The Undivine Comedy

Chapter 4 NARRATIVE AND STYLE IN LOWER HELL But of such a diffused nature, and so large is the Empire of Truth, that it hath place within the walls of Hell, and the Devils themselves are daily forced to practise it . although they deceive us, they lie not unto each other; as well understanding that all community is continued by Truth, and that of Hell cannot consist without it. (Sir Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia epidemica) NTRODUCED BY the complex transition of cantos 16 and 17, Inferno 18 constitutes an emphatic new beginning situated at the canticle’s Imidpoint, at its narrative “mezzo del cammin.” “Luogo è in inferno detto Malebolge” (“There is a place in hell called Malebolge”) begins the canto, with a verse that is crisply informative, explicitly introductory, and patently devoted to differentiation:1 this is a new place, a new locus. Follow- ing the descriptio loci heralded by the opening “Luogo è,”2 the narrator’s focus shifts to the travelers. In two apparently very simple tercets, he acti- vates the poetics of the new, founded on the discreteness of “questo luogo,” this place as distinct from any other: In questo luogo, de la schiena scossi di Gerïon, trovammoci; e ’l poeta tenne a sinistra, e io dietro mi mossi. A la man destra vidi nova pieta, novo tormento e novi frustatori, di che la prima bolgia era repleta. In this place, shaken off Geryon’s back, we found ourselves; the poet kept to the left, and I moved after him. To the right I saw new anguish, new torment and new scourgers, of which the first pouch was replete. (Inf. 18.19–24) Besides the triple use of novo, echoing the double use at the beginning of canto 6, we note the numerical precision of “prima bolgia,” which builds on the earlier “distinto in dieci valli” (“divided into ten valleys” [Inf. 18.9]); numbers will be used throughout lower hell to convey the sense of a suffo- catingly precise system of order. In this canto alone we find not only “prima bolgia” but also “prima valle” (“first valley” [98]), and “argine secondo” NARRATIVE AND STYLE IN LOWER HELL 75 (“second embankment” [101]); in canto 19 we find “terza bolgia” (“third pouch” [6]), “l’argine quarto” (“fourth embankment” [40]), and “dal quarto al quinto argine” (“from the fourth to the fifth embankment” [129]). These numbers prepare us for the smaller and more numerous containers, the more frequent encounters with the new that will characterize lower hell; again, canto 18 sets the pace for this more intense narrative rhythm by presenting us, uniquely, with two pouches, the first of which is further sub- divided into two distinct groups of sinners, the panderers and seducers. Fi- nally, we note that canto 18’s proemial function, its enactment of a new beginning with almost Inferno 1 pretensions, is underscored by verse 21, which echoes in recombinatory fashion the first canto’s last verse: “Allor si mosse, e io li tenni dietro” has become “’l poeta / tenne a sinistra, e io dietro mi mossi.” Once more, then, as at the end of canto 1, the journey has begun. However, it has begun again in a post-Geryon world, as the careful inser- tion of “de la schiena scossi / di Gerïon” into the new beginning’s preamble testifies. The cantos of Malebolge, in fact the cantos of all lower hell, since fraud governs both the eighth and the ninth circles, are written under the sign of Geryon: a representation of fraud that calls into question the very representational values used to figure it forth. Thus, on the one hand these cantos rely on the same kind of representational illusionism that was inau- gurated by the writing on hell’s gate; the line, “Luogo è in inferno detto Malebolge,” for instance, confers truth status on the locus it names by im- plying that it is so named by others—by whom, after all, is this place “called” Malebolge? When the poet speaks in his own voice in verse 6—“di cui suo loco dicerò l’ordigno” (“of whose structure I will speak in its place”)—his “dicerò” is made authoritative by the anonymous “detto” that precedes; he is telling us what is known, and therefore what is true. At the same time, however, that the truth status of his own representation contin- ues to be maintained, Dante will use these cantos to question the basis of all human representation, to probe relentlessly the fraud inherent in language and indeed in all sign systems. In these cantos fraud is consistently treated as a semiotic sin, a sin in which sign systems must be breached in order for the fraudulent act to be committed.3 Canto 18, with its linguistically ori- ented seducers and flatterers, sets the stage for a meditation on representational falsehood that extends throughout Malebolge (a circle that culmi- nates, let us not forget, with the falsifiers of words); this