Così di ponte in ponte, altro parlando
che la mia comedìa cantar non cura,
venimmo; e tenavamo 'l colmo, quando
restammo per veder l'altra fessura
di Malebolge e li altri pianti vani;
e vidila mirabilmente oscura.
Quale ne l'arzanà de' Viniziani
bolle l'inverno la tenace pece
a rimpalmare i legni lor non sani,
ché navicar non ponno – in quella vece
chi fa suo legno novo e chi ristoppa
le coste a quel che più vïaggi fece;
chi ribatte da proda e chi da poppa;
altri fa remi e altri volge sarte;
chi terzeruolo e artimon rintoppa –:
tal, non per foco ma per divin' arte,
bollia là giuso una pegola spessa,
che 'nviscava la ripa d'ogne parte.
I' vedea lei, ma non vedëa in essa
mai che le bolle che 'l bollor levava,
e gonfiar tutta, e riseder compressa.
Mentr' io là giù fisamente mirava,
lo duca mio, dicendo “Guarda, guarda!”
mi trasse a sé del loco dov' io stava.
Allor mi volsi come l'uom cui tarda
di veder quel che li convien fuggire
e cui paura sùbita sgagliarda,
che, per veder, non indugia 'l partire:
e vidi dietro a noi un diavol nero
correndo su per lo scoglio venire.
Ahi quant' elli era ne l'aspetto fero!
e quanto mi parea ne l'atto acerbo,
con l'ali aperte e sovra i piè leggero!
L'omero suo, ch'era aguto e superbo,
carcava un peccator con ambo l'anche,
e quei tenea de' piè ghermito 'l nerbo.
Del nostro ponte disse: “O Malebranche,
ecco un de li anzïan di Santa Zita!
Mettetel sotto, ch'i' torno per anche
a quella terra, che n'è ben fornita:
ogn' uom v'è barattier, fuor che Bonturo;
del no, per li denar, vi si fa ita.”
Là giù 'l buttò, e per lo scoglio duro
si volse; e mai non fu mastino sciolto
con tanta fretta a seguitar lo furo.
Quel s'attuffò, e tornò sù convolto;
ma i demon che del ponte avean coperchio,
gridar: “Qui non ha loco il Santo Volto!
qui si nuota altrimenti che nel Serchio!
Però, se tu non vuo' di nostri graffi,
non far sopra la pegola soverchio.”
Poi l'addentar con più di cento raffi,
disser: “Coverto convien che qui balli,
sì che, se puoi, nascosamente accaffi.”
Non altrimenti i cuoci a' lor vassalli
fanno attuffare in mezzo la caldaia
la carne con li uncin, perché non galli.
Lo buon maestro “Acciò che non si paia
che tu ci sia,” mi disse, “giù t'acquatta
dopo uno scheggio, ch'alcun schermo t'aia;
e per nulla offension che mi sia fatta,
non temer tu, ch'i' ho le cose conte,
per ch'altra volta fui a tal baratta.”
Poscia passò di là dal co del ponte;
e com' el giunse in su la ripa sesta,
mestier li fu d'aver sicura fronte.
Con quel furore e con quella tempesta
ch'escono i cani a dosso al poverello
che di sùbito chiede ove s'arresta,
usciron quei di sotto al ponticello,
e volser contra lui tutt' i runcigli;
ma el gridò: “Nessun di voi sia fello!
Innanzi che l'uncin vostro mi pigli,
traggasi avante l'un di voi che m'oda,
e poi d'arruncigliarmi si consigli.”
Tutti gridaron: “Vada Malacoda!”;
per ch'un si mosse – e li altri stetter fermi –
e venne a lui dicendo: “Che li approda?”
“Credi tu, Malacoda, qui vedermi
esser venuto,” disse 'l mio maestro,
“sicuro già da tutti vostri schermi,
sanza voler divino e fato destro?
Lascian' andar, ché nel cielo è voluto
ch'i' mostri altrui questo cammin silvestro.”
Allor li fu l'orgoglio sì caduto,
ch'e' si lasciò cascar l'uncino a' piedi,
e disse a li altri: “Omai non sia feruto.”
E 'l duca mio a me: “O tu che siedi
tra li scheggion del ponte quatto quatto,
sicuramente omai a me ti riedi.”
Per ch'io mi mossi e a lui venni ratto;
e i diavoli si fecer tutti avanti,
sì ch'io temetti ch'ei tenesser patto;
così vid' ïo già temer li fanti
ch'uscivan patteggiati di Caprona,
veggendo sé tra nemici cotanti.
I' m'accostai con tutta la persona
lungo 'l mio duca, e non torceva li occhi
da la sembianza lor ch'era non buona.
Ei chinavan li raffi e “Vuo' che 'l tocchi,”
diceva l'un con l'altro, “in sul groppone?”
E rispondien: “Si, fa che gliel' accocchi.”
Ma quel demonio che tenea sermone
col duca mio, si volse tutto presto
e disse: “Posa, posa, Scarmiglione!”
Poi disse a noi: “Più oltre andar per questo
iscoglio non si può, però che giace
tutto spezzato al fondo l'arco sesto.
E se l'andare avante pur vi piace,
andatevene su per questa grotta;
presso è un altro scoglio che via face.
Ier, più oltre cinqu' ore che quest' otta,
mille dugento con sessanta sei
anni compié che qui la via fu rotta.
Io mando verso là di questi miei
a riguardar s'alcun se ne sciorina;
gite con lor, che non saranno rei.”
“Tra'ti avante, Alichino, e Calcabrina,”
cominciò elli a dire, “e tu, Cagnazzo;
e Barbariccia guidi la decina.
Libicocco vegn' oltre e Draghignazzo,
Cirïatto sannuto e Graffiacane
e Farfarello e Rubicante pazzo.
Cercate 'ntorno le boglienti pane;
costor sian salvi infino a l'altro scheggio
che tutto intero va sovra le tane.”
“Omè, maestro, che è quel ch'i' veggio?”
diss' io, “deh, sanza scorta andianci soli,
se tu sa' ir; ch'i' per me non la cheggio.
Se tu se' sì accorto come suoli,
non vedi tu ch'e' digrignan li denti
e con le ciglia ne minaccian duoli?”
Ed elli a me: “Non vo' che tu paventi;
lasciali digrignar pur a lor senno,
ch'e' fanno ciò per li lessi dolenti.”
Per l'argine sinistro volta dienno;
ma prima avea ciascun la lingua stretta
coi denti, verso lor duca, per cenno;
ed elli avea del cul fatto trombetta.
From bridge to bridge thus, speaking other things
Of which my Comedy cares not to sing,
We came along, and held the summit, when
We halted to behold another fissure
Of Malebolge and other vain laments;
And I beheld it marvellously dark.
As in the Arsenal of the Venetians
Boils in the winter the tenacious pitch
To smear their unsound vessels o'er again,
For sail they cannot; and instead thereof
One makes his vessel new, and one recaulks
The ribs of that which many a voyage has made;
One hammers at the prow, one at the stern,
This one makes oars, and that one cordage twists,
Another mends the mainsail and the mizzen;
Thus, not by fire, but by the art divine,
Was boiling down below there a dense pitch
Which upon every side the bank belimed.
I saw it, but I did not see within it
Aught but the bubbles that the boiling raised,
And all swell up and resubside compressed.
The while below there fixedly I gazed,
My Leader, crying out: "Beware, beware!"
Drew me unto himself from where I stood.
Then I turned round, as one who is impatient
To see what it behoves him to escape,
And whom a sudden terror doth unman,
Who, while he looks, delays not his departure;
And I beheld behind us a black devil,
Running along upon the crag, approach.
Ah, how ferocious was he in his aspect!
And how he seemed to me in action ruthless,
With open wings and light upon his feet!
His shoulders, which sharp-pointed were and high,
A sinner did encumber with both haunches,
And he held clutched the sinews of the feet.
From off our bridge, he said: "O Malebranche,
Behold one of the elders of Saint Zita;
Plunge him beneath, for I return for others
Unto that town, which is well furnished with them.
All there are barrators, except Bonturo;
No into Yes for money there is changed."
He hurled him down, and over the hard crag
Turned round, and never was a mastiff loosened
In so much hurry to pursue a thief.
The other sank, and rose again face downward;
But the demons, under cover of the bridge,
Cried: "Here the Santo Volto has no place!
Here swims one otherwise than in the Serchio;
Therefore, if for our gaffs thou wishest not,
Do not uplift thyself above the pitch."
They seized him then with more than a hundred rakes;
They said: "It here behoves thee to dance covered,
That, if thou canst, thou secretly mayest pilfer."
Not otherwise the cooks their scullions make
Immerse into the middle of the caldron
The meat with hooks, so that it may not float.
Said the good Master to me: "That it be not
Apparent thou art here, crouch thyself down
Behind a jag, that thou mayest have some screen;
And for no outrage that is done to me
Be thou afraid, because these things I know,
For once before was I in such a scuffle."
Then he passed on beyond the bridge's head,
And as upon the sixth bank he arrived,
Need was for him to have a steadfast front.
With the same fury, and the same uproar,
As dogs leap out upon a mendicant,
Who on a sudden begs, where'er he stops,
They issued from beneath the little bridge,
And turned against him all their grappling-irons;
But he cried out: "Be none of you malignant!
Before those hooks of yours lay hold of me,
Let one of you step forward, who may hear me,
And then take counsel as to grappling me."
They all cried out: "Let Malacoda go;"
Whereat one started, and the rest stood still,
And he came to him, saying: "What avails it?"
"Thinkest thou, Malacoda, to behold me
Advanced into this place," my Master said,
"Safe hitherto from all your skill of fence,
Without the will divine, and fate auspicious?
Let me go on, for it in Heaven is willed
That I another show this savage road."
Then was his arrogance so humbled in him,
That he let fall his grapnel at his feet,
And to the others said: "Now strike him not."
And unto me my Guide: "O thou, who sittest
Among the splinters of the bridge crouched down,
Securely now return to me again."
Wherefore I started and came swiftly to him;
And all the devils forward thrust themselves,
So that I feared they would not keep their compact.
And thus beheld I once afraid the soldiers
Who issued under safeguard from Caprona,
Seeing themselves among so many foes.
Close did I press myself with all my person
Beside my Leader, and turned not mine eyes
From off their countenance, which was not good.
They lowered their rakes, and "Wilt thou have me hit him,"
They said to one another, "on the rump?"
And answered: "Yes; see that thou nick him with it."
But the same demon who was holding parley
With my Conductor turned him very quickly,
And said: "Be quiet, be quiet, Scarmiglione;"
Then said to us: "You can no farther go
Forward upon this crag, because is lying
All shattered, at the bottom, the sixth arch.
And if it still doth please you to go onward,
Pursue your way along upon this rock;
Near is another crag that yields a path.
Yesterday, five hours later than this hour,
One thousand and two hundred sixty-six
Years were complete, that here the way was broken.
I send in that direction some of mine
To see if any one doth air himself;
Go ye with them; for they will not be vicious.
Step forward, Alichino and Calcabrina,"
Began he to cry out, "and thou, Cagnazzo;
And Barbariccia, do thou guide the ten.
Come forward, Libicocco and Draghignazzo,
And tusked Ciriatto and Graffiacane,
And Farfarello and mad Rubicante;
Search ye all round about the boiling pitch;
Let these be safe as far as the next crag,
That all unbroken passes o'er the dens."
