From This Blind World
Into the Living Light
Feraco
Myth to Science Fiction
7 December 2009
Venedico Caccianemico
(Panderer)
• Sold his sister, Ghisola (often called
“Ghisolabella” for her beauty) to the
Marquis Obbizo da Este in order to win
influence with him
• He was a well-known Guelf politician in
Bologna, a city whose populace was
notorious for pandering
• He, like the Unknown Florentine Suicide
in Circle Seven (and like one of the
Grafters in Bolgia Five), stands in for his
city here; his suffering is Dante’s way of
metaphorically punishing the town
Jason (Seducer)
• An ancient hero who plays a role in Ovid’s
Metamorphosis
• As leader of the Argonauts, Jason retrieved the
Golden Fleece thanks in part to Medea, a
princess of Colchis who used her magic to help
Jason defeat the dragon guarding the Fleece
• Jason took her along with him after leaving
Colchis, married her, and sired two of her
children, only to abandon her in order to marry
a woman named Cruesa
• In response, Medea killed her own children and
poisoned Cruesa
• Jason had also seduced and abandoned a woman
named Hypsipyle midway through his quest for
the Fleece, so the sexual and emotional
infidelity he displays towards Medea aren’t
exactly new
Alessio Interminelli
(Flatterer)
•
•
•
•
A sinner who, like Venedico (but unlike Jason), wants
to hide his identity and terrible suffering from Dante;
it’s him who reveals this new trend among the sinners
Dante’s original Italian descriptions of him
onomatopoeically hiss and ooze – thus making him so
inseparable from his disgusting punishment (the
double “Cs” in particular recall the sound of Alessio
slapping his waste-covered head in torment) that we
recoil from any discussion of him, remembering him
only as a disgusting, wretched figure
If we recoil from their sight, it’s probably a good
thing – provided we recognize the sin before
renouncing it
(Much of the renunciation actually takes place during
the last two parts of The Divine Comedy; The Inferno
is much more interested in really recognizing each
sin for what it is, as well as understanding why those
who seek salvation have to purge themselves of their
desire to commit sin)
Pope Nicholas III
(Simoniac)
• Nicholas is the simonist pope who once served as
the head of the Inquisition; he assumed the
papacy in 1277
• He’s a fascinating figure because of his
contradictory nature
• As a pope, he actually did many good things – he
cared for the poor and brokered compromises
between different religious factions; however,
his high moral standards were offset by his
eagerly nepotistic practice of handing church
positions to undeserving family members in
order to benefit himself
• Interestingly, Nicholas mistakes Dante for
Boniface at first, eventually revealing that our
two popes from “Into the Inferno” (Boniface VIII
and Clement V) are far more corrupt than he –
and that they will displace him from his tube
Tiresias (Diviner)
• Perhaps the most famous fortune-teller in all of
classical mythology, Tiresias gained his powers
when he stumbled upon two entangled snakes
and struck at them with his staff
• Upon striking them, he was changed into a
woman – then was changed back seven years
later when he found the same snakes and struck
them again
• After taking the wrong side in Zeus and Hera’s
argument, he was struck blind by Hera; Zeus,
feeling somewhat guilty for involving Tiresias in
the first place, gave him the ability to see the
future instead
• He pops up in a lot of different places –
everything from The Odyssey to The Waste Land
– so he’s a good one to know
Unidentified Navarrese
(Ciampolo) (Grafter)
• Little is known about him save what
Dante writes, although he’s French
rather than Florentine; although Ciardi
never identifies him, many scholars
accept that he is Ciampolo, who took
bribes in exchange for favors through
his service for his king
• His total lack of moral fiber also
distinguishes him: he offers to betray
his peers in order to save himself, then
turns on those who accept what is, in
essence, another bribe
• It’s only fitting that he, a irredeemably
corrupted soul, disappears back into the
black pitch
Jovial Friars
(Hypocrites)
• These two (Catalano and Loderingo) were
founders of a religious/military organization
that aimed to protect widows and orphans, as
well as promote peacekeeping
• Since Catalano was a Guelf and Loderingo a
Ghibelline, the pope (Clement IV) sent them to
“keep the peace” in Florence
• This was before the divide within the Guelfs; at
this point, they’re still unabashedly supporting
of papal power
• It was therefore no surprise that the Jovial
Friars’ ostensible promises of neutrality soon
gave way to practices that openly favored the
Guelfs, who went on to banish the Ghibellines
Caiaphas (Hypocrites)
•
•
•
•
As the High Priest of Jerusalem, Caiaphas is in a
position to spare Christ; instead, Scripture shows him
advising the Pharisees that "one man should die for
the people" so that "the whole nation perish not"
(John 11:50)
Dante, seeing the advice as not only dishonest but
self-serving, places him and his relatives on the floor
of the Sixth Bolgia, where they’re continually stepped
on by the other weighed-down Hypocrites
This contrapasso – the rhetorical term for the logical
relationships between the sins and their punishments
in Dante’s Hell – has been interpreted in darker
terms; at one point, Dante shows Virgil “marveling”
for an extended period of time at Caiaphas’s
punishment, even though he later rebukes Dante for
lingering over the sight of Master Adam and Sinon
fighting
Some see Virgil’s seemingly hypocritical actions here
as Dante’s way of endorsing the Jews’ persecution as
payback for Christ’s crucifixion
Vanni Fucci (Thief)
• Vanni Fucci was a Black from Pistoia,
Florence’s “rival city,” who committed
many crimes – murder among them
• He’s placed below the Seventh Circle
because he also stole holy objects from
the Pistoian cathedral
• Fucci just generally seems like a foul
character, even in death – he vindictively
announces the future decimation of the
Whites, then gestures obscenely at God
