). The Tesoretto, as it has continued to be called, was at that point, even though incomplete, the longest narrative poem composed in Italian. Returning to Florence after the “restoration” of 1266 in the wake of the battle of Benevento, he took up his political and notarial chores, and died in the city, much honored, in 1294. (For a careful presentation of the importance of Brunetto for Dante, see Francesco Mazzoni, “Latini, Brunetto,” ED, vol. 3, 1971, pp. 579–88. See also Mazzoni’s essential study of Dante’s borrowings from Brunetto [Mazz.1967.3]; and Charles Davis’s article [Davi.1967.1].)
The poet’s honorific feelings toward Brunetto are perhaps mirrored in the word his name rhymes with: “intelletto.” And his answering gesture, to move his face down toward his “teacher,” certainly does so as well. (The Petrocchi text here offers what is surely an implausible reading: “la mano alla sua faccia” (which we have translated as it stands). It seems nearly certain that the text should read, as it does in many manuscripts, “la mia alla sua faccia,” i.e., Dante bent his face toward Brunetto’s in an act of homage. This better reading is confirmed by the later verse (v. 44) that has Dante walking with his head still bent down in reverence (see note to v. 50). [return to English / Italian]
48. A number of commentaries on this passage cite Aeneid VI.531–534, Deiphobus’s similar questions to Aeneas.
It is striking that Brunetto never discovers the identity of Dante’s leader (nor did Cavalcante in Inf. X). Like Cavalcante’s son Guido’s, Brunetto’s body of work is notably unmarked by Virgil’s influence. The omission, in other words, may be entirely intentional. [return to English / Italian]
50. Dante’s reflection upon his own lostness at the outset (Inf. I.3, I.14) picks up, as a few commentators have sensed (Pietrobono perhaps the first), a similar passage in Brunetto’s Tesoretto, vv. 186–90:
e io, in tal corrotto
pensando a capo chino,
perdei il gran cammino,
e tenni a la traversa
d’una selva diversa.
(And I, in such great vexation, my head bowed down, lost the main road and came upon a path that crossed a strange wood.)
The phrase a capo chino (my head bowed down) has perhaps been borrowed to describe Dante’s reverence before Brunetto (v. 44—see note to vv. 28–30). [return to English / Italian]
54. Dante had criticized Brunetto’s (along with other Tuscan poets’) Italian poetry for its low dialectism in De vulgari eloquentia (I.xiii.1); now he himself uses a Tuscan dialectical form (ca, for casa, “house” or “home”) as though in apology; and he uses it to express the high and ultimate purpose of his journey, his return to the God who made him. It is a moment of stunning force. [return to English / Italian]
55. Dante’s “star” is probably his natal sign, Gemini. Brunetto here and elsewhere sees Dante’s special status as related to the influence of the heavens rather than to the election of Heaven. [return to English / Italian]
58–60. Brunetto’s desire to aid Dante in his current and future plight, given the context of the discussion that follows, would seem rather to refer to his political life than to his literary one, though it is difficult to separate the two. [return to English / Italian]
61–78. Brunetto, like Farinata (Inf. X.79–81), prophesies Dante’s exile. His sense of the history of Florence (perhaps reflecting his own treatment of this subject in the first book of his Tresor) puts forward the legend that Florence was populated by the Romans after they destroyed neighboring Fiesole in order to put an end to Catiline’s conspiracy. Unfortunately, their descendants, the Florentine nobility, allowed the surviving Fiesolans to emigrate and mix their base population with the Roman stock. For Dante, all the city’s (and his own) troubles stem from this original mistake. [return to English / Italian]
83–85. Dante pays his debt to Brunetto. But what was it that Brunetto (or, more likely, his writings) taught Dante about immortality? Brunetto himself (Tresor II.cxx.1) says that fame for good works gives one a second life on earth. Surely that is not enough for the Christian Dante, who knows the true meaning of immortality. The only seconde vie that matters is in the afterlife. Is Dante saying that Brunetto taught him this? That seems impossible. But he did learn from him how his earthly fame might be established by writing a narrative poem in Italian. And his heavenly reward might be combined with that one if his poem were, unlike Brunetto’s work, dedicated to a higher purpose. Perhaps one of the earliest commentators said this best: Brunetto gave Dante “the knowledge that does not allow him to die either in his essential being in the other world, nor with respect to fame in this one” (Jacopo della Lana). For the work of Brunetto that had such effect on Dante see the note to v. 119. [return to English / Italian]
88–90. The protagonist, responding to Brunetto’s warning that his good deeds will not go unpunished (vv. 61–64), adverts to Farinata’s similar prophecy and Virgil’s promise of Beatrice’s eventual explanation of it. See note to Inf. X.130–132. [return to English / Italian]
91–94. Dante claims that he is ready for Fortune’s adversity. See the similar but stronger utterance at Paradiso XVII.22–24. [return to English / Italian]