"O me! what is it, Master, that I see?
Pray let us go," I said, "without an escort,
If thou knowest how, since for myself I ask none.
If thou art as observant as thy wont is,
Dost thou not see that they do gnash their teeth,
And with their brows are threatening woe to us?"
And he to me: "I will not have thee fear;
Let them gnash on, according to their fancy,
Because they do it for those boiling wretches."
Along the left-hand dike they wheeled about;
But first had each one thrust his tongue between
His teeth towards their leader for a signal;
And he had made a trumpet of his rump.
What is the subject under discussion as the travelers leave the fourth bridge and reach the midpoint of the fifth? Most commentators simply avoid the issue, which probably must remain moot. A few offer hypotheses about it, e.g., Benvenuto saying they discussed still other varieties of divination not touched upon in the examples they had examined (comm. to vv. 1-6), while Trucchi argues that the two poets are discussing their calumniators and their own good conscience, which defends them against such as these (comm. to vv. 1-6). All one may reasonably conjecture is that the poet had no need to call attention to the subject under discussion if he did not want his reader to wonder about it. However, no one has offered anything like a conclusive argument. And Davide Conrieri is of the opinion that any such attempt must be considered a flight of critical fancy (“Letture del canto XXI dell'Inferno,” Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 158 [1981], pp. 1-2). But see the note to Inf. IV.104-105.
Dante's choice of title for his work caused some early commentators difficulty, but not all of them. Guido da Pisa (comm. to vv. 1-2), for instance, nearly certainly echoing the Epistle to Cangrande, says that this work is a comedy because, like other comedies, it begins in misery and adversity and ends in prosperity and happiness (incipiunt a miseria et adversitate et finiunt in prosperitatem et felicitatem). Others see only the stylistic reference of the term, as in the case of Benvenuto, for whom the title simply means 'my book in the vernacular' (meus liber vulgaris). But others, like Francesco da Buti, allow that they are puzzled, wondering whether or not Dante should so have entitled it, but then allowing that it was his right to do whatever he chose: 'Sarebbe dubbio, se questo poema dell'autore si dee chiamare comedia o no; ma poi che li piacque chiamarla comedia debbalisi concedere. Messer Francesco Petrarca in una sua epistola che comincia: Ne te laudasse poeniteat ec., muove questa questione e dice: Nec cur comoediam vocet video' (comm. to vv. 1-18) and see Luca Carlo Rossi, “Presenze di Petrarca in commenti danteschi fra tre e quattrocento,” Aevum 70 (1996), p. 462, for notice of this passage and its reference to the lost letter of Petrarch. For a brief consideration of Dante's sense of tragedy and comedy see the concluding discussion in the note to Inferno XX.106-114. On the question of the 'comic' in these cantos of devilish playfulness see Bernhard König, “Formen und Funktionen grober Komik bei Dante (zu Inferno XXI-XXIII),” Deutsches Dante-Jahrbuch 70 (1995), pp. 7-27.
Castelvetro (comm. to vv. 7-15) objects that Dante's wonderfully energetic simile is almost entirely made up of extraneous elements, i.e., he needed only to say that the pitch in the bolgia was as black as that in the arsenal at Venice. Of course, that is the beauty of it, as Dante paints his scene as though he had seen the pictures of Breughel before they were painted. Trucchi (comm. to Inf. XI.7-18) points out that the 'honest mercantilism' of the Venetians, with all its vitality, stands against the sordid conniving of barrators. The pitch, the punishing agent of this bolgia, is the apt sign of the nature of barrators (whom we today call 'grafters'), working in secret and leaving such practitioners enlimed with its sticky sign, attaching to all who practice this kind of fraud. 'Barratry, the buying and selling of public office, is the civil equivalent of simony, the buying and selling of church office, the sin punished in the third bolgia' (Singleton, comm. to XXI.38).
Verse 11, 'chi fa suo legno novo,' is understood by nearly all the commentators to refer to the construction of new ships. However, the entire context here involves the rebuilding of existent vessels; thus our translation has it that this phrase refers to making an old ship new.
Verse 16, insisting that what Dante records here is not, as is the aesthetically interesting arsenal of Venice, the result of human artisanship, but of God's own and particular craft, which is merely recorded – not created (or so the 'official version' has it) by a human agent. Even the darkness here is 'miraculous' – see v. 6 – as a result of that 'art.'
This figure introduces the 'traditional medieval' devils of plays and festivals to the poem. No other scenes in Inferno are as closely linked to the popular culture of the period as these in the cantos devoted to barratry.
Benvenuto (comm. to vv. 31-36) suggests that this figure, laden with what resembles a slaughtered corpse, reminds us of a butcher taking a carcass to be skinned and sold. Christopher Kleinhenz has indicated another (and parodic) likely source: Christ as the Good Shepherd (the pastor bonus of the Bible and of medieval illustrations), holding a saved lamb on his shoulder. See his “Iconographic Parody in Inferno XXI,” Res publica litterarum 5 (1982), pp. 129-31.
The name of this class of devils, Malebranche, fits well the place, Malebolge, and means 'Evil Claws,' referring to their hooked hands, and perhaps to their forked prongs.
The Elders of Lucca were the city's magistrates, similar in their governance to the Priors of Florence. Zita was a young servant woman of the city, dead in the 1270's, to whom were reputed great kindness and numerous miracles. While she was not canonized until 1690, she was reputed a saint shortly after her death, and her cult flourished around her tomb in the church of San Frediano in Lucca.
As for the identity of this nameless Lucchese, Guido da Pisa seems to have been the first commentator to say that he was Martino Bottario (or Bottai). He seems to have shared political (and thus grafting) power with Bonturo Dati, mentioned in v. 41 (Inf. XXI.41). There is another fact about him that is striking: he apparently died, according to Guido (comm. to this verse), on 26 March 1300, that is, at least in certain calculations, on the very day that is now unfolding in Dante's poem. Francesco da Buti confirms his name and also registers the date of his death, now given as the Friday night before Holy Saturday (but only referring to the month of March, strangely, since Good Friday fell on 9 April in 1300). Later commentators, if they refer to this material, all have the death date as occurring on 9 April, even though this is not authorized by the first commentators to claim that Martino is the Lucchese here present. For particulars see Pietro Mazzamuto (ED.1970.1), pp. 313-14.
The notion that barrators come straight from earth to this point in hell, carried off by a devil, seems to violate the rule that all must cross Acheron with Charon (Inf. III.122-123) and then go before Minos to be judged (Inf. V.7-12). Even the black Cherub who carries off the soul of Guido da Montefeltro is said (by Guido himself) to have carried him only as far as Minos (Inf. XXVII.124). Thus Singleton reasons (comm. to this verse) that the devil at least stops briefly at Minos's place of judgement in order to allow the formal sentencing to take place. (Must we also imagine that he accompanies barrators from Lucca aboard Charon's skiff?) It is surely true that Dante is generally precise in honoring the ground-rules that he establishes; it is also true that he has written a poem, one that allows him to please his fancy when he chooses.
Bonturo Dati, who did not die until 1325, was famed for his barratry. A popular tale has it that when Boniface VIII, embracing him at an encounter when Bonturo visited him on an embassy, shook him, Bonturo said, in return, 'You have just shaken half of Lucca' (meaning to indicate Martino as the other half). Dante's devil's exclusion of him from among the Lucchesi who, suborned by money, will turn an Elder's 'no' into a 'yes' is indubitably ironic and sarcastic: no one in Lucca is a greater grafter than he.
Tommaseo (comm. to vv. 40-42) points out that Bonturo betrayed Lucca to the Pisans in 1315 and that, therefore, this passage was written before that date or Dante would have consigned Bonturo to a future posting in Cocytus, among the treacherous. However, as we must acknowledge, any such certainty about Dante's choice of the most fit punishment may be tentative at best. E.g., why is Dido punished as a lover and not as a suicide? (See the note to Inf. V.61.)
The ironic edge of the devils' remark is variously interpreted, depending on the meaning of convolto. Does this sinner return to the surface with his face now covered with pitch (in which case he resembles the ebony face of Christ on the much-venerated image of the Crucifixion in San Martino, in Lucca)? or is he bent in two, emerging with his backside from the pitch (in which case he looks like a citizen of Lucca kneeling to prostrate himself before the image)? Strong arguments are made for each interpretation, and each is supported by a further text (Inf. XXII. 25-28; Inf. XXII.19-24), in which the sinners in this bolgia are compared, second to frogs with only their snouts out of water, first to dolphins showing their backs as they move through water. Either meaning is completely possible, but most contemporary commentators prefer the latter, perhaps because it is the more burlesque.
Nonetheless, it remains interesting that Barbi (Problemi di critica dantesca [Florence: Sansoni, 1934]), p. 273, supports reading convolto as 'covered up in' with the example of a text in Bono Giamboni (Orosio, V.xix): 'Mario fuggendo... nelle paludi di Minturnese si nascose; della quali malavventuratamente del fango tutto convolto tratto....' See also Isidoro Del Lungo (Dal seculo e dal poema di Dante, vol. II [Bologna: Zanichelli, 1898]), pp. 471-72, offering the following equivalences for the word: 'involto, ravviluppato, ravvolto, in materia sporca o appiccicosa.'
The Serchio is the river near Lucca in which citizens swam for refreshment in the days of summer. That the devils address Martino would tend to support the notion that it is his head that has surfaced rather than his rump, i.e., they would seem to be saying 'Man, that's no way to do your imitation of the Holy Visage!' Guido da Pisa thinks of a passage in the Bible (Deut. 32:20) in ways that might make his reader consider a parodic intent, if Dante were also thinking of it: 'Abscondam faciem meam ab eis' (And I shall hide my face from them). The Mosaic text speaks, of course, of God's hiding his face from humankind.
Virgil's self-assurance will shortly be proven to have been ill-founded. Here begins the longest episode in the Inferno; it will run through Canto XXIII.57, some 290 verses. See Hollander, “Virgil and Dante as Mind-Readers (Inferno XXI and XXIII),” Medioevo romanzo 9 (1984), pp. 85-86.
Some Renaissance commentators (e.g., Vellutello [comm. to vv. 61-63] and Daniello [comm. to vv. 58-63]) insist on the proximity of the word baratta to barratry, which would indicate that the word is likely to indicate a previous scuffle with these very demons – who certainly seem the types to have bothered Virgil on his descent to Cocytus when Erichtho sent him on his mission down there (Inf. IX.22-27). The first commentator in the DDP to try a different tack is Singleton (comm. to this verse): 'Virgil may be referring to his difficulties with the devils at the walls of Dis (see Inf. VIII.82-130) or to some skirmish that he had with these devils on his previous journey to lower hell (see Inf. IX.22-30). The first meaning seems more probable and more significant, since Virgil appears to forget that his difficulties before Dis were solved not by himself but by a messenger from Heaven. Hence Virgil here exhibits the same self-confidence he showed in the earlier encounter, before the devils shut the gate in his face.' The fact that Virgil is shortly to be found out of his depth in his struggle with the Malebranche, again after exhibiting self-confidence in the face of hostile demons, strongly supports this reading. It does not invalidate the understanding that Virgil has earlier had a set-to with these very demons, but may stand alongside it.
Virgil's calm assurance is shredded by the attack of the 'dogs' who rush out upon him, a poor beggar. The simile is hard on poor Virgil, who only barely manages to regain control of the situation, which, we remember, is being observed by Dante, squatting in hiding on the bridge.
