Nel tempo che Iunone era crucciata
per Semelè contra 'l sangue tebano,
come mostrò una e altra fïata,
Atamente divenne tanto insano,
che veggendo la moglie con due figli
andar carcata da ciascuna mano,
gridò: “Tendiam le reti, sì ch'io pigli
la leonessa e ' leoncini al varco”;
e poi distese i dispietati artigli,
prendendo l'un ch'avea nome Learco,
e rotollo e percosselo ad un sasso;
e quella s'annegò con l'altro carco.
E quando la fortuna volse in basso
l'altezza de' Troian che tutto ardiva,
sì che 'nsieme col regno il re fu casso,
Ecuba trista, misera e cattiva,
poscia che vide Polissena morta,
e del suo Polidoro in su la riva
del mar si fu la dolorosa accorta,
forsennata latrò sì come cane;
tanto il dolor le fè la mente torta.
Ma nè di Tebe furie nè troiane
si vider mäi in alcun tanto crude,
non punger bestie, nonché membra umane,
quant' io vidi in due ombre smorte e nude,
che mordendo correvan di quel modo
che 'l porco quando del porcil si schiude.
L'una giunse a Capocchio, e in sul nodo
del collo l'assannò, sì che, tirando,
grattar li fece il ventre al fondo sodo.
E l'Aretin che rimase, tremando
mi disse: “Quel folletto è Gianni Schicchi,
e va rabbioso altrui così conciando.”
“Oh,” diss' io lui, “se l'altro non ti ficchi
li denti a dosso, non ti sia fatica
a dir chi è, pria che di qui si spicchi.”
Ed elli a me: “Quell' è l'anima antica
di Mirra scellerata, che divenne
al padre, fuor del dritto amore, amica.
Questa a peccar con esso così venne,
falsificando sè in altrui forma,
come l'altro che là sen va, sostenne,
per guadagnar la donna de la torma,
falsificare in sè Buoso Donati,
testando e dando al testamento norma.”
E poi che i due rabbiosi fuor passati
sovra cu' io avea l'occhio tenuto,
rivolsilo a guardar li altri mal nati.
Io vidi un, fatto a guisa di lëuto,
pur ch'elli avesse avuta l'anguinaia
tronca da l'altro che l'uomo ha forcuto.
La grave idropesì, che sì dispaia
le membra con l'omor che mal converte,
che 'l viso non risponde a la ventraia,
faceva lui tener le labbra aperte
come l'etico fa, che per la sete
l'un verso 'l mento e l'altro in sù rinverte.
“O voi che sanz' alcuna pena siete,
e non so io perché, nel mondo gramo,”
diss' elli a noi, “guardate e attendete
a la miseria del maestro Adamo;
io ebbi, vivo, assai di quel ch'i' volli,
e ora, lasso!, un gocciol d'acqua bramo.
Li ruscelletti che d'i verdi colli
del Casentin discendon giuso in Arno,
faccendo i lor canali freddi e molli,
sempre mi stanno innanzi, e non indarno,
chè l'imagine lor vie più m'asciuga
che 'l male ond' io nel volto mi discarno.
La rigida giustizia che mi fruga
tragge cagion del loco ov' io peccai
a metter più li miei sospiri in fuga.
Ivi è Romena, là dov' io falsai
la lega suggellata del Batista;
per ch'io il corpo sù arso lasciai.
Ma s'io vedessi qui l'anima trista
di Guido o d'Alessandro o di lor frate,
per Fonte Branda non darei la vista.
Dentro c'è l'una già, se l'arrabbiate
ombre che vanno intorno dicon vero;
ma che mi val, c'ho le membra legate?
S'io fossi pur di tanto ancor leggero
ch'i' potessi in cent' anni andare un'oncia,
io sarei messo già per lo sentiero,
cercando lui tra questa gente sconcia,
con tutto ch'ella volge undici miglia,
e men d'un mezzo di traverso non ci ha.
Io son per lor tra sì fatta famiglia;
e' m'indussero a batter li fiorini
ch'avevan tre carati di mondiglia.”
E io a lui: “Chi son li due tapini
che fumman come man bagnate 'l verno,
giacendo stretti a' tuoi destri confini?”
“Qui li trovai – e poi volta non dierno –,”
rispuose, “quando piovvi in questo greppo,
e non credo che dieno in sempiterno.
L'una è la falsa ch'accusò Gioseppo;
l'altr' è 'l falso Sinon greco di Troia:
per febbre aguta gittan tanto leppo.”
E l'un di lor, che si recò a noia
forse d'esser nomato sì oscuro,
col pugno li percosse l'epa croia.
Quella sonò come fosse un tamburo;
e mastro Adamo li percosse il volto
col braccio suo, che non parve men duro,
dicendo a lui: “Ancor che mi sia tolto
lo muover per le membra che son gravi,
ho io il braccio a tal mestiere sciolto.”
Ond' ei rispuose: “Quando tu andavi
al fuoco, non l'avei tu così presto;
ma sì e più l'avei quando coniavi.”
E l'idropico: “Tu di' ver di questo:
ma tu non fosti sì ver testimonio
là 've del ver fosti a Troia richesto.”
“S'io dissi falso, e tu falsasti il conio,”
disse Sinon; “e son qui per un fallo,
e tu per più ch'alcun altro demonio!”
“Ricorditi, spergiuro, del cavallo,”
rispuose quel ch'avëa infiata l'epa;
“e sieti reo che tutto il mondo sallo!”
“E te sia rea la sete onde ti crepa,”
disse 'l Greco, “la lingua, e l'acqua marcia
che 'l ventre innanzi a li occhi sì t'assiepa!”
Allora il monetier: “Così si squarcia
la bocca tua per tuo mal come suole;
chè, s'i' ho sete e omor mi rinfarcia,
tu hai l'arsura e 'l capo che ti duole,
e per leccar lo specchio di Narcisso,
non vorresti a 'nvitar molte parole.”
Ad ascoltarli er' io del tutto fisso,
quando 'l maestro mi disse: “Or pur mira,
che per poco che teco non mi risso!”
Quand' io 'l senti' a me parlar con ira,
volsimi verso lui con tal vergogna,
ch'ancor per la memoria mi si gira.
Qual è colui che suo dannaggio sogna,
che sognando desidera sognare,
sì che quel ch'è, come non fosse, agogna,
tal mi fec' io, non possendo parlare,
che disïava scusarmi, e scusava
me tuttavia, e nol mi credea fare.
“Maggior difetto men vergogna lava,”
disse 'l maestro, “che 'l tuo non è stato;
però d'ogne trestizia ti disgrava.
E fa ragion ch'io ti sia sempre allato,
se più avvien che fortuna t'accoglia
dove sien genti in simigliante piato:
chè voler ciò udire è bassa voglia.”
'Twas at the time when Juno was enraged,
For Semele, against the Theban blood,
As she already more than once had shown,
So reft of reason Athamas became,
That, seeing his own wife with children twain
Walking encumbered upon either hand,
He cried: "Spread out the nets, that I may take
The lioness and her whelps upon the passage;"
And then extended his unpitying claws,
Seizing the first, who had the name Learchus,
And whirled him round, and dashed him on a rock;
And she, with the other burthen, drowned herself;—
And at the time when fortune downward hurled
The Trojan's arrogance, that all things dared,
So that the king was with his kingdom crushed,
Hecuba sad, disconsolate, and captive,
When lifeless she beheld Polyxena,
And of her Polydorus on the shore
Of ocean was the dolorous one aware,
Out of her senses like a dog she barked,
So much the anguish had her mind distorted;
But not of Thebes the furies nor the Trojan
Were ever seen in any one so cruel
In goading beasts, and much more human members,
As I beheld two shadows pale and naked,
Who, biting, in the manner ran along
That a boar does, when from the sty turned loose.
One to Capocchio came, and by the nape
Seized with its teeth his neck, so that in dragging
It made his belly grate the solid bottom.
And the Aretine, who trembling had remained,
Said to me: "That mad sprite is Gianni Schicchi,
And raving goes thus harrying other people."
"O," said I to him, "so may not the other
Set teeth on thee, let it not weary thee
To tell us who it is, ere it dart hence."
And he to me: "That is the ancient ghost
Of the nefarious Myrrha, who became
Beyond all rightful love her father's lover.
She came to sin with him after this manner,
By counterfeiting of another's form;
As he who goeth yonder undertook,
That he might gain the lady of the herd,
To counterfeit in himself Buoso Donati,
Making a will and giving it due form."
And after the two maniacs had passed
On whom I held mine eye, I turned it back
To look upon the other evil-born.
I saw one made in fashion of a lute,
If he had only had the groin cut off
Just at the point at which a man is forked.
The heavy dropsy, that so disproportions
The limbs with humours, which it ill concocts,
That the face corresponds not to the belly,
Compelled him so to hold his lips apart
As does the hectic, who because of thirst
One tow'rds the chin, the other upward turns.
"O ye, who without any torment are,
And why I know not, in the world of woe,"
He said to us, "behold, and be attentive
Unto the misery of Master Adam;
I had while living much of what I wished,
And now, alas! a drop of water crave.
The rivulets, that from the verdant hills
Of Cassentin descend down into Arno,
Making their channels to be cold and moist,
Ever before me stand, and not in vain;
For far more doth their image dry me up
Than the disease which strips my face of flesh.
