Anno XXXIII, N. 1 RIVISTA DI STUDI ITALIANI Giugno 2015 19
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Anno XXXIII, n. 1 RIVISTA DI STUDI ITALIANI Giugno 2015 CONTRIBUTI DANTE’S PERCEPTION OF THE RUSE FROM INFERNO XXI-XXIII1 ANIELLO DI IORIO University of Wisconsin Madison, Wisconsin Le Sage, c’est-à-dire celui qui est animé de l’esprit du Seigneur, celui qui possède la pratique du formulaire divin, ne rit, ne s’abandonne au rire qu’en tremblant. Le Sage tremble d’avoir ri; le Sage craint le rire, comme il craint les spectacles mondains, la concupiscence. Il s’arrête au bord du rire comme au bord de la tentation. Il y a donc, suivant le Sage, une certaine contradiction secrète entre son caractère de sage et le caractère primordial du rire. (Baudelaire, L’essence du rire et généralement du comique dans les arts plastiques ) n Inferno XXI, Dante the pilgrim and Virgil are standing on the bridge between the fourth and the fifth pouch and they are observing upon the Isinners of this circle. The condemned malefactors are the barraters and they are punished for having committed fraud against the local government. Moreover, the sinners of both cantos are devils. Dante the author characterizes their features with different colors, with singular qualities, and with carnivalesque names 2. It should be noted that the devils are in profusion in 1 In occasione delle celebrazioni dei 750 anni dalla nascita di Dante Alighieri. 2 This term refers to a series of devils that appear in Inferno XXI. Among them we list a few: “Alichino, Calcabrina Cagnazzo, Barbariccia, Libiocco, Draghignazzo, Ciriatto, Malacoda, Graffiacane, Farfarello, Rubicante”. (Inferno XXI 647) To shortly define their significance, we begin with Alichino, which comes from hellequin , progenitor of the Italian Arlecchino; Calcabrina is he who can walk on brine, that is, the nimble-footed one; Libicocco may condense the names for two winds, the libeccio and the scirocco; Draghignazzo may be like a large dragon or he who has a smirk ‒ a sghignazzo ; Ciriatto could come from the dialect word ciro; Farfarello relates to folletto , a malevolent spirit or phantom; and Rubicante may be he who grows red (but since the devils are black, a later variant has Rabicante ‒ that 19 ANIELLO DI IORIO both infernal cantos. At the same time, the leader of the devils is Malacoda and he tricks Virgil in Inferno XXII. The beffa occurs when the latter is conducted on a broken bridge, and Dante the pilgrim watches Virgil with nuance: “E se l’andare avante pur vi piace, / andatevene su per questa grotta; / presso è un altro scoglio che via face” (Chiavacci Leonardi 645); (“If you desire to continue on / then make your way along this rocky ledge. / Nearby’s another crag that yields a passage”)3. (Hollander 389) This passage essentially symbolizes the beginning point for the burla to take place, but it is also where this essay’s argument begins to unfold. Rather than investigating directly upon the way Virgil will be tricked in Inferno XXI-XXIII, this work explores the trick through Dante’s discomfort with the beffa 4. After a keen consideration upon the nature of this folkloristic tradition, we begin to examine Dante’s perception for the ruse by first recognizing his wit. Dante the author depends upon the consciousness of an appropriate incongruity ‒ which is according to Oring Elliot, “the perception of an appropriate interrelationship of elements or situations from domains that is, the furious one). More simple are: Barbariccia, the curly-bearded one; Cagnazzo, the big dog; and Graffiacane, he who scratches dogs. Despite all, these are terms or derivations that somewhat allude to the grotesque and carnival sound of this extensive terminology. To further delve into this nomenclature in reference to Dante’s Demonology, see: Robert Hollander, Inferno in Notes (397); and Allen Mandelbaum, The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: Inferno (376). 3 All the Italian quotations are from La Divina Commedia: Inferno, edited, and with a commentary by Anna Maria Chiavacci Leonardi, Milano: Mondadori Editore, 2005. All the quotations in English are from Dante: The Inferno, A verse translation by Robert Hollander and Jean Hollander, New York: First Anchor Books, 2002. 4 It should be stated that the beffa in Italian literature has been accurately recognized after Dante’s Comedy , particularly in short stories, like the Novellino, Decameron, and Trecentonovelle . Boccaccio is perhaps the first Italian author for having employed the beffa to a greater extent. Even though it is not the case in this essay to discuss of any aforementioned literary source, to further investigate upon Boccaccio’s beffa , see: Anna Fontes-Baratto, “La Beffa dans le Decameron ”, in Formes et Significations de la Beffa dans la littérature italienne de la Renaissance , ed. Andre Rochon (Paris: Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 1972). She states: “Exploite toutes le donnes de la situation ‒ à savoir tous les éléments fournis par le récit, au niveau de l’intrigue comme au niveau de la caractérisation psychologique des personnages ‒ et procède a un truquage du réel, passe, présent ou futur, auquel il imprime le sens voulu, en excluant le hasard des événements qu’il va déclencher” (13). 