The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: The Inferno

CANTO XXIII.

Silent, alone, not now with company
We onward went, one first and one behind,
As Minor Friars[610] use to make their way.
On Æsop’s fable[611] wholly was my mind
Intent, by reason of that contest new—
The fable where the frog and mouse we find;
For Mo and Issa[612] are not more of hue
Than like the fable shall the fact appear,
If but considered with attention due.
And as from one thought springs the next, so here10
Out of my first arose another thought,
Until within me doubled was my fear.
For thus I judged: Seeing through us[613] were brought
Contempt upon them, hurt, and sore despite,
They needs must be to deep vexation wrought.
If anger to malevolence unite,
Then will they us more cruelly pursue
Than dog the hare which almost feels its bite.
All my hair bristled, I already knew,
With terror when I spake: ‘O Master, try20
To hide us quick’ (and back I turned to view
What lay behind), ‘for me they terrify,
These Malebranche following us; from dread
I almost fancy I can feel them nigh.’
And he: ‘Were I a mirror backed with lead
I should no truer glass that form of thine,
Than all thy thought by mine is answered.
For even now thy thoughts accord with mine,
Alike in drift and featured with one face;
And to suggest one counsel they combine.30
If the right bank slope downward at this place,
To the next Bolgia[614] offering us a way,
Swiftly shall we evade the imagined chase.’
Ere he completely could his purpose say,
I saw them with their wings extended wide,
Close on us; as of us to make their prey.
Then quickly was I snatched up by my Guide:
Even as a mother when, awaked by cries,
She sees the flames are kindling at her side,
Delaying not, seizes her child and flies;40
Careful for him her proper danger mocks,
Nor even with one poor shift herself supplies.
And he, stretched out upon the flinty rocks,
Himself unto the precipice resigned
Which one side of the other Bolgia blocks.
A swifter course ne’er held a stream confined,
That it may turn a mill, within its race,
Where near the buckets ’tis the most declined
Than was my Master’s down that rock’s sheer face;
Nor seemed I then his comrade, as we sped,50
But like a son locked in a sire’s embrace.
And barely had his feet struck on the bed
Of the low ground, when they were seen to stand
Upon the crest, no more a cause of dread.[615]
For Providence supreme, who so had planned
In the Fifth Bolgia they should minister,
Them wholly from departure thence had banned.
’Neath us we saw a painted people fare,
Weeping as on their way they circled slow,
Crushed by fatigue to look at, and despair.60
Cloaks had they on with hoods pulled down full low
Upon their eyes, and fashioned, as it seemed,
Like those which at Cologne[616] for monks they sew.
The outer face was gilt so that it gleamed;
Inside was all of lead, of such a weight
Frederick’s[617] to these had been but straw esteemed.
O weary robes for an eternal state!
With them we turned to the left hand once more,
Intent upon their tears disconsolate.
But those folk, wearied with the loads they bore,70
So slowly crept that still new company
Was ours at every footfall on the floor.
Whence to my Guide I said: ‘Do thou now try
To find some one by name or action known,
And as we go on all sides turn thine eye.’
And one, who recognised the Tuscan tone,
Called from behind us: ‘Halt, I you entreat
Who through the air obscure are hastening on;
Haply in me thou what thou seek’st shalt meet.’
Whereon my Guide turned round and said: ‘Await,
And keep thou time with pacing of his feet.’81
I stood, and saw two manifesting great
Desire to join me, by their countenance;
But their loads hampered them and passage strait.[618]
And, when arrived, me with an eye askance[619]
They gazed on long time, but no word they spoke;
Then, to each other turned, held thus parlance:
‘His heaving throat[

[610] Minor Friars: In the early years of their Order the Franciscans went in couples upon their journeys, not abreast but one behind the other.

[611] Æsop’s fable: This fable, mistakenly attributed to Æsop, tells of how a frog enticed a mouse into a pond, and how they were then both devoured by a kite. To discover the aptness of the simile would scarcely be reward enough for the continued mental effort Dante enjoins. So much was everything Greek or Roman then held in reverence, that the mention even of Æsop is held to give dignity to the page.

[612] Mo and Issa: Two words for now.

[613] Through us: The quarrel among the fiends arose from Dante’s insatiable desire to confer with ‘Tuscan or Lombard.’

[614] To the next Bolgia: The Sixth. They are now on the top of the circular ridge that divides it from the Fifth. From the construction of Malebolge the ridge is deeper on the inner side than on that up which they have travelled from the pitch.