• Other shades have done worse things,
but Fucci might be the easiest character
to dislike in the entire Inferno
Five Noble Thieves
• You only need to know what
happens to whom among this
group
• Agnello (Human) merges with
Cianfa (Six-Legged Lizard), who
attacks him
• Buoso (Human) loses his form to
Francesco (Reptile), who attacks
him
• Puccio Sciancato remains
human…for now
– It’s implied that he’ll be attacked soon
Ulysses (Evil Counselor)
•
•
•
•
This is Odysseus from The Odyssey (the Romans
changed Greek names at the drop of a hat), but Dante
hadn’t read it or The Iliad because they hadn’t been
translated
Instead, he relies on Virgil’s pro-Trojan The Aeneid,
which has many unkind things to say about the man
who inspired the Trojan Horse (talk about
deception!), tricked Achilles into joining the war, and
stole the Palladium from Troy
The death sequence Dante relates here is entirely the
poet’s creation, and shows the gifted rhetorician
traveling far beyond the realms that normal men
have traveled; he dies on the edge of Mount
Purgatory, which is where we’ll end our story
This isn’t an accidental parallel; you’ll notice Dante
begins Canto XXVI by warning himself not to go too
far overboard with his own rhetorical flourishes while
describing what he sees
Guido da Montefeltro
(Evil Counselor)
•
Guido was a both a perpetrator and victim of fraud,
much like Ulysses
• He was a Ghibelline military leader outside of
Florence who won several victories over the Guelfs
and even forces who merely fought out of loyalty to
the pope
• Once he suffered defeat, he was excommunicated,
only to find even more military success
• Boniface rescinded the excommunication in order to
get him out of the public’s eye, and Guido
“converted” and became a friar
• Once a friar, Boniface compels him to give him advice
about how to destroy the pope’s enemies; when Guido
seems reluctant to answer, Boniface promises the
impossible (to absolve him of a sin in advance), and
Guido complies, telling the pope to extend a false
promise of amnesty to the main family that opposes
him
• He perpetrated that fraud, but was ultimately
betrayed by Boniface, who never absolved him of his
sin – and thus doomed him to the Eighth Circle
Guido da Montefeltro
(Evil Counselor)
•
T. S. Eliot uses these lines in the Italian original as the
epigraph to his famous poem about a modern-day
parallel to Guido, "The Love Song of J. Alfred
Prufrock":
S'i' credesse che mia risposta fosse
a persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
questa fiamma staria sanza più scosse;
ma però che già mai di questo fondo
non tornò vivo alcun, s'i' odo il vero,
sanza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.
If I believed that my reply were made
To one who could ever climb to the world again,
This flame would shake no more. But since no shade
Ever returned – if what I am told is true –
From this blind world into the living light,
Without fear of dishonor I answer you.
Mahomet / Ali (Sowers of
Religious Discord)
•
In one of the uglier instances of medieval Christian
thinking’s influence on the text, Dante portrays the
Muslim world as the Christian world’s natural
enemies
• Mahomet (the founder of Islam) and Ali (his
cousin/son-and-law) seem like they should be major
characters, but they aren’t nearly as important,
backstory-wise, as many of the others
• In fact, they (as individuals) are not necessarily
important
• Dante’s using them to paint a larger picture, one that
indicts all of Islam for its supposed wrongs against
Christianity
• Since we’re in the circle about discord, Dante can’t
have the faith wandering around the underworld – so
he uses (and punishes) people instead
• Therefore, the men actually function more as
microcosmic symbols for their faith than as real
people
Mahomet / Ali (Sowers of
Religious Discord)
• Islam was a hugely influential cultural force at a
time when Christianity happened to be facing a
number of splits and battles (we’ve just left the
Crusades), and Dante would have been educated
to see Muslims uncritically as divisive and
implacable enemies
• One popular (incorrect) teaching at the time
even held that Mahomet had actually been a
cardinal who sought the papacy, and who caused
a huge schism within Christianity when he was
denied the highest office – one of the worst
wrongs you could commit in Dante’s eyes
(although, oddly, he seems to have absolutely no
compunction about taking shots at the current
Church itself)
Pier da Medicina (Sower
of Political Discord)
• He turned the leading
families of Ravenna and
Rimini against one another,
falsely informing each that
the other plotted to destroy it
• He introduces Dante to the
other Sowers
Mosca dei Lamberti
(Political Discord)
• The original source of the conflict between the
Guelfs and Ghibellines; although deeper political
and cultural issues sustained the conflict, a
single incident created it
• A man named Buondelmonte de’ Buondelmonti
courted a woman from the powerful Amidei
family, only to reject her hand in marriage
(choosing instead a member of the Donati clan)
• Mosca advised the enraged Amideis to take the
harshest revenge they could, and he, the
Amideis, and a member of the Uberti family
(Farinata’s ancestor) stabbed Buondelmonte to
death near the statue of Mars (which the
Florentine Suicide alluded to earlier) on Easter
Sunday 1215
• The Buondelmonti family subsequently attacked
the Uberti clan; the former would organize its
allies into the Guelfs, while the latter led what
would become the Ghibellines
Bertrand de Born (Sower
of Familial Discord)
• Dante’s most famous contrapasso, Betrand de
Born sowed discord between the English King
Henry II and his son (also named Henry)
• Before death, de Born was also a poet of some
renown; Raffa believes Dante was inspired by the
following passage, which “celebrates the
mayhem and violence of warfare”:
Maces, swords, helmets--colorfully—
Shields, slicing and smashing,
We'll see at the start of the melee
With all those vassals clashing,
And horses running free
From their masters, hit, downtread.