The rigid justice that chastises me
Draweth occasion from the place in which
I sinned, to put the more my sighs in flight.
There is Romena, where I counterfeited
The currency imprinted with the Baptist,
For which I left my body burned above.
But if I here could see the tristful soul
Of Guido, or Alessandro, or their brother,
For Branda's fount I would not give the sight.
One is within already, if the raving
Shades that are going round about speak truth;
But what avails it me, whose limbs are tied?
If I were only still so light, that in
A hundred years I could advance one inch,
I had already started on the way,
Seeking him out among this squalid folk,
Although the circuit be eleven miles,
And be not less than half a mile across.
For them am I in such a family;
They did induce me into coining florins,
Which had three carats of impurity."
And I to him: "Who are the two poor wretches
That smoke like unto a wet hand in winter,
Lying there close upon thy right-hand confines?"
"I found them here," replied he, "when I rained
Into this chasm, and since they have not turned,
Nor do I think they will for evermore.
One the false woman is who accused Joseph,
The other the false Sinon, Greek of Troy;
From acute fever they send forth such reek."
And one of them, who felt himself annoyed
At being, peradventure, named so darkly,
Smote with the fist upon his hardened paunch.
It gave a sound, as if it were a drum;
And Master Adam smote him in the face,
With arm that did not seem to be less hard,
Saying to him: "Although be taken from me
All motion, for my limbs that heavy are,
I have an arm unfettered for such need."
Whereat he answer made: "When thou didst go
Unto the fire, thou hadst it not so ready:
But hadst it so and more when thou wast coining."
The dropsical: "Thou sayest true in that;
But thou wast not so true a witness there,
Where thou wast questioned of the truth at Troy."
"If I spake false, thou falsifiedst the coin,"
Said Sinon; "and for one fault I am here,
And thou for more than any other demon."
"Remember, perjurer, about the horse,"
He made reply who had the swollen belly,
"And rueful be it thee the whole world knows it."
"Rueful to thee the thirst be wherewith cracks
Thy tongue," the Greek said, "and the putrid water
That hedges so thy paunch before thine eyes."
Then the false-coiner: "So is gaping wide
Thy mouth for speaking evil, as 'tis wont;
Because if I have thirst, and humour stuff me
Thou hast the burning and the head that aches,
And to lick up the mirror of Narcissus
Thou wouldst not want words many to invite thee."
In listening to them was I wholly fixed,
When said the Master to me: "Now just look,
For little wants it that I quarrel with thee."
When him I heard in anger speak to me,
I turned me round towards him with such shame
That still it eddies through my memory.
And as he is who dreams of his own harm,
Who dreaming wishes it may be a dream,
So that he craves what is, as if it were not;
Such I became, not having power to speak,
For to excuse myself I wished, and still
Excused myself, and did not think I did it.
"Less shame doth wash away a greater fault,"
The Master said, "than this of thine has been;
Therefore thyself disburden of all sadness,
And make account that I am aye beside thee,
If e'er it come to pass that fortune bring thee
Where there are people in a like dispute;
For a base wish it is to wish to hear it."
This is the first of two lengthy classical opening similes derived from the third, fourth, and thirteenth books of Ovid's Metamorphoses. Dante's classical material in this first sally involves the matter of Thebes, his favorite example of the 'city of destruction' in ancient times. Juno, jealous of Semele, daughter of Cadmus, founder of Troy, takes out her wrath on the city by destroying Semele herself (only referred to indirectly here in v. 3) and her sister, Ino, the consort of Athamas, king of Orchomenus. Juno's revenge in this second instance is achieved by making Athamas go mad. In his distemper he kills his son Learchus, thus causing Ino to leap with the other (Melicertes) into the sea (see Metam. IV.512-530).
The second tale is related to Troy, that other classical 'city of destruction.' After the fall of the city, the widowed queen, Hecuba, was, according to Ovid's account in his thirteenth book, carried off by the Greeks. When they stopped in Thrace, she witnessed the sacrifice of her daughter Polyxena on the tomb of Achilles and then, when she had gone to the sea for water to prepare the corpse for burial, found the body of her son Polydorus, murdered by the Thracian king, Polymnestor, washed up on the shore beside her. At this she went mad, and began barking like a dog (Metam. XIII.404-406). Finally, she killed Polymnestor, according to Ovid, by tearing out his eyes.
The completion ('vehicle') of each opening similetic comparison ('tenor') is only now put forward. Reduced to madness, Athamas kills his own child, Hecuba, the king who had killed her son (Metam. XIII.558-564). Nonetheless, they are less savage than the two bestial forms that now appear.
One of these two sinners attacks and bears off Capocchio, who had held our attention at the end of the last canto. This new shade is thus associated with Athamas, acting out his maddened rage, and is identified by Griffolino, the other sinner we met in Canto XXIX, as Gianni Schicchi. Where Capocchio had been scratching himself, he now gets his scabrous belly scraped by the ground as he is dragged off. Among the modern commentators, Isidoro Del Lungo (comm. to vv. 31-33) was the first, in 1926, to study medieval medical treatises in order to explain that the rabidity of this set of sinners is associated with hydrophobia. See also the important study of the canto (first published in 1953), with discussion of the relevance of the work of Bartholomaeus Anglicus, by Gianfranco Contini, Un' idea di Dante (Turin: Einaudi, 1976), pp. 159-70.
Gianni Schicchi was a member of the Florentine Cavalcanti family and was renowned for his ability to impersonate others. He was dead by 1280. Commentators speculate that Dante would have heard tell of his impersonations while he was still a boy. One particular case is detailed a few lines farther on (vv. 42-45).
Griffolino explains to Dante that the other furious shade is that of Ovid's Myrrha (Metam. X.298-502). She, daughter of Cinyras, king of Cyprus, disguised herself, abetted by her nurse, as a willing young woman (her mother being absent) in order to sleep with her father. In the development of the canto, she is at least formally in parallel with Hecuba (since Gianni plays the part of Athamas), but beyond their common femininity there is little to associate them.
We may speculate that all the Ovidian material of this canto has marginalized Virgil. Indeed, he does not speak a word until v. 131. This is the longest silence on his part since he entered the poem in its first canto; it is 169 lines since he last spoke at Inferno XXIX.101. For preceding long Virgilian silences, see Inferno V.112-VI.93; XV.1-99-XVI.18-121. In two cantos he speaks only a single verse (Inf. XV.99 and Inf. XXVII.33). However, the longest Virgilian silences in the poem await us. Inferno XXXII is the first canto in the poem in which he does not speak a word (and he is silent between XXXI.134 and XXXIII.106, a total of 255 verses); Purgatorio XXIV is the second and the longest (with Virgil silent between XXIII.15 and XXV.17, a total of 288 verses).
The story of Gianni Schicchi's impersonation of the dead and testmentless Buoso Donati in order to help the surviving Schicchi family members get an inheritance they feared they would otherwise lose delighted the early commentators, who take pleasure in repeating it. Gianni's payment for himself was to will himself the best animal – the lead mule – of Buoso's herd. Puccini's opera, bearing his name as its title, continues to purvey Gianni's tale.
Reading the last canto for the first time, we may have assumed that the tenth bolgia was devoted to detailing the punishment of a single form of falsification, alchemical deceptions, punished in a single way, by the scabs that cover the bodies of these leprous sinners (see the note to Inf. XXIX.58-66). After reading Canto XXX we have learned that there is a total of four species of falsification, each punished by a particular disease. The three species in this canto are as follows: impersonators (hydrophobia), counterfeiters of coin (dropsy), perjurors (fever). Here we come to the second in this group, the counterfeiters.
For the musical elements in the description of this sinner (he will find a name, Master Adam, at v. 61), see Iannucci (“Musical Imagery in the Mastro Adamo Episode,” in Da una riva e dall'altra: Studi in onore di Antonio D'Andrea, ed. Dante Della Terza [Florence: Edizioni Cadmo, 1995], pp. 103-18). The lute, which resembles 'a pregnant guitar' (as a waggish student of music once insisted) was, in Dante's time, generally regarded as a 'serious' instrument, like David's harp, and thus associated with the 'right' kind of musical performance. Iannucci points out (p. 114) that this is the only stringed instrument mentioned in hell. Adam, who looks like a lute, ends up sounding like a drum (v. 103), an instrument, as Iannucci argues, associated with such lower forms of musical amusement as public spectacles. For the symbolic inversions in the musicality of this scene see Denise Heilbronn, “Master Adam and the Fat-Bellied Lute (Inf. XXX),” Dante Studies 101 (1983), pp. 51-65.
Dropsy, in which a main symptom is the retention of water, which distends parts of the body, was also characterized by terrible thirst.
Resentfully noting Dante's lack of punishment, the sinner identifies himself. Master Adam, according to some commentators an Englishman, was in the employ of the Conti Guidi of Romena (in the Casentino, not far from Florence). (We will hear more of this family in vv. 73-87.) They convinced him to falsify the gold florin, stamped with the image of John the Baptist, the patron of Florence, by pouring gold of only 21 (and not 24) carats, a carat being one twenty-fourth of an ounce. On the symbolic importance of money, as it is reflected in this canto, see Shoaf (Dante, Chaucer, and the Currency of the Word [Norman, Oklahoma: Pilgrim Books, 1983]), pp. 39-48. Adam's crime was discovered and he was burned alive in Florence in 1281.
