The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: The Inferno

CANTO XV.

Now lies[454] our way along one of the margins hard;
Steam rising from the rivulet forms a cloud,
Which ’gainst the fire doth brook and borders guard.
Like walls the Flemings, timorous of the flood
Which towards them pours betwixt Bruges and Cadsand,[455]
Have made, that ocean’s charge may be withstood;
Or what the Paduans on the Brenta’s strand
To guard their castles and their homesteads rear,
Ere Chiarentana[456] feel the spring-tide bland;
Of the same fashion did those dikes appear,10
Though not so high[457] he made them, nor so vast,
Whoe’er the builder was that piled them here.
We, from the wood when we so far had passed
I should not have distinguished where it lay
Though I to see it backward glance had cast,
A group of souls encountered on the way,
Whose line of march was to the margin nigh.
Each looked at us—as by the new moon’s ray
Men peer at others ’neath the darkening sky—
Sharpening his brows on us and only us,20
Like an old tailor on his needle’s eye.
And while that crowd was staring at me thus,
One of them knew me, caught me by the gown,
And cried aloud: ‘Lo, this is marvellous!’[458]
And straightway, while he thus to me held on,
I fixed mine eyes upon his fire-baked face,
And, spite of scorching, seemed his features known,
And whose they were my memory well could trace;
And I, with hand[459] stretched toward his face below,
Asked: ‘Ser Brunetto![460] and is this your place?’30
‘O son,’ he answered, ‘no displeasure show,
If now Brunetto Latini shall some way
Step back with thee, and leave his troop to go.’
I said: ‘With all my heart for this I pray,
And, if you choose, I by your side will sit;
If he, for I go with him, grant delay.’
‘Son,’ said he, ‘who of us shall intermit
Motion a moment, for an age must lie
Nor fan himself when flames are round him lit.
On, therefore! At thy skirts I follow nigh,40
Then shall I overtake my band again,
Who mourn a loss large as eternity.’
I dared not from the path step to the plain
To walk with him, but low I bent my head,[461]
Like one whose steps are all with reverence ta’en.
‘What fortune or what destiny,’ he said,
‘Hath brought thee here or e’er thou death hast seen;
And who is this by whom thou’rt onward led?’
‘Up yonder,’ said I, ‘in the life serene,
I in a valley wandered all forlorn50
Before my years had full accomplished been.
I turned my back on it but yestermorn;[462]
Again I sought it when he came in sight
Guided by whom[463] I homeward thus return.’
And he to me: ‘Following thy planet’s light[464]
Thou of a glorious haven canst not fail,
If in the blithesome life I marked aright.
And had my years known more abundant tale,
Seeing the heavens so held thee in their grace
I, heartening thee, had helped thee to prevail.60
But that ungrateful and malignant race
Which down from Fiesole[465] came long ago,
And still its rocky origin betrays,
Will for thy worthiness become thy foe;
And with good reason, for ’mong crab-trees wild
It ill befits the mellow fig to grow.
By widespread ancient rumour are they styled
A people blind, rapacious, envious, vain:
See by their manners thou be not defiled.
Fortune reserves such honour for thee, fain70
Both sides[466] will be to enlist thee in their need;
But from the beak the herb shall far remain.
Let beasts of Fiesole go on to tread
Themselves to litter, nor the plants molest,
If any such now spring on their rank bed,
In whom there flourishes indeed the blest
Seed of the Romans who still lingered there
When of such wickedness ’twas made the nest.’
‘Had I obtained full answer to my prayer,
You had not yet been doomed,’ I then did say,80
[454] Now lies, etc.: The stream on issuing from the wood flows right across the waste of sand which that encompasses. To follow it they must turn to the right, as always when, their general course being to the left, they have to cross a Circle. But such a veering to the right is a consequence of their leftward course, and not an exception to it.

[455] Cadsand: An island opposite to the mouth of the great canal of Bruges.

[456] Chiarentana: What district or mountain is here meant has been much disputed. It can be taken for Carinthia only on the supposition that Dante was ignorant of where the Brenta rises. At the source of that river stands the Monte Chiarentana, but it may be a question how old that name is. The district name of it is Canzana, or Carenzana.

