INFERNO, Episode 100. The Poetics Of Color And Usury: Inferno, Canto XVII, Lines 46 - 78
We've come to what the Dantista Chivacci Leonardi calls "the most colorful" bits of Dante's INFERNO. Indeed, we've come to the usurers, sitting on the brink of the seventh circle of violence, looking out over the eighth circle of hell.
This passage is stocked with synecdoches--and we want to talk about why that is and how the poetic bones of COMEDY itself are exposed.
This passage is often overlooked--or over-interpreted. There's so much effort in the commentary to name each of these bankers sitting on the burning sands. But Dante goes to some length NOT to name them but rather the implicate the banking families themselves, rather than the individual bankers. Why spend time and energy nailing down who these guys are when the poem goes to come lengths to tell you that they are stand-ins (or synecdoches!) for their families?
Here are the segments of this podcast episode for Inferno, Canto XVII, lines 46 - 78 on WALKING WITH DANTE:
[01:19] My English translation of the passage: INFERNO, Canto XVII, lines 46 - 78. If you'd like to read along, just look below.
[04:22] The usurers sit on the edge of violence and look out over the expanse of the eighth circle, the one for the fraudulent--probably because charging interest on loaned money sits right in the ethical juncture between violence and fraud for Dante. And there's another curious bit that rings underneath this passage: Dante's own family may well have been money-lenders.
[12:47] The colorful purses hung around each other their necks. Let's identify the families and talk about why we don't have to name the specific sinners.
[19:00] Why is this passage so colorful?
[20:45] Where are the Jews in this passage? Any stock medieval reference to money-lending would always involve some anti-Semitic snark. But these are "good" Christian families. Dante seems to shy away from anti-Semitism just when we'd expect it.
[24:37] These bankers are the fulfillment of Dante's own prophecy back in Canto XVI where he decried the coming of new money into Florence.
[25:45] A final bestial image in the passage: the sluggish and stupid ox.
[27:26] More thoughts on synecdoche. First off, the rhetorical strategy fragments the world into pieces. But more than that, synecdoche is the rhetorical strategy for COMEDY as a whole.
And here’s my English translation of INFERNO, Canto XVII, lines 46 - 78:
Their sorrows poured out of their eyes.
This way and that they beat their hands
At the heated air and against the burning ground.
It’s just the way dogs do in the summer,
Now with their muzzles, now with their paws, when they’re eaten
Alive by fleas or tortured with horseflies.
When I set my eyes on the faces of those
On whom the sorrowful fire cascades,
I didn’t recognize a single one—but I did notice
That pouches hung around each of their necks.
These pouches had distinct colors and heraldic symbols.
And each one of those guys had a banquet staring at those pouches.
When I got up to them and got a good look, I saw
A yellow purse embossed with azure, which was
Made to look like the face and bearing of a lion on the ramparts.
When I really got down to noticing the details,
I saw another purse that was as blood red,
Embossed with a goose that was whiter than butter.
And one of them, who had a purse that was
White with a blue, pregrant pig embossed on it,
Said to me, “What are you doing in this sewer?
“Get out of here! But hold up: since you’re still alive,
Know that I’m keeping this seat warm for Vitaliano,
My neighbor, who’s going to sit to my left.
I’m a Paduan among these Florentines.
They’re always thundering in my ears, crying out,
‘Let the sovereign knight come on down
“’Who will bring the purse with three goats on it.’
Then he contorted his mouth and stuck out
His tongue, like an ox licking its nose.
I was a bit scared that a longer stay would get me in trouble
With the one who had warned me to be quick about it,
So I turned my back on those vanquished souls.