95–96. For a reading of the “peasant” that is based in the representation of Saturn as an old and tired farmer, carrying a spade or mattock, and thus keyed to the allegorical understanding of Saturn as time, see Iannucci (Iann.1982.1). The phrase would then mean: “let Fortune turn her wheel as she pleases and let time continue its relentless course” (p. 6). [return to English / Italian]
99. This is Virgil’s only utterance in the canto. (Walking ahead of Dante, accompanied by Brunetto, who is moving close to the bank, along the sand, Virgil is not “in the frame” for most of the scene.) How we should read the remark is no longer as clear as it once seemed. Is it congratulatory or monitory? All the early commentators who deal with it think it is the latter, i.e., Dante has just uttered a truthful wish (vv. 91–96), but one difficult to live up to. And that seems the most likely reading. [return to English / Italian]
106–114. Brunetto indicates that all his companions were men of letters, identifying Priscian (the great Latin grammarian of the early sixth century); Francesco d’Accorso (1225–93), a renowned jurist of Bologna; and Andrea de’ Mozzi (died 1296). A Florentine, he was made bishop of Florence (on the Arno) in 1287 until he was transferred to Vicenza (on the Bacchiglione) by Pope Boniface VIII (here ironically referred to with the papal formula “servant of servants”) in 1295 for his riotous habits. None of these (neither is Brunetto) is recorded by other writers as having been homosexual. The last verse, indicating Andrea’s “sin-stretched sinews” would, however, seem to indicate his sexual activity (and the meaning of this line is thus hotly contested by those who deny that homosexuality is punished in this ring—see the endnote to the next canto). [return to English / Italian]
118. What is the division that separates these two groups of homosexuals? We should note that Brunetto, accompanying Dante, has gone lower down the sloping sand than he generally does; his group apparently remains higher up. The only clue given us by the text is that his fellows are all men of letters, while the next group will be made up of politicians (but then Brunetto must be considered, at least to some degree, a “politician” himself). Is that what keeps them separate? It does not seem likely. It would rather seem that the two groups are kept separate by their particular form of sexual deviance, as Boccaccio appears to suggest. [return to English / Italian]
119. It has long been assumed that Brunetto asks Dante’s affectionate remembrance of his Tresor. In the opinion of some, however, it is far better to understand that the work in question is the Tesoretto. To suggest as much is not to deny the importance of the French encyclopedic treatise for Dante, who knew it well and whose memory is suffused by it. However, given his predilection for poetry, it seems likely that for him the pivotal work was the Tesoretto because it was his first Italian model for the Comedy. It is fairly clear why nearly all the commentators think that Dante is referring to the Tresor: It is a major work, at least by comparison to the unfinished Tesoretto, and people do not especially appreciate the poetry of Brunetto (perhaps with good reason). But why would Dante not be giving credit to the work which made a difference to him as poet? That seems a sensible view of the matter. However, it was only in the eighteenth century that a commentator (Lombardi) would suggest this possibility, and only in the nineteenth that one would seize upon it (Gregorio Di Siena). An as yet unpublished book on Dante and Brunetto by Frank Ordiway extends the evidence offered by Mazzoni (Mazz.1967.3) of Dante’s considerable citation of the Tesoretto into a strong argument for the reference to the Italian work in this line. For bibliography of those who have argued for the Tesoretto see Holl.1992.2, n. 82.
The text of the Tesoretto itself offers evidence that it is the work we should think of here:
Io, Burnetto Latino,
che vostro in ogni guisa
mi son sanza divisa,
a voi mi racomando.
Poi vi presento e mando
questo ricco Tesoro,
che vale argento ed oro:…
(vv. 70–76; italics added)
(I, Brunetto Latini, who am yours in every way,
without any reservation commend myself to you.
Then I present and send to you this rich
Treasure, which is worth silver and gold.)
Within the text of what we call the Tesoretto we find that its own title for itself is Tesoro (and this will occur twice more in the work). And we can hear, in Dante’s verse 119, another echo of the Italian work, the verb raccomandare. It seems difficult to go on believing that the Tresor is on our poet’s mind at this crucial juncture of his presentation of his literary “father,” his final words in Dante’s poem. [return to English / Italian]
121–124. The canto concludes with a simile that perfectly expresses Dante’s ambivalent feelings about Brunetto. He looks every bit the winner—but he is in last place. In the actual race run outside Verona, the runners ran naked, according to the early commentators; the winner received a piece of green cloth, while the one who finished last was given a rooster, which he had to carry back into the city with him as a sign of his disgrace and a cause of derisive taunts on the part of his townsmen. The case can be made that Dante treats Brunetto in exactly both these ways.
Two biblical texts are of interest here: “The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong” (Eccles. 9:11); “Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receives the prize?” (I Cor. 9:24). [return to English / Italian]