His name almost inevitably reminds the reader of his namesake, the first sinner. For discussion of the way in which this 'new Adam' is in fact a modern version of the first one, see Sally Mussetter, “Inferno XXX: Dante's Counterfeit Adam,” Traditio 34 (1978), pp. 427-35.
As many note, the language here again reflects that found in the Lamentations of Jeremiah. See the note to Inferno XXVIII.130-138.
Adam's memories of 'the green hills of home' torment him, only increasing his punishment. What for the reader is a moment of pastoral escape from hellish thoughts is for him torment. For a Virgilian source of the image see Eclogue X.42, describing 'cool streams and gentle meadows.'
Envy, often marked by the desire to see those who are well off suffering, rules Adam's heart. He would rather see his employers punished than slake his thirst. Fonte Branda, according to the early commentators, is the famous spring in Siena. Later writers have argued for another, of the same name, in the vicinity of Romena. However, that the earliest commentators do not refer to it probably seconds the notion that the more famous one is referred to here.
Guido had died in 1281 and news of his location in this bolgia has reached Adam through one of the rabid impersonators who range the territory.
Adam's 'impossible dream' is to be able to move an inch in a hundred years – and even that is beyond him. Were it not, Manfredi Porena (comm. to these verses) did the math and calculated that, at even this speed, it would take him 700,000 years to find Guido.
That this bolgia is half the circumference and breadth of the last one has given those who would like to establish the exact size of Dante's hell the two co-ordinates they think they need. Such calculation is a temptation to be avoided. (See the note to Inf. XXIX.8-9.) Adam undercalculates the diameter, which is 3.5 miles, considerably. We reflect that his dubious measurement is the result of his dropsied bulk and consequent laziness. A half mile is hundreds of thousands of years of (for him impossible) movement.
The fact that Master Adam says that the circumference of the tenth bolgia is eleven miles draws the numerologically minded Victoria Kirkham (“Eleven Is for Evil: Measured Trespass in Dante's Commedia,” Allegorica 10 [1989], pp. 27-28, 36-37), to make the claim that this number here relates to eleven as the 'number of transgression' (see the note to Inf. XI.10-15). On the other hand, eleven here may merely be half of the twenty-two mentioned by Virgil in the preceding bolgia as being the number of miles of its circumference (see the note to Inf. XXIX.8-9).
Adam's hatred of the Conti Guidi is understandable; his placing the entire blame on them for his own misdeeds is typical of certain sinners, always finding a cause for their failures in the hearts and minds of others.
Adam first identifies Potiphar's wife (Genesis 39:6-20), who, having failed to seduce Joseph, accused him before Pharoah of attempting to seduce her. Then he identifies Sinon (as he is known from the second book of the Aeneid), whose misrepresentations led to the destruction of Troy. Both suffer from high fever, seen not as a symptom of other ailments, but as a disease in itself; both worked treacherously against a 'chosen people,' the Hebrews and the Trojans.
Angered by the words of Master Adam, Sinon's first gesture is to strike him on his taut paunch, which booms like a drum. This act begins a series of exchanged insults, begun and ended by Adam. Until the last in the series, each one occupies a single tercet (Adam's final flourish will occupy two). As many who have written on this scene have reflected, Dante's technique here is modelled on the exchange of poetic insult found in the genre called tenzone. See the note to Inferno VIII.31-39.
Not only are these exchanges generally reflective of the tradition of the tenzone, this particular verse has been seen (e.g., Casini/Barbi's commentary to this verse in 1921) as rehearsing a particular tenzone, one between Cecco Angiolieri and Dante (whose sonnet, apparently the occasion for Cecco's, is lost). Cecco's ('Dante Alighieri, s'i' so' bon begolardo') begins roughly as follows:
Dante Alighier, if I'm a foolish bard,
I can feel your lance just behind my back;
If I'm out for dinner, you're there for a snack;
If I chew the fat, you but suck the lard.
For Virgil's presentation of Sinon's lie, see Aeneid II.152-159.
Adam's last words remind Sinon that, even if the counterfeiter is suffering from dropsy, his accuser has got a case of fever. His last riposte jibes at Sinon's thirst, which would lead him to the 'mirror of Narcissus,' i.e., a pool that would reflect his true, hideous self – which image he would destroy out of thirst, in a sort of grubby version of the original myth. As Kevin Brownlee pointed out, this reference begins the 'Narcissus program' in the Commedia, which includes references to the myth in a number of passages, and in all cantos numbered XXX (“Dante and Narcissus [Purg. XXX, 76-99],” Dante Studies 96 [1978], pp. 205-6).
Virgil's harsh rebuke here seems on the mark, certainly to Dante himself. Dante's emphatic acceptance of it stands in clear contrast to his rejection of the similar rebuke in the last canto (Inf. XXIX.4-12), where Virgil had not understood the cause of his staring into the ninth bolgia. Here Dante has become an interested bystander (rather than a man with a mission), enjoying the back-and-forth argument between the two sinners (just as do we) because it is both violent and amusing.
This is a remarkable simile (or 'pseudo-simile' on the grounds that it 'compares a thing, person, or emotion with itself' – in the words of Eric Mallin (see “The False Simile in Dante's Commedia,” Dante Studies 102 [1984], p. 15). (Mallin discusses this particular simile, pp. 28-31.) Tozer's prior remark in his commentary to this verse (1901) is of interest: 'This is a conspicuous instance of an interesting class of similes – viz. those drawn from mental experiences – of which there are as many as thirty in the Divine Comedy.' The simile is difficult enough that a prose paraphrase may help to make its point clearer: 'As a man dreams of being harmed and of wishing he were only dreaming (which he in fact is), so did I, unable to speak, feel ashamed because I could not excuse myself – while all the while my blushing was doing just that for me.'
Virgil accepts Dante's unvoiced apology and warns him against future backsliding of this kind. Berthier (comm. to XXX.130-132) cites from St. Bernard, De ordine vitae, from a passage, he says, located 'before its middle': 'audire quod turpe est, pudori maximo est' (it is most shameful to give ear to vile things).
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Nel tempo che Iunone era crucciata
per Semelè contra 'l sangue tebano,
come mostrò una e altra fïata,
Atamente divenne tanto insano,
che veggendo la moglie con due figli
andar carcata da ciascuna mano,
gridò: “Tendiam le reti, sì ch'io pigli
la leonessa e ' leoncini al varco”;
e poi distese i dispietati artigli,
prendendo l'un ch'avea nome Learco,
e rotollo e percosselo ad un sasso;
e quella s'annegò con l'altro carco.
E quando la fortuna volse in basso
l'altezza de' Troian che tutto ardiva,
sì che 'nsieme col regno il re fu casso,
Ecuba trista, misera e cattiva,
poscia che vide Polissena morta,
e del suo Polidoro in su la riva
del mar si fu la dolorosa accorta,
forsennata latrò sì come cane;
tanto il dolor le fè la mente torta.
Ma nè di Tebe furie nè troiane
si vider mäi in alcun tanto crude,
non punger bestie, nonché membra umane,
quant' io vidi in due ombre smorte e nude,
che mordendo correvan di quel modo
che 'l porco quando del porcil si schiude.
L'una giunse a Capocchio, e in sul nodo
del collo l'assannò, sì che, tirando,
grattar li fece il ventre al fondo sodo.
E l'Aretin che rimase, tremando
mi disse: “Quel folletto è Gianni Schicchi,
e va rabbioso altrui così conciando.”
“Oh,” diss' io lui, “se l'altro non ti ficchi
li denti a dosso, non ti sia fatica
a dir chi è, pria che di qui si spicchi.”
Ed elli a me: “Quell' è l'anima antica
di Mirra scellerata, che divenne
al padre, fuor del dritto amore, amica.
Questa a peccar con esso così venne,
falsificando sè in altrui forma,
come l'altro che là sen va, sostenne,
per guadagnar la donna de la torma,
falsificare in sè Buoso Donati,
testando e dando al testamento norma.”
E poi che i due rabbiosi fuor passati
sovra cu' io avea l'occhio tenuto,
rivolsilo a guardar li altri mal nati.
Io vidi un, fatto a guisa di lëuto,
pur ch'elli avesse avuta l'anguinaia
tronca da l'altro che l'uomo ha forcuto.
La grave idropesì, che sì dispaia
le membra con l'omor che mal converte,
che 'l viso non risponde a la ventraia,
faceva lui tener le labbra aperte
come l'etico fa, che per la sete
l'un verso 'l mento e l'altro in sù rinverte.
“O voi che sanz' alcuna pena siete,
e non so io perché, nel mondo gramo,”
diss' elli a noi, “guardate e attendete
a la miseria del maestro Adamo;
io ebbi, vivo, assai di quel ch'i' volli,
e ora, lasso!, un gocciol d'acqua bramo.
Li ruscelletti che d'i verdi colli
del Casentin discendon giuso in Arno,
faccendo i lor canali freddi e molli,
sempre mi stanno innanzi, e non indarno,
chè l'imagine lor vie più m'asciuga
che 'l male ond' io nel volto mi discarno.
