The Divine Comedy Of Dante Alighieri Part 16

[368] _'Twas I, etc._: Some little time after the victory of Montaperti there was a great Ghibeline gathering from various cities at Empoli, when it was proposed, with general approval, to level Florence with the ground in revenge for the obstinate Guelfism of the population. Farinata roughly declared that as long as he lived and had a sword he would defend his native place, and in the face of this protest the resolution was departed from. It is difficult to understand how of all the Florentine n.o.bles, whose wealth consisted largely in house property, Farinata should have stood alone in protesting against the ruin of the city. But so it seems to have been; and in this great pa.s.sage Farinata is repaid for his service, in despite of Inferno.

[369] _Other laws_: Ciacco, in Canto vi., prophesied what was to happen in Florence, and Farinata has just told him that four years later than now he will have failed in an attempt to return from exile: yet Farinata does not know if his family is still being persecuted, and Cavalcanti fears that his son Guido is already numbered with the dead. Farinata replies that like the longsighted the shades can only see what is some distance off, and are ignorant of what is going on, or about to happen; which seems to imply that they forget what they once foresaw. Guido was to die within a few months, and the event was too close at hand to come within the range of his father's vision.

[370] _The Second Frederick_: The Emperor of that name who reigned from 1220 to 1250, and waged a life-long war with the Popes for supremacy in Italy. It is not however for his enmity with Rome that he is placed in the Sixth Circle, but for his Epicureanism--as Dante understood it. From his Sicilian court a spirit of free inquiry spread through the Peninsula. With men of the stamp of Farinata it would be converted into a crude materialism.

[371] _The Cardinal_: Ottaviano, of the powerful Tuscan family of the Ubaldini, a man of great political activity, and known in Tuscany as 'The Cardinal.' His sympathies were not with the Roman Court. The news of Montaperti filled him with delight, and later, when the Tuscan Ghibelines refused him money he had asked for, he burst out with 'And yet I have lost my soul for the Ghibelines--if I have a soul.' He died not earlier than 1273. After these ill.u.s.trious names Farinata scorns to mention meaner ones.

[372] _Ominous words_: Those in which Farinata foretold Dante's exile.

[373] _The stages, etc._: It is Cacciaguida, his ancestor, who in Paradise instructs Dante in what his future life is to be--one of poverty and exile (_Parad._ xvii.). This is, however, done at the request of Beatrice.

[374] _To the middle_: Turning to the left they cut across the circle till they reach the inner boundary of the city of tombs. Here there is no wall.

CANTO XI.

We at the margin of a lofty steep Made of great shattered stones in circle bent, Arrived where worser torments crowd the deep.

So horrible a stench and violent Was upward wafted from the vast abyss,[375]

Behind the cover we for shelter went Of a great tomb where I saw written this: 'Pope Anastasius[376] is within me thrust, Whom the straight way Photinus made to miss.'

'Now on our course a while we linger must,' 10 The Master said, 'be but our sense resigned A little to it, and the filthy gust We shall not heed.' Then I: 'Do thou but find Some compensation lest our time should run Wasted.' And he: 'Behold, 'twas in my mind.

Girt by the rocks before us, O my son, Lie three small circles,'[377] he began to tell, 'Graded like those with which thou now hast done, All of them filled with spirits miserable.

That sight[378] of them may thee henceforth suffice. 20 Hear how and wherefore in these groups they dwell.

Whate'er in Heaven's abhorred as wickedness Has injury[379] for its end; in others' bane By fraud resulting or in violent wise.

Since fraud to man alone[380] doth appertain, G.o.d hates it most; and hence the fraudulent band, Set lowest down, endure a fiercer pain.

Of the violent is the circle next at hand To us; and since three ways is violence shown, 'Tis in three several circuits built and planned. 30 To G.o.d, ourselves, or neighbours may be done Violence, or on the things by them possessed; As reasoning clear shall unto thee make known.

Our neighbour may by violence be distressed With grievous wounds, or slain; his goods and lands By havoc, fire, and plunder be oppressed.

Hence those who wound and slay with violent hands, Robbers, and spoilers, in the nearest round Are all tormented in their various bands.

Violent against himself may man be found, 40 And 'gainst his goods; therefore without avail They in the next are in repentance drowned Who on themselves loss of your world entail, Who gamble[381] and their substance madly spend, And who when called to joy lament and wail.

And even to G.o.d may violence extend By heart denial and by blasphemy, Scorning what nature doth in bounty lend.

