17. Welcome To Virgil's Home Turf: INFERNO, Canto IV, Lines 1 - 45
Virgil goes uncharacteristically pale as he and the pilgrim descend to his home turf.
Welcome home, Virgil. We’ve come to the first circle of hell . . . and to the moments when Virgil has to admit he’s damned. He has been damned all along, of course. But he’s never been clearly stated it and we have seen him hanging out with a heavenly being. But now he has to explain why he’s damned . . . and in so doing may make a mess out of theology.
Should we take Virgil’s explanation at face value? Or is it our poet who’s changing the rules of the game?
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The segments of this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE:
[01:34] A confession on my part and a summary of the poem's plot so far.
[03:19] My English translation of INFERNO, Canto IV, lines 1 - 45. If you want to check out these lines, find a larger study guide with lots of questions, or even continue the conversation with me by a comment, scroll down this page.
[06:16] As Dante wakes up, I offer ideas about the very real problem of revising what you write in a world of limited resources.
[09:11] Seeing is believing! But where does that put the reader of this poem?
[10:35] An interpretive knot about the thunder and the wailing--and a bit about the architecture of hell itself.
[12:20] Virgil turns pale. How does a "shade" turns pale? Fair enough, but why? That's an even harder question. Virgil explains it. Should we believe him?
[19:27] Limbo is definitely in hell . . . but only for Dante, not for the church.
[22:15] Virgil's petulance and his explanation for why he's in Limbo (that is, why he's damned, in terms of the poem).
[25:49] The terms of Virgil's damnation seem to have changed: He had been a rebel against God's law but now he's "simply" someone who lacks a baptism.
[28:21] Virgil's equivocation, Dante's response, and the strange notion of being "suspended," which came up much earlier in Canto II.
[31:25] A strange interpretive theory: Beatrice appeared to Virgil as Virgil would expect to see her. If so, the problem is (and has been) Virgil's point of view.
My English translation of INFERNO, Canto IV, lines 1 – 45:
A giant thunderclap resounded in my head
And broke up my deep sleep, so that I woke up
As if someone had shoved me hard.
Getting up, I turned my rested eyes
In every direction and then stared fixedly
To learn where I was.
Truth is, I found myself on the edge
Of the valley of the abyss of sorrow
That resounds with infinite wailing.
It was so dark and deep and foggy
That even though I tried hard to see the bottom,
I couldn’t make out a thing.
“Let’s go down into the blind world,”
The poet began, all sickly pale.
“I will be first and you will be second.”
I noted my guide’s color and said,
“How am I supposed to come with you if you’re afraid
Because I look to you for solace when I’m in doubt.”
And he to me, “The anguish of the people
Who are below has tinted my face
With compassion—which you mistake for fear.
Let’s go, for the long path calls us.”
So he set out and he made me enter
The first circle wrapped around the abyss.
Here was no lamenting,
None that could be heard, only sighs
That made the eternal atmosphere tremble—
Sighs of grief without torment,
Which came up to me from a thick and large crowd,
Made up of babies, women, and men.
My good master to me, “So you’re not going to ask me
What spirits are these that you see?
Before we walk any farther, I want you to know,
“That these did not sin. If they earned themselves some merit,
It wasn’t enough, because there was no baptism,
Which is the doorway to the faith that you believe.
“And if they existed before Christianity,
They did not worship God, as is required.
I am counted one of these.
“Because of these deficits, and for no other fault,
We are lost and afflicted in only this way:
We live in desire without hope.”
My heart was pressed down with sorrow when I heard this,
Because I understood that people of outstanding merit
Were here suspended in Limbo.
FOR MORE STUDY
Two translation issues:
The pilgrim and Virgil descend, but to where? At line 12, Virgil says, “Or discendiam qua già nel cieco mondo” (literally, “Now let’s descend down here in the blind world”). There are two problems here. One, “qua già” or “down here.” This tells us that Virgil already knows this place. He’s not a guide; he’s an inhabitant (because it’s not “down there” but located toward him: “here.”) And two, “cieco mondo” (“blind world”). How can the world be blind? Does it have eyes? “Blinding” or “blinded” might make a little more sense. But the poet has left it stark: blind world. It forces your brain into an interpretive leap just before Virgil starts to make his interpretive leaps. You have to reinterpret “blind” to mean “morally blind” or perhaps you have to understand that the world has lost its original sight, which pushes you back to theological questions. In any event, you have to lift off the page and into interpretation just before Virgil does the same.
