47. Saved At Last . . . By Mercury, Jesus, The Archangel Michael, Someone: INFERNO, Canto IX, Lines 64 - 106
The messenger approaches the walls of Dis.
How long have we been standing with the pilgrim and his guide in front of the walls of Dis? For ten episodes of this podcast!
Now comes salvation . . . in the form of a messenger . . . from heaven? Yes, most likely. But who is this, so disdainful and above the fracas of Styx?
Just a reminder: Salvation was always on the way. Virgil said so many lines ago. So what was everyone so worried about?
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The segments for this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE:
[01:26] My English translation of INFERNO, Canto IX, lines 64 - 106. If you’d like to read along, continue the conversation with a comment, or find a deeper study guide for this passage, scroll down this page.
[04:32] Our passage starts with two allusions out of Virgil's AENEID, one from early in the epic and one from near the end. These two get fused in front of Dis and offer us the full sweep of Virgil's epic just before we pass beyond Virgil's imaginative landscape.
[07:52] Then we get a simile cribbed from Ovid, one that shows all the derring-do our poet can muster. He renovates this strange allusion into a Christian context.
[11:02] The messenger arrives. Jesus? Mercury? The Archangel Michael? Saint Peter? Hercules? Aeneas? The Holy Roman Emperor Henry VII? The devil in charge of this circle? Jesus is the word of God made flesh. But would Jesus show up (again) in hell? Mercury carried the words of the gods to mortals . . . and had become a medieval allegory for the good use of language. Maybe this figure is the arrival of eloquence, just when a poet needs it most, when Dante is about to step away from his master's imaginative landscape.
[17:29] We've had disdain from the demons, but here comes legitimate disdain, righteous and rather impatient, right before the whole scene ends in its forgone and foretold conclusion.
My English translation of INFERNO, Canto IX, Lines 64 - 106:
And now there crashed across the turbulent waves
An awe-inspiring sound
That made the shore of the swamp start to tremble.
It was like the blast of a wind
That’s caused by opposing heat currents
Such that it strikes a forest without any resistance,
Splintering the branches, snapping them off, and sweeping them away,
Pouring forward with a lot of dust,
Putting the animals and shepherds to rout.
[Virgil] uncovered my eyes and said, “Now look way out there
Over the ancient dross and focus in on
The spot where the smoke is the most intense.”
As frogs before a hostile
Snake will scatter and flee in every direction
Until they’re all bunched together on the land,
So I saw more than a thousand spirits fleeing
In front of one who strode along
Over the swamp of Styx with dry soles.
The air was acrid all around him,
And with his left hand he fanned his face, worn out
It appeared, with this sort of annoyance.
I well knew he’d been sent from heaven,
And I turned to my master, who made a sign
That I should stay quiet and bow down before him.
How full of disdain he seemed to me!
He came up to the gate and with a little wand
Opened it as if nothing held it in place.
“O outcasts from heaven, o despised people,”
He began as he stood on the awful threshold,
“What makes you stick to your insolence?
“Why do you kick against what is willed?
Its purpose can never be turned back
And it can increase your pain at any time.
“Do you think it helps to butt your skulls against fate?
Your Cerberus, as you well remember,
Got his chin and gullet flayed for stuff like this.”
Then he went back along the mucky road,
Without ever so much as making a gesture toward us. He looked like
A man pressed and gnawed by other cares
Than the ones caused by the guy in front of him.
We hightailed it to the city,
Fortified by his holy words.
We went in without the slightest battle challenge.
FOR DEEPER STUDY
Sources:
For the two fused passages that begin this passage: see Virgil’s AENEID Book II: 416 - 419 and Book XII:451 - 455.
For the scattering frogs: see Ovid’s METAMORPHOSES, Book VI:370 - 381.
For Mercury’s fanning gesture: see Statius’ THEBIAD, Book II:1 - 5.
For Jesus’ walking on the water: see the Gospel of Matthew 14:25.
