INFERNO, Episode 39. The Poet Between The Classical And Modern Worlds: INFERNO, Canto VIII, Lines 7 - 30
Don’t make that boat too laden!
We’re now over a break in the poem.
Or are we? Medieval and Renaissance scholars thought so. Many modern scholars do not.
First, I’d like to challenge my own interpretation of the poem and discount the idea of a break in it.
Then, as we work through this moderately complex passage, I’ll posit a question about our poet’s position in the history of Western thought. Maybe thinking of him as a medieval man on the cusp of the Renaissance isn’t all that helpful.
Finally, on the shores of the mucky swamp of the wrathful, our poet solves (maybe?) the question of his pilgrim’s corporeality . . . and maybe even settles (bodily?) into the poem that he’s writing.
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The segments for this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE:
[01:05] My English translation of INFERNO, Canto VIII, Lines 7 - 30. (Actually, I'll back up and take it from the first line of the canto for a running start into these lines.) If you'd like to read along or drop a comment about this episode, please scroll down this page.
[02:53] Does COMEDY restart after a break? Here are some of the reasons my interpretation--that it restarts at Canto VIII--may be wrong.
[07:46] Why do the towers signal each other? The scene opens with a interpretative question, which may set up the interpretive quagmire of the cantos ahead.
[10:58] A boat arrives! It's "little," as opposed to Charon's big boat.
[12:21] Who is Phlegyas?
[14:04] Perhaps it's not good idea to think about Dante in terms of the Middle Ages v. the Renaissance. Perhaps it's better to think of him in terms of the classical and modern world.
[17:44] The problem of corporeality is solved! The boat sinks under the weight of the pilgrim. But that solution brings with it more problems. And maybe it also exhibits a greater confidence on the part of our poet.
My English translation of INFERNO, Canto VIII, Lines 7 – 30 (actually, going back to line 1 and continuing on):
[Continuing on, I say that well before
We got to the foot of that high tower,
Our eyes had already been directed toward its top,
Drawn by two flames that flickered up there,
And another that answered from so far away,
Our eyes could barely make it out.]
Turning to that sea of all that can be known,
I said, “What’s this one saying? And what does
That other flame respond? And who are the ones who made it?”
And he to me: “You can already see
Over the greasy waters what we are expecting,
If the miasma from the swamp doesn’t hide it from you.”
No bow ever shot an arrow
That flew through the air so fast
As the pipsqueak boat I saw coming toward us,
Skimming along on the water,
Under the hand of a single oarsman,
Who hollered, “Now I’ve got you, you foul soul!”
“Phlegyas, Phlegyas, you shout for no use,”
Said my leader, “in this instance—
You will have us no longer than the time it takes to cross over this swamp.”
Like one who learns he’s been taken in by a big scheme
And is eaten up with resentment,
So was Phleygas in his trapped rage.
My leader stepped down into the boat,
And he made me step in with him,
And only when I did, did the boat seem to be laden.
As soon as my leader and I were on board,
The ancient prow cut deeper in the water,
More than it did when it transported others.
FOR MORE STUDY
Further explanation:
I mentioned the concept of a narrative arc without explaining it. Sorry about that. A narrative arc describes the structural shape of a story. The first way to think of this is through Aristotle’s notion of a story’s beginning, middle, and end. With modern ideas of structure, we morph Aristotle’s insight into something you may have learned in school: opening-rising action-climax-falling action-last word. Fair enough, but in a poem as long as COMEDY (or even in a novel as long as, say, Anna Karenina), we can’t reduce structure quite so much. Instead, we have to think of the heart of storytelling: It’s a way to set up a (long) chain of cause and effect. We might simply say, “one thing leads to another.” But in fact, it’s often difficult for to get one thing to lead to another. Even worse, in storytelling one thing must lead to another (or else the story becomes slapstick, farcical, surreal, or even absurdist). So a narrative arc describes the causal chain that makes a story seem probable. (Interesting that in storytelling, probability is increased by the simplicity of the cause-effect relations, even though we know that rarely is such case in our lived experience—maybe storytelling is one form of wish fulfillment for a simpler, more explicable world.) The causal chain has been relatively simple in COMEDY up to this point. Now it seems to expand to include backstories, side quests, diatribes, and even outright diversions from the central plot (or cause-effect lineup). What’s more, a narrative arc with its causal chain doesn’t have to be steady or linear. It can slow down. It can branch. It can back up. It can stop to reassess. It takes a gifted writer to handle so many possibilities in one story.