Sodom and Cahors[382] hence are doomed to lie Within the narrowest circlet surely sealed; 50 And such as G.o.d within their hearts defy.

Fraud,[383] 'gainst whose bite no conscience findeth shield, A man may use with one who in him lays Trust, or with those who no such credence yield.

Beneath this latter kind of it decays The bond of love which out of nature grew; Hence, in the second circle[384] herd the race To feigning given and flattery, who pursue Magic, false coining, theft, and simony, Pimps, barrators, and suchlike residue. 60 The other form of fraud makes nullity Of natural bonds; and, what is more than those, The special trust whence men on men rely.

Hence in the place whereon all things repose, The narrowest circle and the seat of Dis,[385]

Each traitor's gulfed in everlasting woes.'

'Thy explanation, Master, as to this Is clear,' I said, 'and thou hast plainly told Who are the people stowed in the abyss.

But tell why those the muddy marshes hold, 70 The tempest-driven, those beaten by the rain, And such as, meeting, virulently scold, Are not within the crimson city ta'en For punishment, if hateful unto G.o.d; And, if not hateful, wherefore doomed to pain?'

And he to me: 'Why wander thus abroad, More than is wont, thy wits? or how engrossed Is now thy mind, and on what things bestowed?

Hast thou the memory of the pa.s.sage lost In which thy Ethics[386] for their subject treat 80 Of the three moods by Heaven abhorred the most-- Malice and b.e.s.t.i.a.lity complete; And how, compared with these, incontinence Offends G.o.d less, and lesser blame doth meet?

If of this doctrine thou extract the sense, And call to memory what people are Above, outside, in endless penitence, Why from these guilty they are sundered far Thou shalt discern, and why on them alight The strokes of justice in less angry war.' 90 'O Sun that clearest every troubled sight, So charmed am I by thy resolving speech, Doubt yields me joy no less than knowing right.

Therefore, I pray, a little backward reach,'

I asked, 'to where thou say'st that usury Sins 'gainst G.o.d's bounty; and this mystery teach.'

He said: 'Who gives ear to Philosophy Is taught by her, nor in one place alone, What nature in her course is governed by, Even Mind Divine, and art which thence hath grown; 100 And if thy Physics[387] thou wilt search within, Thou'lt find ere many leaves are open thrown, This art by yours, far as your art can win, Is followed close--the teacher by the taught; As grandchild then to G.o.d your art is kin.

And from these two--do thou recall to thought How Genesis[388] begins--should come supplies Of food for man, and other wealth be sought.

And, since another plan the usurer plies, Nature and nature's child have his disdain;[389] 110 Because on other ground his hope relies.

But come,[390] for to advance I now am fain: The Fishes[391] over the horizon line Quiver; o'er Caurus now stands all the Wain; And further yonder does the cliff decline.'

FOOTNOTES:

[375] _Vast abyss_: They are now at the inner side of the Sixth Circle, and upon the verge of the rocky steep which slopes down from it into the Seventh. All the lower h.e.l.l lies beneath them, and it is from that rather than from the next circle in particular that the stench arises, symbolical of the foulness of the sins which are punished there. The noisome smells which make part of the horror of Inferno are after this sometimes mentioned, but never dwelt upon (_Inf._ xviii. 106, and xxix.

50).

[376] _Pope Anastasius_: The second of the name, elected Pope in 496.

Photinus, bishop of Sirenium, was infected with the Sabellian heresy, but he was deposed more than a century before the time of Anastasius.

Dante follows some obscure legend in charging Anastasius with heresy.

The important point is that the one heretic, in the sense usually attached to the term, named as being in the city of unbelief, is a Pope.

[377] _Three small circles_: The Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth; small in circ.u.mference compared with those above. The pilgrims are now deep in the hollow cone.

[378] _That sight, etc._: After hearing the following explanation Dante no longer asks to what cla.s.ses the sinners met with belong, but only as to the guilt of individual shades.

[379] _Injury_: They have left above them the circles of those whose sin consists in the exaggeration or misdirection of a wholesome natural instinct. Below them lie the circles filled with such as have been guilty of malicious wickedness. This manifests itself in two ways: by violence or by fraud. After first mentioning in a general way that the fraudulent are set lowest in Inferno, Virgil proceeds to define violence, and to tell how the violent occupy the circle immediately beneath them--the Seventh. For division of the maliciously wicked into two cla.s.ses Dante is supposed to be indebted to Cicero: 'Injury may be wrought by force or by fraud.... Both are unnatural for man, but fraud is the more hateful.'--_De Officiis_, i. 13. It is remarkable that Virgil says nothing of those in the Sixth Circle in this account of the cla.s.ses of sinners.

