51. Poetic Rivalry And Poetic Guilt: INFERNO, Canto X, Lines 52 - 72
Where is my son?
MEA CULPA: I made a mistake in this episode! The Dante scholar mentioned near the end is John Took, not Peter Took. Sorry about that. There’s no way to correct the audio but I can at least make the note here. Now on to the episode:
Without a doubt, this is one of the toughest passages in COMEDY, including the dense theological difficulties we’ll hit in the road ahead in PURGATORIO and PARADISO. It’s tough because lines are garbled, because characters misunderstand each other, and because it’s structure is so strange.
Farinata has been speaking in all his Stoic splendor. But he’s suddenly interrupted by a man who is 1) his political rival, 2) his in-law (he married his daughter to this man’s son), 3) the father of one of Dante’s own poetic rivals, and 4) a father who wants to know where his son is.
In the end, our poet is brave enough to own up to something horrible: his own role in the suffering caused by Florentine factionalism.
This passage is complicated, dense, garbled (at times), and rewarding. Maybe that’s the point. Maybe our poet is offering us lines that give us space to experience the pleasures of figuring it out.
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The segments for this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE:
[00:51] My English translation of INFERNO: Canto X, lines 52 - 72. If you'd like to see this translation, find a deeper study guide, or start a conversation with me, scroll down this page.
[02:38] An overview of the rings of hell until now--and the way this sixth circle may differ from what's come before.
[06:00] The arrival of Cavalcante de' Cavalcanti, hauling himself up onto his knees in the tomb next to Farinata. Who is this? And why is he so important to Dante (both our poet and our pilgrim)?
[08:55] Cavalcante's rather caustic reply to the pilgrim--which may tell more of the truth than he means. Dante is truly moving by his "high genius," despite the apparent sneer from the old man, who also reveals himself to be a doting father.
[11:56] Who is Guido Cavalcanti, Dante's poetic rival?
[15:53] The central point of the entire canto: Dante comes face to face with his complicity in the sufferings of Florence brought on by factionalism.
[16:58] Surely, the most difficult line in all of COMEDY! Centuries of scholarship have not made it any clearer. But I have another answer, outside the traditional readings.
[22:23] Cavalcante misunderstands the pilgrim. Misunderstanding may be the heart of the poet's notion of heresy. But there may be more afoot here. What if the poet is showing us that the pilgrim is not ready to use language properly because he is still sunk down in Florentine factionalism?
[28:00] One structuring device that may at work in Canto X: Acts 17 and the moment St. Paul is questioned by the Stoics and Epicureans in Athens.
[29:16] A second structuring device that may be at work in Canto X: the way Boethius in THE CONSOLATION OF PHILOSOPHY weaves poetry and theology/philosophy together in one text.
[31:29] Finally, the Dante scholar John (not Peter—sorry!) Took's fantastic notion that our poet may be trying to offer busy people a hint of the contemplative life by writing poetry that needs to be puzzled out.
[34:23] Rereading INFERNO, Canto X, lines 52 - 72.
My English translation of INFERNO, Canto X, lines 52 - 72:
Then another shade, just beside him, rose
In the open sepulcher, just visible from his chin up.
I believe this one had raised himself to his knees.
He look around me, as if he was worried
About seeing someone else with me—
And when his halfway hopes were dashed,
He started crying and said, “If it is because of your high genius
That you are able to walk through this blind prison,
Then where is my son? And why is he not with you?”
I to him, “I do not come under my own steam.
The one who is with me over there leads me,
Maybe to someone your Guido held in disdain.”
His words and the methodology of his pain
Had already read me his name:
This is the reason I gave him a spot-on reply.
Straightening up all of a sudden, he wailed, “What?
Did you just say ‘held’? Is he no longer alive?
Does not the sweet sunlight still fire up his eyes?”
When he noticed a certain hesitancy
I made before giving him an answer,
He fell down flat and was no longer visible.