The entry on the scene of Malacoda ('Eviltail'), the lead devil of the Malebranche of Malebolge, is perfectly in character, as we shall see. He pretends to be servile, but mutters under his breath about his sense of Virgil's futility.
Virgil's aplomb, his 'high style' contrasting with demonic 'vernacular,' serves at once to set him apart from the 'low-life' devils and their leader, Malacoda, but also to make him seem slightly ridiculous, since Malacoda, not he, is eventually in control of the situation, as Virgil will only finally realize, to his considerable chagrin, in Inferno XXIII.140-141.
Does Virgil remember Malacoda from his last visit? Or has he only repeated Malacoda's name because he has just now heard it from the other devils? The plural 'your' (vostri) seems to be generalized and to refer to all and any demonic opposition that he and Dante have encountered so far in their journey, actually only once before, at the gates of Dis (Inf. VIII.115-120). Virgil's phrasing at v. 82, combining references to the will of God and to the (pagan?) Fates, picks up his identical coupling of these two powers in Inferno IX.94-97. A Christian guide might have only used the first term. (Guido da Pisa, in his gloss to this passage, refers explicitly to the different ambiences of the two expressions, the first being 'theological,' the second, 'pagan' [comm. to vv. 79-82]).
Virgil's reference in verse 83 to the fact that he is not alone ('Let us proceed') for the first time alerts Malacoda and his cohort to Dante's hidden presence.
Malacoda's fearful gesture, letting fall his billhook, is a masterful ploy that succeeds in getting Virgil to lower his guard. See Sam Guyler, “Virgil the Hypocrite – Almost: A Re-interpretation of Inferno XXIII,” Dante Studies 90 (1972), p. 34.
Virgil, tricked, orders Dante to leave his hiding-place. The devils, sensing fresh meat, crowd forward. Dante's fear is a more realistic response to the situation than is Virgil's self-assurance.
Dante was present at the successful siege of Caprona in 1289, a cavalryman observing the success of the mission of his Tuscan Guelphs against this Pisan stronghold. It is to his lasting credit that what he remembers for us is how the victims must have felt when they came out under a pact of safe-conduct. Dante, exiled on the charge of barratry by his fellow citizens, here perhaps means to remind them that he had borne arms on behalf of the republic in its victories, the siege of Caprona in August of 1289, and the previous great victory at Campaldino that June, referred to later in this scene (Inf. XXII.4-5). He was not a grafter, scheming in the dark, but a cavalryman who did his deeds in the fearsome clarity of war. There have been several attempts in the last two centuries to relate the scenes and personnages of these cantos of barratry to Dante's own experiences as accused barrator perfidiously sent into exile on this pretext (and thus presented as attacked by the twelve Priors of Florence, the Malebranche), and to his military experiences, offered as vindication against such malicious and untrue charges. For cautionary remarks, urging restraint in such interpretation, see Conrieri (“Letture del canto XXI dell'Inferno,” Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 158 [1981]), pp. 38-39. For perhaps the first attempt to claim that Dante had constructed a developed autobiographical 'political allegory' in this scene, see Rossetti's introduction to his commentary on Inferno XXI.
Dante's fears are justified; only Malacoda's intervention prevents the bullying devils from assaulting him with their hooks. Malacoda holds back Scarmiglione, encouraging him to await a more propitious moment for his attack. Scarmiglione is the first of the ten devils to be named. He is apparently not included in the squad of ten put under Barbariccia's control – see the note to Inf. XXI.118-123.
Malacoda's partial truth (the sixth bridge, over the bolgia of hypocrisy, is in ruins) is quickly joined to a total lie (the next bridge along their route is intact). All the bridges are down, as Virgil will be told by Fra Catalano in Inferno XXIII.133-138.
This extraordinarily precise time reference is the most certain text in the poem for establishing an external date for the journey. It is 7am of Holy Saturday, since Christ, according to Dante (Conv. IV.xxiii.10), died at noon. In fact Dante here is modifying the facts, if on the authority of Luke (Luke 23:44), who gives the time of the preternatural darkness as noon. Even Luke, however, is clear that Jesus died at 3pm. Dante is willing to rewrite any text to suit his purpose.
From this passage we learn that the events narrated in this poem occurred in Easter week of 1300. However, and as we have seen, Dante seems to be conflating two dates for the start of the journey, each of which is propitious, 25 March and 8 April (the actual date of Good Friday in 1300) in order to gain the maximum significant referentiality. See the note to Inferno I.1.
Malacoda lies yet again, promising safe-conduct. Once again Virgil is trusting, Dante not.
Dante's pleasure in developing nomi parlanti (names that bespeak the quality of their possessors) is evident here. His playful naming is based on the aggressive bestial characteristics of these creatures (for some possible 'translations' into English of their names, see the commentary of Durling and Martinez [New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996], p. 330). For the possible Old French sources of his onomastic behavior see Picone, “Baratteria e stile comico in Dante,” in Studi Americani su Dante, ed. G. C. Alessio e R. Hollander (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1989), pp. 76-81.
Dante's thoroughness and care in his handling of the demons' names is underlined by the fact that each of the ten members of the decina (from decuria, the Latin military term for a 'squad' of ten troopers) is named exactly once in the following canto, as follows (with John Sinclair's English approximations of some of these names in parentheses): Barbariccia (Curlybeard – XXII.29), Graffiacane (Scratchdog – 34), Rubicante (Redface – 40), Cirïatto (Swineface – 55), Libicocco (70), Dragignazzo (Vile Dragon – 73), Farfarello (94), Cagnazzo (Low hound – 106), Alichino (112), and Calcabrina (133).
Malacoda lies again: the devils understand that they are to take Dante and Virgil by surprise, attacking Dante later on.
Dante's pleas to Virgil will fall on deaf ears, but we sense already (and will shortly have confirmed) that he, not his guide, understands what the devils are up to.
Virgil's response to Dante's question, based on correct observation and resultant correct interpretation of the devils' true motives, marks yet another moment in this canto in which the reader is nearly forced to observe how harshly the guide is being treated by the author. In recent years there has been an increasing acknowledgment of what should have been clear to any reader who is willing to give over the notion that the Comedy is essentially an 'allegorical' poem in which the character Virgil represents 'Reason.' See, among others, Ricardo Bacchelli, “Da Dite a Malebolge: la tragedia delle porte chiuse e la farsa dei ponti rotti,” Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 131 (1954), pp. 1-32; C.J. Ryan, “Inferno XXI: Virgil and Dante: A Study in Contrasts,” Italica 59 (1982), pp. 16-31; Hollander, “Virgil and Dante as Mind-Readers (Inferno XXI and XXIII),” Medioevo romanzo 9 (1984), pp. 85-100.
The devils either prepare to make or have already made a farting sound with their tongues stuck through their teeth in answer to Malcoda's prior 'war-signal' of a fart. See Sarolli's appreciation of this low-mimetic scene as part of the tradition of musica diaboli, the hellish music that stands in total contrast with the heavenly music we shall hear in Paradiso (see Gian Roberto Sarolli, Prolegomena alla “Divina Commedia” [Florence: Olschki, 1971], pp. 5n., 363-80). The perverse devils turn their mouths into anuses in preparing to answer Malacoda's (and he is surely aptly named in light of this sound) turning his anus into a bugle, the gestures constituting a sign of 'understanding among the malefactors and a sign of their derision for Virgil's self-confident misreading of their intentions' (Hollander, “Virgil and Dante as Mind-Readers [Inferno XXI and XXIII],” Medioevo romanzo 9 [1984], p. 90).
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Così di ponte in ponte, altro parlando
che la mia comedìa cantar non cura,
venimmo; e tenavamo 'l colmo, quando
restammo per veder l'altra fessura
di Malebolge e li altri pianti vani;
e vidila mirabilmente oscura.
Quale ne l'arzanà de' Viniziani
bolle l'inverno la tenace pece
a rimpalmare i legni lor non sani,
ché navicar non ponno – in quella vece
chi fa suo legno novo e chi ristoppa
le coste a quel che più vïaggi fece;
chi ribatte da proda e chi da poppa;
altri fa remi e altri volge sarte;
chi terzeruolo e artimon rintoppa –:
tal, non per foco ma per divin' arte,
bollia là giuso una pegola spessa,
che 'nviscava la ripa d'ogne parte.
I' vedea lei, ma non vedëa in essa
mai che le bolle che 'l bollor levava,
e gonfiar tutta, e riseder compressa.
Mentr' io là giù fisamente mirava,
lo duca mio, dicendo “Guarda, guarda!”
mi trasse a sé del loco dov' io stava.
Allor mi volsi come l'uom cui tarda
di veder quel che li convien fuggire
e cui paura sùbita sgagliarda,
che, per veder, non indugia 'l partire:
e vidi dietro a noi un diavol nero
correndo su per lo scoglio venire.
Ahi quant' elli era ne l'aspetto fero!
e quanto mi parea ne l'atto acerbo,
con l'ali aperte e sovra i piè leggero!
L'omero suo, ch'era aguto e superbo,
carcava un peccator con ambo l'anche,
e quei tenea de' piè ghermito 'l nerbo.
Del nostro ponte disse: “O Malebranche,
ecco un de li anzïan di Santa Zita!
Mettetel sotto, ch'i' torno per anche
a quella terra, che n'è ben fornita:
ogn' uom v'è barattier, fuor che Bonturo;
del no, per li denar, vi si fa ita.”
Là giù 'l buttò, e per lo scoglio duro
si volse; e mai non fu mastino sciolto
con tanta fretta a seguitar lo furo.
Quel s'attuffò, e tornò sù convolto;
ma i demon che del ponte avean coperchio,
gridar: “Qui non ha loco il Santo Volto!
qui si nuota altrimenti che nel Serchio!
Però, se tu non vuo' di nostri graffi,
non far sopra la pegola soverchio.”
Poi l'addentar con più di cento raffi,
disser: “Coverto convien che qui balli,
sì che, se puoi, nascosamente accaffi.”
Non altrimenti i cuoci a' lor vassalli
fanno attuffare in mezzo la caldaia
la carne con li uncin, perché non galli.
Lo buon maestro “Acciò che non si paia
che tu ci sia,” mi disse, “giù t'acquatta
dopo uno scheggio, ch'alcun schermo t'aia;
e per nulla offension che mi sia fatta,
non temer tu, ch'i' ho le cose conte,
per ch'altra volta fui a tal baratta.”
Poscia passò di là dal co del ponte;
e com' el giunse in su la ripa sesta,
mestier li fu d'aver sicura fronte.
Con quel furore e con quella tempesta
ch'escono i cani a dosso al poverello
che di sùbito chiede ove s'arresta,
usciron quei di sotto al ponticello,
e volser contra lui tutt' i runcigli;
ma el gridò: “Nessun di voi sia fello!
Innanzi che l'uncin vostro mi pigli,
traggasi avante l'un di voi che m'oda,
e poi d'arruncigliarmi si consigli.”
Tutti gridaron: “Vada Malacoda!”;
per ch'un si mosse – e li altri stetter fermi –
e venne a lui dicendo: “Che li approda?”
“Credi tu, Malacoda, qui vedermi
esser venuto,” disse 'l mio maestro,
“sicuro già da tutti vostri schermi,
sanza voler divino e fato destro?
