11. To Be Saved, Tell A Story: INFERNO, Canto II, Lines 76 - 114
Beatrice: “Sitting near Rachel, I was approached by Lucy, who told me to save my friend.”
Virgil and Beatrice are at war. Well, at least a war of words. They have to use language to get what they want. About as Dante does, both as a poet and as a pilgrim.
Except he’s strangely gone missing from this scene in THE DIVINE COMEDY. What gives?
And while we’re at it, where is the hell we’ve been promised? Instead of that, we leap to the heights of heaven with Beatrice and get a glimpse of Paradise, before coming back to her intimate but very formal conversation with Virgil.
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The segments of this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE
[02:11] My English translation of INFERNO, Canto II, Lines 76 -114. If you want to read along, study more in depth, or continue the conversation with me, just scroll down this page.
[06:36] A bit about dissonances in the poem and reminder that we live in a more linear world than Dante.
[08:57] Virgil's response to Beatrice involves flattery (maybe flattery that's too high, even blasphemous) and--curious!--it involves his doubting her.
[12:05] Virgil then recasts his obedience away from theology and into chivalry . . . as well as his own discomfort wherever he is (in hell).
[14:42] Beatrice begins to answer Virgil . . . with some strange interpretive issues right up front in her speech.
[16:14] Beatrice mentions flames in hell. But Virgil is not in any flames!
[18:20] Beatrice's story includes two other women: presumably the Virgin Mary and Saint Lucy.
[22:20] A few words about the incredibly complex structure of this passage.
[23:48] A few thoughts about what it means to have left the "common crowd" or the "vulgar horde."
[25:22] What flood? How has Dante left a flood when he seemed to be lost in a dark wood?
[26:48] Words have a direct effect . . . even on Beatrice, who then asks Virgil to use his words to have a direct effect on our pilgrim.
My English translation of INFERNO, Canto II, 76 – 114
“Lady of virtue, through whom alone
Humankind goes beyond what is contained
In the smallest circle of heaven,
Your command pleases me so much
That instant obedience would seem tardy.
You have to do no more than reveal your desire.
But tell me the reason you don’t guard yourself
When you descend to this central point
From the expansive place where you long to be?”
“’Since you have such a deep yearning to know,’
She replied, “I will briefly tell you
Why I am not afraid to come here.
“’You should fear only those things
That have the power to harm you. Other things, not so much.
Those don’t cause fear.
“’I am made by God, by his grace,
So that your pain doesn’t touch me,
Nor can I these flames hurt me.
“’In heaven, there is a gracious lady,
Moved with a great deal of pity for the one I’m sending you to—
In fact, firm decrees have been broken by her.
“’This lady summoned Lucy and said,
“’”Your faithful one now needs you,
And I turn him over to your hand.”
“Lucy, the enemy of all cruelty,
Got up and came to where I sat
With the ancient Rachel,
“’And said, ”Beatrice, truly praiseworthy of God,
Why do you not aid the one
Who left the common crowd because of his full love for you.
“’”Do you not hear his sorrowful anguish
Or see how he is beset by death
In a flood that swells larger than the sea?”
“’No one on earth was ever so fast
To gain an advantage or escape from loss
As I was when those words were spoken.
“’I came down here from my blessed throne,
Placing my trust in your noble [or virtuous] speech
Which honors you and everyone who pays attention to it.’”
FOR MORE STUDY
Three translation issues:
When Virgil first addresses Beatrice, he calls her “donna di virtù” (l. 76). The most obvious translation is as what I put it: “lady of virtue.” Or maybe even better, “lady of righteousness.” (I’m skipping over the problems with “donna,” a hefty term out of chivalric culture.) Problem is, “virtù” is a loaded word in the medieval Florentine. It can mean “virtue,” but it can also mean “power,” “strength,” or even “indomitable will.” Try each one of these ideas into the opening of Virgil’s address and you’ll see that it’s not as straightforward as it appears. And if doing that is not confusing enough, then look at the rest of that line and the next one: “sola per cui/ l’umana spezie eccede. . . .” There, it’s the “sola” that gives so many so much trouble. Most translators want to make it refer to the “virtue,” not the lady. In other words, “O lady of virtue, by which alone humans go beyond. . . .” They’re making that call to save Virgil from heresy, but the phrase is more ambiguous and may offer some texture to Virgil’s limited knowledge of the redeemed. It can be read as “O lady of virtue through whom alone humans go beyond. . . .” Virgil would then be positing redemption through Beatrice! (And that is indeed how things work out for our pilgrim in the end.) Should we read the lines both ways? In any event, there are many problems in Virgil’s opening lines to Beatrice, just as there were many in his opening lines to the pilgrim Dante. Is there a complex irony here? Does the master of Roman poetry stammer a bit when he first meets the other two main characters in this Christian poem? Is the problem that the lauded Virgil can’t quite say what he means . . . or even muffs what he means to say?
Where does Virgil think Beatrice resides? He says she comes down from “l’ampio loco” (“the large place” or perhaps “the wide spot”—line 84). Most translators refashion this to something like “the highest heaven” or even the “Empyrean” because they know what’s ahead long down the poem. But Virgil’s description is looser, less specific. Does this wording say something about Virgil? Or about the poet who may not have the clearest notion of the geography of his poem at its very start?