La rigida giustizia che mi fruga
tragge cagion del loco ov' io peccai
a metter più li miei sospiri in fuga.
Ivi è Romena, là dov' io falsai
la lega suggellata del Batista;
per ch'io il corpo sù arso lasciai.
Ma s'io vedessi qui l'anima trista
di Guido o d'Alessandro o di lor frate,
per Fonte Branda non darei la vista.
Dentro c'è l'una già, se l'arrabbiate
ombre che vanno intorno dicon vero;
ma che mi val, c'ho le membra legate?
S'io fossi pur di tanto ancor leggero
ch'i' potessi in cent' anni andare un'oncia,
io sarei messo già per lo sentiero,
cercando lui tra questa gente sconcia,
con tutto ch'ella volge undici miglia,
e men d'un mezzo di traverso non ci ha.
Io son per lor tra sì fatta famiglia;
e' m'indussero a batter li fiorini
ch'avevan tre carati di mondiglia.”
E io a lui: “Chi son li due tapini
che fumman come man bagnate 'l verno,
giacendo stretti a' tuoi destri confini?”
“Qui li trovai – e poi volta non dierno –,”
rispuose, “quando piovvi in questo greppo,
e non credo che dieno in sempiterno.
L'una è la falsa ch'accusò Gioseppo;
l'altr' è 'l falso Sinon greco di Troia:
per febbre aguta gittan tanto leppo.”
E l'un di lor, che si recò a noia
forse d'esser nomato sì oscuro,
col pugno li percosse l'epa croia.
Quella sonò come fosse un tamburo;
e mastro Adamo li percosse il volto
col braccio suo, che non parve men duro,
dicendo a lui: “Ancor che mi sia tolto
lo muover per le membra che son gravi,
ho io il braccio a tal mestiere sciolto.”
Ond' ei rispuose: “Quando tu andavi
al fuoco, non l'avei tu così presto;
ma sì e più l'avei quando coniavi.”
E l'idropico: “Tu di' ver di questo:
ma tu non fosti sì ver testimonio
là 've del ver fosti a Troia richesto.”
“S'io dissi falso, e tu falsasti il conio,”
disse Sinon; “e son qui per un fallo,
e tu per più ch'alcun altro demonio!”
“Ricorditi, spergiuro, del cavallo,”
rispuose quel ch'avëa infiata l'epa;
“e sieti reo che tutto il mondo sallo!”
“E te sia rea la sete onde ti crepa,”
disse 'l Greco, “la lingua, e l'acqua marcia
che 'l ventre innanzi a li occhi sì t'assiepa!”
Allora il monetier: “Così si squarcia
la bocca tua per tuo mal come suole;
chè, s'i' ho sete e omor mi rinfarcia,
tu hai l'arsura e 'l capo che ti duole,
e per leccar lo specchio di Narcisso,
non vorresti a 'nvitar molte parole.”
Ad ascoltarli er' io del tutto fisso,
quando 'l maestro mi disse: “Or pur mira,
che per poco che teco non mi risso!”
Quand' io 'l senti' a me parlar con ira,
volsimi verso lui con tal vergogna,
ch'ancor per la memoria mi si gira.
Qual è colui che suo dannaggio sogna,
che sognando desidera sognare,
sì che quel ch'è, come non fosse, agogna,
tal mi fec' io, non possendo parlare,
che disïava scusarmi, e scusava
me tuttavia, e nol mi credea fare.
“Maggior difetto men vergogna lava,”
disse 'l maestro, “che 'l tuo non è stato;
però d'ogne trestizia ti disgrava.
E fa ragion ch'io ti sia sempre allato,
se più avvien che fortuna t'accoglia
dove sien genti in simigliante piato:
chè voler ciò udire è bassa voglia.”
'Twas at the time when Juno was enraged,
For Semele, against the Theban blood,
As she already more than once had shown,
So reft of reason Athamas became,
That, seeing his own wife with children twain
Walking encumbered upon either hand,
He cried: "Spread out the nets, that I may take
The lioness and her whelps upon the passage;"
And then extended his unpitying claws,
Seizing the first, who had the name Learchus,
And whirled him round, and dashed him on a rock;
And she, with the other burthen, drowned herself;—
And at the time when fortune downward hurled
The Trojan's arrogance, that all things dared,
So that the king was with his kingdom crushed,
Hecuba sad, disconsolate, and captive,
When lifeless she beheld Polyxena,
And of her Polydorus on the shore
Of ocean was the dolorous one aware,
Out of her senses like a dog she barked,
So much the anguish had her mind distorted;
But not of Thebes the furies nor the Trojan
Were ever seen in any one so cruel
In goading beasts, and much more human members,
As I beheld two shadows pale and naked,
Who, biting, in the manner ran along
That a boar does, when from the sty turned loose.
One to Capocchio came, and by the nape
Seized with its teeth his neck, so that in dragging
It made his belly grate the solid bottom.
And the Aretine, who trembling had remained,
Said to me: "That mad sprite is Gianni Schicchi,
And raving goes thus harrying other people."
"O," said I to him, "so may not the other
Set teeth on thee, let it not weary thee
To tell us who it is, ere it dart hence."
And he to me: "That is the ancient ghost
Of the nefarious Myrrha, who became
Beyond all rightful love her father's lover.
She came to sin with him after this manner,
By counterfeiting of another's form;
As he who goeth yonder undertook,
That he might gain the lady of the herd,
To counterfeit in himself Buoso Donati,
Making a will and giving it due form."
And after the two maniacs had passed
On whom I held mine eye, I turned it back
To look upon the other evil-born.
I saw one made in fashion of a lute,
If he had only had the groin cut off
Just at the point at which a man is forked.
The heavy dropsy, that so disproportions
The limbs with humours, which it ill concocts,
That the face corresponds not to the belly,
Compelled him so to hold his lips apart
As does the hectic, who because of thirst
One tow'rds the chin, the other upward turns.
"O ye, who without any torment are,
And why I know not, in the world of woe,"
He said to us, "behold, and be attentive
Unto the misery of Master Adam;
I had while living much of what I wished,
And now, alas! a drop of water crave.
The rivulets, that from the verdant hills
Of Cassentin descend down into Arno,
Making their channels to be cold and moist,
Ever before me stand, and not in vain;
For far more doth their image dry me up
Than the disease which strips my face of flesh.
The rigid justice that chastises me
Draweth occasion from the place in which
I sinned, to put the more my sighs in flight.
There is Romena, where I counterfeited
The currency imprinted with the Baptist,
For which I left my body burned above.
But if I here could see the tristful soul
Of Guido, or Alessandro, or their brother,
For Branda's fount I would not give the sight.
One is within already, if the raving
Shades that are going round about speak truth;
But what avails it me, whose limbs are tied?
If I were only still so light, that in
A hundred years I could advance one inch,
I had already started on the way,
Seeking him out among this squalid folk,
Although the circuit be eleven miles,
And be not less than half a mile across.
For them am I in such a family;
They did induce me into coining florins,
Which had three carats of impurity."
And I to him: "Who are the two poor wretches
That smoke like unto a wet hand in winter,
Lying there close upon thy right-hand confines?"
"I found them here," replied he, "when I rained
Into this chasm, and since they have not turned,
Nor do I think they will for evermore.
One the false woman is who accused Joseph,
The other the false Sinon, Greek of Troy;
From acute fever they send forth such reek."
And one of them, who felt himself annoyed
At being, peradventure, named so darkly,
Smote with the fist upon his hardened paunch.
It gave a sound, as if it were a drum;
And Master Adam smote him in the face,
With arm that did not seem to be less hard,
Saying to him: "Although be taken from me
All motion, for my limbs that heavy are,
I have an arm unfettered for such need."
Whereat he answer made: "When thou didst go
Unto the fire, thou hadst it not so ready:
But hadst it so and more when thou wast coining."
The dropsical: "Thou sayest true in that;
But thou wast not so true a witness there,
Where thou wast questioned of the truth at Troy."
"If I spake false, thou falsifiedst the coin,"
Said Sinon; "and for one fault I am here,
And thou for more than any other demon."
"Remember, perjurer, about the horse,"
He made reply who had the swollen belly,
"And rueful be it thee the whole world knows it."
"Rueful to thee the thirst be wherewith cracks
Thy tongue," the Greek said, "and the putrid water
That hedges so thy paunch before thine eyes."
Then the false-coiner: "So is gaping wide
Thy mouth for speaking evil, as 'tis wont;
Because if I have thirst, and humour stuff me
Thou hast the burning and the head that aches,
And to lick up the mirror of Narcissus
Thou wouldst not want words many to invite thee."
In listening to them was I wholly fixed,
When said the Master to me: "Now just look,
For little wants it that I quarrel with thee."
When him I heard in anger speak to me,
I turned me round towards him with such shame
That still it eddies through my memory.
And as he is who dreams of his own harm,
Who dreaming wishes it may be a dream,
So that he craves what is, as if it were not;
Such I became, not having power to speak,
For to excuse myself I wished, and still
Excused myself, and did not think I did it.
"Less shame doth wash away a greater fault,"
The Master said, "than this of thine has been;
Therefore thyself disburden of all sadness,
And make account that I am aye beside thee,
If e'er it come to pass that fortune bring thee
Where there are people in a like dispute;
For a base wish it is to wish to hear it."
