7. Virgil The Poet Becomes Virgil The Prophet: INFERNO, Canto I, Lines 97 - 136

A look at all that’s ahead . . . for the pilgrim Dante and maybe for the world.

We come to perhaps the strangest part of this strange first canto: Virgil’s prophecies of the future—not only Dante’s future, but all of the Italian peninsula’s . . . and maybe the world’s future, too. We just might get a glimpse of the Last Judgment in Christian theology at the very start of COMEDY.

Many readers have seen this first canto as the opening canto, not just of INFERNO, but of the entire poem. And no wonder! So much goes on: from fear to beasts, from loneliness to haunting, from a pilgrim with no past to one with a foretold future.

And maybe there’s another point, too. Maybe the poet wants this overfilled canto to slow his readers down, to indicate that this poem will not be an easy walk.

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The segments for this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE:

[01:26] My English translation of INFERNO, Canto I, Lines 97 - 136. If you'd like to read along, find a more intense study guide for this episode, or continue the conversation with me through the comment function, please scroll down this page.

[03:43] Virgil's ultimate role: a poet-prophet.

[05:07] What is a prophet in the Biblical tradition? What does Virgil predict? What's up with a greyhound?

[09:55] I'll offer you five interpretations of Virgil's opaque prophecy, four from the commentary tradition and one of my own.

[18:32] Virgil simplifies things by telling the pilgrim's future (that is, not the future of the Italian peninsula but just of the road ahead). But in telling about the journey ahead, Virgil reveals his misunderstanding (or maybe his limited understanding) about what's ahead.

[20:32] My own journey is not Dante's. But the pilgrim is off under his own steam, even without me in tow. Except he seems to forget something right away.

My English translation of INFERNO, Canto 1, Lines 97 - 136:

[Virgil continues:] “Her [the she-wolf’s] nature is so violent and insane

That her greedy hunger is never satisfied.

Once fed, she’s hungrier than ever!

 

“Many are the animals with which she mates,

And there will be even more, until the greyhound will come

Who will put her to a pain-filled death.

 

“He will not feed on land or wealth

But on wisdom, love, and virtue.

His birthplace is between Feltro and Feltro.

 

“He will be the salving of humble Italy

For which the virgin Camilla died,

As well as Euryalus, Turnus, and Nisus.

 

“He will hunt the beast in every little village

Until he sends her back to hell,

That place where envy first let her loose.

 

“Therefore, I think it’s wise and discerning

For you to follow me and I will be your guide,

And lead you from here to an eternal place

 

“Where you will hear the wailing of despair

And see the ancient souls in torment

Who eternally lament their second death.

 

“And then you’ll see the souls who are content

In the fire, because they hope to get to come among,

Whenever it may be, the blessed people.

 

“If you want to ascend to these,

There will be a soul more worthy than I.

I’ll leave you with her when I depart.

 

“For the emperor who sits on high

Has decided that I, who was a rebel against his law,

Should not ever get to come into his city.

 

“In every part he reigns and also rules.

There is his city and his high seat.

Happy is the one who he chooses to be there!”


And I to him, “Poet, I beg you,

By this God who you do not know,

In order that I can get out of his evil and even worse,

 

“Lead me to the place you’ve described

So that I may see Saint Peter’s Gate,

And the ones you say are filled with sorrow.”

Then he started off, and I went behind him.

FOR MORE STUDY

Two translation issues:

  1. The terms that are so troubling in this prophecy are found at lines 101 and 105: “veltro” (something like “greyhound”—although there is some scholarly debate on this) and “feltro.” As you heard in the episode, “feltro” is an even more challenging word to translate—so much so that most scholars just leave it be in the medieval Florentine! These words are actually in the rhyming position of each line (that is, at the end of their lines), which gives them a strong stress and makes them even more important. If we widen our perspective, the entire rhyme scheme is at lines 101, 103, and 105: “veltro,” “peltro” (“spoils,” “wealth,” or even “money”), and “feltro.” If we link up these words, we might see that the meaning moves from the dog to perhaps a high state (“wealth”), then back down to something more humble: “felt” (or even a cryptic reference to a couple of rural towns—Feltre and Motrefeltro.)

