“Chi è costui che 'l nostro monte cerchia
prima che morte li abbia dato il volo,
e apre li occhi a sua voglia e coverchia?”
“Non so chi sia, ma so ch'e' non è solo;
domandal tu che più li t'avvicini,
e dolcemente, sì che parli, acco'lo.”
Così due spirti, l'uno a l'altro chini,
ragionavan di me ivi a man dritta;
poi fer li visi, per dirmi, supini;
e disse l'uno: “O anima che fitta
nel corpo ancora inver' lo ciel ten vai,
per carità ne consola e ne ditta
onde vieni e chi se'; ché tu ne fai
tanto maravigliar de la tua grazia,
quanto vuol cosa che non fu più mai.”
E io: “Per mezza Toscana si spazia
un fiumicel che nasce in Falterona,
e cento miglia di corso nol sazia.
Di sovr' esso rech' io questa persona:
dirvi ch'i' sia, saria parlare indarno,
ché 'l nome mio ancor molto non suona.”
“Se ben lo 'ntendimento tuo accarno
con lo 'ntelletto,” allora mi rispuose
quei che diceva pria, “tu parli d'Arno.”
E l'altro disse lui: “Perché nascose
questi il vocabol di quella riviera,
pur com' om fa de l'orribili cose?”
E l'ombra che di ciò domandata era,
si sdebitò così: “Non so; ma degno
ben è che 'l nome di tal valle pèra;
ché dal principio suo, ov' è sì pregno
l'alpestro monte ond' è tronco Peloro,
che 'n pochi luoghi passa oltra quel segno,
infin là 've si rende per ristoro
di quel che 'l ciel de la marina asciuga,
ond' hanno i fiumi ciò che va con loro,
vertù così per nimica si fuga
da tutti come biscia, o per sventura
del luogo, o per mal uso che li fruga:
ond' hanno sì mutata lor natura
li abitator de la misera valle,
che par che Circe li avesse in pastura.
Tra brutti porci, più degni di galle
che d'altro cibo fatto in uman uso,
dirizza prima il suo povero calle.
Botoli trova poi, venendo giuso,
ringhiosi più che non chiede lor possa,
e da lor disdegnosa torce il muso.
Vassi caggendo; e quant ella più 'ngrossa,
tanto più trova di can farsi lupi
la maladetta e sventurata fossa.
Discesa poi per più pelaghi cupi,
trova le volpi sì piene di froda,
che non temono ingegno che le occùpi.
Né lascerò di dir perch' altri m'oda;
e buon sarà costui, s'ancor s'ammenta
di ciò che vero spirto mi disnoda.
Io veggio tuo nepote che diventa
cacciator di quei lupi in su la riva
del fiero fiume, e tutti li sgomenta.
Vende la carne loro essendo viva;
poscia li ancide come antica belva;
molti di vita e sé di pregio priva.
Sanguinoso esce de la trista selva;
lasciala tal, che di qui a mille anni
ne lo stato primaio non si rinselva.”
Com' a l'annunzio di dogliosi danni
si turba il viso di colui ch'ascolta,
da qual che parte il periglio l'assanni,
così vid' io l'altr' anima, che volta
stava a udir, turbarsi e farsi trista,
poi ch'ebbe la parola a sé raccolta.
Lo dir de l'una e de l'altra la vista
mi fer voglioso di saper lor nomi,
e dimanda ne fei con prieghi mista;
per che lo spirto che di pria parlòmi
ricominciò: “Tu vuo' ch'io mi deduca
nel fare a te ciò che tu far non vuo'mi.
Ma da che Dio in te vuol che traluca
tanto sua grazia, non ti sarò scarso;
però sappi ch'io fui Guido del Duca.
Fu il sangue mio d'invidia sì rïarso,
che se veduto avesse uom farsi lieto,
visto m'avresti di livore sparso.
Di mia semente cotal paglia mieto;
o gente umana, perché poni 'l core
là 'v' è mestier di consorte divieto?
Questi è Rinier; questi è 'l pregio e l'onore
de la casa da Calboli, ove nullo
fatto s'è reda poi del suo valore.
E non pur lo suo sangue è fatto brullo,
tra 'l Po e 'l monde e la marina e 'l Reno,
del ben richesto al vero e al trastullo;
ché dentro a questi termini è ripieno
di venenosi sterpi, sì che tardi
per coltivare omai verrebber meno.
Ov' è 'l buon Lizio e Arrigo Mainardi?
Pier Traversaro e Guido di Carpigna?
Oh Romagnuoli tornati in bastardi!
Quando in Bologna un Fabbro si ralligna?
quando in Faenza un Bernardin di Fosco,
verga gentil di picciola gramigna?
Non ti maravigliar s'io piango, Tosco,
quando rimembro, con Guido da Prata,
Ugolin d'Azzo che vivette nosco,
Federigo Tignoso e sua brigata,
la casa Traversara e li Anastagi
(e l'una gente e l'altra è diretata),
le donne e ' cavalier, li affanni e li agi
che ne 'nvogliava amore e cortesia
là dove i cuor son fatti sì malvagi.
O Bretinoro, ché non fuggi via,
poi che gita se n'è la tua famiglia
e molta gente per non esser ria?
Ben fa Bagnacaval, che non rifiglia;
e mal fa Castrocaro, e peggio Conio,
che di figliar tai conti più s'impiglia.
Ben faranno i Pagan, da che 'l demonio
lor sen girà; ma non però che puro
già mai rimagna d'essi testimonio.
O Ugolin de' Fantolin, sicuro
è 'l nome tuo, da che più non s'aspetta
chi far lo possa, tralignando, scuro.