[457] Not so high, etc.: This limitation is very characteristic of Dante’s style of thought, which compels him to a precision that will produce the utmost possible effect of verisimilitude in his description. Most poets would have made the walls far higher and more vast, by way of lending grandeur to the conception.

[458] Marvellous: To find Dante, whom he knew, still living, and passing through the Circle.

[459] With hand, etc.: ‘With my face bent to his’ is another reading, but there seems to be most authority for that in the text.—The fiery shower forbids Dante to stoop over the edge of the causeway. To Brunetto, who is some feet below him, he throws out his open hand, a gesture of astonishment mingled with pity.

[460] Ser Brunetto: Brunetto Latini, a Florentine, was born in 1220. As a notary he was entitled to be called Ser, or Messer. As appears from the context, Dante was under great intellectual obligations to him, not, we may suppose, as to a tutor so much as to an active-minded and scholarly friend of mature age, and possessed of a ripe experience of affairs. The social respect that Dante owed him is indicated by the use of the plural form of address. See note, Inf. x. 51. Brunetto held high appointments in the Republic. Perhaps with some exaggeration, Villani says of him that he was the first to refine the Florentines, teaching them to speak correctly, and to administer State affairs on fixed principles of politics (Cronica, viii. 10). A Guelf in politics, he shared in the exile of his party after the Ghibeline victory of Montaperti in 1260, and for some years resided in Paris. There is reason to suppose that he returned to Florence in 1269, and that he acted as prothonotary of the court of Charles of Valois’ vicar-general in Tuscany. His signature as secretary to the Council of Florence is found under the date of 1273. He died in 1294, when Dante was twenty-nine, and was buried in the cloister of Santa Maria Maggiore, where his tombstone may still be seen. (Not in Santa Maria Novella.) Villani mentions him in his Chronicle with some reluctance, seeing he was a ‘worldly man.’ His life must indeed have been vicious to the last, before Dante could have had the heart to fix him in such company. Brunetto’s chief works are the Tesoro and Tesoretto. For the Tesoro, see note at line 119. The Tesoretto, or Little Treasure, is an allegorical poem in Italian rhymed couplets. In it he imagines himself, as he is on his return from an embassy to Alphonso of Castile, meeting a scholar of Bologna of whom he asks ‘in smooth sweet words for news of Tuscany.’ Having been told of the catastrophe of Montaperti he wanders out of the beaten way into the Forest of Roncesvalles, where he meets with various experiences; he is helped by Ovid, is instructed by Ptolemy, and grows penitent for his sins. In this, it will be seen, there is a general resemblance to the action of the Comedy. There are even turns of expression that recall Dante (e.g. beginning of Cap. iv.); but all together amounts to little.

[461] Low I bent my head: But not projecting it beyond the line of safety, strictly defined by the edge of the causeway. We are to imagine to ourselves the fire of Sodom falling on Brunetto’s upturned face, and missing Dante’s head only by an inch.

[462] Yestermorn: This is still the Saturday. It was Friday when Dante met Virgil.

[463] Guided by whom: Brunetto has asked who the guide is, and Dante does not tell him. A reason for the refusal has been ingeniously found in the fact that among the numerous citations of the Treasure Brunetto seldom quotes Virgil. See also the charge brought against Guido Cavalcanti (Inf. x. 63), of holding Virgil in disdain. But it is explanation enough of Dante’s omission to name his guide that he is passing through Inferno to gain experience for himself, and not to satisfy the curiosity of the shades he meets. See note on line 99.

[464] Thy planet’s light: Some think that Brunetto had cast Dante’s horoscope. In a remarkable passage (Parad. xxii. 112) Dante attributes any genius he may have to the influence of the Twins, which constellation was in the ascendant when he was born. See also Inf. xxvi. 23. But here it is more likely that Brunetto refers to his observation of Dante’s good qualities, from which he gathered that he was well starred.

[465] Fiesole: The mother city of Florence, to which also most of the Fiesolans were believed to have migrated at the beginning of the eleventh century. But all the Florentines did their best to establish a Roman descent for themselves; and Dante among them. His fellow-citizens he held to be for the most part of the boorish Fiesolan breed, rude and stony-hearted as the mountain in whose cleft the cradle of their race was seen from Florence.