[380] _To man alone, etc._: Fraud involves the corrupt use of the powers that distinguish us from the brutes.

[381] _Who gamble, etc._: A different sin from the lavish spending punished in the Fourth Circle (_Inf._ vii.). The distinction is that between thriftlessness and the prodigality which, stripping a man of the means of living, disgusts him with life, as described in the following line. It is from among prodigals that the ranks of suicides are greatly filled, and here they are appropriately placed together. It may seem strange that in his cla.s.sification of guilt Dante should rank violence to one's self as a more heinous sin than that committed against one's neighbour. He may have in view the fact that none harm their neighbours so much as they who are oblivious of their own true interest.

[382] _Sodom and Cahors_: Sins against nature are reckoned sins against G.o.d, as explained lower down in this Canto. Cahors in Languedoc had in the Middle Ages the reputation of being a nest of usurers. These in old English Chronicles are termed Caorsins. With the sins of Sodom and Cahors are ranked the denial of G.o.d and blasphemy against Him--deeper sins than the erroneous conceptions of the Divine nature and government punished in the Sixth Circle. The three concentric rings composing the Seventh Circle are all on the same level, as we shall find.

[383] _Fraud, etc._: Fraud is of such a nature that conscience never fails to give due warning against the sin. This is an aggravation of the guilt of it.

[384] _The second circle_: The second now beneath them; that is, the Eighth.

[385] _Seat of Dis_: The Ninth and last Circle.

[386] _Thy Ethics_: The Ethics of Aristotle, in which it is said: 'With regard to manners, these three things are to be eschewed: incontinence, vice, and b.e.s.t.i.a.lity.' Aristotle holds incontinence to consist in the immoderate indulgence of propensities which under right guidance are adapted to promote lawful pleasure. It is, generally speaking, the sin of which those about whom Dante has inquired were guilty.--It has been ingeniously sought by Philalethes (_Gott. Com._) to show that Virgil's disquisition is founded on this threefold cla.s.sification of Aristotle's--violence being taken to be the same as b.e.s.t.i.a.lity, and malice as vice. But the reference to Aristotle is made with the limited purpose of justifying the lenient treatment of incontinence; in the same way as a few lines further on Genesis is referred to in support of the harsh treatment of usury.

[387] _Physics_: The Physics of Aristotle, in which it is said: 'Art imitates nature.' Art includes handicrafts.

[388] _Genesis_: 'And the Lord G.o.d took the man, and put him into the garden to dress it and to keep it.' 'In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.'

[389] _His disdain_: The usurer seeks to get wealth independently of honest labour or reliance on the processes of nature. This far-fetched argument against usury closes one of the most arid pa.s.sages of the _Comedy_. The shortness of the Canto almost suggests that Dante had himself got weary of it.

[390] _But come, etc._: They have been all this time resting behind the lid of the tomb.

[391] _The Fishes, etc._: The sun being now in Aries the stars of Pisces begin to rise about a couple of hours before sunrise. The Great Bear lies above Caurus, the quarter of the N.N.W. wind. It seems impossible to harmonise the astronomical indications scattered throughout the _Comedy_, there being traces of Dante's having sometimes used details belonging rather to the day on which Good Friday fell in 1300, the 8th of April, than to the (supposed) true anniversary of the crucifixion.

That this, the 25th of March, is the day he intended to conform to appears from _Inf._ xxi. 112.--The time is now near dawn on the Sat.u.r.day morning. It is almost needless to say that Virgil speaks of the stars as he knows they are placed, but without seeing them. By what light they see in Inferno is nowhere explained. We have been told that it was dark as night (_Inf._ iv. 10, v. 28).

CANTO XII.

The place of our descent[392] before us lay Precipitous, and there was something more From sight of which all eyes had turned away.

As at the ruin which upon the sh.o.r.e Of Adige[393] fell upon this side of Trent-- Through earthquake or by slip of what before Upheld it--from the summit whence it went Far as the plain, the shattered rocks supply Some sort of foothold to who makes descent; Such was the pa.s.sage down the precipice high. 10 And on the riven gully's very brow Lay spread at large the Cretan Infamy[394]