Ma va via, Tosco, omai; ch'or mi diletta
troppo di pianger più che di parlare,
sì m'ha nostra ragion la mente stretta.”
Noi sapavam che quell' anime care
ci sentivano andar; però, tacendo,
facëan noi del cammin confidare.
Poi fummo fatti soli procedendo,
folgore parve quando l'aere fende,
voce che giunse di contra dicendo:
“Anciderammi qualunque m'apprende”;
e fuggì come tuon che si dilegua,
se sùbito la nuvola scoscende.
Come da lei l'udir nostro ebbe triegua,
ed ecco l'altra con sì gran fracasso,
che somigliò tonar che tosto segua:
“Io sono Aglauro che divenni sasso”;
e allor, per ristrignermi al poeta,
in destro feci, e non innanzi, il passo.
Già era l'aura d'ogne parte queta;
ed el mi disse: “Quel fu 'l duro camo
che dovria l'uom tener dentro a sua meta.
Ma voi prendete l'esca, sì che l'amo
de l'antico avversaro a sé vi tira;
e però poco val freno o richiamo.
Chiamavi 'l cielo e 'ntorno vi si gira,
mostrandovi le sue bellezze etterne,
e l'occhio vostro pur a terra mira;
onde vi batte chi tutto discerne.”
"Who is this one that goes about our mountain,
Or ever Death has given him power of flight,
And opes his eyes and shuts them at his will?"
"I know not who, but know he's not alone;
Ask him thyself, for thou art nearer to him,
And gently, so that he may speak, accost him."
Thus did two spirits, leaning tow'rds each other,
Discourse about me there on the right hand;
Then held supine their faces to address me.
And said the one: "O soul, that, fastened still
Within the body, tow'rds the heaven art going,
For charity console us, and declare
Whence comest and who art thou; for thou mak'st us
As much to marvel at this grace of thine
As must a thing that never yet has been."
And I: "Through midst of Tuscany there wanders
A streamlet that is born in Falterona,
And not a hundred miles of course suffice it;
From thereupon do I this body bring.
To tell you who I am were speech in vain,
Because my name as yet makes no great noise."
"If well thy meaning I can penetrate
With intellect of mine," then answered me
He who first spake, "thou speakest of the Arno."
And said the other to him: "Why concealed
This one the appellation of that river,
Even as a man doth of things horrible?"
And thus the shade that questioned was of this
Himself acquitted: "I know not; but truly
'Tis fit the name of such a valley perish;
For from its fountain-head (where is so pregnant
The Alpine mountain whence is cleft Peloro
That in few places it that mark surpasses)
To where it yields itself in restoration
Of what the heaven doth of the sea dry up,
Whence have the rivers that which goes with them,
Virtue is like an enemy avoided
By all, as is a serpent, through misfortune
Of place, or through bad habit that impels them;
On which account have so transformed their nature
The dwellers in that miserable valley,
It seems that Circe had them in her pasture.
'Mid ugly swine, of acorns worthier
Than other food for human use created,
It first directeth its impoverished way.
Curs findeth it thereafter, coming downward,
More snarling than their puissance demands,
And turns from them disdainfully its muzzle.
It goes on falling, and the more it grows,
The more it finds the dogs becoming wolves,
This maledict and misadventurous ditch.
Descended then through many a hollow gulf,
It finds the foxes so replete with fraud,
They fear no cunning that may master them.
Nor will I cease because another hears me;
And well 'twill be for him, if still he mind him
Of what a truthful spirit to me unravels.
Thy grandson I behold, who doth become
A hunter of those wolves upon the bank
Of the wild stream, and terrifies them all.
He sells their flesh, it being yet alive;
Thereafter slaughters them like ancient beeves;
Many of life, himself of praise, deprives.
Blood-stained he issues from the dismal forest;
He leaves it such, a thousand years from now
In its primeval state 'tis not re-wooded."
As at the announcement of impending ills
The face of him who listens is disturbed,
From whate'er side the peril seize upon him;
So I beheld that other soul, which stood
Turned round to listen, grow disturbed and sad,
When it had gathered to itself the word.
The speech of one and aspect of the other
Had me desirous made to know their names,
And question mixed with prayers I made thereof,
Whereat the spirit which first spake to me
Began again: "Thou wishest I should bring me
To do for thee what thou'lt not do for me;
But since God willeth that in thee shine forth
Such grace of his, I'll not be chary with thee;
Know, then, that I Guido del Duca am.
My blood was so with envy set on fire,
That if I had beheld a man make merry,
Thou wouldst have seen me sprinkled o'er with pallor.
From my own sowing such the straw I reap!
O human race! why dost thou set thy heart
Where interdict of partnership must be?
This is Renier; this is the boast and honour
Of the house of Calboli, where no one since
Has made himself the heir of his desert.
And not alone his blood is made devoid,
'Twixt Po and mount, and sea-shore and the Reno,
Of good required for truth and for diversion;
For all within these boundaries is full
Of venomous roots, so that too tardily
By cultivation now would they diminish.
Where is good Lizio, and Arrigo Manardi,
Pier Traversaro, and Guido di Carpigna,
O Romagnuoli into bastards turned?
When in Bologna will a Fabbro rise?
When in Faenza a Bernardin di Fosco,
The noble scion of ignoble seed?
Be not astonished, Tuscan, if I weep,
When I remember, with Guido da Prata,
Ugolin d' Azzo, who was living with us,
Frederick Tignoso and his company,
The house of Traversara, and th' Anastagi,
And one race and the other is extinct;
The dames and cavaliers, the toils and ease
That filled our souls with love and courtesy,
There where the hearts have so malicious grown!