Lascian' andar, ché nel cielo è voluto
ch'i' mostri altrui questo cammin silvestro.”
Allor li fu l'orgoglio sì caduto,
ch'e' si lasciò cascar l'uncino a' piedi,
e disse a li altri: “Omai non sia feruto.”
E 'l duca mio a me: “O tu che siedi
tra li scheggion del ponte quatto quatto,
sicuramente omai a me ti riedi.”
Per ch'io mi mossi e a lui venni ratto;
e i diavoli si fecer tutti avanti,
sì ch'io temetti ch'ei tenesser patto;
così vid' ïo già temer li fanti
ch'uscivan patteggiati di Caprona,
veggendo sé tra nemici cotanti.
I' m'accostai con tutta la persona
lungo 'l mio duca, e non torceva li occhi
da la sembianza lor ch'era non buona.
Ei chinavan li raffi e “Vuo' che 'l tocchi,”
diceva l'un con l'altro, “in sul groppone?”
E rispondien: “Si, fa che gliel' accocchi.”
Ma quel demonio che tenea sermone
col duca mio, si volse tutto presto
e disse: “Posa, posa, Scarmiglione!”
Poi disse a noi: “Più oltre andar per questo
iscoglio non si può, però che giace
tutto spezzato al fondo l'arco sesto.
E se l'andare avante pur vi piace,
andatevene su per questa grotta;
presso è un altro scoglio che via face.
Ier, più oltre cinqu' ore che quest' otta,
mille dugento con sessanta sei
anni compié che qui la via fu rotta.
Io mando verso là di questi miei
a riguardar s'alcun se ne sciorina;
gite con lor, che non saranno rei.”
“Tra'ti avante, Alichino, e Calcabrina,”
cominciò elli a dire, “e tu, Cagnazzo;
e Barbariccia guidi la decina.
Libicocco vegn' oltre e Draghignazzo,
Cirïatto sannuto e Graffiacane
e Farfarello e Rubicante pazzo.
Cercate 'ntorno le boglienti pane;
costor sian salvi infino a l'altro scheggio
che tutto intero va sovra le tane.”
“Omè, maestro, che è quel ch'i' veggio?”
diss' io, “deh, sanza scorta andianci soli,
se tu sa' ir; ch'i' per me non la cheggio.
Se tu se' sì accorto come suoli,
non vedi tu ch'e' digrignan li denti
e con le ciglia ne minaccian duoli?”
Ed elli a me: “Non vo' che tu paventi;
lasciali digrignar pur a lor senno,
ch'e' fanno ciò per li lessi dolenti.”
Per l'argine sinistro volta dienno;
ma prima avea ciascun la lingua stretta
coi denti, verso lor duca, per cenno;
ed elli avea del cul fatto trombetta.
From bridge to bridge thus, speaking other things
Of which my Comedy cares not to sing,
We came along, and held the summit, when
We halted to behold another fissure
Of Malebolge and other vain laments;
And I beheld it marvellously dark.
As in the Arsenal of the Venetians
Boils in the winter the tenacious pitch
To smear their unsound vessels o'er again,
For sail they cannot; and instead thereof
One makes his vessel new, and one recaulks
The ribs of that which many a voyage has made;
One hammers at the prow, one at the stern,
This one makes oars, and that one cordage twists,
Another mends the mainsail and the mizzen;
Thus, not by fire, but by the art divine,
Was boiling down below there a dense pitch
Which upon every side the bank belimed.
I saw it, but I did not see within it
Aught but the bubbles that the boiling raised,
And all swell up and resubside compressed.
The while below there fixedly I gazed,
My Leader, crying out: "Beware, beware!"
Drew me unto himself from where I stood.
Then I turned round, as one who is impatient
To see what it behoves him to escape,
And whom a sudden terror doth unman,
Who, while he looks, delays not his departure;
And I beheld behind us a black devil,
Running along upon the crag, approach.
Ah, how ferocious was he in his aspect!
And how he seemed to me in action ruthless,
With open wings and light upon his feet!
His shoulders, which sharp-pointed were and high,
A sinner did encumber with both haunches,
And he held clutched the sinews of the feet.
From off our bridge, he said: "O Malebranche,
Behold one of the elders of Saint Zita;
Plunge him beneath, for I return for others
Unto that town, which is well furnished with them.
All there are barrators, except Bonturo;
No into Yes for money there is changed."
He hurled him down, and over the hard crag
Turned round, and never was a mastiff loosened
In so much hurry to pursue a thief.
The other sank, and rose again face downward;
But the demons, under cover of the bridge,
Cried: "Here the Santo Volto has no place!
Here swims one otherwise than in the Serchio;
Therefore, if for our gaffs thou wishest not,
Do not uplift thyself above the pitch."
They seized him then with more than a hundred rakes;
They said: "It here behoves thee to dance covered,
That, if thou canst, thou secretly mayest pilfer."
Not otherwise the cooks their scullions make
Immerse into the middle of the caldron
The meat with hooks, so that it may not float.
Said the good Master to me: "That it be not
Apparent thou art here, crouch thyself down
Behind a jag, that thou mayest have some screen;
And for no outrage that is done to me
Be thou afraid, because these things I know,
For once before was I in such a scuffle."
Then he passed on beyond the bridge's head,
And as upon the sixth bank he arrived,
Need was for him to have a steadfast front.
With the same fury, and the same uproar,
As dogs leap out upon a mendicant,
Who on a sudden begs, where'er he stops,
They issued from beneath the little bridge,
And turned against him all their grappling-irons;
But he cried out: "Be none of you malignant!
Before those hooks of yours lay hold of me,
Let one of you step forward, who may hear me,
And then take counsel as to grappling me."
They all cried out: "Let Malacoda go;"
Whereat one started, and the rest stood still,
And he came to him, saying: "What avails it?"
"Thinkest thou, Malacoda, to behold me
Advanced into this place," my Master said,
"Safe hitherto from all your skill of fence,
Without the will divine, and fate auspicious?
Let me go on, for it in Heaven is willed
That I another show this savage road."
Then was his arrogance so humbled in him,
That he let fall his grapnel at his feet,
And to the others said: "Now strike him not."
And unto me my Guide: "O thou, who sittest
Among the splinters of the bridge crouched down,
Securely now return to me again."
Wherefore I started and came swiftly to him;
And all the devils forward thrust themselves,
So that I feared they would not keep their compact.
And thus beheld I once afraid the soldiers
Who issued under safeguard from Caprona,
Seeing themselves among so many foes.
Close did I press myself with all my person
Beside my Leader, and turned not mine eyes
From off their countenance, which was not good.
They lowered their rakes, and "Wilt thou have me hit him,"
They said to one another, "on the rump?"
And answered: "Yes; see that thou nick him with it."
But the same demon who was holding parley
With my Conductor turned him very quickly,
And said: "Be quiet, be quiet, Scarmiglione;"
Then said to us: "You can no farther go
Forward upon this crag, because is lying
All shattered, at the bottom, the sixth arch.
And if it still doth please you to go onward,
Pursue your way along upon this rock;
Near is another crag that yields a path.
Yesterday, five hours later than this hour,
One thousand and two hundred sixty-six
Years were complete, that here the way was broken.
I send in that direction some of mine
To see if any one doth air himself;
Go ye with them; for they will not be vicious.
Step forward, Alichino and Calcabrina,"
Began he to cry out, "and thou, Cagnazzo;
And Barbariccia, do thou guide the ten.
Come forward, Libicocco and Draghignazzo,
And tusked Ciriatto and Graffiacane,
And Farfarello and mad Rubicante;
Search ye all round about the boiling pitch;
Let these be safe as far as the next crag,
That all unbroken passes o'er the dens."
"O me! what is it, Master, that I see?
Pray let us go," I said, "without an escort,
If thou knowest how, since for myself I ask none.
If thou art as observant as thy wont is,
Dost thou not see that they do gnash their teeth,
And with their brows are threatening woe to us?"
And he to me: "I will not have thee fear;
Let them gnash on, according to their fancy,
Because they do it for those boiling wretches."
Along the left-hand dike they wheeled about;
But first had each one thrust his tongue between
His teeth towards their leader for a signal;
And he had made a trumpet of his rump.
What is the subject under discussion as the travelers leave the fourth bridge and reach the midpoint of the fifth? Most commentators simply avoid the issue, which probably must remain moot. A few offer hypotheses about it, e.g., Benvenuto saying they discussed still other varieties of divination not touched upon in the examples they had examined (comm. to vv. 1-6), while Trucchi argues that the two poets are discussing their calumniators and their own good conscience, which defends them against such as these (comm. to vv. 1-6). All one may reasonably conjecture is that the poet had no need to call attention to the subject under discussion if he did not want his reader to wonder about it. However, no one has offered anything like a conclusive argument. And Davide Conrieri is of the opinion that any such attempt must be considered a flight of critical fancy (“Letture del canto XXI dell'Inferno,” Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 158 [1981], pp. 1-2). But see the note to Inf. IV.104-105.
Dante's choice of title for his work caused some early commentators difficulty, but not all of them. Guido da Pisa (comm. to vv. 1-2), for instance, nearly certainly echoing the Epistle to Cangrande, says that this work is a comedy because, like other comedies, it begins in misery and adversity and ends in prosperity and happiness (incipiunt a miseria et adversitate et finiunt in prosperitatem et felicitatem). Others see only the stylistic reference of the term, as in the case of Benvenuto, for whom the title simply means 'my book in the vernacular' (meus liber vulgaris). But others, like Francesco da Buti, allow that they are puzzled, wondering whether or not Dante should so have entitled it, but then allowing that it was his right to do whatever he chose: 'Sarebbe dubbio, se questo poema dell'autore si dee chiamare comedia o no; ma poi che li piacque chiamarla comedia debbalisi concedere. Messer Francesco Petrarca in una sua epistola che comincia: Ne te laudasse poeniteat ec., muove questa questione e dice: Nec cur comoediam vocet video' (comm. to vv. 1-18) and see Luca Carlo Rossi, “Presenze di Petrarca in commenti danteschi fra tre e quattrocento,” Aevum 70 (1996), p. 462, for notice of this passage and its reference to the lost letter of Petrarch. For a brief consideration of Dante's sense of tragedy and comedy see the concluding discussion in the note to Inferno XX.106-114. On the question of the 'comic' in these cantos of devilish playfulness see Bernhard König, “Formen und Funktionen grober Komik bei Dante (zu Inferno XXI-XXIII),” Deutsches Dante-Jahrbuch 70 (1995), pp. 7-27.
Castelvetro (comm. to vv. 7-15) objects that Dante's wonderfully energetic simile is almost entirely made up of extraneous elements, i.e., he needed only to say that the pitch in the bolgia was as black as that in the arsenal at Venice. Of course, that is the beauty of it, as Dante paints his scene as though he had seen the pictures of Breughel before they were painted. Trucchi (comm. to Inf. XI.7-18) points out that the 'honest mercantilism' of the Venetians, with all its vitality, stands against the sordid conniving of barrators. The pitch, the punishing agent of this bolgia, is the apt sign of the nature of barrators (whom we today call 'grafters'), working in secret and leaving such practitioners enlimed with its sticky sign, attaching to all who practice this kind of fraud. 'Barratry, the buying and selling of public office, is the civil equivalent of simony, the buying and selling of church office, the sin punished in the third bolgia' (Singleton, comm. to XXI.38).