FOR DEEPER STUDY
Three translation issues:
When Cavalcante rises up in the tomb, there’s no debate over whether he “is raised” or “raised himself.” The verb (line 52) is surse (“raised) and then levata at line 54 (“stood up”). Do these active verbs solve the translation problem at line 35? Farinata raised himself (and wasn’t raised by another)? Or are there two movements here: Farinata is raised while Cavalcante raises himself (thereby introducing irony into the moment, since the great warlord can’t even raise himself)?
And then the kicker line 63: forse cui Guido vostro ebbe a disdegno (literally, “perhaps to one Guido your held in disdain”). First off, note the use of the formal “you”—vostra. The pilgrim gives Cavalcante the same deferential dignity he gives Farinata. But the real problem lies with that cui; it can mean “whom” or “to whom.” And the reference for “who” is debatable (Virgil? Beatrice? God?), much less the grammatical directionality of that “whom” (is it accusative or dative, to put it in modern terms?). Then there’s that difficult past tense of ebbe which can mean “just now held” or “once held” or “no longer holds” or “definitely held.” We can’t solve the problems here—and they’ll probably never be solved . . . which leads me to question whether the line isn’t garbled on purpose.
Cavalcante may fully stand up. Line 63 begins Di sùbito drizzato grido . . . (literally, “by suddenly uprighting himself, he cried . . .”). This phrase can mean he pulled himself up as far as he was able or he actually stood up. If the latter (and it’s likely the case), he’s now as tall as Farinata. How would the two be of similar stature at this moment?
Five interpretive issues:
When Cavalcante mentions Dante’s “high genius” (line 59: altezza d’ingegno—literally, “most high genius”), he’s echoing an earlier moment when Dante invokes the muses to help him to record his journey, praising their “high genius” (INFERNO II: 7). In the invocation, Dante is calling on a higher power to help him. Here, Cavalcante locates that genius in the pilgrim himself, thereby denying an external higher power. Does this say something about Cavalcante’s point of view? And notice that while Cavalcante’s answer may be secular, Dante’s reply is perhaps more theological (line 61) . . . or at least more humble.
Back to that garbled line. The pilgrim chalks up the poet Guido’s stance as disdegno (line 63—“disdain”). This word has occurred once in three cantos in a row—back at VIII: 88 to describe the fallen angels’ response to Virgil and the pilgrim; then at IX: 88 to describe the heavenly messenger’s attitude toward the Furies and demons; and now here. So we move from infernal disdain to divinely-powered disdain to human disdain, perhaps the median point between the other two. The poet seems to be wrapping these three cantos into one unit. How then might we better understand them as interrelated structurally?
The late Dante scholar Robert Durling sees a Biblical echo in Cavalcante’s speech. When the father asks “Where is my son?”, he may be echoing the line at Genesis 4: 9 where God asks Abel “Where is your brother?” Durling claims these are both acts of fratricide (Cain kills his brother out of jealousy; Dante kills his poetic brother out of . . .). And both acts result in exile (Cain and Dante are kicked out of their homes).
Is heresy predicated on an act of misreading? With all the factionalism and personal guilt in this passage, it’s hard to remember we’re among the heretics. Heresy is certainly a reason for factionalism, particularly in Dante’s day when pogroms broke out to control heretics (and when alleged heretics persecuted more orthodox believers). But with Cavalcante, we see an act of misreading that leads to his misery. Is that then a comment on heresy? Misreading the Bible or other texts? Parsing texts to the wrong conclusion? Most heretics did claim they represented the “real” orthodoxy, based on their reading of theological or philosophical texts.
I mentioned a reference to THE AENEID at line 69: a glancing call-out to Book III, lines 310 - 312. So ends the section: Virgil’s text in Cavalcante’s mouth. But Cavalcante may start that way, too. At lines 58 - 59, Cavalcante calls hell a cieco/ carcere (literally, “blind prison”). He’s probably echoing the description of the afterlife as a carcere caeco (Latin from THE AENEID VI: 734—a “blind prison”). If the son held Virgil in disdain, or even if the son rejected classical poetry in favor of this sweet new style, the father can’t seem to help but quote the epic poet.
One journaling prompt:
Surely there has been a moment when you’ve been complicit in another’s misery. What happened? Could you make amends now? What would that look like? Or does your guilt make you, like the pilgrim, hesitant?