54. An Interpolated Episode: A Thematic And Structural Overview Of INFERNO, Canto X
Let’s step back and look at INFERNO, Canto X (even though we haven’t quite finished it). It’s overall structure is a chiasmus, a crossing.
It’s easy to be obsessed with Farinata. He’s a giant of history. He’s talkative (in his courtly way). He’s Stoic. But he may not be the true heart of this difficult canto.
That may be Cavalcante. And mostly, his horrifying question: “Where is my son?”
By looking closely at Canto X, we may also discover something about Dante’s conception of the self.
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There’s no specific passage for this episode. If you want, look back at my English translations in previous episode entries.
To find a study guide for deeper analysis or to drop a comment about this episode and continue the conversation with me, scroll down this page.
The segments for this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE:
[01:04] Why is Farinata damned? Posthumously, he was accused of the Cathar heresy.
[10:12] A look at the difference between Farinata and Cavalcante in Canto X.
[12:39] The structure of Canto X: a chiasmus. Dante hides something from Virgil--Farinata arises--Cavalcante arises--Farinata continues--Dante tells Virgil everything. That means that Cavalcante is the fulcrum of the canto.
[19:36] Farinata isn't the only one who tells the future. Back in Canto VI, Ciacco did, too. What's the difference?
[24:40] Shame, vendetta, and the nature of the self for Dante.
FOR DEEPER STUDY
One correction:
In the episode, my Protestant upbringing slipped out. Sorry about that. I said that the body of Christ was in the consecrated host (or the Eucharist wafer). No, in Roman Catholic theology the consecrated host is the body of Christ. (FYI, the transubstantiation of the host was received doctrine in Dante’s day, having been established by the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 and promoted by Aquinas’s monumental systematic theology.)
Three interpretive points:
We’re at Canto X. Its number can be written as a Roman numeral. That numeral is also a chi, the Greek letter X. Which means the numeral for the canto illustrates a chiasmus, the rhetorical structure of the canto itself. Is Dante that clever? Most likely.
Dualism is the philosophical stance that reality is made of two, often opposing, but certainly fundamental principles, substances, or even states of being. “Good v. bad” is a weak-tea, ethical version of dualism. In Western thought, dualism is primarily expressed as mind v. body, or perhaps matter v. spirit; but it can even traffic in mortal v. immortal, or even rational v. irrational. In our modern world, we often live under what’s called Cartesian dualism (that is, the dualism espoused by Renée DesCartes): mind/body. Although there’s a form of dualism called “substantive dualism” that states that the two halves can exist independently and are not in a competitive or which-one-is-best relationship, most forms of dualism collapse into ethical dualism, declaring one side lesser or inferior to the other. And mostly in Western thought, the lesser, weaker, more sinful, or just deficient side is the physical one (or often, the body). The Cathar heresy certainly existed under this rubric with its extreme denigration of the physical. One of the things that’s amazing (and not very medieval) about Dante’s COMEDY is the way the physical is not put down: the libido drive to Beatrice, the pilgrim’s corporeality in the afterlife (his body is almost never seen as the problem), and (later on) the emphasis on the pilgrim’s physical states (tired, breathing heavy, or sleepy). Dante seems to be directing his poem away from an ethical dualism. Watch how he manages that stance in the cantos of the violent ahead.
In the episode, I said that truth often is seen as one thing, a unified vision. Frankly, this stance is the obsession of Western thought, from the cult of reason that developed in the Enlightenment to our current mania for a grand unifying theory in physics. Westerners often believe that truth is not contradictory and that it can explain everything once it’s known. The truth will set you free, in other words. But will it?