O Brettinoro! why dost thou not flee,
Seeing that all thy family is gone,
And many people, not to be corrupted?
Bagnacaval does well in not begetting
And ill does Castrocaro, and Conio worse,
In taking trouble to beget such Counts.
Will do well the Pagani, when their Devil
Shall have departed; but not therefore pure
Will testimony of them e'er remain.
O Ugolin de' Fantoli, secure
Thy name is, since no longer is awaited
One who, degenerating, can obscure it!
But go now, Tuscan, for it now delights me
To weep far better than it does to speak,
So much has our discourse my mind distressed."
We were aware that those beloved souls
Heard us depart; therefore, by keeping silent,
They made us of our pathway confident.
When we became alone by going onward,
Thunder, when it doth cleave the air, appeared
A voice, that counter to us came, exclaiming:
"Shall slay me whosoever findeth me!"
And fled as the reverberation dies
If suddenly the cloud asunder bursts.
As soon as hearing had a truce from this,
Behold another, with so great a crash,
That it resembled thunderings following fast:
"I am Aglaurus, who became a stone!"
And then, to press myself close to the Poet,
I backward, and not forward, took a step.
Already on all sides the air was quiet;
And said he to me: "That was the hard curb
That ought to hold a man within his bounds;
But you take in the bait so that the hook
Of the old Adversary draws you to him,
And hence availeth little curb or call.
The heavens are calling you, and wheel around you,
Displaying to you their eternal beauties,
And still your eye is looking on the ground;
Whence He, who all discerns, chastises you."
These words do not, as we might assume, issue from Sapia, but from a new speaker, the dominant presence in this canto. He is Guido del Duca, as we will discover at verse 81 (see the note to that verse). His rather salty way of responding to the news (broadcast at Purg. XIII.142, when Guido overheard Dante speaking to Sapia) that Dante is here in the flesh, a man 'who can open his eyes at will and shut them,' will turn out to be typical of his bluntness, which finds its foil in the indirect and extremely polite ways of his interlocutor, Rinieri da Calboli. Guido cannot see that Dante can see him (we recall that Dante was sensitive about his favored status in this respect at Purg. XIII.73-74) but surmises that, as a living soul, Dante has the ocular power that is taken from all those who are purging their envy on this terrace. This does not make him a source of envy for these souls, but of wonder (see vv. 13-14).
We can sense the extraordinary care with which Dante measures off this poetic space, sense him watching us mark in our margins the precisions found here (who these two will turn out to be; what they've overheard Dante saying; what they are like; and how that reflects in their relations). The passage presents a brief epitome of how carefully he invites us to read his text.
The phrase 'before he has been given wings by death' was anticipated by Benvenuto da Imola earlier in his commentary (to Purg. X.126): 'at death the soul flies at once to justice, as is elsewhere stated.'
The second speaker, Rinier da Calboli (see the note to vv. 88-90), a sort of precursor of one of Marcel Proust's famously overpolite great-aunts, addresses Dante only through his companion, Guido. The characterization of the two respondents to Dante's presence is reminiscent, in its handling of such dramatically differing personalities, of the representation of character in the colloquy among Dante, Farinata, and Cavalcante in Inferno X.
We here learn that these are speakers we have not heard before. For a moment it is as though we were as 'blind' as the penitents and dependent on what we hear said by the narrator to understand who is involved in this colloquy.
Sapia (Purg. XIII.130) had wanted to know Dante's identity; his response was to identify himself only as a person who had (at least until now) been prideful in his life. Now Guido (the speaker is not identified, but we safely assume, both from the rotation of speakers and from the forthright quality of his question, that it is he) asks to know both his homeland and his name; Dante will modestly offer only the first piece of information. He has learned, we surmise, something about Pride in his few hours on that terrace.
Guido's amazement at Dante's condition does two things quickly and neatly; it shows that he (and Rinieri) are not envious of his condition and it allows Dante not to have to insist pridefully on his uniqueness, something that Guido has done for him. Once we find out who these two are, we realize that these now fraternal souls were, on earth, a Ghibelline (Guido) and a Guelph (Rinieri). These details may remind us of the far less fraternal interaction between Farinata (a Ghibelline) and Cavalcante (a Guelph) in Inferno X.
The protagonist introduces its controlling image to the canto, the river Arno. Its source is in the Apennines at Mt. Falterona and it then makes its way, as we shall hear, through the Casentino, then the cities of Arezzo, Florence, and Pisa, before it reaches the sea. Giovanna Ioli (La Divina Commedia: Purgatorio, ed. G. Ioli [Turin: S.E.I., 1989]), p. 210, points out that the verb saziare (slake) introduces the theme of hunger to this description of the Arno. The river seems, in order to satisfy its own appetites, not to extend far enough, despite all the harm its ca. 150 miles (and not Dante's 100) produces.
The protagonist identifies himself as a Tuscan, not as a Florentine. This is perhaps less the result of modesty than the poet's reflection on his wandering condition in his exile, much of which was to be spent in Tuscany, though not in Florence.
Dante's modesty here is gainsaid by his previous inclusion among the great poets of all time in Inferno IV.100-102. There are those who claim that in 1300 he had not indeed become particularly famous and that this is the reason for his modesty here. It would rather seem to be that he is keeping in mind the lessons in humility he has just learned on the last terrace. Further, he clearly expects that fame will one day find him. However, the only time his name is used in the Commedia it is spoken, not for praise, but in denunciation of his disloyalty by Beatrice (Purg. XXX.55).