This is the first of two lengthy classical opening similes derived from the third, fourth, and thirteenth books of Ovid's Metamorphoses. Dante's classical material in this first sally involves the matter of Thebes, his favorite example of the 'city of destruction' in ancient times. Juno, jealous of Semele, daughter of Cadmus, founder of Troy, takes out her wrath on the city by destroying Semele herself (only referred to indirectly here in v. 3) and her sister, Ino, the consort of Athamas, king of Orchomenus. Juno's revenge in this second instance is achieved by making Athamas go mad. In his distemper he kills his son Learchus, thus causing Ino to leap with the other (Melicertes) into the sea (see Metam. IV.512-530).
The second tale is related to Troy, that other classical 'city of destruction.' After the fall of the city, the widowed queen, Hecuba, was, according to Ovid's account in his thirteenth book, carried off by the Greeks. When they stopped in Thrace, she witnessed the sacrifice of her daughter Polyxena on the tomb of Achilles and then, when she had gone to the sea for water to prepare the corpse for burial, found the body of her son Polydorus, murdered by the Thracian king, Polymnestor, washed up on the shore beside her. At this she went mad, and began barking like a dog (Metam. XIII.404-406). Finally, she killed Polymnestor, according to Ovid, by tearing out his eyes.
The completion ('vehicle') of each opening similetic comparison ('tenor') is only now put forward. Reduced to madness, Athamas kills his own child, Hecuba, the king who had killed her son (Metam. XIII.558-564). Nonetheless, they are less savage than the two bestial forms that now appear.
One of these two sinners attacks and bears off Capocchio, who had held our attention at the end of the last canto. This new shade is thus associated with Athamas, acting out his maddened rage, and is identified by Griffolino, the other sinner we met in Canto XXIX, as Gianni Schicchi. Where Capocchio had been scratching himself, he now gets his scabrous belly scraped by the ground as he is dragged off. Among the modern commentators, Isidoro Del Lungo (comm. to vv. 31-33) was the first, in 1926, to study medieval medical treatises in order to explain that the rabidity of this set of sinners is associated with hydrophobia. See also the important study of the canto (first published in 1953), with discussion of the relevance of the work of Bartholomaeus Anglicus, by Gianfranco Contini, Un' idea di Dante (Turin: Einaudi, 1976), pp. 159-70.
Gianni Schicchi was a member of the Florentine Cavalcanti family and was renowned for his ability to impersonate others. He was dead by 1280. Commentators speculate that Dante would have heard tell of his impersonations while he was still a boy. One particular case is detailed a few lines farther on (vv. 42-45).
Griffolino explains to Dante that the other furious shade is that of Ovid's Myrrha (Metam. X.298-502). She, daughter of Cinyras, king of Cyprus, disguised herself, abetted by her nurse, as a willing young woman (her mother being absent) in order to sleep with her father. In the development of the canto, she is at least formally in parallel with Hecuba (since Gianni plays the part of Athamas), but beyond their common femininity there is little to associate them.
We may speculate that all the Ovidian material of this canto has marginalized Virgil. Indeed, he does not speak a word until v. 131. This is the longest silence on his part since he entered the poem in its first canto; it is 169 lines since he last spoke at Inferno XXIX.101. For preceding long Virgilian silences, see Inferno V.112-VI.93; XV.1-99-XVI.18-121. In two cantos he speaks only a single verse (Inf. XV.99 and Inf. XXVII.33). However, the longest Virgilian silences in the poem await us. Inferno XXXII is the first canto in the poem in which he does not speak a word (and he is silent between XXXI.134 and XXXIII.106, a total of 255 verses); Purgatorio XXIV is the second and the longest (with Virgil silent between XXIII.15 and XXV.17, a total of 288 verses).
The story of Gianni Schicchi's impersonation of the dead and testmentless Buoso Donati in order to help the surviving Schicchi family members get an inheritance they feared they would otherwise lose delighted the early commentators, who take pleasure in repeating it. Gianni's payment for himself was to will himself the best animal – the lead mule – of Buoso's herd. Puccini's opera, bearing his name as its title, continues to purvey Gianni's tale.
Reading the last canto for the first time, we may have assumed that the tenth bolgia was devoted to detailing the punishment of a single form of falsification, alchemical deceptions, punished in a single way, by the scabs that cover the bodies of these leprous sinners (see the note to Inf. XXIX.58-66). After reading Canto XXX we have learned that there is a total of four species of falsification, each punished by a particular disease. The three species in this canto are as follows: impersonators (hydrophobia), counterfeiters of coin (dropsy), perjurors (fever). Here we come to the second in this group, the counterfeiters.
For the musical elements in the description of this sinner (he will find a name, Master Adam, at v. 61), see Iannucci (“Musical Imagery in the Mastro Adamo Episode,” in Da una riva e dall'altra: Studi in onore di Antonio D'Andrea, ed. Dante Della Terza [Florence: Edizioni Cadmo, 1995], pp. 103-18). The lute, which resembles 'a pregnant guitar' (as a waggish student of music once insisted) was, in Dante's time, generally regarded as a 'serious' instrument, like David's harp, and thus associated with the 'right' kind of musical performance. Iannucci points out (p. 114) that this is the only stringed instrument mentioned in hell. Adam, who looks like a lute, ends up sounding like a drum (v. 103), an instrument, as Iannucci argues, associated with such lower forms of musical amusement as public spectacles. For the symbolic inversions in the musicality of this scene see Denise Heilbronn, “Master Adam and the Fat-Bellied Lute (Inf. XXX),” Dante Studies 101 (1983), pp. 51-65.
Dropsy, in which a main symptom is the retention of water, which distends parts of the body, was also characterized by terrible thirst.
Resentfully noting Dante's lack of punishment, the sinner identifies himself. Master Adam, according to some commentators an Englishman, was in the employ of the Conti Guidi of Romena (in the Casentino, not far from Florence). (We will hear more of this family in vv. 73-87.) They convinced him to falsify the gold florin, stamped with the image of John the Baptist, the patron of Florence, by pouring gold of only 21 (and not 24) carats, a carat being one twenty-fourth of an ounce. On the symbolic importance of money, as it is reflected in this canto, see Shoaf (Dante, Chaucer, and the Currency of the Word [Norman, Oklahoma: Pilgrim Books, 1983]), pp. 39-48. Adam's crime was discovered and he was burned alive in Florence in 1281.
His name almost inevitably reminds the reader of his namesake, the first sinner. For discussion of the way in which this 'new Adam' is in fact a modern version of the first one, see Sally Mussetter, “Inferno XXX: Dante's Counterfeit Adam,” Traditio 34 (1978), pp. 427-35.
As many note, the language here again reflects that found in the Lamentations of Jeremiah. See the note to Inferno XXVIII.130-138.
Adam's memories of 'the green hills of home' torment him, only increasing his punishment. What for the reader is a moment of pastoral escape from hellish thoughts is for him torment. For a Virgilian source of the image see Eclogue X.42, describing 'cool streams and gentle meadows.'
Envy, often marked by the desire to see those who are well off suffering, rules Adam's heart. He would rather see his employers punished than slake his thirst. Fonte Branda, according to the early commentators, is the famous spring in Siena. Later writers have argued for another, of the same name, in the vicinity of Romena. However, that the earliest commentators do not refer to it probably seconds the notion that the more famous one is referred to here.
Guido had died in 1281 and news of his location in this bolgia has reached Adam through one of the rabid impersonators who range the territory.
Adam's 'impossible dream' is to be able to move an inch in a hundred years – and even that is beyond him. Were it not, Manfredi Porena (comm. to these verses) did the math and calculated that, at even this speed, it would take him 700,000 years to find Guido.
That this bolgia is half the circumference and breadth of the last one has given those who would like to establish the exact size of Dante's hell the two co-ordinates they think they need. Such calculation is a temptation to be avoided. (See the note to Inf. XXIX.8-9.) Adam undercalculates the diameter, which is 3.5 miles, considerably. We reflect that his dubious measurement is the result of his dropsied bulk and consequent laziness. A half mile is hundreds of thousands of years of (for him impossible) movement.
The fact that Master Adam says that the circumference of the tenth bolgia is eleven miles draws the numerologically minded Victoria Kirkham (“Eleven Is for Evil: Measured Trespass in Dante's Commedia,” Allegorica 10 [1989], pp. 27-28, 36-37), to make the claim that this number here relates to eleven as the 'number of transgression' (see the note to Inf. XI.10-15). On the other hand, eleven here may merely be half of the twenty-two mentioned by Virgil in the preceding bolgia as being the number of miles of its circumference (see the note to Inf. XXIX.8-9).
Adam's hatred of the Conti Guidi is understandable; his placing the entire blame on them for his own misdeeds is typical of certain sinners, always finding a cause for their failures in the hearts and minds of others.
Adam first identifies Potiphar's wife (Genesis 39:6-20), who, having failed to seduce Joseph, accused him before Pharoah of attempting to seduce her. Then he identifies Sinon (as he is known from the second book of the Aeneid), whose misrepresentations led to the destruction of Troy. Both suffer from high fever, seen not as a symptom of other ailments, but as a disease in itself; both worked treacherously against a 'chosen people,' the Hebrews and the Trojans.