There’s a linguistic link in the Florentine that’s hard to convey in English. At line 26, Limbo is said to be full of “sospiri” (“sighs”); and at line 45, the souls are said to be “sospesi” (“suspended—the same word used at INFERNO, Canto II, line 52). You can see that “sospiri” and “sospesi” are quite close: in tone, vibe, and even spelling. How then are the sighs part of the suspension?
Four interpretive issues:
I launched one of my central points for our walk in this episode: COMEDY is a poem in process. Does Dante the poet know where he’s ultimately headed on this journey? Yes, probably, about as much as Dante the pilgrim knows when Virgil laid out the geography of the journey in Canto I. But does the poet have the poem more conclusively mapped out? I can’t say that quite yet based on textual evidence. (Wait until we get a little more into INFERNO and we’ll see ways this canticle looks ahead in the poem—and once we’re into PURGATORIO and PARADISO, we’ll see ways Dante has connected them back to INFERNO, although that wouldn’t be something he had to plan in advance). But I want to be clear: A poem in process can still be a polished, beautiful poem. COMEDY is! That Dante is perhaps changing the terms of his argument along the way—for example, that the Lucifer-like rebel Virgil (INFERNO, Canto I, line 125) here becomes the more melacholic, sad-sack Virgil—doesn’t take away from the overall masterpiece. In fact, it gives us a glimpse into the ways the poem becomes a masterpiece.
There’s urgency in Virgil’s explanation of his place in hell at lines 33 - 36. “Or vo’ che sappi,” he begins (“Now I want you to know”). Then he puts a “right now” temporal qualifier on it: “innanzi che più andi” (“before going even a little farther”). And then comes what he’s so impatient to explain:“Ch’ ei non peccaro” (literally, “that they not sin” or “that they didn’t sin”). The urgency is intriguing, as I say, but so is that verb: “they.” Not “we”? After that, Virgil lets his full explanation drop into the text: “e s’elli hanno mercedi,/ non basta, perché non ebber battesmo,/ ch’è porta de la fede che tu credi” (literally, “and if they have merit,/ not enough, because they not were baptized, which is door of the faith that you believe.” Frankly, those lines are a little murky. For one thing, he says “porta,” not “la porta.” It’s true he doesn’t need the definite article in the Florentine, but you could be justified in reading the line as “which is a door of the faith. . . .” Well, no, Virgil, not “a door.” However, I wouldn’t put too much weight on this small quibble, but you could use it to add color to Virgil’s response. And for a second thing, there’s his emphasis on “merit,” when we’ve already been told the place has babies. Can babies attain “mercedi,” a distinct virtue? Isn’t Virgil weighting this argument to his situation?
After that, Virgil seems to double-down: “Per tai difetti, non per altro rio,/ semo perduti” (lines 40 - 41—literally, “For such defects, not for other faults, we are lost”). “Difetti” doesn’t sound dire; it sounds small, like a scratch in the veneer. True, “rio” "(“faults,” “miscalculations”) is stronger, more assertive—but these people don’t have any. It’s all a strange quagmire. To pull your foot out of it, I think you have two options. One, you can say that Virgil is hedging his place in the afterlife, trying to make it sound better or at least less awful than “damned.” Or you can say that Dante the poet is hedging this part of the afterlife, trying to say that people like Virgil who wrote the great works of the classical world don’t really deserve to be down in the maw of hell. You could probably hear me vacillate between these two positions in the episode.
Maybe one answer to the problem of being “sospesi” (“suspended”—line 45) is found in the way they're condemned. At line 42, these are said to live “sanza speme” (“without hope”) but “in disio” (“in desire”). That word, one of COMEDY’s most crucial words, “disio” already came up about the damned at INFERNO, Canto III, line 126, when Virgil explains why people would rush to Charon’s boat to get on to the torments of hell. Their fears morph into the desire. And maybe this is the suspension? These damned are stuck at desire without any fulfillment? Nobody is in agony, other than sighing. Maybe they got “suspended” in the hellish process: Fear became desire . . . but without an object.
One journaling prompt:
Virgil goes pale as they enter Limbo. It seems as if he’s afraid. Dante the pilgrim certainly calls it “fear” at line 16. But is this “fear” the same as “cowardice,” for which Virgil has reprimanded the pilgrim? Is Virgil hoisted with his own petard? I think not. Cowardice is fear in the face of the unknown. But Virgil is afraid precisely because he does know. How is fear disconnected from cowardice? In the world? In your own life?