The rhyme word accarno, a hapax, derives, as commentators point out, from the word used to describe an animal that has caught another and is biting into its flesh (carne). Guido's third speech unravels the fairly simple riddle that conceals the river's name.
Rinieri once again addresses Guido in order to pose a question for Dante to answer. We can now see that this is the central trait of his personality as explored in this canto. (He only speaks twice, a total of six lines, and yet we feel we know him. We will see his sad expression in vv. 70-72 but he will not speak again.) Guido's peremptory, forward manner in some ways matches, in bono, the Tuscan (western) side of the Apennines, presented as being ferocious; Rinieri's diffident attitude is perhaps meant to reflect his connection with the good folk (now long gone) from the eastern side of those mountains, in the Romagna.
Guido's opening verbal gesture of disdain sets the stage for his serial denunciation of the mountain hamlets and cities of the plain along the Arno. For the resonance of Job (18:17): 'Memoria illius pereat de terra' (and may memory of him vanish from the earth), see Tommaseo (comm. to these lines).
Guido first indicates the length of the entire river, from the mountain range (the Apennines) 'from which Pelorus was broken off' to the sea on the other side of Pisa, where the river deposits its waters to replace that moisture drawn by the sun from the sea and subsequently dropped into the mountains where the Arno has its source. The natural cycle of renewal that typifies the river is not replicated by the inhabitants along it; these go from bad to worse as the river descends. (Compare the descent of the rivers that eventually make up the Po, falling from Lake Garda to the Adriatic Sea in Inf. XX.61-81.)
Pelorus, the promontory at the northeast end of Sicily, was believed to have been cut off by the sea (the Strait of Messina) from the southwest end of the Apennine range. Virgil testifies to this phenomenon, as was first noted by Gabriele (comm. to vv. 31-32) and then by Portirelli (comm. to vv. 22-36), at Aeneid III.410-419, as does Lucan (Phars. II.437-438 – a citation first offered by Daniello [comm. to vv. 32-33]).
Casini/Barbi (comm. to verse 17) cite Ermenegildo Pistelli for the opinion that, far from being indicative of a certain enviousness on his part, Guido's polemic reveals a magnanimous and passionate opposition to such low sentiments in his zeal to correct the Tuscans.
The word for 'snake,' biscia, deployed a third and final time (see also Purg. VIII.98 for its use to indicate the serpent in the garden) in the poem, recalls Inferno IX.77: the angelic messenger compared to a snake from which frogs flee. Mercury is the veiled common denominator in these scenes. In Inferno IX the angel (the archangel Michael? – see the note to Inf. IX.85) 'imitates' Mercury in the Thebaid (II.1-11) as well as in Ovid's Metamorphoses (II.819), opening the door to Herse's chamber (we'll find Aglauros, the envious sister of Herse, as exemplar of envy at verse 139 of this canto). In all these scenes and in Dante's redoing of them the magical instrument that accomplishes its task is a virga or verghetta, a magic wand, in Virgil associated, variously, with Mercury, the Sibyl, and Circe (see verse 42, where her wand is not referred to but is clearly meant to be understood as the instrument of the Arno-dwellers' metamorphoses, just as we understood the same of the companions of Ulysses at Inf. XXVI.91, in Circe's only other nominal appearance in the poem).
The cause for the immoderate behavior of the valley's inhabitants, expressed as uncertain ('whether some curse / is on the place or evil habits goad them on'), is eventually explicitly identified as the result of the misapplied freedom of the will (i.e., the second cause alluded to here) by Marco Lombardo (Purg. XVI.67-83), as was pointed out, uniquely among the early commentators, by Benvenuto da Imola (comm. to vv. 31-39). All of the Arno-dwellers seem to have been turned to brutes by the sorceress Circe, most particularly those described in the next tercet.
After the glosses found in the Codice Cassinese (comm. to verse 43), this porcine part of the Casentino is usually associated with the Conti Guidi (see the note to Inf. XXX.58-61) and in particular with the branch of the family who ruled in Porciano, a fortified town near Mt. Falterona along the shallow stream that will grow to become the Arno. Non-Tuscan readers may be surprised at commentators' certainty about the identities of all the unnamed towns or cities referred to in this part of the diatribe, but Dante counts on a reader familiar with the major points of habitation along the river.
Next downstream is Arezzo, from which city the river turns sharply away in order to head northwest toward Florence as though it wanted to avoid the nasty 'whelps' of Arezzo. Like the Texas rancher who is all hat and no cattle, these little dogs are all snarl or bark and no bite – or so the Ottimo (comm. to vv. 46-47) thought.
Florence seems to be associated, unsurprisingly, with avarice. (For the wolf as representing avarice see the note to Inf. VII.8.)
If Florence is associated with avarice, Pisa is presented as full of fraud. Foxes are referred to in two other passages in the poem (Inf. XXVII.75: Guido da Montefeltro refers to his former 'vulpine' strategies; Purg. XXXII.119: a fox, generally understood as heresy, invades the cart of the chariot of the Church).
Pietro di Dante (Pietro1, comm. to vv. 49-51) and Daniello (comm. to vv. 52-54) both think of a passage in Boethius as Dante's source for the animals in Guido's outburst. See De consolatione philosophiae IV.iii(pr).57-60: 'You will say that the man who is driven by avarice to seize what belongs to others is like a wolf; the restless, angry man who spends his life in quarrels you will compare to a dog. The treacherous conspirator who steals by fraud may be likened to a fox;... the man who is sunk in foul lust is trapped in the pleasures of a filthy sow' (trans. Richard Green). (The accompanying poem in Boethius begins with Circe, who turned the companions of Ulysses into animals by means of her poisoned potions.)
