28. The Case For Francesca: INFERNO, Canto V, Lines 88 - 142
“The Shades Of Francesaca da Rimini and Paolo Malatesta Appear to Dante and Virgil” by Ary Scheffer
Standing out vividly from Canto V of Dante’s INFERNO, Francesca has for ages been a subject of fierce debate. Romantic heroine? Or damned temptress?
Maybe she's just bigger than her sin. Maybe—even more threateningly—she escapes the poet who gave her a voice.
Maybe she does the ultimate thing a character can do: She pulls the curtain back to reveal her creator, standing there in all his ambivalence, his sorrow, and his unfulfilled desire.
Francesca may escape her damnation as she escapes the text built to imprison her.
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The segments for this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE:
[02:15] My English translation of INFERNO, Canto V, lines 88 - 142. If you want to see this translation, find a deeper study guide, or leave a comment about this episode to continue the conversation with me, scroll down this page.
[05:09] An admission: the case for Francesca is really the case against Dante-the-poet.
[06:32] Is she really a flatterer? She seems to know her fate.
[08:20] Is she a poet?
[10:40] Her hymn to love. Yes, it slips the definitions between lust and love. But she's only doing what Virgil and Dante have already done.
[12:05] Her sin is hardly the gravest sin. In fact, it's the closest sin to love itself.
[15:16] Francesca calls the poet on his game. She reveals that he still turns to classical literature, not theological literature, for the answers to the questions of human motivation.
[19:03] Francesca is a reader! She's the very person any poet wants.
[20:17] Paolo kissed her "trembling all over." It's an echo from Dante's reaction to Beatrice in the VITA NUOVA.
[21:31] Paolo does with Francesca what Dante never does with Beatrice. Does Dante wish he had?
[24:23] The passage ends with desire fulfilled. And the pilgrim faints--and maybe the poet, too.
[25:46] The scope of Canto V: from the sure judge Minos to Francesca's long passage of (perhaps) ambiguity and (perhaps) deep irony.
My English translation for INFERNO, Canto V, Lines 88 - 142:
“O gracious and benevolent living creature,
Who comes in the doom-filled air to visit us,
The ones who stained the world with blood,
If the king of the universe were our friend,
We would pray he grant you peace,
Because you have displayed so much pity over our bad twists of fate.
All the things that it pleases you to speak or hear,
We really want to hear and speak with you,
While the wind has quieted, as now.
I was born in that land
Where the river Po and all its tributaries slow down
And descend to find peace in the sea.
Love, that quickly catches fire in the gentle heart,
Seized this one with me, because of my gorgeous body
That has been taken from me—and the way it was taken still hurts me.
Love, that doesn’t stop anyone loved from loving,
Seized me with such a strong passion for this guy
That, as you see, it hasn’t abandoned me yet.
Love drove both of us to one death.
Caïna waits for the man who blotted out our lives.”
These words were blown from them to us.
When I heard these scarred souls,
I bowed my head and kept it down
Until the poet said to me, “What are you thinking about?”
When I could reply, I began, “Alas,
How many sweet thoughts, how much desire,
Drove these two to the sorrowful pass!”
Then I turned to them to speak again
And began, “Francesca, all this pain
Makes me weep with sorrow and pity.
“But tell me: in the time of those sweet sighs,
By what means and how did love
Make you cognizant of your dubious desires?”
And she to me, “There is no greater sorrow
Than to remember our happy times
In the middle of misery, as your teacher knows.
“But if you really want to know the originary root
Of our love that you are so drawn to,
I will tell it as one who both weeps and tells.
“One day, just for pleasure, we were reading
About how love got the better of Lancelot.
We were alone and without any suspicions.
“That reading made us lock eyes more than once
And robbed the color from our faces—
But on a single point, we were defeated.
“When we read how the much-desired smile
Was kissed by such a great lover,
This guy, who will now never be divided from me,
“Kissed me on my mouth, trembling all over.
That book and the one who wrote it were our Galeotto.
That day we didn’t read any further.”