20 DANTE’S PERCEPTION OF THE RUSE FROM INFERNO XXI-XXIII are generally regarded as incongruous” (Elliot 12) 5. The choice to link two disparate characters on the joke’s stage unveils the main aspect of such incongruity. On one hand, there is Malacoda the Alazon , which translates into a ‘low-mimetic code’ character. On the other hand, there is Virgil the Pharmakos , which symbolizes a ‘high-mimetic code’6. Across the domain of this peculiar episode, the beffa becomes a literary device for Dante to adopt even among characters like Virgil. His human reason gets valued over the Devils’ human mediocrity, but the devil’s figure represents a popular character that was used to both reveal farcical elements in literature and to entertain the public of the Early Middle Ages 7. Since certain types of wit 8 can be interpreted when engendered by two overlapping scripts and can be perceived as opposite in a certain sense, the poet’s voice within the episode of Inferno XXI and XXII can turn out to be ambiguous towards the joke. This means that Dante the author models his point of view upon the tricksters and the tricked with hesitancy: “Allor mi volsi come l’uom cui tarda / di veder quel che li convien fuggire” (Chiavacci Leonardi 633); (“Then I turned like a man, intent / on making out what he must run from”). (Hollander 383) He narrates from a great distance as if he 5 Although I will only adopt Elliot’s theory of Appropriate Incongruity in this essay, it should be suggested that the incongruity theory has been adopted several times in these recent years, and most notably by Arthur Koestler, for whom the humor is the result of “perceiving of a situation or idea in two self- consistent but habitually incompatible frames of reference” (35). Another scholar who exploited the same theory is Victor Raskin, who defines humor as “engendered by two incongruities perceived appropriately in a sense” (100). To consider also the relation between humor and incongruity from Clark’s article Humor and Incongruity (20-32). 6 Northrop Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism discusses in depth on both terms aforementioned (44-65). They indicate a trace on which literary characters will endeavor their central function, based on their role in the Comedy . Most of all, these terms are significant in literature because they determine an order within the ambience of Comedy and the tragedy. These are terms that delineate simultaneously the character’s features as a subject to literary criticism. To explore both high and low mimetic code to a higher extent, see also (37-38; 43-44; 58-59; 62-65; 137-138; and 318-319). 7 For the unabridged history of the devil’s figure in Literature, see: Arturo Graf, Miti, leggende e superstizioni del Medio Evo (79-139); and from the same author, see: Il Diavolo (58-273). 8 By wit I intend cleverness or apt humor, and I will only discuss about Dante’s humor on the specific subject matter concerning the beffa . 21 ANIELLO DI IORIO were an external observer 9. While Dante the author/narrator employs some of his narration’s strategies with more freedom, this self-determination allows the Florentine poet’s voice to oscillate across these antithetical aspects. Whether is Virgil’s high persona or Malacoda’s popular figure, Dante the author will express his wit through this continuous motion between these two opposite characters. Furthermore, it is from this point that I will suggest that because the Florentine poet does not maintain a steady position across the domain of the ruse, Dante begins to conceive the beffa from a bipolar perspective (which translates in high and low mimetic code) 10 . To study Dante’s wit means to understand how Dante foresees the trick, and this procedure should also enable us to recognize his moral neutrality across the joke’s domain. Therefore, I will finally indicate that Dante the author perceives the beffa between the notion of ridicule and the elegiac features, between the comic and the tragic. I. The Ruse’s Domain in Inferno XXI-XXIII The beffa is fundamentally an act of derision, or a lie, that develops on the canto’s literary stage where it takes place. The extensive nomenclature of this farcical element is characterized by terms such as the scherzo , the ruse, the burla , the beffa , and the inganno. This variety of definitions determines both the importance of this subject matter in literature, and the joke’s literary diversity. In addition, the burla ’s inner nature is tied uniformly to the characterization of the trick, where this farcical element belongs to a region often associated with the comicality.