Inferno: Images in Primo Canto

1
Inferno Images in Primo Canto

• The ouverture
• Ma poi chi fui al pie dun colle giunto,
  la dove
  terminava quella valle
  che mavea di paura
  il cor compunto,
  
  
• Guardai in alto, e vidi le sue spalle
  vestite gia
  de raggi del pianeta
  che mena dritto
  altrui per ogni calle
  
  (13-18)

2
Nel mezzo del cammin ..

• La Selva and Il Pelago
• Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
  mi ritrovai per una selva
  oscura
  che la diritta via era smarrita
  (1-3)
• E come quei che con lena affannata
  uscito fuor del pelago alla riva,
  si
  volge allacqua perigliosa e guata,
  cosi lanimo mio,
  chancor fuggiva,
  si volse a retro a rimirar lo passo
  che non lascio gia
  mai persona viva
  (22-27)

3

• Il Pelago
• In Convivio (Conv., I, ix) used to define
  Writing
• Lo tempo chiama e domanda la mia nave uscir di
  porto per che, dirizzato lartimone della
  ragione a lora del mio desiderio, entro in
  pelago con isperanza di dolce cammino e
  salutevole porto (II, I, 1)
• Work of art as adventurous marine voyage (in
  Purg. and Par.) Medielval Topos

• La Selva
• La selva in Vergil recurs as image of Creative,
  Poetic Practice
• Hard and wild forest a work that could not be
  written locus of creative aridity
• The straight road (way) which was lost a
  temporary loss of inspiration
• Vegetation is linked in Dante to Creativity
• Ascent to Paradise coincides with ascent to Mount
  Parnassus (Purg. XXVIII, 139-141)

4

• Il Colle
• Symbolic Apparition new inspiration
• The ascent is the attempt to transform the effort
  in poetic reality gradus ad Parnassum
  Si chl pie fermo sempre era il piu
  basso (Inf. I, 30)
• Apollos power will lead Dante to the poetic
  objective.

• Il Sole
• In Convivio, Sun God
• But also creative project
• Questo sara luce nuova, sole nuovo, lo quale
  surgera dove lusato tramontera, e dara lume a
  coloro che sono in tenebre e in oscuritate. . .
  (Conv. I, xiii, 12)
• The new work is the new sun of his inspiration
• God of creativity for the Latins was Apollo
  (subterranean presence in Inf. but openly
  addressed in Par. O buono Apollo, allultimo
  lavoro/fammi del tuo valor si fatto vaso,/come
  dimandi a dar lamato alloro. (Par. I, 13-15)

5
The Ascent to the Hill

• The pilgrim poet is prisoner of his creative
  impasse (Convivio) comes to the hill and decides
  to ascend. He is impeded in his effort by three
  wild animals the lonza, the lion and the wolf.
• Moral problem (the wolf) difficult aspect to
  resolve within the creative problem of the work
• Dante needs a guide. Why Vergil and not a saint,
  a confessor? (79-81 82-87)
• The crisis of the selva is motivated by the
  desire to return to pure poetry, without
  commentary (as he had proposed in the Convivio).
• The second aspect of the new work the necessity
  to absorb the moral message within the live
  corpus of the creative operation, how to face
  EVIL (to represent it and dominate it) inside
  ones own poetic universe

6
Vergil

• Vergil Wisdom and Reason
• What is wisdom? The light of knowledge that
  guides us (Conv.)
• The art inherited from the Latins and the
  Christians the art of good understanding of the
  world, which alone will guarantee the souls
  nobility
• Horace, in his Ars Poetica scribendi recte
  sapere est et principium et fons. (310) Wisdom is
  the origin of good writing
• Who is the great poet the one who can teach
  useful things in a pleasant manner aut simul
  et jucunda et idonea dicere vitae (334) and
  lectores delectando et pariterque monendo (344)
• Christianity and theology had indicated in Faith
  the way to wisdom. Poetry is only functional to
  theology. Poets were looked upon with suspicion,
  fraudulent soothsayers (Plato)

7
Dante as Orpheus

• Orpheus, the sacred interpreter of the gods,
  teaches the truth to humankind, establishes
  cities and with his songs tames the beast, the
  dyonisiac demon. Dante is afraid of the beasts
  and falls back where the sun does not shine.
• Vergils appearance with the accompanying image
  of the river of eloquence indicates the triumph
  of the word
• Poetry must delectare ut prodesse
• Vergils encouragement a te convien tener altro
  viaggio you are a Christian, I was not think
  of your idea of life, which procedes ascending
  and descending (Conv. IV, xxiii, 6, 8). You will
  put in a poem all you know, narrating while
  speculating (unlike Conv.). You will believe in
  your culture and penetrate it in depth, as
  Orpheus, mediator between humanity and divinity.
  If you undertake this trip (work), your exile
  will have new meaning your return to God.
• You will return to God only if you write a great
  poem, you will write a great poem only if you
  return to God. Poet as prophet