[615] No more a cause of dread: There seems some incongruity between Virgil’s dread of these smaller devils and the ease with which he cowed Minos, Charon, and Pluto. But his character gains in human interest the more he is represented as sympathising with Dante in his terrors; and in this particular case the confession of fellow-feeling prepares the way for the beautiful passage which follows it (line 38, etc.), one full of an almost modern tenderness.

[616] Cologne: Some make it Clugny, the great Benedictine monastery; but all the old commentators and most of the mss. read Cologne. All that the text necessarily carries is that the cloaks had great hoods. If, in addition, a reproach of clumsiness is implied, it would agree well enough with the Italian estimate of German people and things.

[617] Frederick’s, etc.: The Emperor Frederick II.; but that he used any torture of leaden sheets seems to be a fabrication of his enemies.

[618] Passage strait: Through the crowd of shades, all like themselves weighed down by the leaden cloaks. There is nothing in all literature like this picture of the heavily-burdened shades. At first sight it seems to be little of a torture compared with what we have already seen, and yet by simple touch after touch an impression is created of the intolerable weariness of the victims. As always, too, the punishment answers to the sin. The hypocrites made a fair show in the flesh, and now their mantles which look like gold are only of base lead. On earth they were of a sad countenance, trying to seem better than they were, and the load which to deceive others they voluntarily assumed in life is now replaced by a still heavier weight, and one they cannot throw off if they would. The choice of garb conveys an obvious charge of hypocrisy against the Friars, then greatly fallen away from the purity of their institution, whether Franciscans or Dominicans.

[619] An eye askance: They cannot turn their heads.

[620] His heaving throat: In Purgatory Dante is known for a mortal by his casting a shadow. Here he is known to be of flesh and blood by the act of respiration; yet, as appears from line 113, the shades, too, breathe as well as perform other functions of living bodies. At least they seem so to do, but this is all only in appearance. They only seem to be flesh and blood, having no weight, casting no shadow, and drawing breath in a way of their own. Dante, as has been said (Inf. vi. 36), is hard put to it to make them subject to corporal pains and yet be only shadows.

[621] Merry Friars: Knights of the Order of Saint Mary, instituted by Urban IV. in 1261. Whether the name of Frati Godenti which they here bear was one of reproach or was simply descriptive of the easy rule under which they lived, is not known. Married men might, under certain conditions, enter the Order. The members were to hold themselves aloof from public office, and were to devote themselves to the defence of the weak and the promotion of justice and religion. The two monkish cavaliers of the text were in 1266 brought to Florence as Podestas, the Pope himself having urged them to go. There is much uncertainty as to the part they played in Florence, but none as to the fact of their rule having been highly distasteful to the Florentines, or as to the other fact, that in Florence they grew wealthy. The Podesta, or chief magistrate, was always a well-born foreigner. Probably some monkish rule or custom forbade either Catalano or Loderingo to leave the monastery singly.

[622] Gardingo: A quarter of Florence, in which many palaces were destroyed about the time of the Podestaship of the Frati.

[623] One man as victim: St. John xi. 50. Caiaphas and Annas, with the Scribes and Pharisees who persecuted Jesus to the death, are the vilest hypocrites of all. They lie naked across the path, unburdened by the leaden cloak, it is true, but only that they may feel the more keenly the weight of the punishment of all the hypocrites of the world.

[624] Virgil: On Virgil’s earlier journey through Inferno Caiaphas and the others were not here, and he wonders as at something out of a world to him unknown.

[625] On the right: As they are moving round the Bolgia to the left, the rocky barrier between them and the Seventh Bolgia is on their right.

[626] We, both of us: Dante, still in the body, as well as Virgil, the shade.

[627] The encircling wall: That which encloses all the Malebolge.

[628] He warned us: Malacoda (Inf. xxi. 109) had assured him that the next rib of rock ran unbroken across all the Bolgias, but it too, like all the other bridges, proves to have been, at the time of the earthquake, shattered where it crossed this gulf of the hypocrites. The earthquake told most on this Bolgia, because the death of Christ and the attendant earthquake were, in a sense, caused by the hypocrisy of Caiaphas and the rest.

[629] At Bologna: Even in Inferno the Merry Friar must have his joke. He is a gentleman, but a bit of a scholar too; and the University of Bologna is to him what Marischal College was to Captain Dalgetty.

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