This passage offers the occasion for a dispute among the commentators: does altri refer to Rinieri or to Dante? (According to most early commentators, the former; to most later ones, the latter). The major problem with the older hypothesis is that one has a hard time seeing what good it can do Rinieri to hear this news (and Guido's locution points to a potential benefit to his auditor), since he cannot intervene in worldly events, while Guido's unseen mortal interlocutor still has a life to live back on the earth – indeed in Tuscany – and may profit from this prophetic warning.
Casini/Barbi (comm. to verse 57) seem to have been the first to cite, for Dante's phrase vero spirto, John 16:13, 'Spiritus veritatis' (the Spirit of truth – i.e., the prophetic capacity of the Holy Spirit); notice of this passage has become fairly commonplace, but represents a relatively recent discovery. Guido openly calls upon the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit (John 16:7), as the guarantor of the truth in his words; Dante's own prophetic status in the poem is not put before us so straightforwardly, but is nonetheless perceptible. See the note to Purgatorio XXIV.52-54.
Guido's prophecy concerns the grandson of Rinieri, Fulcieri da Calboli, 'member of the illustrious Guelf family of that name at Forlì; he was Podestà of Florence in 1302/3, after the return of the Neri [the Black Guelphs] through the influence of Charles of Valois, and proved himself a bitter foe of the Bianchi' (Toynbee, “Fulcieri da Calboli” [Concise Dante Dictionary]). His enmity was shown not only to White Guelphs but to Ghibellines, as he had leaders of both these parties arrested and tortured and killed. See Villani's Cronica (VIII.59) for a detailed report of Fulcieri's iniquities (available in English in Singleton's comment to verse 58). Or see the only slightly modified version of Villani's narrative in the commentary of the Anonimo Fiorentino (comm. to vv. 58-63).
Fulcieri bargained with his employers (the Black Guelphs) over the fates of his prisoners, thus currying the favor of the Black leaders while shoring up his position as podestà; he eventually handed many of the captives over to be put to death by their enemies, selling them like cattle.
The metaphoric reference to Florence as a trista selva (wretched wood) in verse 64 may draw our attention back to the second verse of the poem, in which the protagonist discovers himself in a selva oscura (dark wood). The language of this tercet also identifies the better days of Florence as Edenic and suggests that the good old days are now gone for a very long time indeed.
A much more difficult verse than is readily apparent. First of all, what exactly does it mean? Second, what is its import for our recognition of the inner condition of Rinieri? Early commentators paid no heed to this part of the problem at all. In fact, the first commentator to pay attention to the relation of this verse, 'no matter where the threat may bare its fangs,' to the condition of Rinieri was Andreoli (comm. to this line): 'whatever may be the role he might have in the dire events predicted. The ones predicted by Guido only touch Rinieri with respect to his care for the good name of his own family.' Mattalia (comm. to this verse) goes farther, if in a different direction. According to him the clause would be meaningless unless we keep in mind 'the premise that, since it is in response to things regarding a close relative, the reaction [in a living soul] would have had to have been much more intense, while [Rinieri] reacts with equanimity, not making distinctions between one kind of danger and another.' The point is well taken, yet it seems based on a desire to make sense out of what does not quite seem to do so.
Guido reminds Dante that he has not furnished his own name, but relents upon considering Dante's special relationship to the Divine plan that is manifest in his mere presence on the mountain in the flesh.
'Guido del Duca, gentleman of Bertinoro, near Forlì, in Romagna, son of Giovanni del Duca of the Onesti family of Ravenna. The earliest mention of Guido occurs in a document dated May 4, 1199, in which he is described as holding the office of judge to the Podestà of Rimini. In 1202, and again in 1204, he is mentioned as playing an important part in the affairs of Romagna, both times in connexion with Pier Traversaro (Purg. XIV.98), whose adherent he appears to have been. In 1218, Pier Traversaro, with the help of his Ghibelline friends, and especially of the Mainardi of Bertinoro, made himself master of Ravenna, and expelled the Guelfs from the city. The latter, in revenge, seized Bertinoro, destroyed the houses belonging to the Mainardi, and drove out all Piero's adherents; among them was Guido del Duca, who at this time apparently, together with his family, betook himself to Ravenna, his father's native place, and resided there under the protection of Pier Traversaro. Some ten years later (in 1229) Guido's name appears as witness to a deed at Ravenna; he was alive in 1249...' (Toynbee, “Guido del Duca” [Concise Dante Dictionary]).
Guido's wry self-knowledge, similar to that of Sapia (Purg. XIII.110-111), practically defines the sin of envy as Dante understood it. Pietro di Dante (Pietro1, comm. to vv. 16-27) cites Horace (Epistles I.ii.57): 'The envious man grows lean when his neighbor prospers.' The citation is apt, even if Dante's knowledge of the Epistles is not assured. A more certain source is found in Aquinas, as is variously noted, first by Poletto (comm. to Purg. XVII.118-120): tristitia de alienis bonis (sadness at another's possessions). But see Jacopo della Lana (comm. to Inf. XVI.73-75), who attributes the phrase to John of Damascus (8th century): 'tristitia de bonis alienis.'
For the gray-blue color of envy see the note to Purgatorio XIII.8-9.
The phrasing (sowing and reaping) is obviously biblical, as Lombardi (comm. to this verse) was perhaps the first to note (in 1791), citing St. Paul (Galatians 6:8): 'Quae enim seminaverit homo, haec et metet' (For what a man sows, that shall he reap). Tommaseo (comm. to vv. 85-87) cites another five biblical passages that also rely on this metaphor, but the passage in Paul is favored by the commentators once it enters the tradition. Here Guido, in purgation, harvests the straw of expiation for his sins on earth; his wheat awaits him in paradise.