All the time this spirit said this,
The other one beside her wailed—such that pity
Overcame me as if I’d died.
And I collapsed as a dead body collapses.
FOR MORE STUDY
One translation issue:
It’s unclear how innocent Francesca and Paolo are. When she says they were alone at line 129, she adds “e sanza alcun sospetto” (literally, something like “and without any suspicions”). What suspicions? That they were being watched by her husband? Or that the book was as sexy as it was? If the former, then they intended to read the book and hook up with no one the wiser. If the latter, then they read without knowing what the book might contain. But isn’t that always how it goes when you read a book?
Five interpretive issues:
When Francesca talks about her birthplace near the river Po, she adds a phrase that might give us a clue to the larger problem of her weight. She says that the Po flows into the sea “per aver pace” (“to have peace”—line 99) . . . and then her curious addition: “co’ sequaci sui” (“with its followers”). I translated this as “its tributaries" but that phrasing might be too geographical, not metaphoric (or poetic) enough. It’s almost like a school of thought, certainly as if a crowd descends into the sea to find peace (something she will never find). So it’s not just that the river can dissolve into a larger body of water; it’s that everyone who accompanies the river can do so, too. And we would surely say that Semiramis, Helen, and the other “greats” on the wind disappear into the sea of the text in ways that Francesca does not and will not.
I may have muffed this point a bit in the episode, so I want to come back to it. When Francesca ends the first part of her speech, the pilgrim falls silent and bows his head (lines 109 - 111). The only thing that pulls him back to himself is Virgil, here called not his “guide” or his “leader,” but “the poet.” He asks: “Che pense?” (“What are you thinking?”) The larger allegorical point here is that she’s brought our classically learned Dante to an impasse that only his beloved classical literature (in the voice of Virgil) can get him out of. In other words, she knows just who Dante is and makes him run to his comfort zone to (momentarily) get away from her. FYI, an older way to look at this is that the pilgrim is starting to become confused and the allegory of human reason, Virgil, must put him back on track. But given that Francesca is about to quote Virgil (at lines 121 - 123—see the last episode’s study guide for more on this quotation), it seems as if Virgil is more the world of classical learning and high literature, very much at odds with trashy romances.
Francesca claims a great deal for the power of love. When Lancelot falls for Guinevere, she says “amor lo strinse” (literally, “love beset him”—line 128). You can also read this as “love hemmed him in” or “constrained him.” Isn’t that what Christian love is supposed to do? You make a vow of monogamy and then are constrained by your love from pursuing others. And your love for God is supposed to hem you in, cause you to make right choices. But Francesca may see this “constraining” in other ways because she goes on to claim that love “ci vinse” (literally, “us vanquished” or “us conquered”—line 132). It’s a war. And she lost. Because love’s constraints were not all that Christians think they’re cracked up to be.
The only time we hear from Paolo is at the end of the passage: “Mentre che l’uno spirito questo disse,/ l’altro piangëa” (literally, “While the one spirit this said,/ the other wept”—lines 139 - 140). Intriguingly, he’s nonverbal, after Francesca’s linguistic tour de force! Plus, his weeping causes the pilgrim’s collapse: “sì che di pietade/ io venni men così com’ io morisse” (literally, “so that from pity,/ I became just like how I would have died”—lines 140 - 141). It’s Paolo’s tears that do the deed. However, Paolo has apparently been crying the whole time: “mentre che” (“while”). We didn’t know her story had a sound track. Dante delays this detail, causing us to reimagine the whole speech from the beginning. It’s almost as if he wants us to reread it. And if so, her speech may indeed loft her out of the prison of the text that Dante has created for her.
We’re not done with Francesca. She’ll come up again on the terrace of lust in PURGATORIO. And Dante seems to quote this episode way up in PARADISO, at Canto XXX, when he makes claims about how love “mi vinse” (“me conquers”) and “mi constrinse” (“me constrains”). And Paolo’s reaction is mirrored in a scene with Beatrice up in PURGATORIO (XXXI, 89). Francesca has indeed escaped the prison of her text. She’s all over COMEDY!