Angered by the words of Master Adam, Sinon's first gesture is to strike him on his taut paunch, which booms like a drum. This act begins a series of exchanged insults, begun and ended by Adam. Until the last in the series, each one occupies a single tercet (Adam's final flourish will occupy two). As many who have written on this scene have reflected, Dante's technique here is modelled on the exchange of poetic insult found in the genre called tenzone. See the note to Inferno VIII.31-39.
Not only are these exchanges generally reflective of the tradition of the tenzone, this particular verse has been seen (e.g., Casini/Barbi's commentary to this verse in 1921) as rehearsing a particular tenzone, one between Cecco Angiolieri and Dante (whose sonnet, apparently the occasion for Cecco's, is lost). Cecco's ('Dante Alighieri, s'i' so' bon begolardo') begins roughly as follows:
Dante Alighier, if I'm a foolish bard,
I can feel your lance just behind my back;
If I'm out for dinner, you're there for a snack;
If I chew the fat, you but suck the lard.
For Virgil's presentation of Sinon's lie, see Aeneid II.152-159.
Adam's last words remind Sinon that, even if the counterfeiter is suffering from dropsy, his accuser has got a case of fever. His last riposte jibes at Sinon's thirst, which would lead him to the 'mirror of Narcissus,' i.e., a pool that would reflect his true, hideous self – which image he would destroy out of thirst, in a sort of grubby version of the original myth. As Kevin Brownlee pointed out, this reference begins the 'Narcissus program' in the Commedia, which includes references to the myth in a number of passages, and in all cantos numbered XXX (“Dante and Narcissus [Purg. XXX, 76-99],” Dante Studies 96 [1978], pp. 205-6).
Virgil's harsh rebuke here seems on the mark, certainly to Dante himself. Dante's emphatic acceptance of it stands in clear contrast to his rejection of the similar rebuke in the last canto (Inf. XXIX.4-12), where Virgil had not understood the cause of his staring into the ninth bolgia. Here Dante has become an interested bystander (rather than a man with a mission), enjoying the back-and-forth argument between the two sinners (just as do we) because it is both violent and amusing.
This is a remarkable simile (or 'pseudo-simile' on the grounds that it 'compares a thing, person, or emotion with itself' – in the words of Eric Mallin (see “The False Simile in Dante's Commedia,” Dante Studies 102 [1984], p. 15). (Mallin discusses this particular simile, pp. 28-31.) Tozer's prior remark in his commentary to this verse (1901) is of interest: 'This is a conspicuous instance of an interesting class of similes – viz. those drawn from mental experiences – of which there are as many as thirty in the Divine Comedy.' The simile is difficult enough that a prose paraphrase may help to make its point clearer: 'As a man dreams of being harmed and of wishing he were only dreaming (which he in fact is), so did I, unable to speak, feel ashamed because I could not excuse myself – while all the while my blushing was doing just that for me.'
Virgil accepts Dante's unvoiced apology and warns him against future backsliding of this kind. Berthier (comm. to XXX.130-132) cites from St. Bernard, De ordine vitae, from a passage, he says, located 'before its middle': 'audire quod turpe est, pudori maximo est' (it is most shameful to give ear to vile things).
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Nel tempo che Iunone era crucciata
per Semelè contra 'l sangue tebano,
come mostrò una e altra fïata,
Atamente divenne tanto insano,
che veggendo la moglie con due figli
andar carcata da ciascuna mano,
gridò: “Tendiam le reti, sì ch'io pigli
la leonessa e ' leoncini al varco”;
e poi distese i dispietati artigli,
prendendo l'un ch'avea nome Learco,
e rotollo e percosselo ad un sasso;
e quella s'annegò con l'altro carco.
E quando la fortuna volse in basso
l'altezza de' Troian che tutto ardiva,
sì che 'nsieme col regno il re fu casso,
Ecuba trista, misera e cattiva,
poscia che vide Polissena morta,
e del suo Polidoro in su la riva
del mar si fu la dolorosa accorta,
forsennata latrò sì come cane;
tanto il dolor le fè la mente torta.
Ma nè di Tebe furie nè troiane
si vider mäi in alcun tanto crude,
non punger bestie, nonché membra umane,
quant' io vidi in due ombre smorte e nude,
che mordendo correvan di quel modo
che 'l porco quando del porcil si schiude.
L'una giunse a Capocchio, e in sul nodo
del collo l'assannò, sì che, tirando,
grattar li fece il ventre al fondo sodo.
E l'Aretin che rimase, tremando
mi disse: “Quel folletto è Gianni Schicchi,
e va rabbioso altrui così conciando.”
“Oh,” diss' io lui, “se l'altro non ti ficchi
li denti a dosso, non ti sia fatica
a dir chi è, pria che di qui si spicchi.”
Ed elli a me: “Quell' è l'anima antica
di Mirra scellerata, che divenne
al padre, fuor del dritto amore, amica.
Questa a peccar con esso così venne,
falsificando sè in altrui forma,
come l'altro che là sen va, sostenne,
per guadagnar la donna de la torma,
falsificare in sè Buoso Donati,
testando e dando al testamento norma.”
E poi che i due rabbiosi fuor passati
sovra cu' io avea l'occhio tenuto,
rivolsilo a guardar li altri mal nati.
Io vidi un, fatto a guisa di lëuto,
pur ch'elli avesse avuta l'anguinaia
tronca da l'altro che l'uomo ha forcuto.
La grave idropesì, che sì dispaia
le membra con l'omor che mal converte,
che 'l viso non risponde a la ventraia,
faceva lui tener le labbra aperte
come l'etico fa, che per la sete
l'un verso 'l mento e l'altro in sù rinverte.
“O voi che sanz' alcuna pena siete,
e non so io perché, nel mondo gramo,”
diss' elli a noi, “guardate e attendete
a la miseria del maestro Adamo;
io ebbi, vivo, assai di quel ch'i' volli,
e ora, lasso!, un gocciol d'acqua bramo.
Li ruscelletti che d'i verdi colli
del Casentin discendon giuso in Arno,
faccendo i lor canali freddi e molli,
sempre mi stanno innanzi, e non indarno,
chè l'imagine lor vie più m'asciuga
che 'l male ond' io nel volto mi discarno.
La rigida giustizia che mi fruga
tragge cagion del loco ov' io peccai
a metter più li miei sospiri in fuga.
Ivi è Romena, là dov' io falsai
la lega suggellata del Batista;
per ch'io il corpo sù arso lasciai.
Ma s'io vedessi qui l'anima trista
di Guido o d'Alessandro o di lor frate,
per Fonte Branda non darei la vista.
Dentro c'è l'una già, se l'arrabbiate
ombre che vanno intorno dicon vero;
ma che mi val, c'ho le membra legate?
S'io fossi pur di tanto ancor leggero
ch'i' potessi in cent' anni andare un'oncia,
io sarei messo già per lo sentiero,
cercando lui tra questa gente sconcia,
con tutto ch'ella volge undici miglia,
e men d'un mezzo di traverso non ci ha.
Io son per lor tra sì fatta famiglia;
e' m'indussero a batter li fiorini
ch'avevan tre carati di mondiglia.”
E io a lui: “Chi son li due tapini
che fumman come man bagnate 'l verno,
giacendo stretti a' tuoi destri confini?”
“Qui li trovai – e poi volta non dierno –,”
rispuose, “quando piovvi in questo greppo,
e non credo che dieno in sempiterno.
L'una è la falsa ch'accusò Gioseppo;
l'altr' è 'l falso Sinon greco di Troia:
per febbre aguta gittan tanto leppo.”
E l'un di lor, che si recò a noia
forse d'esser nomato sì oscuro,
col pugno li percosse l'epa croia.
Quella sonò come fosse un tamburo;
e mastro Adamo li percosse il volto
col braccio suo, che non parve men duro,
dicendo a lui: “Ancor che mi sia tolto
lo muover per le membra che son gravi,
ho io il braccio a tal mestiere sciolto.”
Ond' ei rispuose: “Quando tu andavi
al fuoco, non l'avei tu così presto;
ma sì e più l'avei quando coniavi.”
E l'idropico: “Tu di' ver di questo:
ma tu non fosti sì ver testimonio
là 've del ver fosti a Troia richesto.”
“S'io dissi falso, e tu falsasti il conio,”
disse Sinon; “e son qui per un fallo,
e tu per più ch'alcun altro demonio!”
“Ricorditi, spergiuro, del cavallo,”
rispuose quel ch'avëa infiata l'epa;
“e sieti reo che tutto il mondo sallo!”
“E te sia rea la sete onde ti crepa,”
disse 'l Greco, “la lingua, e l'acqua marcia
che 'l ventre innanzi a li occhi sì t'assiepa!”
Allora il monetier: “Così si squarcia
la bocca tua per tuo mal come suole;
chè, s'i' ho sete e omor mi rinfarcia,
tu hai l'arsura e 'l capo che ti duole,
e per leccar lo specchio di Narcisso,
non vorresti a 'nvitar molte parole.”
Ad ascoltarli er' io del tutto fisso,
quando 'l maestro mi disse: “Or pur mira,
che per poco che teco non mi risso!”
Quand' io 'l senti' a me parlar con ira,
volsimi verso lui con tal vergogna,
ch'ancor per la memoria mi si gira.