Verse 11, 'chi fa suo legno novo,' is understood by nearly all the commentators to refer to the construction of new ships. However, the entire context here involves the rebuilding of existent vessels; thus our translation has it that this phrase refers to making an old ship new.
Verse 16, insisting that what Dante records here is not, as is the aesthetically interesting arsenal of Venice, the result of human artisanship, but of God's own and particular craft, which is merely recorded – not created (or so the 'official version' has it) by a human agent. Even the darkness here is 'miraculous' – see v. 6 – as a result of that 'art.'
This figure introduces the 'traditional medieval' devils of plays and festivals to the poem. No other scenes in Inferno are as closely linked to the popular culture of the period as these in the cantos devoted to barratry.
Benvenuto (comm. to vv. 31-36) suggests that this figure, laden with what resembles a slaughtered corpse, reminds us of a butcher taking a carcass to be skinned and sold. Christopher Kleinhenz has indicated another (and parodic) likely source: Christ as the Good Shepherd (the pastor bonus of the Bible and of medieval illustrations), holding a saved lamb on his shoulder. See his “Iconographic Parody in Inferno XXI,” Res publica litterarum 5 (1982), pp. 129-31.
The name of this class of devils, Malebranche, fits well the place, Malebolge, and means 'Evil Claws,' referring to their hooked hands, and perhaps to their forked prongs.
The Elders of Lucca were the city's magistrates, similar in their governance to the Priors of Florence. Zita was a young servant woman of the city, dead in the 1270's, to whom were reputed great kindness and numerous miracles. While she was not canonized until 1690, she was reputed a saint shortly after her death, and her cult flourished around her tomb in the church of San Frediano in Lucca.
As for the identity of this nameless Lucchese, Guido da Pisa seems to have been the first commentator to say that he was Martino Bottario (or Bottai). He seems to have shared political (and thus grafting) power with Bonturo Dati, mentioned in v. 41 (Inf. XXI.41). There is another fact about him that is striking: he apparently died, according to Guido (comm. to this verse), on 26 March 1300, that is, at least in certain calculations, on the very day that is now unfolding in Dante's poem. Francesco da Buti confirms his name and also registers the date of his death, now given as the Friday night before Holy Saturday (but only referring to the month of March, strangely, since Good Friday fell on 9 April in 1300). Later commentators, if they refer to this material, all have the death date as occurring on 9 April, even though this is not authorized by the first commentators to claim that Martino is the Lucchese here present. For particulars see Pietro Mazzamuto (ED.1970.1), pp. 313-14.
The notion that barrators come straight from earth to this point in hell, carried off by a devil, seems to violate the rule that all must cross Acheron with Charon (Inf. III.122-123) and then go before Minos to be judged (Inf. V.7-12). Even the black Cherub who carries off the soul of Guido da Montefeltro is said (by Guido himself) to have carried him only as far as Minos (Inf. XXVII.124). Thus Singleton reasons (comm. to this verse) that the devil at least stops briefly at Minos's place of judgement in order to allow the formal sentencing to take place. (Must we also imagine that he accompanies barrators from Lucca aboard Charon's skiff?) It is surely true that Dante is generally precise in honoring the ground-rules that he establishes; it is also true that he has written a poem, one that allows him to please his fancy when he chooses.
Bonturo Dati, who did not die until 1325, was famed for his barratry. A popular tale has it that when Boniface VIII, embracing him at an encounter when Bonturo visited him on an embassy, shook him, Bonturo said, in return, 'You have just shaken half of Lucca' (meaning to indicate Martino as the other half). Dante's devil's exclusion of him from among the Lucchesi who, suborned by money, will turn an Elder's 'no' into a 'yes' is indubitably ironic and sarcastic: no one in Lucca is a greater grafter than he.
Tommaseo (comm. to vv. 40-42) points out that Bonturo betrayed Lucca to the Pisans in 1315 and that, therefore, this passage was written before that date or Dante would have consigned Bonturo to a future posting in Cocytus, among the treacherous. However, as we must acknowledge, any such certainty about Dante's choice of the most fit punishment may be tentative at best. E.g., why is Dido punished as a lover and not as a suicide? (See the note to Inf. V.61.)
The ironic edge of the devils' remark is variously interpreted, depending on the meaning of convolto. Does this sinner return to the surface with his face now covered with pitch (in which case he resembles the ebony face of Christ on the much-venerated image of the Crucifixion in San Martino, in Lucca)? or is he bent in two, emerging with his backside from the pitch (in which case he looks like a citizen of Lucca kneeling to prostrate himself before the image)? Strong arguments are made for each interpretation, and each is supported by a further text (Inf. XXII. 25-28; Inf. XXII.19-24), in which the sinners in this bolgia are compared, second to frogs with only their snouts out of water, first to dolphins showing their backs as they move through water. Either meaning is completely possible, but most contemporary commentators prefer the latter, perhaps because it is the more burlesque.
Nonetheless, it remains interesting that Barbi (Problemi di critica dantesca [Florence: Sansoni, 1934]), p. 273, supports reading convolto as 'covered up in' with the example of a text in Bono Giamboni (Orosio, V.xix): 'Mario fuggendo... nelle paludi di Minturnese si nascose; della quali malavventuratamente del fango tutto convolto tratto....' See also Isidoro Del Lungo (Dal seculo e dal poema di Dante, vol. II [Bologna: Zanichelli, 1898]), pp. 471-72, offering the following equivalences for the word: 'involto, ravviluppato, ravvolto, in materia sporca o appiccicosa.'
The Serchio is the river near Lucca in which citizens swam for refreshment in the days of summer. That the devils address Martino would tend to support the notion that it is his head that has surfaced rather than his rump, i.e., they would seem to be saying 'Man, that's no way to do your imitation of the Holy Visage!' Guido da Pisa thinks of a passage in the Bible (Deut. 32:20) in ways that might make his reader consider a parodic intent, if Dante were also thinking of it: 'Abscondam faciem meam ab eis' (And I shall hide my face from them). The Mosaic text speaks, of course, of God's hiding his face from humankind.
Virgil's self-assurance will shortly be proven to have been ill-founded. Here begins the longest episode in the Inferno; it will run through Canto XXIII.57, some 290 verses. See Hollander, “Virgil and Dante as Mind-Readers (Inferno XXI and XXIII),” Medioevo romanzo 9 (1984), pp. 85-86.
Some Renaissance commentators (e.g., Vellutello [comm. to vv. 61-63] and Daniello [comm. to vv. 58-63]) insist on the proximity of the word baratta to barratry, which would indicate that the word is likely to indicate a previous scuffle with these very demons – who certainly seem the types to have bothered Virgil on his descent to Cocytus when Erichtho sent him on his mission down there (Inf. IX.22-27). The first commentator in the DDP to try a different tack is Singleton (comm. to this verse): 'Virgil may be referring to his difficulties with the devils at the walls of Dis (see Inf. VIII.82-130) or to some skirmish that he had with these devils on his previous journey to lower hell (see Inf. IX.22-30). The first meaning seems more probable and more significant, since Virgil appears to forget that his difficulties before Dis were solved not by himself but by a messenger from Heaven. Hence Virgil here exhibits the same self-confidence he showed in the earlier encounter, before the devils shut the gate in his face.' The fact that Virgil is shortly to be found out of his depth in his struggle with the Malebranche, again after exhibiting self-confidence in the face of hostile demons, strongly supports this reading. It does not invalidate the understanding that Virgil has earlier had a set-to with these very demons, but may stand alongside it.
Virgil's calm assurance is shredded by the attack of the 'dogs' who rush out upon him, a poor beggar. The simile is hard on poor Virgil, who only barely manages to regain control of the situation, which, we remember, is being observed by Dante, squatting in hiding on the bridge.
The entry on the scene of Malacoda ('Eviltail'), the lead devil of the Malebranche of Malebolge, is perfectly in character, as we shall see. He pretends to be servile, but mutters under his breath about his sense of Virgil's futility.
Virgil's aplomb, his 'high style' contrasting with demonic 'vernacular,' serves at once to set him apart from the 'low-life' devils and their leader, Malacoda, but also to make him seem slightly ridiculous, since Malacoda, not he, is eventually in control of the situation, as Virgil will only finally realize, to his considerable chagrin, in Inferno XXIII.140-141.
Does Virgil remember Malacoda from his last visit? Or has he only repeated Malacoda's name because he has just now heard it from the other devils? The plural 'your' (vostri) seems to be generalized and to refer to all and any demonic opposition that he and Dante have encountered so far in their journey, actually only once before, at the gates of Dis (Inf. VIII.115-120). Virgil's phrasing at v. 82, combining references to the will of God and to the (pagan?) Fates, picks up his identical coupling of these two powers in Inferno IX.94-97. A Christian guide might have only used the first term. (Guido da Pisa, in his gloss to this passage, refers explicitly to the different ambiences of the two expressions, the first being 'theological,' the second, 'pagan' [comm. to vv. 79-82]).
Virgil's reference in verse 83 to the fact that he is not alone ('Let us proceed') for the first time alerts Malacoda and his cohort to Dante's hidden presence.
Malacoda's fearful gesture, letting fall his billhook, is a masterful ploy that succeeds in getting Virgil to lower his guard. See Sam Guyler, “Virgil the Hypocrite – Almost: A Re-interpretation of Inferno XXIII,” Dante Studies 90 (1972), p. 34.
Virgil, tricked, orders Dante to leave his hiding-place. The devils, sensing fresh meat, crowd forward. Dante's fear is a more realistic response to the situation than is Virgil's self-assurance.
Dante was present at the successful siege of Caprona in 1289, a cavalryman observing the success of the mission of his Tuscan Guelphs against this Pisan stronghold. It is to his lasting credit that what he remembers for us is how the victims must have felt when they came out under a pact of safe-conduct. Dante, exiled on the charge of barratry by his fellow citizens, here perhaps means to remind them that he had borne arms on behalf of the republic in its victories, the siege of Caprona in August of 1289, and the previous great victory at Campaldino that June, referred to later in this scene (Inf. XXII.4-5). He was not a grafter, scheming in the dark, but a cavalryman who did his deeds in the fearsome clarity of war. There have been several attempts in the last two centuries to relate the scenes and personnages of these cantos of barratry to Dante's own experiences as accused barrator perfidiously sent into exile on this pretext (and thus presented as attacked by the twelve Priors of Florence, the Malebranche), and to his military experiences, offered as vindication against such malicious and untrue charges. For cautionary remarks, urging restraint in such interpretation, see Conrieri (“Letture del canto XXI dell'Inferno,” Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 158 [1981]), pp. 38-39. For perhaps the first attempt to claim that Dante had constructed a developed autobiographical 'political allegory' in this scene, see Rossetti's introduction to his commentary on Inferno XXI.
Dante's fears are justified; only Malacoda's intervention prevents the bullying devils from assaulting him with their hooks. Malacoda holds back Scarmiglione, encouraging him to await a more propitious moment for his attack. Scarmiglione is the first of the ten devils to be named. He is apparently not included in the squad of ten put under Barbariccia's control – see the note to Inf. XXI.118-123.
Malacoda's partial truth (the sixth bridge, over the bolgia of hypocrisy, is in ruins) is quickly joined to a total lie (the next bridge along their route is intact). All the bridges are down, as Virgil will be told by Fra Catalano in Inferno XXIII.133-138.