For Hercules’ saving Theseus: see Virgil’s AENEID, Book VI:392 - 396.
Two translation issues:
Virgil directs the pilgrim Dante to drizza il nerbo/ del viso su per quella schiuma antica (lines 73b - 74—literally, “to direct the beam of the vision over the foam ancient”). Yes, schiuma is a nicely disgusting word for Styx. We can imagine who scummy it is. But these lines are actually a curious bit from Dante. They indicate that some sort of light must emerge from your eyes for you to see the things in the world. In fact, that’s not Dante’s hypothesis. It’s Plato’s. Although Dante has perhaps only read one small fragment of Plato’s work, he knows more from Aristotle’s commentaries that touch on Plato . . . and in the CONVIVIO, Dante uses Aristotle to refute Plato’s claim that you see because light comes out of your eyes (Book III, chapter ix, line 10). However, our poet perhaps doesn’t remember his own earlier correction of this “scientific” gaffe, since he states it rather straightforwardly here . . . unless he’s having Virgil repeat Plato’s mistake, thereby showing Virgil’s prone-to-error humanness and again putting distance between the pilgrim and his guide.
The messenger steps over those souls in Styx. As I said, the question is who are they? They could be the angry and sullen in the swamp, Argenti perhaps among them. Or they could be fallen angels, the demons we’ve already seen before the walls of Dis. The storytelling logic may dictate the first answer (how could the demons get over there so quickly and unnoticed?), but the words of the text may dictate the second. When the messenger speaks of the ones wearying him, he calls them cacciati del ciel (line 91—literally, “chased-out-ones from heaven”). It’s doubtful that he’d think of damned humans as coming from heaven since we’re denizens of earth. The phrasing clearly indicates some sort of fallen angels (that is, demons). In the end, I think you’ve got two options. You can say that there are more of those demons who ran back into the gates who live out in the swamp (in other words, there are more of them out there who we didn’t know about). Or you can claim the text is muddled, that the poet has stuck demons in two places at once. Frankly, I vote for the latter, but I’m not afraid of occasionally maligning our great poet, since I see COMEDY as a poem in process, rather than a fully polished, modern work of art. (Much more on that down the road in the poem.)
Four interpretive issues:
No doubt about it, the messenger opens the gate with a wand (una verghetta—line 89). We might then say that a wand precludes this messenger’s being Michael, since the archangel is most often presented with a great sword. Then again, we might say that a wand precludes this figure’s being Jesus, since what would Jesus have to do with magic? In fact, ever since Erichtho at line 23, there’s been all sorts of sorcery and magic afoot in Canto IX. And we’re approaching the heretics. Might those two things be connected? (Not that the poet would think the messenger is a sorcerer, but might there be all sorts of lesser magic afoot that sets the vibe for the lesser mysticism of the heretics?)
How was Hercules thought of as a symbol for Christ in the Middle Ages? Because of his mixed divinity and humanity. Because he often came from on high as a benefactor to humans. Because he had easy access between Mount Olympus and the world of humans. Because he descended into Hades to rescue Theseus. And because his death was a great apotheosis.
Although I gave you a lot of possible interpretations for this messenger, the early commentators were less sure. Many of them simply called him messo celeste, “messenger of heaven.” Does our modern desire to pin things down and say what it “really” means get in the way of a simpler, more straightforward answer?
How is this incident like the harrowing of hell? For one thing, a messenger from heaven (in that case, Jesus) descends to rescue those trapped. Although this messenger does rescue the pilgrim and Virgil, he doesn’t pull them out of hell. Instead, he turns around and heads back, clearly indicating that the point here is not rescue but the journey onward. Maybe this episode is a bit tongue-in-cheek: a seemingly grandiose, even operatic moment in front of Dis, solved and even waved off with a shrug, before everything goes back to normal. A tempest in a tea pot, as it were.
One journaling prompt:
Do you expect anything out of those who rescue you? Have you ever been rescued by someone who seemed indifferent to the whole affair? How did that make you feel?