Qual è colui che suo dannaggio sogna,
che sognando desidera sognare,
sì che quel ch'è, come non fosse, agogna,
tal mi fec' io, non possendo parlare,
che disïava scusarmi, e scusava
me tuttavia, e nol mi credea fare.
“Maggior difetto men vergogna lava,”
disse 'l maestro, “che 'l tuo non è stato;
però d'ogne trestizia ti disgrava.
E fa ragion ch'io ti sia sempre allato,
se più avvien che fortuna t'accoglia
dove sien genti in simigliante piato:
chè voler ciò udire è bassa voglia.”
'Twas at the time when Juno was enraged,
For Semele, against the Theban blood,
As she already more than once had shown,
So reft of reason Athamas became,
That, seeing his own wife with children twain
Walking encumbered upon either hand,
He cried: "Spread out the nets, that I may take
The lioness and her whelps upon the passage;"
And then extended his unpitying claws,
Seizing the first, who had the name Learchus,
And whirled him round, and dashed him on a rock;
And she, with the other burthen, drowned herself;—
And at the time when fortune downward hurled
The Trojan's arrogance, that all things dared,
So that the king was with his kingdom crushed,
Hecuba sad, disconsolate, and captive,
When lifeless she beheld Polyxena,
And of her Polydorus on the shore
Of ocean was the dolorous one aware,
Out of her senses like a dog she barked,
So much the anguish had her mind distorted;
But not of Thebes the furies nor the Trojan
Were ever seen in any one so cruel
In goading beasts, and much more human members,
As I beheld two shadows pale and naked,
Who, biting, in the manner ran along
That a boar does, when from the sty turned loose.
One to Capocchio came, and by the nape
Seized with its teeth his neck, so that in dragging
It made his belly grate the solid bottom.
And the Aretine, who trembling had remained,
Said to me: "That mad sprite is Gianni Schicchi,
And raving goes thus harrying other people."
"O," said I to him, "so may not the other
Set teeth on thee, let it not weary thee
To tell us who it is, ere it dart hence."
And he to me: "That is the ancient ghost
Of the nefarious Myrrha, who became
Beyond all rightful love her father's lover.
She came to sin with him after this manner,
By counterfeiting of another's form;
As he who goeth yonder undertook,
That he might gain the lady of the herd,
To counterfeit in himself Buoso Donati,
Making a will and giving it due form."
And after the two maniacs had passed
On whom I held mine eye, I turned it back
To look upon the other evil-born.
I saw one made in fashion of a lute,
If he had only had the groin cut off
Just at the point at which a man is forked.
The heavy dropsy, that so disproportions
The limbs with humours, which it ill concocts,
That the face corresponds not to the belly,
Compelled him so to hold his lips apart
As does the hectic, who because of thirst
One tow'rds the chin, the other upward turns.
"O ye, who without any torment are,
And why I know not, in the world of woe,"
He said to us, "behold, and be attentive
Unto the misery of Master Adam;
I had while living much of what I wished,
And now, alas! a drop of water crave.
The rivulets, that from the verdant hills
Of Cassentin descend down into Arno,
Making their channels to be cold and moist,
Ever before me stand, and not in vain;
For far more doth their image dry me up
Than the disease which strips my face of flesh.
The rigid justice that chastises me
Draweth occasion from the place in which
I sinned, to put the more my sighs in flight.
There is Romena, where I counterfeited
The currency imprinted with the Baptist,
For which I left my body burned above.
But if I here could see the tristful soul
Of Guido, or Alessandro, or their brother,
For Branda's fount I would not give the sight.
One is within already, if the raving
Shades that are going round about speak truth;
But what avails it me, whose limbs are tied?
If I were only still so light, that in
A hundred years I could advance one inch,
I had already started on the way,
Seeking him out among this squalid folk,
Although the circuit be eleven miles,
And be not less than half a mile across.
For them am I in such a family;
They did induce me into coining florins,
Which had three carats of impurity."
And I to him: "Who are the two poor wretches
That smoke like unto a wet hand in winter,
Lying there close upon thy right-hand confines?"
"I found them here," replied he, "when I rained
Into this chasm, and since they have not turned,
Nor do I think they will for evermore.
One the false woman is who accused Joseph,
The other the false Sinon, Greek of Troy;
From acute fever they send forth such reek."
And one of them, who felt himself annoyed
At being, peradventure, named so darkly,
Smote with the fist upon his hardened paunch.
It gave a sound, as if it were a drum;
And Master Adam smote him in the face,
With arm that did not seem to be less hard,
Saying to him: "Although be taken from me
All motion, for my limbs that heavy are,
I have an arm unfettered for such need."
Whereat he answer made: "When thou didst go
Unto the fire, thou hadst it not so ready:
But hadst it so and more when thou wast coining."
The dropsical: "Thou sayest true in that;
But thou wast not so true a witness there,
Where thou wast questioned of the truth at Troy."
"If I spake false, thou falsifiedst the coin,"
Said Sinon; "and for one fault I am here,
And thou for more than any other demon."
"Remember, perjurer, about the horse,"
He made reply who had the swollen belly,
"And rueful be it thee the whole world knows it."
"Rueful to thee the thirst be wherewith cracks
Thy tongue," the Greek said, "and the putrid water
That hedges so thy paunch before thine eyes."
Then the false-coiner: "So is gaping wide
Thy mouth for speaking evil, as 'tis wont;
Because if I have thirst, and humour stuff me
Thou hast the burning and the head that aches,
And to lick up the mirror of Narcissus
Thou wouldst not want words many to invite thee."
In listening to them was I wholly fixed,
When said the Master to me: "Now just look,
For little wants it that I quarrel with thee."
When him I heard in anger speak to me,
I turned me round towards him with such shame
That still it eddies through my memory.
And as he is who dreams of his own harm,
Who dreaming wishes it may be a dream,
So that he craves what is, as if it were not;
Such I became, not having power to speak,
For to excuse myself I wished, and still
Excused myself, and did not think I did it.
"Less shame doth wash away a greater fault,"
The Master said, "than this of thine has been;
Therefore thyself disburden of all sadness,
And make account that I am aye beside thee,
If e'er it come to pass that fortune bring thee
Where there are people in a like dispute;
For a base wish it is to wish to hear it."
This is the first of two lengthy classical opening similes derived from the third, fourth, and thirteenth books of Ovid's Metamorphoses. Dante's classical material in this first sally involves the matter of Thebes, his favorite example of the 'city of destruction' in ancient times. Juno, jealous of Semele, daughter of Cadmus, founder of Troy, takes out her wrath on the city by destroying Semele herself (only referred to indirectly here in v. 3) and her sister, Ino, the consort of Athamas, king of Orchomenus. Juno's revenge in this second instance is achieved by making Athamas go mad. In his distemper he kills his son Learchus, thus causing Ino to leap with the other (Melicertes) into the sea (see Metam. IV.512-530).
The second tale is related to Troy, that other classical 'city of destruction.' After the fall of the city, the widowed queen, Hecuba, was, according to Ovid's account in his thirteenth book, carried off by the Greeks. When they stopped in Thrace, she witnessed the sacrifice of her daughter Polyxena on the tomb of Achilles and then, when she had gone to the sea for water to prepare the corpse for burial, found the body of her son Polydorus, murdered by the Thracian king, Polymnestor, washed up on the shore beside her. At this she went mad, and began barking like a dog (Metam. XIII.404-406). Finally, she killed Polymnestor, according to Ovid, by tearing out his eyes.
The completion ('vehicle') of each opening similetic comparison ('tenor') is only now put forward. Reduced to madness, Athamas kills his own child, Hecuba, the king who had killed her son (Metam. XIII.558-564). Nonetheless, they are less savage than the two bestial forms that now appear.
One of these two sinners attacks and bears off Capocchio, who had held our attention at the end of the last canto. This new shade is thus associated with Athamas, acting out his maddened rage, and is identified by Griffolino, the other sinner we met in Canto XXIX, as Gianni Schicchi. Where Capocchio had been scratching himself, he now gets his scabrous belly scraped by the ground as he is dragged off. Among the modern commentators, Isidoro Del Lungo (comm. to vv. 31-33) was the first, in 1926, to study medieval medical treatises in order to explain that the rabidity of this set of sinners is associated with hydrophobia. See also the important study of the canto (first published in 1953), with discussion of the relevance of the work of Bartholomaeus Anglicus, by Gianfranco Contini, Un' idea di Dante (Turin: Einaudi, 1976), pp. 159-70.
Gianni Schicchi was a member of the Florentine Cavalcanti family and was renowned for his ability to impersonate others. He was dead by 1280. Commentators speculate that Dante would have heard tell of his impersonations while he was still a boy. One particular case is detailed a few lines farther on (vv. 42-45).
Griffolino explains to Dante that the other furious shade is that of Ovid's Myrrha (Metam. X.298-502). She, daughter of Cinyras, king of Cyprus, disguised herself, abetted by her nurse, as a willing young woman (her mother being absent) in order to sleep with her father. In the development of the canto, she is at least formally in parallel with Hecuba (since Gianni plays the part of Athamas), but beyond their common femininity there is little to associate them.