This extraordinarily precise time reference is the most certain text in the poem for establishing an external date for the journey. It is 7am of Holy Saturday, since Christ, according to Dante (Conv. IV.xxiii.10), died at noon. In fact Dante here is modifying the facts, if on the authority of Luke (Luke 23:44), who gives the time of the preternatural darkness as noon. Even Luke, however, is clear that Jesus died at 3pm. Dante is willing to rewrite any text to suit his purpose.
From this passage we learn that the events narrated in this poem occurred in Easter week of 1300. However, and as we have seen, Dante seems to be conflating two dates for the start of the journey, each of which is propitious, 25 March and 8 April (the actual date of Good Friday in 1300) in order to gain the maximum significant referentiality. See the note to Inferno I.1.
Malacoda lies yet again, promising safe-conduct. Once again Virgil is trusting, Dante not.
Dante's pleasure in developing nomi parlanti (names that bespeak the quality of their possessors) is evident here. His playful naming is based on the aggressive bestial characteristics of these creatures (for some possible 'translations' into English of their names, see the commentary of Durling and Martinez [New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996], p. 330). For the possible Old French sources of his onomastic behavior see Picone, “Baratteria e stile comico in Dante,” in Studi Americani su Dante, ed. G. C. Alessio e R. Hollander (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1989), pp. 76-81.
Dante's thoroughness and care in his handling of the demons' names is underlined by the fact that each of the ten members of the decina (from decuria, the Latin military term for a 'squad' of ten troopers) is named exactly once in the following canto, as follows (with John Sinclair's English approximations of some of these names in parentheses): Barbariccia (Curlybeard – XXII.29), Graffiacane (Scratchdog – 34), Rubicante (Redface – 40), Cirïatto (Swineface – 55), Libicocco (70), Dragignazzo (Vile Dragon – 73), Farfarello (94), Cagnazzo (Low hound – 106), Alichino (112), and Calcabrina (133).
Malacoda lies again: the devils understand that they are to take Dante and Virgil by surprise, attacking Dante later on.
Dante's pleas to Virgil will fall on deaf ears, but we sense already (and will shortly have confirmed) that he, not his guide, understands what the devils are up to.
Virgil's response to Dante's question, based on correct observation and resultant correct interpretation of the devils' true motives, marks yet another moment in this canto in which the reader is nearly forced to observe how harshly the guide is being treated by the author. In recent years there has been an increasing acknowledgment of what should have been clear to any reader who is willing to give over the notion that the Comedy is essentially an 'allegorical' poem in which the character Virgil represents 'Reason.' See, among others, Ricardo Bacchelli, “Da Dite a Malebolge: la tragedia delle porte chiuse e la farsa dei ponti rotti,” Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 131 (1954), pp. 1-32; C.J. Ryan, “Inferno XXI: Virgil and Dante: A Study in Contrasts,” Italica 59 (1982), pp. 16-31; Hollander, “Virgil and Dante as Mind-Readers (Inferno XXI and XXIII),” Medioevo romanzo 9 (1984), pp. 85-100.
The devils either prepare to make or have already made a farting sound with their tongues stuck through their teeth in answer to Malcoda's prior 'war-signal' of a fart. See Sarolli's appreciation of this low-mimetic scene as part of the tradition of musica diaboli, the hellish music that stands in total contrast with the heavenly music we shall hear in Paradiso (see Gian Roberto Sarolli, Prolegomena alla “Divina Commedia” [Florence: Olschki, 1971], pp. 5n., 363-80). The perverse devils turn their mouths into anuses in preparing to answer Malacoda's (and he is surely aptly named in light of this sound) turning his anus into a bugle, the gestures constituting a sign of 'understanding among the malefactors and a sign of their derision for Virgil's self-confident misreading of their intentions' (Hollander, “Virgil and Dante as Mind-Readers [Inferno XXI and XXIII],” Medioevo romanzo 9 [1984], p. 90).
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Così di ponte in ponte, altro parlando
che la mia comedìa cantar non cura,
venimmo; e tenavamo 'l colmo, quando
restammo per veder l'altra fessura
di Malebolge e li altri pianti vani;
e vidila mirabilmente oscura.
Quale ne l'arzanà de' Viniziani
bolle l'inverno la tenace pece
a rimpalmare i legni lor non sani,
ché navicar non ponno – in quella vece
chi fa suo legno novo e chi ristoppa
le coste a quel che più vïaggi fece;
chi ribatte da proda e chi da poppa;
altri fa remi e altri volge sarte;
chi terzeruolo e artimon rintoppa –:
tal, non per foco ma per divin' arte,
bollia là giuso una pegola spessa,
che 'nviscava la ripa d'ogne parte.
I' vedea lei, ma non vedëa in essa
mai che le bolle che 'l bollor levava,
e gonfiar tutta, e riseder compressa.
Mentr' io là giù fisamente mirava,
lo duca mio, dicendo “Guarda, guarda!”
mi trasse a sé del loco dov' io stava.
Allor mi volsi come l'uom cui tarda
di veder quel che li convien fuggire
e cui paura sùbita sgagliarda,
che, per veder, non indugia 'l partire:
e vidi dietro a noi un diavol nero
correndo su per lo scoglio venire.
Ahi quant' elli era ne l'aspetto fero!
e quanto mi parea ne l'atto acerbo,
con l'ali aperte e sovra i piè leggero!
L'omero suo, ch'era aguto e superbo,
carcava un peccator con ambo l'anche,
e quei tenea de' piè ghermito 'l nerbo.
Del nostro ponte disse: “O Malebranche,
ecco un de li anzïan di Santa Zita!
Mettetel sotto, ch'i' torno per anche
a quella terra, che n'è ben fornita:
ogn' uom v'è barattier, fuor che Bonturo;
del no, per li denar, vi si fa ita.”
Là giù 'l buttò, e per lo scoglio duro
si volse; e mai non fu mastino sciolto
con tanta fretta a seguitar lo furo.
Quel s'attuffò, e tornò sù convolto;
ma i demon che del ponte avean coperchio,
gridar: “Qui non ha loco il Santo Volto!
qui si nuota altrimenti che nel Serchio!
Però, se tu non vuo' di nostri graffi,
non far sopra la pegola soverchio.”
Poi l'addentar con più di cento raffi,
disser: “Coverto convien che qui balli,
sì che, se puoi, nascosamente accaffi.”
Non altrimenti i cuoci a' lor vassalli
fanno attuffare in mezzo la caldaia
la carne con li uncin, perché non galli.
Lo buon maestro “Acciò che non si paia
che tu ci sia,” mi disse, “giù t'acquatta
dopo uno scheggio, ch'alcun schermo t'aia;
e per nulla offension che mi sia fatta,
non temer tu, ch'i' ho le cose conte,
per ch'altra volta fui a tal baratta.”
Poscia passò di là dal co del ponte;
e com' el giunse in su la ripa sesta,
mestier li fu d'aver sicura fronte.
Con quel furore e con quella tempesta
ch'escono i cani a dosso al poverello
che di sùbito chiede ove s'arresta,
usciron quei di sotto al ponticello,
e volser contra lui tutt' i runcigli;
ma el gridò: “Nessun di voi sia fello!
Innanzi che l'uncin vostro mi pigli,
traggasi avante l'un di voi che m'oda,
e poi d'arruncigliarmi si consigli.”
Tutti gridaron: “Vada Malacoda!”;
per ch'un si mosse – e li altri stetter fermi –
e venne a lui dicendo: “Che li approda?”
“Credi tu, Malacoda, qui vedermi
esser venuto,” disse 'l mio maestro,
“sicuro già da tutti vostri schermi,
sanza voler divino e fato destro?
Lascian' andar, ché nel cielo è voluto
ch'i' mostri altrui questo cammin silvestro.”
Allor li fu l'orgoglio sì caduto,
ch'e' si lasciò cascar l'uncino a' piedi,
e disse a li altri: “Omai non sia feruto.”
E 'l duca mio a me: “O tu che siedi
tra li scheggion del ponte quatto quatto,
sicuramente omai a me ti riedi.”
Per ch'io mi mossi e a lui venni ratto;
e i diavoli si fecer tutti avanti,
sì ch'io temetti ch'ei tenesser patto;
così vid' ïo già temer li fanti
ch'uscivan patteggiati di Caprona,
veggendo sé tra nemici cotanti.
I' m'accostai con tutta la persona
lungo 'l mio duca, e non torceva li occhi
da la sembianza lor ch'era non buona.
Ei chinavan li raffi e “Vuo' che 'l tocchi,”
diceva l'un con l'altro, “in sul groppone?”
E rispondien: “Si, fa che gliel' accocchi.”
Ma quel demonio che tenea sermone
col duca mio, si volse tutto presto
e disse: “Posa, posa, Scarmiglione!”
Poi disse a noi: “Più oltre andar per questo
iscoglio non si può, però che giace
tutto spezzato al fondo l'arco sesto.
E se l'andare avante pur vi piace,
andatevene su per questa grotta;
presso è un altro scoglio che via face.
Ier, più oltre cinqu' ore che quest' otta,
mille dugento con sessanta sei
anni compié che qui la via fu rotta.
Io mando verso là di questi miei
a riguardar s'alcun se ne sciorina;
gite con lor, che non saranno rei.”
“Tra'ti avante, Alichino, e Calcabrina,”
cominciò elli a dire, “e tu, Cagnazzo;
e Barbariccia guidi la decina.
Libicocco vegn' oltre e Draghignazzo,
Cirïatto sannuto e Graffiacane
e Farfarello e Rubicante pazzo.
Cercate 'ntorno le boglienti pane;
costor sian salvi infino a l'altro scheggio
che tutto intero va sovra le tane.”
“Omè, maestro, che è quel ch'i' veggio?”
diss' io, “deh, sanza scorta andianci soli,
se tu sa' ir; ch'i' per me non la cheggio.
Se tu se' sì accorto come suoli,
non vedi tu ch'e' digrignan li denti
e con le ciglia ne minaccian duoli?”
Ed elli a me: “Non vo' che tu paventi;
lasciali digrignar pur a lor senno,
ch'e' fanno ciò per li lessi dolenti.”
Per l'argine sinistro volta dienno;
ma prima avea ciascun la lingua stretta
coi denti, verso lor duca, per cenno;
ed elli avea del cul fatto trombetta.
From bridge to bridge thus, speaking other things
Of which my Comedy cares not to sing,
We came along, and held the summit, when
We halted to behold another fissure
Of Malebolge and other vain laments;
And I beheld it marvellously dark.
As in the Arsenal of the Venetians
Boils in the winter the tenacious pitch
To smear their unsound vessels o'er again,
For sail they cannot; and instead thereof
One makes his vessel new, and one recaulks
The ribs of that which many a voyage has made;
One hammers at the prow, one at the stern,
This one makes oars, and that one cordage twists,
Another mends the mainsail and the mizzen;
Thus, not by fire, but by the art divine,
Was boiling down below there a dense pitch
Which upon every side the bank belimed.
I saw it, but I did not see within it
Aught but the bubbles that the boiling raised,
And all swell up and resubside compressed.
The while below there fixedly I gazed,
My Leader, crying out: "Beware, beware!"
Drew me unto himself from where I stood.
Then I turned round, as one who is impatient
To see what it behoves him to escape,
And whom a sudden terror doth unman,
Who, while he looks, delays not his departure;
And I beheld behind us a black devil,
Running along upon the crag, approach.