meditation gener- ates both content—the types of sins Dante includes under the rubric of fraud, the concern to characterize these sins linguistically—and poetic form. From the stylistic perspective, these cantos run the gamut from the lowest of low styles to the highest of high; here too, canto 18 is paradigmatic, moving in its brief compass from vulgar black humor (“Ahi come facean lor levar le berze / a le prime percosse! già nessuno / le seconde aspettava né le terze” [“Oh, how they made them lift their heels at the first blows! Truly 76 CHAPTER 4 none awaited the second or the third” (37–39)]) to the solemnity with which Vergil displays Jason (“Guarda quel grande che vene” [“Look at that great one who comes” (83)]) to the nastiness of the merda in which the flatterers are plunged. For Barchiesi, such transitions constitute the essence of canto 18; he suggests that the canto’s most singular aspect is its violent juxtapositioning of elevated language with realistic language, of the Lati- nate “Luogo è” with the plebeian neologism “Malebolge.”4 This insight can be extended to the cantos of Malebolge as a group, whose violent stylistic transitions provide an implicit commentary on the questions of genre and style that were opened up for the poem by the use of the term comedìa in the Geryon episode. Transitions in style and register occur with singular frequency in Male- bolge.5 These marked and sudden changes in style signal an exploration of the bounds of representational decorum that is connected to the poet’s first formulation, in canto 16, of genre. His use of comedìa in canto 16 will be answered, in canto 20, by a unique use of tragedìa: “alta tragedìa” is Inferno 20’s designation for the Aeneid. In my previous reading of the poem’s Ver- gilian narrative, I attempted to show that the running critique of Vergil that is found in the Inferno is also, necessarily, a critique of tragedìa; the poem works to demonstrate that alta tragedìa is inferior to—because less true than—bassa comedìa. Comedìa, the textuality that undertakes to represent such as Geryon, may appear to be a lie, but is always truth: it is a “ver c’ha faccia di menzogna,” a “mirum verum,” a “cosa incredibile e vera.” What I intend to focus on here is the stylistic correlative to the comedìa’s truth claims, which I take to be its manifoldness; the ultimate point of lower hell’s dizzying array of register and style is that the comedìa is a voracious genre, one that—because it tells the truth—is committed to embracing and repre- senting all of reality. My concern is no longer to demonstrate the implicit contrast Dante establishes between comedìa and tragedìa, verità and menzogna; however, I am obliged to remind the reader that all formulations of what comedìa is occur, in this poem, in tandem with what it is not. Thus, it is no accident that Malebolge contains a series of classical/contemporary couples; these couples serve to highlight the disjunction that is at the root of Dante’s meditation on genre and style, the disjunction between comedìa and tragedìa. Returning to canto 18, which again is paradigmatic for Malebolge as a whole, Sanguineti notes that the canto contains a modern and a classical figure in each of its two pouches; Barchiesi comments on the symmetry whereby the pilgrim addresses both contemporaries, while Vergil takes it upon himself to describe both classical sinners.6 We could further note that the two classical/contemporary couples of Malebolge’s first canto (Venedico Caccianemico and Jason, Alessio Interminelli and Thaïs) are matched by the two classical/contemporary couples of Malebolge’s last canto, canto 30 (Gianni Schicchi and Myrrha, Master Adam and Sinon). Bracketed by these NARRATIVE AND STYLE IN LOWER HELL 77 sets of classical/contemporary figures, is the pièce de résistance, Ulysses and Guido da Montefeltro, where the alignment between Vergil and Ulysses on the one hand and Dante and Guido on the other is pronounced; Vergil feels that he should address the Greek hero, while the pilgrim may speak to his Italian counterpart. In this crucial central diptych the classical/contemporary coupling signals a stylistic disjunction on a grand scale, as we move from the heroic discourse of canto 26 to the quotidian language of canto 27.7 The disjunction between cantos 26 and 27 is programmatic, a signpost to Male- bolgian poetics, and it is already implicit on a smaller scale in the similar disjunctions that make up the stylistic texture of Inferno 18. The classical/contemporary couples that punctuate Malebolge are em- blems of the mixed style that is the essence of the “comedic” mode.8 While Jason deceived Hypsipyle “with signs and ornate words” (“con segni e con parole ornate” [Inf.

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