The Divine Comedy, Vol. I: Inferno - WordPress

PE;-.;GUJN CLASSICSDANTE ALIGHIERI was born in Florence in I265 and belonged to a noblebut impoverished family. He followed a normal course of studies,possibly attending university in Bologna, and when he was abouttwenty, he married Gemma Donati, by whom he had several children.He had first met Bice Portinari, whom he called Beatrice, in I274,and when she died in I290, he sought distraction by studying phi losophy and theology and by writing La Vita Nuova. During this timehe became involved in the strife between the Guelfs and the Ghibel lines; he became a prominent White Guelf, and when the Black Guelfscame to power in I 302, Dante, during an absence from Florence, wascondemned to exile. He took refuge first in Verona, and after wan dering from place to place--as far as Paris and even, some have said,to Oxford-he settled in Ravenna. While there he completed TheDivine Comedy, which he began in about I 308. Dante died in Ravennain IJ2!.MARK MusA is a graduate of Rutgers University (B.A., I956), theUniversity of Florence (Fulbright, I956-58), and the Johns HopkinsUniversity (M.A., I959; Ph.D., I96I). He is a former Guggenheimfellow and the author of a number of books and articles. Best knownfor his translations of the Italian classics (Dante and the poetry of theMiddle Ages), he is Distinguished Professor of French and Italian atthe Center for Italian Studies, Indiana University. Mr. Musa and PeterBondanella have translated and edited Tile Portable Machiavelli, alsopublished by Penguin Books.

DANTE ALIGHIERITHE DIVINECOMEDYVOLUME IINFERNOTRANSLATED WITH AN INTRODUCTION,NOTES, AND COMMENTARY BYMARK MUSAPENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN BOOKSPublished by the Penguin GroupViking Penguin Inc., 40 West 2.3rd StreetNew York, New York 10010, U.S.A.Penguin Books Ltd, 2.7 Wrights Lane,London W 8 sTZ, EnglandPenguin Books Australia Ltd, R.ingwood,Victoria, AustraliaPenguin Books Canada Ltd, 2.8 01john Street,Markham, Ontario, Canada L3R IB4Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road,Auckland 10, New Zealand,Penguin Books Ltd, Regi stered Offices:Harmondsworth, Middlesex, EnglandThis translationfirst publishedin the United States of Americaby Indiana University Press1971First published in Canada byFitzhenry & Whiteside Limited 1971a new Introduction,with revisions 1984Published in The Penguin Classics withGlossary, and Selected Bibliography and7 910 8Copyright Indiana University Press,1971Introduction and Glossary and Index of Personsand Places copyrightAU Mark Musa,1984rights reservedLIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATADante Alighieri,U6S-1321.The divine comedy.(Penguin classics)Translation of: Divina commedia.Bibliography: p.Includes ir:dex.Contents: v. I. Inferno.PQI. Musa, Mark. II. Series.4315.M8 1984851'.183-17423ISBN o 14 044.441 6Printed in rhe United States of AmericaSet in Linotron BemboDiagrams and maps drawn by C.W.Scott-Giles

FORISABELLANel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita

The subject of this work must first be considered according to theletter, then be considered allegorically. The subject ofthe whole work,then, taken in the literal sense alone, is simply " The state of soulsafter death, " for the movement of the whole work hinges on this. Ifthe work be taken allegorically, the subject is "Man-as, accordingto his merits or demerits in the exercise of his free will, he is subjectto reward or punishment by Justice. . . .The title of the work is "Here begins the Comedy of DanteAlighieri, Florentine by birth, not by character. "DANTE's Letter to Can Grande"

C O N TE N T SAcknowledgments13An Introduction to Dante and His Works15Translator's Note: On Being a Good Lover57Canto ICanto IICanto IIICanto IVCanto VCanto VICanto VIICanto VIIICanto IXCanto XCanto XICanto XIICanto XIIICanto XIVCanto XVCanto XVICanto XVIICanto XVIIICanto XIXCanto XXCanto XXICanto XXIICanto XXIIICanto XXIVCanto XXV677989971091211291381471581 681 761 8619620521422323 123925 1260268277288297

10THE DIVINE COMEDY: INFERNOCanto XXVICanto XXVIICanto XXVIIICanto XXIXCanto XXXCanto XXXICanto XXXIICanto XXXIIICanto XXXIV305315325335343353362370379Glossary and Index of Persons and Places3 89Selected Bibliography429

L I S T O F D IA GR A MSA N D MA P SSection of the Earth66Map of Upper Hell, Circles I to V88Map of Lower Hell, Circles VI and VII148Section-Map of Hell1 72Map of Lower Hell, Circle VIII232Bridge over Bolgia 324 1Font in Baptistery at Pisa24 1Diagram to Illustrate Canto XXIV, 34-3 5290Map and Sketch of Lower Hell, Circle IX352

A C K N O WL E D GME N T SI should like to acknowledge my gratitude to all the studentsin my Dante classes at Indiana University for the past nineyears, whose comments I often found helpful in the prepa ration of my notes, and especially to Christopher Kleinhenzand Charles Jernigan (now professors), Denise Heilbronn andJudith Sherrington, who served in various ways as my researchassistants; and to Indiana University's Office of Research andAdvanced Studies for a number of very helpful grants. I amalso indebted to Rudolph Gottfried and Gene Lawlis, profes sors in the English Department of this university, for valuablesuggestions concerning the translation and the notes. And manythanks to Bernard Perry, the director of the Indiana UniversityPress, for his courage and encouragement and for giving mean editor with the splendid talents of Dorothy Wikclund.And to Anna Hatcher, my severest critic.Special thanks to Georges Edelen, several of whose sug gestions I have incorporated into this new Penguin edition,and to Peter Bondanella and Jim Jensen, who made suggestionsfor the Introduction. Thanks to Nancy Kipp Smith for herhelp with the Glossary and to sweet Sandy Claxon, who typedand typed and typed.