Ah, how ferocious was he in his aspect!
And how he seemed to me in action ruthless,
With open wings and light upon his feet!
His shoulders, which sharp-pointed were and high,
A sinner did encumber with both haunches,
And he held clutched the sinews of the feet.
From off our bridge, he said: "O Malebranche,
Behold one of the elders of Saint Zita;
Plunge him beneath, for I return for others
Unto that town, which is well furnished with them.
All there are barrators, except Bonturo;
No into Yes for money there is changed."
He hurled him down, and over the hard crag
Turned round, and never was a mastiff loosened
In so much hurry to pursue a thief.
The other sank, and rose again face downward;
But the demons, under cover of the bridge,
Cried: "Here the Santo Volto has no place!
Here swims one otherwise than in the Serchio;
Therefore, if for our gaffs thou wishest not,
Do not uplift thyself above the pitch."
They seized him then with more than a hundred rakes;
They said: "It here behoves thee to dance covered,
That, if thou canst, thou secretly mayest pilfer."
Not otherwise the cooks their scullions make
Immerse into the middle of the caldron
The meat with hooks, so that it may not float.
Said the good Master to me: "That it be not
Apparent thou art here, crouch thyself down
Behind a jag, that thou mayest have some screen;
And for no outrage that is done to me
Be thou afraid, because these things I know,
For once before was I in such a scuffle."
Then he passed on beyond the bridge's head,
And as upon the sixth bank he arrived,
Need was for him to have a steadfast front.
With the same fury, and the same uproar,
As dogs leap out upon a mendicant,
Who on a sudden begs, where'er he stops,
They issued from beneath the little bridge,
And turned against him all their grappling-irons;
But he cried out: "Be none of you malignant!
Before those hooks of yours lay hold of me,
Let one of you step forward, who may hear me,
And then take counsel as to grappling me."
They all cried out: "Let Malacoda go;"
Whereat one started, and the rest stood still,
And he came to him, saying: "What avails it?"
"Thinkest thou, Malacoda, to behold me
Advanced into this place," my Master said,
"Safe hitherto from all your skill of fence,
Without the will divine, and fate auspicious?
Let me go on, for it in Heaven is willed
That I another show this savage road."
Then was his arrogance so humbled in him,
That he let fall his grapnel at his feet,
And to the others said: "Now strike him not."
And unto me my Guide: "O thou, who sittest
Among the splinters of the bridge crouched down,
Securely now return to me again."
Wherefore I started and came swiftly to him;
And all the devils forward thrust themselves,
So that I feared they would not keep their compact.
And thus beheld I once afraid the soldiers
Who issued under safeguard from Caprona,
Seeing themselves among so many foes.
Close did I press myself with all my person
Beside my Leader, and turned not mine eyes
From off their countenance, which was not good.
They lowered their rakes, and "Wilt thou have me hit him,"
They said to one another, "on the rump?"
And answered: "Yes; see that thou nick him with it."
But the same demon who was holding parley
With my Conductor turned him very quickly,
And said: "Be quiet, be quiet, Scarmiglione;"
Then said to us: "You can no farther go
Forward upon this crag, because is lying
All shattered, at the bottom, the sixth arch.
And if it still doth please you to go onward,
Pursue your way along upon this rock;
Near is another crag that yields a path.
Yesterday, five hours later than this hour,
One thousand and two hundred sixty-six
Years were complete, that here the way was broken.
I send in that direction some of mine
To see if any one doth air himself;
Go ye with them; for they will not be vicious.
Step forward, Alichino and Calcabrina,"
Began he to cry out, "and thou, Cagnazzo;
And Barbariccia, do thou guide the ten.
Come forward, Libicocco and Draghignazzo,
And tusked Ciriatto and Graffiacane,
And Farfarello and mad Rubicante;
Search ye all round about the boiling pitch;
Let these be safe as far as the next crag,
That all unbroken passes o'er the dens."
"O me! what is it, Master, that I see?
Pray let us go," I said, "without an escort,
If thou knowest how, since for myself I ask none.
If thou art as observant as thy wont is,
Dost thou not see that they do gnash their teeth,
And with their brows are threatening woe to us?"
And he to me: "I will not have thee fear;
Let them gnash on, according to their fancy,
Because they do it for those boiling wretches."
Along the left-hand dike they wheeled about;
But first had each one thrust his tongue between
His teeth towards their leader for a signal;
And he had made a trumpet of his rump.
What is the subject under discussion as the travelers leave the fourth bridge and reach the midpoint of the fifth? Most commentators simply avoid the issue, which probably must remain moot. A few offer hypotheses about it, e.g., Benvenuto saying they discussed still other varieties of divination not touched upon in the examples they had examined (comm. to vv. 1-6), while Trucchi argues that the two poets are discussing their calumniators and their own good conscience, which defends them against such as these (comm. to vv. 1-6). All one may reasonably conjecture is that the poet had no need to call attention to the subject under discussion if he did not want his reader to wonder about it. However, no one has offered anything like a conclusive argument. And Davide Conrieri is of the opinion that any such attempt must be considered a flight of critical fancy (“Letture del canto XXI dell'Inferno,” Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 158 [1981], pp. 1-2). But see the note to Inf. IV.104-105.
Dante's choice of title for his work caused some early commentators difficulty, but not all of them. Guido da Pisa (comm. to vv. 1-2), for instance, nearly certainly echoing the Epistle to Cangrande, says that this work is a comedy because, like other comedies, it begins in misery and adversity and ends in prosperity and happiness (incipiunt a miseria et adversitate et finiunt in prosperitatem et felicitatem). Others see only the stylistic reference of the term, as in the case of Benvenuto, for whom the title simply means 'my book in the vernacular' (meus liber vulgaris). But others, like Francesco da Buti, allow that they are puzzled, wondering whether or not Dante should so have entitled it, but then allowing that it was his right to do whatever he chose: 'Sarebbe dubbio, se questo poema dell'autore si dee chiamare comedia o no; ma poi che li piacque chiamarla comedia debbalisi concedere. Messer Francesco Petrarca in una sua epistola che comincia: Ne te laudasse poeniteat ec., muove questa questione e dice: Nec cur comoediam vocet video' (comm. to vv. 1-18) and see Luca Carlo Rossi, “Presenze di Petrarca in commenti danteschi fra tre e quattrocento,” Aevum 70 (1996), p. 462, for notice of this passage and its reference to the lost letter of Petrarch. For a brief consideration of Dante's sense of tragedy and comedy see the concluding discussion in the note to Inferno XX.106-114. On the question of the 'comic' in these cantos of devilish playfulness see Bernhard König, “Formen und Funktionen grober Komik bei Dante (zu Inferno XXI-XXIII),” Deutsches Dante-Jahrbuch 70 (1995), pp. 7-27.
Castelvetro (comm. to vv. 7-15) objects that Dante's wonderfully energetic simile is almost entirely made up of extraneous elements, i.e., he needed only to say that the pitch in the bolgia was as black as that in the arsenal at Venice. Of course, that is the beauty of it, as Dante paints his scene as though he had seen the pictures of Breughel before they were painted. Trucchi (comm. to Inf. XI.7-18) points out that the 'honest mercantilism' of the Venetians, with all its vitality, stands against the sordid conniving of barrators. The pitch, the punishing agent of this bolgia, is the apt sign of the nature of barrators (whom we today call 'grafters'), working in secret and leaving such practitioners enlimed with its sticky sign, attaching to all who practice this kind of fraud. 'Barratry, the buying and selling of public office, is the civil equivalent of simony, the buying and selling of church office, the sin punished in the third bolgia' (Singleton, comm. to XXI.38).
Verse 11, 'chi fa suo legno novo,' is understood by nearly all the commentators to refer to the construction of new ships. However, the entire context here involves the rebuilding of existent vessels; thus our translation has it that this phrase refers to making an old ship new.
Verse 16, insisting that what Dante records here is not, as is the aesthetically interesting arsenal of Venice, the result of human artisanship, but of God's own and particular craft, which is merely recorded – not created (or so the 'official version' has it) by a human agent. Even the darkness here is 'miraculous' – see v. 6 – as a result of that 'art.'
This figure introduces the 'traditional medieval' devils of plays and festivals to the poem. No other scenes in Inferno are as closely linked to the popular culture of the period as these in the cantos devoted to barratry.
Benvenuto (comm. to vv. 31-36) suggests that this figure, laden with what resembles a slaughtered corpse, reminds us of a butcher taking a carcass to be skinned and sold. Christopher Kleinhenz has indicated another (and parodic) likely source: Christ as the Good Shepherd (the pastor bonus of the Bible and of medieval illustrations), holding a saved lamb on his shoulder. See his “Iconographic Parody in Inferno XXI,” Res publica litterarum 5 (1982), pp. 129-31.
The name of this class of devils, Malebranche, fits well the place, Malebolge, and means 'Evil Claws,' referring to their hooked hands, and perhaps to their forked prongs.
The Elders of Lucca were the city's magistrates, similar in their governance to the Priors of Florence. Zita was a young servant woman of the city, dead in the 1270's, to whom were reputed great kindness and numerous miracles. While she was not canonized until 1690, she was reputed a saint shortly after her death, and her cult flourished around her tomb in the church of San Frediano in Lucca.
As for the identity of this nameless Lucchese, Guido da Pisa seems to have been the first commentator to say that he was Martino Bottario (or Bottai). He seems to have shared political (and thus grafting) power with Bonturo Dati, mentioned in v. 41 (Inf. XXI.41). There is another fact about him that is striking: he apparently died, according to Guido (comm. to this verse), on 26 March 1300, that is, at least in certain calculations, on the very day that is now unfolding in Dante's poem. Francesco da Buti confirms his name and also registers the date of his death, now given as the Friday night before Holy Saturday (but only referring to the month of March, strangely, since Good Friday fell on 9 April in 1300). Later commentators, if they refer to this material, all have the death date as occurring on 9 April, even though this is not authorized by the first commentators to claim that Martino is the Lucchese here present. For particulars see Pietro Mazzamuto (ED.1970.1), pp. 313-14.
The notion that barrators come straight from earth to this point in hell, carried off by a devil, seems to violate the rule that all must cross Acheron with Charon (Inf. III.122-123) and then go before Minos to be judged (Inf. V.7-12). Even the black Cherub who carries off the soul of Guido da Montefeltro is said (by Guido himself) to have carried him only as far as Minos (Inf. XXVII.124). Thus Singleton reasons (comm. to this verse) that the devil at least stops briefly at Minos's place of judgement in order to allow the formal sentencing to take place. (Must we also imagine that he accompanies barrators from Lucca aboard Charon's skiff?) It is surely true that Dante is generally precise in honoring the ground-rules that he establishes; it is also true that he has written a poem, one that allows him to please his fancy when he chooses.
Bonturo Dati, who did not die until 1325, was famed for his barratry. A popular tale has it that when Boniface VIII, embracing him at an encounter when Bonturo visited him on an embassy, shook him, Bonturo said, in return, 'You have just shaken half of Lucca' (meaning to indicate Martino as the other half). Dante's devil's exclusion of him from among the Lucchesi who, suborned by money, will turn an Elder's 'no' into a 'yes' is indubitably ironic and sarcastic: no one in Lucca is a greater grafter than he.