  2. At lines 118 - 119, when Virgil talks about those “contenti nel foco” (“content in the fire”—a reference to Purgatory), he calls them “le beate genti” (“the blessed people”). The kicker is that last word: “genti.” Although it can mean “people” in a general sense, it also has class and status connotations in medieval Florentine. (You can see that “gentility” is derived from it.) What if we translated Virgil’s understanding of heaven’s populace as the “blessed gentry”? We’d suddenly hear 1) his lower position in reference to them and 2) their inherent nobility, itself a loaded term in the Middle Ages, one carrying aspects of reverence and obeisance.

Four interpretive issues:

  1. Here are the five interpretations I laid out for the greyhound who comes from between “feltro” and “felto”: a) a Messianic prophecy that moves in scope from Jesus’s humble birth to his second coming in battle-ready triumph, b) Dante’s hopes for Henry VII and the Holy Roman Empire to put things right in Tuscany even through some sort of electoral control in the felt-lined ballot boxes, c) Dante’s praise of Cangrande I della Scala (that “big dog” from up north) as a possible unifier of Tuscany and a counterbalance to papal control, d) Dante the poet himself as the one who will rise to the occasion and write a poem that will even the scales of justice against his ravenous she-wolf nemesis, and e) a deliberately muddled prophecy, either to show Virgil’s half-full understanding of what’s ahead (he isn’t a Christian prophet, after all) or to cause the reader to slow down and ponder what in the world is going on in this poem.

  2. When Virgil talks about heaven, he offers a civic vision at lines 127 - 128: he (God) reigns; he rules in his city and from his seat. This is a storied way to understand heaven, going back to Augustine’s City Of God but even all the way back to the New Jerusalem promised in the Apocalypse of Saint John (or the book of Revelations) at the very end of the New Testament. Why is the civic understanding of the new, better world crucial? Is it a function of a world at war? Or is it more than that? Heaven could be understood to be anything: a garden, a beehive, a perfect mathematical sum. Why is it so often a city in the Western imagination?

  3. Some Dante scholars (like Natalino Sapegno) claim that this first canto is quite ham-handed, jumping from one type of literature to another, from quest to prophecy, despair to hope, personal problems to global apocalypse, existential threat to some sort of redemption. You can think about the muddiness of Canto I as an on-view illustration of the key problem for this middling poet: how to write this massive poem. There’s the uneven tone, the vacillating imagery, and the uneven pacing (faster and faster, then slower and slower—that is, a lot of action up front and then a lot of “blah, blah, blah” at the end). Do you think these are strategic choices the poet makes? If so, what do they say about this poem?

  4. Just to be clear, the four fallen warriors Virgil mentions in lines 107 - 108 are Camilla, Euryalus, Turnus, and Nisus. Camilla was the daughter of one of the kings who fought against Aeneas when the Trojan hero finally made it to the Italian peninsula. Her story is found at AENEID XI: 759 - 831. Turnus was one of those kings who fought against (and was killed by) Aeneas: AENEID: XII: 887 - 95. Euryalus and Nisus were young men and best friends who fought FOR Aeneas on the Italian peninsula and died in a night attack: AENEID IX: 179 - 449. As you can see, there are fallen warriors from each side of Aeneas’s campaign to take the peninsula.

Two journaling prompts:

  1. The pilgrim Dante clearly must choose the harder path. When have you faced this decision? How did you respond? What were the consequences of your decision?

  2. The pilgrim seems to forget heaven is ahead at line 134. He only imagines himself up to Saint Peter’s gate, not inside heaven itself. Why is it easy to forget the possibility of a happy ending, even when you’re sure of it?