Guido's denunciation, in the form of an apostrophe of the human race, places the blame for our envious lot in our not being able to seek goods that are shared. His phrase, 'things that of necessity cannot be shared,' will come back to be scrutinized in the next canto (XV.45), there offering Virgil occasion for a lengthy gloss (XV.46-75).
'Rinier da Calboli, member of the illustrious Guelf family of that name at Forlì.... Rinieri, who played an important part in the affairs of Romagna, was born probably at the beginning of Cent. xiii; he was Podestà of Faenza in 1265 (the year of Dante's birth). In 1276 he made war upon Forlì, but was compelled to retire to his stronghold of Calboli, in the upper valley of the Montone, where he was besieged by Guido da Montefeltro (Inf. XXVII), at that time Captain of Forlì, who forced him to surrender, and destroyed the castle. In 1292, while for the second time Podestà of Faenza..., Rinieri captured Forlì, and expelled... many... powerful Ghibellines. Two years later, however (in 1294), Rinieri and his adherents were in turn expelled. In 1296 Rinieri and the Guelfs once more made themselves masters of Forlì, but the Ghibellines... quickly retook the city and killed many of the Guelfs, Rinieri among the number' (Toynbee, “Rinier da Calboli” [Concise Dante Dictionary]).
Guido now describes the boundaries of Romagna, a large area on the right-hand side of Italy, separated from Tuscany (subject of the first half of the canto's exploration of sins along the Arno) by the Apennines, lying south and west of Romagna. The rough boundaries include the river Reno, just to the west of Bologna, the river Po, flowing into the Adriatic north of Ravenna, the Adriatic as the eastern limit, and the hills of Montefeltro at the southern edge.
Once virtuous, peopled by such as Rinieri, Romagna is now turned to an unweeded garden.
Guido's second speech on a set topic, a version of the 'ubi sunt?' (where are [the good folk of the past] today?) topos, as Sapegno (comm. to verse 97) insists, pointing to a general sense of source in the Bible and in medieval Latin hymns, includes references to ten additional worthy individuals, four families, and three towns, each of which is gone or has come upon hard times. The three categories are intermingled.
Lizio [di Valbona, a castle near Bagno], a Guelph, fought alongside Rinieri in the losing battle at Forlì in 1276. Lizio is a character in one of the novelle (V.iv) of the Decameron. Arrigo Mainardi, a Ghibelline from Bertinoro, associated with Guido del Duca, was still living in 1228. Thus this first pair is divided equally between the two protagonists of the canto and their two political parties.
Pier Traversaro, the most distinguished member of the powerful Ghibelline family of Ravenna and renowned for his patronage of poets, was an ally of Guido del Duca. At the end of his life in 1225 he was the unofficial ruler of Ravenna, where he had earlier been podestà for three separate terms, but his son Paolo, who succeeded him as the central political figure in the city, became a Guelph and, at his death in 1240, the Traversaro influence in Ravenna, which had been strong for nearly 300 years, came to its end. Guido di Carpigna, a Guelph whose family was related to the counts of Montefeltro, was once podestà of Ravenna (in 1251).
The relationship between the first four names and the present-day inhabitants of Romagna is oppositional, a notion that escaped some of the early commentators, who thought Dante was vilifying at least the next two names.
Fabbro [de' Lambertazzi], leader of the Bolognese Ghibellines, served as podestà of seven Italian cities (of three more than once) between 1230 and 1258.
Bernardin di Fosco, sprung from ordinary folk (the Ottimo, comm. to these lines, says he was a peasant), apparently exhibited such personal gentility that the nobles of Faenza eventually looked upon him as one of their own. While no commentator seems to know enough about him to identify his political party, the fact that he seems to have been involved in the defense of Faenza against the emperor (Frederick II) in 1240 would ordinarily suggest that he was a Guelph; on the other hand he apparently was in the emperor's favor in 1248 and 1249 when he was made podestà of Pisa and then of Siena – positions that would suggest his alignment with the Ghibellines. However, Isidoro Del Lungo (comm. to vv. 100-102), the only commentator to deal with the issue, simply states that he was a Guelph.
Of Guido da Prata so little is known that one commentator, Luigi Pietrobono (comm. to this verse), is of the opinion that, in light of the small amount of information that has come down to us, Dante had overestimated his worth. Prata is a village in the Romagna, between Forlì and Faenza; Guido seems to have been active in the political life of Ravenna.
Ugolino d'Azzo was born in Tuscany, but at some point moved to Faenza (and thus, in Guido's words, 'lived among us'). He was the son of Azzo degli Ubaldini and thus related to both the cardinal Ottaviano degli Ubaldini (Inf. X.120) and the archbishop Ruggieri degli Ubaldini (Inf. XXXIII.14). He was married to a daughter of Provenzan Salvani (Purg. XI.121) and died at a ripe old age in 1293.
Of Federigo Tignoso practically nothing is known. Benvenuto says he was a rich nobleman of Rimini and that he had heard tell that Federigo had a great shock of yellow hair, so that his sobriquet, Tignoso, which is the adjective from the noun tigna (or 'mange'), was a playful misnomer. Federigo's companions were, apparently, those who took part in his hospitable way of life. Those who attempt to date his life set it in the first half of the thirteenth century.