Tommaseo (comm. to vv. 40-42) points out that Bonturo betrayed Lucca to the Pisans in 1315 and that, therefore, this passage was written before that date or Dante would have consigned Bonturo to a future posting in Cocytus, among the treacherous. However, as we must acknowledge, any such certainty about Dante's choice of the most fit punishment may be tentative at best. E.g., why is Dido punished as a lover and not as a suicide? (See the note to Inf. V.61.)
The ironic edge of the devils' remark is variously interpreted, depending on the meaning of convolto. Does this sinner return to the surface with his face now covered with pitch (in which case he resembles the ebony face of Christ on the much-venerated image of the Crucifixion in San Martino, in Lucca)? or is he bent in two, emerging with his backside from the pitch (in which case he looks like a citizen of Lucca kneeling to prostrate himself before the image)? Strong arguments are made for each interpretation, and each is supported by a further text (Inf. XXII. 25-28; Inf. XXII.19-24), in which the sinners in this bolgia are compared, second to frogs with only their snouts out of water, first to dolphins showing their backs as they move through water. Either meaning is completely possible, but most contemporary commentators prefer the latter, perhaps because it is the more burlesque.
Nonetheless, it remains interesting that Barbi (Problemi di critica dantesca [Florence: Sansoni, 1934]), p. 273, supports reading convolto as 'covered up in' with the example of a text in Bono Giamboni (Orosio, V.xix): 'Mario fuggendo... nelle paludi di Minturnese si nascose; della quali malavventuratamente del fango tutto convolto tratto....' See also Isidoro Del Lungo (Dal seculo e dal poema di Dante, vol. II [Bologna: Zanichelli, 1898]), pp. 471-72, offering the following equivalences for the word: 'involto, ravviluppato, ravvolto, in materia sporca o appiccicosa.'
The Serchio is the river near Lucca in which citizens swam for refreshment in the days of summer. That the devils address Martino would tend to support the notion that it is his head that has surfaced rather than his rump, i.e., they would seem to be saying 'Man, that's no way to do your imitation of the Holy Visage!' Guido da Pisa thinks of a passage in the Bible (Deut. 32:20) in ways that might make his reader consider a parodic intent, if Dante were also thinking of it: 'Abscondam faciem meam ab eis' (And I shall hide my face from them). The Mosaic text speaks, of course, of God's hiding his face from humankind.
Virgil's self-assurance will shortly be proven to have been ill-founded. Here begins the longest episode in the Inferno; it will run through Canto XXIII.57, some 290 verses. See Hollander, “Virgil and Dante as Mind-Readers (Inferno XXI and XXIII),” Medioevo romanzo 9 (1984), pp. 85-86.
Some Renaissance commentators (e.g., Vellutello [comm. to vv. 61-63] and Daniello [comm. to vv. 58-63]) insist on the proximity of the word baratta to barratry, which would indicate that the word is likely to indicate a previous scuffle with these very demons – who certainly seem the types to have bothered Virgil on his descent to Cocytus when Erichtho sent him on his mission down there (Inf. IX.22-27). The first commentator in the DDP to try a different tack is Singleton (comm. to this verse): 'Virgil may be referring to his difficulties with the devils at the walls of Dis (see Inf. VIII.82-130) or to some skirmish that he had with these devils on his previous journey to lower hell (see Inf. IX.22-30). The first meaning seems more probable and more significant, since Virgil appears to forget that his difficulties before Dis were solved not by himself but by a messenger from Heaven. Hence Virgil here exhibits the same self-confidence he showed in the earlier encounter, before the devils shut the gate in his face.' The fact that Virgil is shortly to be found out of his depth in his struggle with the Malebranche, again after exhibiting self-confidence in the face of hostile demons, strongly supports this reading. It does not invalidate the understanding that Virgil has earlier had a set-to with these very demons, but may stand alongside it.
Virgil's calm assurance is shredded by the attack of the 'dogs' who rush out upon him, a poor beggar. The simile is hard on poor Virgil, who only barely manages to regain control of the situation, which, we remember, is being observed by Dante, squatting in hiding on the bridge.
The entry on the scene of Malacoda ('Eviltail'), the lead devil of the Malebranche of Malebolge, is perfectly in character, as we shall see. He pretends to be servile, but mutters under his breath about his sense of Virgil's futility.
Virgil's aplomb, his 'high style' contrasting with demonic 'vernacular,' serves at once to set him apart from the 'low-life' devils and their leader, Malacoda, but also to make him seem slightly ridiculous, since Malacoda, not he, is eventually in control of the situation, as Virgil will only finally realize, to his considerable chagrin, in Inferno XXIII.140-141.
Does Virgil remember Malacoda from his last visit? Or has he only repeated Malacoda's name because he has just now heard it from the other devils? The plural 'your' (vostri) seems to be generalized and to refer to all and any demonic opposition that he and Dante have encountered so far in their journey, actually only once before, at the gates of Dis (Inf. VIII.115-120). Virgil's phrasing at v. 82, combining references to the will of God and to the (pagan?) Fates, picks up his identical coupling of these two powers in Inferno IX.94-97. A Christian guide might have only used the first term. (Guido da Pisa, in his gloss to this passage, refers explicitly to the different ambiences of the two expressions, the first being 'theological,' the second, 'pagan' [comm. to vv. 79-82]).
Virgil's reference in verse 83 to the fact that he is not alone ('Let us proceed') for the first time alerts Malacoda and his cohort to Dante's hidden presence.
Malacoda's fearful gesture, letting fall his billhook, is a masterful ploy that succeeds in getting Virgil to lower his guard. See Sam Guyler, “Virgil the Hypocrite – Almost: A Re-interpretation of Inferno XXIII,” Dante Studies 90 (1972), p. 34.
Virgil, tricked, orders Dante to leave his hiding-place. The devils, sensing fresh meat, crowd forward. Dante's fear is a more realistic response to the situation than is Virgil's self-assurance.
Dante was present at the successful siege of Caprona in 1289, a cavalryman observing the success of the mission of his Tuscan Guelphs against this Pisan stronghold. It is to his lasting credit that what he remembers for us is how the victims must have felt when they came out under a pact of safe-conduct. Dante, exiled on the charge of barratry by his fellow citizens, here perhaps means to remind them that he had borne arms on behalf of the republic in its victories, the siege of Caprona in August of 1289, and the previous great victory at Campaldino that June, referred to later in this scene (Inf. XXII.4-5). He was not a grafter, scheming in the dark, but a cavalryman who did his deeds in the fearsome clarity of war. There have been several attempts in the last two centuries to relate the scenes and personnages of these cantos of barratry to Dante's own experiences as accused barrator perfidiously sent into exile on this pretext (and thus presented as attacked by the twelve Priors of Florence, the Malebranche), and to his military experiences, offered as vindication against such malicious and untrue charges. For cautionary remarks, urging restraint in such interpretation, see Conrieri (“Letture del canto XXI dell'Inferno,” Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 158 [1981]), pp. 38-39. For perhaps the first attempt to claim that Dante had constructed a developed autobiographical 'political allegory' in this scene, see Rossetti's introduction to his commentary on Inferno XXI.
Dante's fears are justified; only Malacoda's intervention prevents the bullying devils from assaulting him with their hooks. Malacoda holds back Scarmiglione, encouraging him to await a more propitious moment for his attack. Scarmiglione is the first of the ten devils to be named. He is apparently not included in the squad of ten put under Barbariccia's control – see the note to Inf. XXI.118-123.
Malacoda's partial truth (the sixth bridge, over the bolgia of hypocrisy, is in ruins) is quickly joined to a total lie (the next bridge along their route is intact). All the bridges are down, as Virgil will be told by Fra Catalano in Inferno XXIII.133-138.
This extraordinarily precise time reference is the most certain text in the poem for establishing an external date for the journey. It is 7am of Holy Saturday, since Christ, according to Dante (Conv. IV.xxiii.10), died at noon. In fact Dante here is modifying the facts, if on the authority of Luke (Luke 23:44), who gives the time of the preternatural darkness as noon. Even Luke, however, is clear that Jesus died at 3pm. Dante is willing to rewrite any text to suit his purpose.
From this passage we learn that the events narrated in this poem occurred in Easter week of 1300. However, and as we have seen, Dante seems to be conflating two dates for the start of the journey, each of which is propitious, 25 March and 8 April (the actual date of Good Friday in 1300) in order to gain the maximum significant referentiality. See the note to Inferno I.1.
Malacoda lies yet again, promising safe-conduct. Once again Virgil is trusting, Dante not.
Dante's pleasure in developing nomi parlanti (names that bespeak the quality of their possessors) is evident here. His playful naming is based on the aggressive bestial characteristics of these creatures (for some possible 'translations' into English of their names, see the commentary of Durling and Martinez [New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996], p. 330). For the possible Old French sources of his onomastic behavior see Picone, “Baratteria e stile comico in Dante,” in Studi Americani su Dante, ed. G. C. Alessio e R. Hollander (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1989), pp. 76-81.
Dante's thoroughness and care in his handling of the demons' names is underlined by the fact that each of the ten members of the decina (from decuria, the Latin military term for a 'squad' of ten troopers) is named exactly once in the following canto, as follows (with John Sinclair's English approximations of some of these names in parentheses): Barbariccia (Curlybeard – XXII.29), Graffiacane (Scratchdog – 34), Rubicante (Redface – 40), Cirïatto (Swineface – 55), Libicocco (70), Dragignazzo (Vile Dragon – 73), Farfarello (94), Cagnazzo (Low hound – 106), Alichino (112), and Calcabrina (133).
Malacoda lies again: the devils understand that they are to take Dante and Virgil by surprise, attacking Dante later on.
Dante's pleas to Virgil will fall on deaf ears, but we sense already (and will shortly have confirmed) that he, not his guide, understands what the devils are up to.
Virgil's response to Dante's question, based on correct observation and resultant correct interpretation of the devils' true motives, marks yet another moment in this canto in which the reader is nearly forced to observe how harshly the guide is being treated by the author. In recent years there has been an increasing acknowledgment of what should have been clear to any reader who is willing to give over the notion that the Comedy is essentially an 'allegorical' poem in which the character Virgil represents 'Reason.' See, among others, Ricardo Bacchelli, “Da Dite a Malebolge: la tragedia delle porte chiuse e la farsa dei ponti rotti,” Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 131 (1954), pp. 1-32; C.J. Ryan, “Inferno XXI: Virgil and Dante: A Study in Contrasts,” Italica 59 (1982), pp. 16-31; Hollander, “Virgil and Dante as Mind-Readers (Inferno XXI and XXIII),” Medioevo romanzo 9 (1984), pp. 85-100.
The devils either prepare to make or have already made a farting sound with their tongues stuck through their teeth in answer to Malcoda's prior 'war-signal' of a fart. See Sarolli's appreciation of this low-mimetic scene as part of the tradition of musica diaboli, the hellish music that stands in total contrast with the heavenly music we shall hear in Paradiso (see Gian Roberto Sarolli, Prolegomena alla “Divina Commedia” [Florence: Olschki, 1971], pp. 5n., 363-80). The perverse devils turn their mouths into anuses in preparing to answer Malacoda's (and he is surely aptly named in light of this sound) turning his anus into a bugle, the gestures constituting a sign of 'understanding among the malefactors and a sign of their derision for Virgil's self-confident misreading of their intentions' (Hollander, “Virgil and Dante as Mind-Readers [Inferno XXI and XXIII],” Medioevo romanzo 9 [1984], p. 90).
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