[466] Both sides: This passage was most likely written not long after Dante had ceased to entertain any hope of winning his way back to Florence in the company of the Whites, whose exile he shared, and when he was already standing in proud isolation from Black and White, from Guelf and Ghibeline. There is nothing to show that his expectation of being courted by both sides ever came true. Never a strong partisan, he had, to use his own words, at last to make a party by himself, and stood out an Imperialist with his heart set on the triumph of an Empire far nobler than that the Ghibeline desired. Dante may have hoped to hold a place of honour some day in the council of a righteous Emperor; and this may be the glorious haven with the dream of which he was consoled in the wanderings of his exile.

[467] Another text: Ciacco and Farinata have already hinted at the troubles that lie ahead of him (Inf. vi. 65, and x. 79).

[468] The clown, etc.: The honest performance of duty is the best defence against adverse fortune.

[469] Right about: In traversing the sands they keep upon the right-hand margin of the embanked stream, Virgil leading the way, with Dante behind him on the right so that Brunetto may see and hear him well.

[470] He hears, etc.: Of all the interpretations of this somewhat obscure sentence that seems the best which applies it to Virgil’s Quicquid erit, superanda omnis fortuna ferendo est—‘Whatever shall happen, every fate is to be vanquished by endurance’ (Æn. v. 710). Taking this way of it, we have in the form of Dante’s profession of indifference to all the adverse fortune that may be in store for him a refined compliment to his Guide; and in Virgil’s gesture and words an equally delicate revelation of himself to Brunetto, in which is conveyed an answer to the question at line 48, ‘Who is this that shows the way?’—Otherwise, the words convey Virgil’s approbation of Dante’s having so well attended to his advice to store Farinata’s prophecy in his memory (Inf. x.127).

[471] His band: That is, the company to which Brunetto specially belongs, and from which for the time he has separated himself.

[472] Stained with one sin: Dante will not make Brunetto individually confess his sin.

[473] Priscian: The great grammarian of the sixth century; placed here without any reason, except that he is a representative teacher of youth.

[474] Francis d’Accorso: Died about 1294. The son of a great civil lawyer, he was himself professor of the civil law at Bologna, where his services were so highly prized that the Bolognese forbade him, on pain of the confiscation of his goods, to accept an invitation from Edward I. to go to Oxford.

[475] Of him the Slave, etc.: One of the Pope’s titles is Servus Servorum Domini. The application of it to Boniface, so hated by Dante, may be ironical: ‘Fit servant of such a slave to vice!’ The priest referred to so contemptuously is Andrea, of the great Florentine family of the Mozzi, who was much engaged in the political affairs of his time, and became Bishop of Florence in 1286. About ten years later he was translated to Vicenza, which stands on the Bacchiglione; and he died shortly afterwards. According to Benvenuto he was a ridiculous preacher and a man of dissolute manners. What is now most interesting about him is that he was Dante’s chief pastor during his early manhood, and is consigned by him to the same disgraceful circle of Inferno as his beloved master Brunetto Latini—a terrible evidence of the corruption of life among the churchmen as well as the scholars of the thirteenth century.

[476] New dust-clouds: Raised by a band by whom they are about to be met.

[477] My Treasure: The TrÉsor, or Tesoro, Brunetto’s principal work, was written by him in French as being ‘the pleasantest language, and the most widely spread.’ In it he treats of things in general in the encyclopedic fashion set him by Alphonso of Castile. The first half consists of a summary of civil and natural history. The second is devoted to ethics, rhetoric, and politics. To a great extent it is a compilation, containing, for instance, a translation, nearly complete, of the Ethics of Aristotle—not, of course, direct from the Greek. It is written in a plodding style, and speaks to more industry than genius. To it Dante is indebted for some facts and fables.

[478] The Green Cloth: To commemorate a victory won by the Veronese there was instituted a race to be run on the first Sunday of Lent. The prize was a piece of green cloth. The competitors ran naked.—Brunetto does not disappear into the gloom without a parting word of applause from his old pupil. Dante’s rigorous sentence on his beloved master is pronounced as softly as it can be. We must still wonder that he has the heart to bring him to such an awful judgment.

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