Dante suddenly switches from munificent individuals to munificent families. Of the Traversari of Ravenna we have heard tell in the person of Piero (see the note to verse 98); now we hear of another great Ghibelline family of that city, the Anastagi. When we consider that the last years of Dante's life were spent at Ravenna as a result of the hospitality of Guido Novello da Polenta it is striking that the Polentani, perhaps the greatest of all the families of Ravenna (along with the Traversari), are not mentioned here. Writing after 1317, Dante would surely have included them, since their Guelph allegiance would apparently have been no bar to being included in the cast assembled here, containing roughly as many Guelphs as Ghibellines.
Both these families have by 1300 nearly died out – a fate that is not the unmitigated disaster it might seem, as we shall soon see.
These verses served Ariosto (1474-1533) as the model for the opening of his epic poem, Orlando furioso: 'Le donne, i cavalier, l'arme, gli amori, / le cortesie, l'audaci imprese io canto' (Ladies and knights, weapons and love, courteous acts, bold-hearted deeds: all these I sing). The good old days have yielded to an iron age; it is perhaps better not to breed. That is the message that begins to be hammered home. For the themes of cortesia and nobiltà, see Renzo Lo Cascio (“La nozione di cortesia e di nobiltà dai siciliani a Dante,” in Atti del Convegno di studi su Dante e la Magna Curia [Palermo: Luxograph, 1967], pp. 113-84).
Bertinoro begins the list of four towns of Romagna that interrupts the series of families, which had interrupted the series of named individuals. The sequence, chiastic in shape, runs as follows:
9 individuals
2 families
all 4 towns
final family (v. 118)
final individual (v. 121)
Bertinoro, between Forlì and Cesena, was renowned for the generosity of its noble families, as the early commentators, beginning with the Anonymous Lombard (comm. to these verses) told. The family referred to as having left may be the Mainardi (mentioned in verse 97) or some other; some commentators want to see the term as generic (i.e., all the good people of the town) but this is probably not warranted.
Bagnacavallo, between Imola and Ravenna, a Ghibelline stronghold in Dante's time, is congratulated for not having male offspring by its counts (the Malvicini family), extinguished, in their male line, by 1300.
Castrocaro, near Forlì, was a Ghibelline stronghold of the counts of Castrocaro until 1300, when it passed into the hands of the local Ordelaffi family and then, subsequently, into the possession of the Florentine Black Guelphs. Conio, a castle near Imola, was in the possession of Guelph counts. Both these strongholds are seen as breeding worse and worse stock.
To conclude the brief list of families, Dante refers to the Pagani. They were Ghibelline lords of Faenza. Rather than praise their good early stock, Dante fixes on their 'Devil,' Maghinardo Pagano da Susinana, a truly impressive warrior and statesman. A Ghibelline, he also favored the Florentine Guelphs because of their decent treatment of him when he was a child and in their protection. On one side of the Apennines he fought on the side of Guelphs; on the other, of Ghibellines. What undoubtedly took any possibility of a dispassionate view of this extraordinary man from Dante was the fact that he entered the city in November 1301 at the side of Charles of Valois, the French conqueror of Florence (in collaboration with Corso Donati).
Maghinardo is the only name mentioned in this passage of a person alive at the imagined date of the vision (he died in 1302). Everyone else is of thirteenth-century provenance, and of the persons and events datable in this welter of historical material, nothing before 1200 or after 1293 is alluded to, thus reinforcing the notion that Dante is talking, through the mouth of Guido del Duca, of the 'good old days' in Romagna. A similar and longer discourse in historical romanticism will be put forth by Cacciaguida in Paradiso XVI, an entire canto given over to the moral supremacy of a Florence that is now long gone.
The last name to resound in Guido's list is that of Ugolino de' Fantolini. A Guelph from Cerfugnano, near Faenza, he was several times podestà of Faenza. Dead in 1278, he was survived by his two sons, both of whom died well before 1300, so that this Ugolino's name may be preserved from being sullied by any additional Fantolinian progeny.
Guido's juxtaposition of tears and speech may remind the reader of Francesca's similar gesture – as well as Ugolino's. See Inferno V.126 and XXXIII.9, as is suggested by Mattalia (comm. to this verse). And see the note to Inferno XXXIII.9.
His final words of lament, after the extraordinary vivacity and range of his styles (noble, earthy, ironic, cynical, but always sharply honed), are the last word on Romagna, which was once so fair and now is foul, a transformation that leaves only grief in its wake.
The voices overhead that greeted the travelers as they entered this terrace (Purg. XIII.25-27) return, again moving against the direction of their movement, but now presenting negative exemplars. Cain's words are translated from the Vulgate (Genesis 4:14): 'Every one who finds me shall slay me,' spoken before God marked his forehead after the murder of his brother, Abel, so that he would not, indeed, be slain. For Cain's association with Envy, according to some fathers of the Church, see Anthony Cassell (“The Letter of Envy: Purgatorio XIII-XIV,” Stanford Italian Review 4 [1984]), p. 17.
See Ovid, Metamorphoses II.797-819, where Mercury turns Aglauros to stone because she wants him for herself and stations herself outside her sister Herse's door in order to prevent his entry to Herse's bedchamber. Mercury then opens the door with a touch of his caduceus. That scene has already been (tacitly) present in Inferno IX.89-90, where the Mercury-like angel opens the gates of Dis to Virgil and Dante. See the note to that passage.
Cain and Aglauros share the condition of envy of a sibling, Cain of Abel, Aglauros of Herse. The second exemplar of Charity, Pylades, was in a brotherly relationship with Orestes, even though they were not related by blood (Purg. XIII.32).
It is noteworthy that the voices presenting the exemplars of Charity are courteous and inviting (Purg. XIII.25-27), while these, presenting exemplars of Envy, are like lightning and thunder and cause the protagonist to be fearful.