A N I N T R O D UC T I O N T OD A N TE A ND H I S W O R K SNoTMUCH is known about Dante Alighieri. W e know hewas born in Florence sometime in late May or early June (hewas a Gemini) of the year 1 265 in the district of San Martino,the son of Alighiero di Bellincione d'Alighiero. His mother,Donna Bella, died when he was very young; his father, whomhe seems to avoid mentioning as much as possible, remarried,and died while Dante was in his late teens. The Alighieri familymay be considered noble by reason of the titles and dignitiesbestowed upon its members, although by the time Dante ar rived on the scene the family seems to have been reduced tomodest economic and social circumstances. According to Dantehimself in Inferno XV, the family descended from the nobleseed of the Roman founders of the city. This claim, however,remains largely unsubstantiated, as nothing is known of Dante'sancestors before his great-great-grandfather Cacciaguida, whowas knighted by Emperor Conrad III. In the company ofCacciaguida Dante spends several emotional cantos in the finalpart of the great poem: they are cantos that occupy the centralportion of the Paradise, in which important questions are an swered, tragic events are revealed, and major themes runningthrough the entire Divine Comedy are resolved. Cacciaguidadied, or so Dante tells us in Paradise XV ( 1 3 9-48), during theSecond Crusade, about I 1 47.Like most of the city's lesser nobility and artisans, Dante'sfamily was affiliated with the Guelf party, as opposed to theGhibellines, whose adherents tended to belong to the feudalaristocracy. These two parties came into Italy from Germany,and their names represent Italianized forms of the names at tached to the two rival German clans of Welf and Waibling.In Italy, the parties were at first identified with broad aile-

16THE DIVINE COMEDY: INFERNOgiances: to papal authority for the Guelfs, and to imperialauthority in the case of the Ghibellines. Eventually, however,this distinction between Church and Empire disappeared, andthe two parties became less clearly defined in outlook andpurpose. Local connotations became much more important,as party issues and activities were tied to neighborhood ri valries, family feuds, and private interests. Thus, the Guelfsand Ghibellines of Florence were in a sense factions peculiarto that region alone.One year after Dante's birth the Guelfs gained control inFlorence: 1 266 marks the beginning of nearly thirty years ofrelative peace and prosperity in the city. Florence was flour ishing at this time, artistically, intellectually, and commer cially; according to a contemporary chronicler, Dino Compagni,Florence could even boast of a tourist trade. The city, com posed of old and respectable, wealthy families as well as thenouveau riche, was certainly one of the wealthiest of its day.Founded on banking and the gold florin, it thrived on themanufacturing of silk, fur, leather, and especially wool. An other chronicler, Giovanni Villani, reports that there were asmany as two hundred shops, or botteghe, belonging to the woolguild (which employed thirty thousand people) and as manyas eighty banks in town. By this time the Florentine bankingfamilies, most prominent of whom were the Bardi and thePeruzzi, had become international leaders in the field ofbanking.Like every good male citizen of Florence, Dante did hismilitary service. In 1 289 he joined the cavalry, the aristocraticbranch of the armed forces, and in the summer of that year,when Florence and its Guelf allies were at war with the neigh boring town of Arezzo, Dante took part in the battle of Cam paldino, which ended in a decisive victory for Florence. Lateron, in August, he was at the siege of the Pisan fortress ofCaprona. He records both experiences in The Divine Comedy:Campaldino in Purgatory V, through the eyes ofthe courageousBuonconte da Montefeltro, who dies in that battle; and thesurrender of Caprona's fortress in Inferno XXI.lf l were asked to quote a passage that best describes Dante's

INTRODUCTION17feelings about war in general, I might turn to the opening linesof Inferno XXII for their color and force and pageantry, butmy final choice would be to quote the closing lines of CantoXXI, for the first five tercets of the next canto are simply agloss on them. Mala coda, the devil-captain in charge of affairsin the Fifth Bolgia, which houses the corrupt souls of the Graft ers, who misused public office, orders ten of his best devilsto accompany the Pilgrim and his guide, Virgil, to the archwaycrossing the Sixth Bolgia. There is no archway, but only thecaptain and his men know that, and they are about to takeadvantage of the fact by having a little fun with their innocentwards; the canto ends with the black squadron of ten salutingtheir honorable captain just as they are about to take off:Before they turned left-face along the bankeach one gave their good captain a salutewith farting tongue pressed tightly to his teeth,and he blew back with his bugle of an ass-hole.So much for war!As far as one can tell from his writings, Dante's recollectionsof family life were pleasant ones. It is fairly certain that hereceived a careful education, although little of its content isprecisely known. He may have attended the Franciscan lowerschools, and later the order's schools of philosophy. The fam ily's modest social standing did not prevent him from pursuinghis studies, nor was he hindered in his effort to lead the lifeof a gentleman. His writings indicate that he was familiar withthe ways of the country as well as with city life. He probablystudied for a time under the direction of the distinguishedteacher, scholar, and statesman Brunetto Latini (c. 1220--94 ),who was the author of an encyclopedia in French, the Tresor,a work well known all over Europe. At this time Dante wasdriven by a desire to master the techniques of style. It seemsthat Brunetto encouraged his keenness for study and learning,and this may account for a trip, around 1 287, to Bologna,where Dante decided to pursue his study of rhetoric in thehighly renowned university.