8
Conclusion

• The idea of the Commedia stems from Dantes
  turning to the Latin poets for illumination and
  guidance. The poets turn the austere commentaries
  of the Convivio in the vibrant language and tale
  of the Commedia.
• Inventive Originality to reach the regal status
  of philosophy and theology through poetry, as if
  the beauty of the poem were functional to its own
  truth. Beauty then is not only Gods product, it
  is also a creation of man.
• If faith is needed to accomplish the voyage, its
  conquest will be attempted in order to complete
  the work. Dantes effort appears like the
  laborious conquest of a certainty that is
  necessary to his creation
• The temerity of the bet how to transform a poem
  in a faith and a faith in a poem

9
Comedia Why This Title

• Title as enigma and the Episode of Geryon
  (XVI-XVII)
• Dantes rope and Vergils use of it (XVI -
  106-14)
• Nature of Fraud Geryon as personification of
  moral and poetic fraud Dante realizes that it
  was necessary to use fraud on both the moral and
  literary plane
• Dantes voyage is also the tale of that voyage
  (voyage and tale are two inseparable issues)
• Who is Geryon, description and function (XVII,
  10-18)
• The knots and wheels symbolize fraudulent tricks,
  but are aesthetically pleasing and therefore
  intriguing to Dante, like the elaborate draperies
  of Turks and Tartars (infidels), or Aracnes
  weaving. (Aracne represents, in the myth, the
  challenge of the artist who wants to surpass,
  with his creation, god himself)
• The richness of poetic elaboration is necessary
  to continue his tale

10

• Both moral as well as poetic fraud are necessary
  to continue the voyage and its tale
• Sempre a quel ver chha faccia di menzogna
  de luom chiuder le
  labbra fin chel pote,
  pero che sanza colpa fa vergogna
  ma qui
  tacer nol posso (XVI, 124-27)
  e per le note
  
  di questa comedia,
  lettor, ti giuro,
  selle non sien di lunga grazia
  vote (XVI, 127-29)
• It is not the first time that Dante describes an
  incredible vision, but this time he wants to
  reassure the reader of the veracity of his good
  faith (and he swears on the work itself!) he is
  in front of such a surprising truth that it may
  appear as a lie. Credibility must happen on the
  poetic level, if he writes well he will be
  believed.
• The Commedia is a trip in the afterworld, in the
  universe of the divinity Dante is profoundly
  aware of the drama of the impossible dialogue
  with divine reality. The truth he wants to reveal
  can be expressed only through a myth Gods word
  is incomprehensible

11

• Dantes drama is gnoseological as well as
  representational,
• He needs to underline the exigency of a polisemic
  reading of the work, keeping in mind St. Thomas
  warning that poetic expression cannot go beyond
  the literal level, that Christian literature has
  a literal meaning, as in a parable, not a
  symbolical or allegorical value, which belongs to
  Gods word
• Dante is alone in front of God Et vidit arcana
  Dei, que non licet homini loqui (I saw Gods
  mistery which cannot be expressed in human words
• To understand his poem it is necessary then to
  read it as a great metaphor in order to reveal
  the truth, Dante had to use the lies and
  inventions of the ancient (pagan) poets
• Geryons appearance reveals this condition his
  poem is not the imitation of gods word but one
  where passion and human intelligence coexist in
  mediating and interpreting divine truth (Dante
  as Christian Orpheus)

12

• Language and the Comedia
• Language is for Dante the crux proof of the
  human decadence (we need, unlike the angels and
  God, to speak in order to communicate) as well as
  egregium humani generis actum (De Vulgari
  Eloquentia, I, iv, 3)
• Reason is also ambivalent Glory of man and
  symbol of his sinful state, his decadence (the
  angels do not need reason)
• Reason and language contain fraud
• The only way to enter in contact with Gods
  reality is language, but humanity is situated
  outside this reality
• How can one define a work that from its very
  inception cannot find the appropriate language to
  its theme, because that language does not exist?
• Comedia for this reason work in which language
  is totally inadequate to express the divine
  greatness of its content (comedia vs tragedia)

13
Dante and Gerione

• When fraud is emerging in Dantes conscience (and
  the readers), the poet sees his entire work as a
  weaving of words, a new challenge (like that of
  Aracnes against Minerva)
• But the difference with Geryon is that the poet
  serves the truth, speaks in its name Despite
  the appearance, do not doubt, reader read and
  comprehend in its depth the meaning of my search
  that is individual as well as universal (see
  Geryons emerging and Dantes descent)
• To recognize fraud also means to recognize its
  absolute necessity, now that Dante is immersing
  himself in the deepest circles of Inferno, those
  of the Fraudulent. He is afraid, his fear being
  also metaphysical how to face the enemy-ally (he
  is sitting on Geryon). Dante is sailing on fraud
  to descend into the Inferno, and his immersion
  becomes a flight. Geryon arrives to Malebolge
  without booty the representation of fraud, is
  now its victim