When Beatrice is persuaded by Lucy to go save our pilgrim (notice that neither Lucy nor the “gracious lady” make any mention of using Virgil in this quest), Beatrice changes her game a bit. As she’s talking about Lucy (aka Saint Lucy) who is “nimica di ciascun crudele” (an enemy of each and every cruelty”—line 100), Beatrice says that Lucy hears the plea of the “gentil” “donna” (the “gracious lady”—but “gracious” in a chivalric sense, as in higher up the social and class scale and worthy of deference) and Lucy then “ si mosse” (line 101)—that is, “moves herself.” Earlier, Beatrice had claimed that she is moved by love (line 72). Is there a difference worth noting here? Is a saint able to move herself, to make her own decisions, while a run-of-the-mill redeemed person like Beatrice needs to be moved in some way? Or is “si mosse” another of those reflexive verbs that stand in for a passive voice: “Lucy, an enemy of each and every cruelty, was moved”?
Three interpretive issues:
Where are Virgil and Beatrice as they talk? At line 83, Virgil identifies the place as “questo centro” (“this center” or “this central point”). But as we’ll see, Virgil is not stationed in hell at the center of the universe. Yes, hell itself is the center in a macro sense; but Virgil inhabits one of its outermost ranks. The center of the universe lies far below him. (We’ll get there!) Is Virgil overstating the importance of where they are? Or the importance of where he’s stationed? Or is this just all shorthand for talking about Dante’s concept of hell in a geocentric universe? Or is Virgil’s point actually metaphoric: Just her being there makes the place central to what’s about to happen. Then, as if to make matters more complicated, Beatrice speaks of the “fiamma d’esto ‘ncendio non m’assale” (line 93—”the flames of this burning don’t trouble me”). Notice how she even doubles down: “fiamma” + “(i)ncendio.” But what flames? What burning? It seems as if we’re to picture the two of them in the mythic fires of hell with Beatrice untouched. But as we’ll see, there are no flames where Virgil is imprisoned. (He, too, was perhaps cagey when he said he was with those who were “suspended”—line 52). Are they somewhere else besides Virgil’s home turf? Probably not. And by the way, there are only two rings in all of Dante’s hell where anyone is burning. So again, what flames? Perhaps this moment in the text may be one where we can see COMEDY as a poem in process. We’re seeing it as Dante is writing it. And he doesn’t quite have it all worked out. He may have the general outline, he may even have some of the details of what’s ahead, but he hasn’t got the whole thing in his head as a complete picture until he continues writing the poem.
What river is Lucy talking about? Here are lines 107 - 108: “non vedi tu la morte che ‘l combatte/ su la fiumma ove ‘l mar non ha vanto?” (“Do you now see the death that battles him/ on the river where the sea has no victory?”). I thought the pilgrim woke up in a dark wood; I thought he started to climb that hill and looked back like a guy who has come out of troubled waters. Does Lucy see in ways we mortals don’t see? Does she see metaphoric space as the real space? Or how’s this? John Freccero claims that she’s redefining the she-wolf as a river in order to bring the Exodus story to bear on this passage. In other words, she’s moved off of the allegorical beasts (or perhaps just that last, worst one) and into the Biblical story of crossing the Red Sea. In fact, Freccero claims that Dante must learn to see all his difficulties as reflections of the Exodus experience, that he must learn to trust that he will always walk on dry ground, no matter how else it looks. If you want to get technical, Freccero is essentially claiming that Lucy has moved from the physical beasts and their allegorical meaning to an anagogical meaning for what has happened to the pilgrim (that is, to a meaning about the soul’s ultimate journey toward the afterlife or the Promised Land, as understood through the Exodus story). I’m still not sure I buy his reading . . . although it does solve a lot in the passage. For me, this murky passage is one of many in COMEDY that I believe Dante the poet intends to cause much contemplation out of his reader.
Let’s go back to that problem of leaving behind “la volgare schiera” (“the vulgar horde”—line 105). Lucy’s claim is that the pilgrim left this horde because “t’amò tanto” (“he loves you so fully”—line 104). Therefore, love (and specifically the love of Beatrice) has set the pilgrim on his way. (Lucy even doubles down on Beatrice’s role at line 105: “uscì per te de la volgare schiera”—”exits because of you from the vulgar horde”). But who exits? Dante the poet or Dante our pilgrim? Truth be told, there’s no rigid boundary between the two in the poem. Dividing them into poet and pilgrim is a convenience for our interpretation. There will be plenty of times in the COMEDY when there’s no daylight between the poet and the pilgrim. But there are other moments in which they do seem separate (as in the opening lines of INFERNO, Canto I, where we’ve got a guy in the dark wood and a second guy at his desk trying to describe the dark wood). So step back from this passage and consider who is exiting the vulgar horde. What if Lucy is talking about the poet, not necessarily the pilgrim? Might that explain the curious reference to a river in line 108, just in the next tercet (or three-line stanza)? Has the poet left the horde behind to fights his battles on a raging river of text, while the pilgrim is “just” a lost guy in a dark wood? Or is this too esoteric an interpretation and in this moment, there’s really no difference between the poet and the pilgrim?
A journaling prompt:
As we discussed, Virgil claims that wherever he is (and yes, it is hell, even with its flames) is the center of the universe. Where is the center of your universe? Is it a geographical spot? An idea? A person? A family member? How does recognizing the center of your universe affect how you interpret the world around you?