Once the charge has been led,
Every man of nobility
Will hack at arms and heads.
Better than taken prisoner: be dead.
Griffolino d’Arezzo and
Capocchio (Alchemists)
•
Both men tried to chemically alter metals in order to
appear more valuable – similar in many ways to
counterfeiting
• Griffolino points out that while he’s punished for his
misconduct here, it wasn’t what got him killed;
instead, he jokingly promised a gullible but powerful
friend that he could teach him how to fly
• After failing miserably at flying – and making a fool
of himself in the process – the friend complained to
an inquisitor, who had Griffolino burned at the stake
for supposedly practicing the “dark magic” that
would have allowed the friend to fly
• Capocchio was probably an old classmate of Dante’s
from Florence, as he expects Dante to have
recognized him
• He had a talent for mimicking people and even
objects, but soon turned his attention to making
metal mimic other things
• In the end, a total of three men were paid to burn him
at the stake, indicating that his crimes were fairly
serious
Gianni Schicchi (Evil
Impersonator)
• Gianni appears when he sinks
his teeth into Capocchio and
drags him back into the ditch
• In life, he was a member of
the Cavalcanti clan
• He once impersonated a man
who was already dead (Buoso
Donati, one of the Five Noble
Thieves) in order to dictate a
false will – one that benefitted
him hugely
Master Adam
(Counterfeiter)
• In certain Circles, shades are hostile to one
another, usually by design (the Hoarders and
the Wasters, the Wrathful and the Sullen); the
Eighth Circle takes that hostility and makes it
much more important
• The sinners behave with hostility towards one
another, whereas the blessed are supposed to
love mankind
• In the Tenth Bolgia, we meet two souls that seem
to be perpetually at war with one another
• Master Adam manufactured florins (Florence’s
currency) that contained only 21-karat gold,
making them essentially fake; apocryphal
stories claim that his counterfeiting operation
was prolific enough to start a currency crisis
within Florence
Sinon (False Witness)
•
•
•
•
•
•
Sinon was introduced to Dante through Virgil’s
Aeneid, which (just as with Ulysses) paints him as a
villain for assisting in the destruction of Troy
As part of the plot for moving the Trojan Horse inside
the city’s walls, the Greeks “leave” Sinon behind when
they seemingly desert the battlefield
In actuality, most of them are inside the horse
Sinon convinces the Trojans that the Greeks angered
Athena when Odysseus stole the Palladium from Troy,
and that they built the Horse in order to calm her
fury; he even goes so far as to claim that he escaped
before they could sacrifice him in her name in
exchange for a safe voyage home
Believing the Horse to be a workable replacement for
their stolen Palladium, the Trojans bring the Horse
inside the city in order to placate the gods
themselves; then the Greeks pour out of it at night
and destroy everything
Thus the Greeks are able to destroy Troy through
dishonor and fraud
Nimrod and Antaeus
(Giants)
•
•
•
•
•
Nimrod was an extremely tall king whose subjects
decided to build a tower (the Tower of Babel) that
would reach Heaven; a displeased God scatters the
people everywhere and fractures their language
irreparably (Genesis’s explanation for linguistic
diversity)
Nimrod’s former subjects no longer understand each
other, and Nimrod himself has been robbed of
sensible language entirely; he just babbles now
Nimrod’s subjects reflect their ruler’s pride – it takes
a certain audacity to try building something that
reaches into God’s realm without divine permission,
and that audacity results in their punishment
Antaeus can talk (unlike Nimrod), and is also
unchained; Virgil notes that he wasn’t one of the
Giants who attacked the gods, although he did attach
humans (and was killed by Hercules)
Antaeus is as proud as Nimrod; the poets reach the
Ninth Circle because Virgil appeals to his pride, telling
him that Dante will renew his reputation as a
fearsome warrior if he helps them