We may speculate that all the Ovidian material of this canto has marginalized Virgil. Indeed, he does not speak a word until v. 131. This is the longest silence on his part since he entered the poem in its first canto; it is 169 lines since he last spoke at Inferno XXIX.101. For preceding long Virgilian silences, see Inferno V.112-VI.93; XV.1-99-XVI.18-121. In two cantos he speaks only a single verse (Inf. XV.99 and Inf. XXVII.33). However, the longest Virgilian silences in the poem await us. Inferno XXXII is the first canto in the poem in which he does not speak a word (and he is silent between XXXI.134 and XXXIII.106, a total of 255 verses); Purgatorio XXIV is the second and the longest (with Virgil silent between XXIII.15 and XXV.17, a total of 288 verses).
The story of Gianni Schicchi's impersonation of the dead and testmentless Buoso Donati in order to help the surviving Schicchi family members get an inheritance they feared they would otherwise lose delighted the early commentators, who take pleasure in repeating it. Gianni's payment for himself was to will himself the best animal – the lead mule – of Buoso's herd. Puccini's opera, bearing his name as its title, continues to purvey Gianni's tale.
Reading the last canto for the first time, we may have assumed that the tenth bolgia was devoted to detailing the punishment of a single form of falsification, alchemical deceptions, punished in a single way, by the scabs that cover the bodies of these leprous sinners (see the note to Inf. XXIX.58-66). After reading Canto XXX we have learned that there is a total of four species of falsification, each punished by a particular disease. The three species in this canto are as follows: impersonators (hydrophobia), counterfeiters of coin (dropsy), perjurors (fever). Here we come to the second in this group, the counterfeiters.
For the musical elements in the description of this sinner (he will find a name, Master Adam, at v. 61), see Iannucci (“Musical Imagery in the Mastro Adamo Episode,” in Da una riva e dall'altra: Studi in onore di Antonio D'Andrea, ed. Dante Della Terza [Florence: Edizioni Cadmo, 1995], pp. 103-18). The lute, which resembles 'a pregnant guitar' (as a waggish student of music once insisted) was, in Dante's time, generally regarded as a 'serious' instrument, like David's harp, and thus associated with the 'right' kind of musical performance. Iannucci points out (p. 114) that this is the only stringed instrument mentioned in hell. Adam, who looks like a lute, ends up sounding like a drum (v. 103), an instrument, as Iannucci argues, associated with such lower forms of musical amusement as public spectacles. For the symbolic inversions in the musicality of this scene see Denise Heilbronn, “Master Adam and the Fat-Bellied Lute (Inf. XXX),” Dante Studies 101 (1983), pp. 51-65.
Dropsy, in which a main symptom is the retention of water, which distends parts of the body, was also characterized by terrible thirst.
Resentfully noting Dante's lack of punishment, the sinner identifies himself. Master Adam, according to some commentators an Englishman, was in the employ of the Conti Guidi of Romena (in the Casentino, not far from Florence). (We will hear more of this family in vv. 73-87.) They convinced him to falsify the gold florin, stamped with the image of John the Baptist, the patron of Florence, by pouring gold of only 21 (and not 24) carats, a carat being one twenty-fourth of an ounce. On the symbolic importance of money, as it is reflected in this canto, see Shoaf (Dante, Chaucer, and the Currency of the Word [Norman, Oklahoma: Pilgrim Books, 1983]), pp. 39-48. Adam's crime was discovered and he was burned alive in Florence in 1281.
His name almost inevitably reminds the reader of his namesake, the first sinner. For discussion of the way in which this 'new Adam' is in fact a modern version of the first one, see Sally Mussetter, “Inferno XXX: Dante's Counterfeit Adam,” Traditio 34 (1978), pp. 427-35.
As many note, the language here again reflects that found in the Lamentations of Jeremiah. See the note to Inferno XXVIII.130-138.
Adam's memories of 'the green hills of home' torment him, only increasing his punishment. What for the reader is a moment of pastoral escape from hellish thoughts is for him torment. For a Virgilian source of the image see Eclogue X.42, describing 'cool streams and gentle meadows.'
Envy, often marked by the desire to see those who are well off suffering, rules Adam's heart. He would rather see his employers punished than slake his thirst. Fonte Branda, according to the early commentators, is the famous spring in Siena. Later writers have argued for another, of the same name, in the vicinity of Romena. However, that the earliest commentators do not refer to it probably seconds the notion that the more famous one is referred to here.
Guido had died in 1281 and news of his location in this bolgia has reached Adam through one of the rabid impersonators who range the territory.
Adam's 'impossible dream' is to be able to move an inch in a hundred years – and even that is beyond him. Were it not, Manfredi Porena (comm. to these verses) did the math and calculated that, at even this speed, it would take him 700,000 years to find Guido.
That this bolgia is half the circumference and breadth of the last one has given those who would like to establish the exact size of Dante's hell the two co-ordinates they think they need. Such calculation is a temptation to be avoided. (See the note to Inf. XXIX.8-9.) Adam undercalculates the diameter, which is 3.5 miles, considerably. We reflect that his dubious measurement is the result of his dropsied bulk and consequent laziness. A half mile is hundreds of thousands of years of (for him impossible) movement.
The fact that Master Adam says that the circumference of the tenth bolgia is eleven miles draws the numerologically minded Victoria Kirkham (“Eleven Is for Evil: Measured Trespass in Dante's Commedia,” Allegorica 10 [1989], pp. 27-28, 36-37), to make the claim that this number here relates to eleven as the 'number of transgression' (see the note to Inf. XI.10-15). On the other hand, eleven here may merely be half of the twenty-two mentioned by Virgil in the preceding bolgia as being the number of miles of its circumference (see the note to Inf. XXIX.8-9).
Adam's hatred of the Conti Guidi is understandable; his placing the entire blame on them for his own misdeeds is typical of certain sinners, always finding a cause for their failures in the hearts and minds of others.
Adam first identifies Potiphar's wife (Genesis 39:6-20), who, having failed to seduce Joseph, accused him before Pharoah of attempting to seduce her. Then he identifies Sinon (as he is known from the second book of the Aeneid), whose misrepresentations led to the destruction of Troy. Both suffer from high fever, seen not as a symptom of other ailments, but as a disease in itself; both worked treacherously against a 'chosen people,' the Hebrews and the Trojans.
Angered by the words of Master Adam, Sinon's first gesture is to strike him on his taut paunch, which booms like a drum. This act begins a series of exchanged insults, begun and ended by Adam. Until the last in the series, each one occupies a single tercet (Adam's final flourish will occupy two). As many who have written on this scene have reflected, Dante's technique here is modelled on the exchange of poetic insult found in the genre called tenzone. See the note to Inferno VIII.31-39.
Not only are these exchanges generally reflective of the tradition of the tenzone, this particular verse has been seen (e.g., Casini/Barbi's commentary to this verse in 1921) as rehearsing a particular tenzone, one between Cecco Angiolieri and Dante (whose sonnet, apparently the occasion for Cecco's, is lost). Cecco's ('Dante Alighieri, s'i' so' bon begolardo') begins roughly as follows:
Dante Alighier, if I'm a foolish bard,
I can feel your lance just behind my back;
If I'm out for dinner, you're there for a snack;
If I chew the fat, you but suck the lard.
For Virgil's presentation of Sinon's lie, see Aeneid II.152-159.
Adam's last words remind Sinon that, even if the counterfeiter is suffering from dropsy, his accuser has got a case of fever. His last riposte jibes at Sinon's thirst, which would lead him to the 'mirror of Narcissus,' i.e., a pool that would reflect his true, hideous self – which image he would destroy out of thirst, in a sort of grubby version of the original myth. As Kevin Brownlee pointed out, this reference begins the 'Narcissus program' in the Commedia, which includes references to the myth in a number of passages, and in all cantos numbered XXX (“Dante and Narcissus [Purg. XXX, 76-99],” Dante Studies 96 [1978], pp. 205-6).
Virgil's harsh rebuke here seems on the mark, certainly to Dante himself. Dante's emphatic acceptance of it stands in clear contrast to his rejection of the similar rebuke in the last canto (Inf. XXIX.4-12), where Virgil had not understood the cause of his staring into the ninth bolgia. Here Dante has become an interested bystander (rather than a man with a mission), enjoying the back-and-forth argument between the two sinners (just as do we) because it is both violent and amusing.
This is a remarkable simile (or 'pseudo-simile' on the grounds that it 'compares a thing, person, or emotion with itself' – in the words of Eric Mallin (see “The False Simile in Dante's Commedia,” Dante Studies 102 [1984], p. 15). (Mallin discusses this particular simile, pp. 28-31.) Tozer's prior remark in his commentary to this verse (1901) is of interest: 'This is a conspicuous instance of an interesting class of similes – viz. those drawn from mental experiences – of which there are as many as thirty in the Divine Comedy.' The simile is difficult enough that a prose paraphrase may help to make its point clearer: 'As a man dreams of being harmed and of wishing he were only dreaming (which he in fact is), so did I, unable to speak, feel ashamed because I could not excuse myself – while all the while my blushing was doing just that for me.'
Virgil accepts Dante's unvoiced apology and warns him against future backsliding of this kind. Berthier (comm. to XXX.130-132) cites from St. Bernard, De ordine vitae, from a passage, he says, located 'before its middle': 'audire quod turpe est, pudori maximo est' (it is most shameful to give ear to vile things).
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