Two translation problems:
There’s a snappy rhyme in this passage that gives way to a bigger ambiguity. Starting at line 14, the rhyming words are “snella-quella-fella (“quickly-this [little boat]-evil (or lacking).” The sound of the Florentine is downright witty. That’s why Phlegyas’ line falls almost like the punchline to a joke: “Or se’ giunta, anima fella” (“Now you’re caught, evil soul”). But the verb, giungere in the infinitive form, is double-sided. It can mean “arrived” or “captured.” Is it “now you got here” or “now you’re captured”? In other words, the first line we hear from this boatman is not clear . . . because he’s so angry? Because he can’t make sense? Because he’s as hard to figure out as the signals from the towers? Because we’re heading down into nonsense? All difficult to interpret . . . and that’s forgetting that he uses the word for “soul” when the pilgrim’s corporeality is emphasized in this passage. Or is Phlegyas only talking to Virgil? (The word for “soul” is in the singular.) Does Phlegyas not even notice the pilgrim? And why would any soul want to go farther down into hell? (The answer to that actually lies ahead!)
Even if the poet attempts to solve the problem of the pilgrim’s corporeality in this passage, there’s a possible dodge right as it happens at line 27: “e sol quand’ io fui dentro parve carca” (literally, “and only when I was inside it seemed laden.” Seemed? Was it? Is there any doubt?
Three interpretative problems:
First, Phlegyas himself. A lot of commentators seem to make his identification an easy matter. It’s not. As I said, he’s a rather minor figure in classical literature, sometimes not even one character but the name of a group of people (particularly, the barbarians around Thessaly). Dante’s sources for Phlegyas are most likely Virgil and Statius. In The Aeneid, Book VI, lines 618 - 620, Phlegyas is at the gates of Tartarus (the lower, baleful pit of the afterlife), screaming out a warning to learn from his example and fear the gods. (It’s unclear who up here would hear his warning and who down there would heed it.) Virgil seems to have shorthanded the character a bit, as if he was a well-known entity. Later, Statius offers a little more detail in The Thebiad at Book I, lines 712 - 715. There, Phlegyas is starving, trapped at a banquet table but unable to eat because of his disgust at his fate. Both that disgust and his useless scream may be why Dante picks him out as a figure for wrath. Also, Dante may know a more diffuse mythological tradition that says Phlegyas burned the temple of Apollo at Delphi, after his mother was violated by the god. His arson was then an act of (justifiable?) rage. However, it’s doubtful Dante would find any act of arson against the gods as justifiable.
The question in line 9 brings up an interesting problem. “E qui son quei che ‘l fenno?” (Literally, “And who is the one who it made?”) Hell has been developed like real estate! We know the place was created by God, according to the inscription over its gate at the beginning of INFERNO, Canto III. But it may have since become more of a planned community with towers and such. Who indeed did this building? The damned? Or more nefarious creatures?
I made much of Dante standing on a bridge between the classical and modern world. Maybe so. Or do I just see it as so because I live in the modern world and Dante is so far removed from me? There’s no real answer to this question, even if answering it is crucial to the work of interpretation: How much does a reader project onto a work of art? Here’s one possible answer: Probably a lot. And here’s the best safeguard: Even if readers project onto a work, they should only work within the boundaries of that art. Any projection has to be supported by something in the work itself. I think we can safely say that given the poem so far and even more so based on what’s ahead, classical literature and the pilgrim’s subjectivity become the double lens of COMEDY as it moves forward in INFERNO.
One journaling prompt:
We probably all stand on bridges. Some people stand in a spot between their modern lives and an older Biblical world. Others have history, whether imagined or fact-based. Certainly those in Belgium, Poland, and Cambodia must bridge horrific historical events, the past ever encroaching into the present. Yet those who reenact Civil War battles seem to try to balance competing historical moments in other ways. What bridge do you stand on? How do you make compromises so the bridge won’t collapse?