14

• Dantes journey is an immersion into the
  innermost parts of our subconscious. The infernal
  journey is a descent into the underworld of the
  human psyche, a world populated by ghosts and
  monsters that haunt Dantes exiled days (those
  demons he represented in the three beasts of the
  beginning)
• In order to ascend, one must first descend and
  face the demons. Poets have understood this long
  before psychoanalysis
• Geryons appearance is like an emersion,
  expressed through the image of the sailor that
  appears at the sea surface after he has freed the
  anchor from the bottom, the anchor that impedes
  the continuation of the voyage
• Geryon himself will become the vessel, la
  navicella that will help Dante to descend from
  the 7th to the 8th circle of Inferno one must be
  able to learn how to take advantage of fraud

15
Dante a Modern Poet?

• Dante has no direct followers. Petrarca has been
  for long the model to imitate
• Dantes fame crosses the boundaries of Italian
  literature, but he is and remains an irregular
• Giambattista Vico (Neapolitan philosopher of the
  XVIII century) first defines Dante as a poet of
  Weltliteratur world literature postulates a
  movement of artistic and literary creation, a
  galactic spiral of cross literary and artistic
  references. It is a recognition of Dantes idea
  of a supernational empire (that of literature)
• Charles Singleton presents Dantes work as the
  SUMMA of the Middle Ages against a model that can
  be defined as modern for Singleton, Dante is the
  new interpreter of Medieval theology
• Erich Auerbach (Mimesis) espouses a different
  view Dante created the man that the European
  consciousness knows today, both in the figurative
  arts and in historiography. What antiquity had
  formed in a totally different way and the Middle
  Ages had never known the human being

16

• Not in the image of the legend, or of the
  abstract formulation of a moral type, but the
  real man, alive, connected to history. A complete
  human being. In this Dante was the first.
• Dante inaugurates realism, and with it the
  representation of the human identity in its
  entirety and complexity
• Through the classics (Petronius, Horace, Homer,
  Apuleius), Dante discovers the possibility to
  create himself as a literary character
• DANTE AND THEOLOGY
• Theology was for Dante an irrefutable fact
  (something like modern science today). We cannot
  refute science and its progress, it is there, for
  Dante it was the same for theology. But, like
  science, how many aspects of the human life has
  theology not covered! Dante advances thus a
  different way of thinking and existing, the
  artistic one. A strategy that (through theology),
  will lead beyond its realms, to a higher sphere
  the territory where the rule is the poets
• Discovery of the Middle Ages the opposition
  between internal and external world and the
  discovery of the spiritual sphere as uncharted
  territory. From this derives the invention of
  psychology as a journey of knowledge and
  discovery

17

• From this discovery originates in Dante, as
  unexpected consequence, the idea of the
  reaffirmation of the validity of the artistic
  endeavor and of its author
• Dante validates the status of the poet as he
  rivals that of the philosopher and the theologian
  and the certainty of their hermeneutic processes
• In Paradise, San Bernard (de Clairvaux) pleads
  for Dante to the Virgin Mary that he be allowed
  see God. In reality S. Bernard had affirmed that
  At talis visio non est vitae presentis, sed in
  novissimis reservatur . . . Non sapiens, non
  sanctus, non propheta videre illum, sicuti est,
  potest, aut potuit in corpore hoc mortali.
• In Paradise, the saint that had demonstrated most
  adversity towards the poet intercedes for DANTE
  and why is that because he is a poet. In Canto
  II of the Inferno, Dante compares his destiny to
  that of Enea and Paul. This comparison opens the
  possibility of a heroic destiny for Dante. His
  investiture to the incredible voyage is given to
  him by the Virgin Mary, by St. Lucy, Rachel and
  ultimately Beatrice. However, this destiny will
  be secured only if Dante accepts Vergil as his
  guide, and on the agreement that he writes what
  he sees
• Faith is functional to the creation of the poetic
  work (and not vice-versa), which was anathema at
  the time. We then understand Dantes necessity to
  coat the entire poem with the most traditional
  and accepted dogmatic doctrines

18

• Dante is a writer of strong ambiguity his
  declarations are replete with meanings and that
  aspect is inseparable from the attempt to
  challenge the classical poets on their ground.
  Dante receives the teaching of the classics that
  has matured in the Middle Ages. Without them he
  would have never been able to write the Commedia,
  because without them he would not have reached
  this certainty THE SUPERIORITY OF THE POET IN
  DESCRIBING THE WORLD
• DANTE, MODERN POET
• The modern poet differentiates himself from the
  classical one in the strong perception of the
  substantial gratuity of his efforts
• Only the poet that can free himself of the burden
  and ties of knowledge and look at the world with
  the eyes of a child, only through a new ingenuity
  and a new purity can the poet capture the world.
• Study led Dante to poetry. The poet, through
  study, is able to regain his child-like status .
  . . Study must make us child-like, exactly like
  Dante feels when he is in front of Beatrice.
  Study must purify us from artifice, so that we
  can return to Nature. It is one of Dantes
  discoveries . (Giovanni Pascoli, Il fanciullino)