Virgil's language in this passage is biblical: Psalm 31:9 (32:9): 'Be not as the horse, or as the mule, which have no understanding: whose mouth must be held in with bit [Vulgate: camo] and bridle [Vulgate: freno]...' (a passage also cited by Dante in Monarchia III.xv.9, as was first noted by Tommaseo [comm. to verse 144]); Ecclesiastes 9:12: 'as the fishes that are taken in an evil net [Vulgate: hamo (hook)], and as the birds that are caught in the snare; so are the sons of man snared....' See Purgatorio XIII.40 for Dante's first use of freno on the terraces and see the note to XIII.37-42. The devil sets his snares or hooks to trap humankind. The next passage presents God's way of hunting us.
God's 'lure' (richiamo), a technical term from falconry, is part of this magnificent final image, which turns our human expectations upside down. God is seen as a falconer in the Empyrean spinning his lures, the stars that end each cantica, over his head, as it were, while we are falcons that are not drawn to this amazing bait, but look down to the earth for our temptations. Compare that other disobedient falcon, the monster Geryon, at Inferno XVII.127-132. The language of this passage is Boethian. See De consolatione philosophiae III.m8: '[Humans] dig the earth in search of the good, which soars above the star-filled heavens' (trans. R. Green).
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“Chi è costui che 'l nostro monte cerchia
prima che morte li abbia dato il volo,
e apre li occhi a sua voglia e coverchia?”
“Non so chi sia, ma so ch'e' non è solo;
domandal tu che più li t'avvicini,
e dolcemente, sì che parli, acco'lo.”
Così due spirti, l'uno a l'altro chini,
ragionavan di me ivi a man dritta;
poi fer li visi, per dirmi, supini;
e disse l'uno: “O anima che fitta
nel corpo ancora inver' lo ciel ten vai,
per carità ne consola e ne ditta
onde vieni e chi se'; ché tu ne fai
tanto maravigliar de la tua grazia,
quanto vuol cosa che non fu più mai.”
E io: “Per mezza Toscana si spazia
un fiumicel che nasce in Falterona,
e cento miglia di corso nol sazia.
Di sovr' esso rech' io questa persona:
dirvi ch'i' sia, saria parlare indarno,
ché 'l nome mio ancor molto non suona.”
“Se ben lo 'ntendimento tuo accarno
con lo 'ntelletto,” allora mi rispuose
quei che diceva pria, “tu parli d'Arno.”
E l'altro disse lui: “Perché nascose
questi il vocabol di quella riviera,
pur com' om fa de l'orribili cose?”
E l'ombra che di ciò domandata era,
si sdebitò così: “Non so; ma degno
ben è che 'l nome di tal valle pèra;
ché dal principio suo, ov' è sì pregno
l'alpestro monte ond' è tronco Peloro,
che 'n pochi luoghi passa oltra quel segno,
infin là 've si rende per ristoro
di quel che 'l ciel de la marina asciuga,
ond' hanno i fiumi ciò che va con loro,
vertù così per nimica si fuga
da tutti come biscia, o per sventura
del luogo, o per mal uso che li fruga:
ond' hanno sì mutata lor natura
li abitator de la misera valle,
che par che Circe li avesse in pastura.
Tra brutti porci, più degni di galle
che d'altro cibo fatto in uman uso,
dirizza prima il suo povero calle.
Botoli trova poi, venendo giuso,
ringhiosi più che non chiede lor possa,
e da lor disdegnosa torce il muso.
Vassi caggendo; e quant ella più 'ngrossa,
tanto più trova di can farsi lupi
la maladetta e sventurata fossa.
Discesa poi per più pelaghi cupi,
trova le volpi sì piene di froda,
che non temono ingegno che le occùpi.
Né lascerò di dir perch' altri m'oda;
e buon sarà costui, s'ancor s'ammenta
di ciò che vero spirto mi disnoda.
Io veggio tuo nepote che diventa
cacciator di quei lupi in su la riva
del fiero fiume, e tutti li sgomenta.
Vende la carne loro essendo viva;
poscia li ancide come antica belva;
molti di vita e sé di pregio priva.
Sanguinoso esce de la trista selva;
lasciala tal, che di qui a mille anni
ne lo stato primaio non si rinselva.”
Com' a l'annunzio di dogliosi danni
si turba il viso di colui ch'ascolta,
da qual che parte il periglio l'assanni,
così vid' io l'altr' anima, che volta
stava a udir, turbarsi e farsi trista,
poi ch'ebbe la parola a sé raccolta.
Lo dir de l'una e de l'altra la vista
mi fer voglioso di saper lor nomi,
e dimanda ne fei con prieghi mista;
per che lo spirto che di pria parlòmi
ricominciò: “Tu vuo' ch'io mi deduca
nel fare a te ciò che tu far non vuo'mi.
Ma da che Dio in te vuol che traluca
tanto sua grazia, non ti sarò scarso;
però sappi ch'io fui Guido del Duca.
Fu il sangue mio d'invidia sì rïarso,
che se veduto avesse uom farsi lieto,
visto m'avresti di livore sparso.
Di mia semente cotal paglia mieto;
o gente umana, perché poni 'l core
là 'v' è mestier di consorte divieto?
Questi è Rinier; questi è 'l pregio e l'onore
de la casa da Calboli, ove nullo
fatto s'è reda poi del suo valore.
E non pur lo suo sangue è fatto brullo,
tra 'l Po e 'l monde e la marina e 'l Reno,
del ben richesto al vero e al trastullo;
ché dentro a questi termini è ripieno
di venenosi sterpi, sì che tardi
per coltivare omai verrebber meno.
Ov' è 'l buon Lizio e Arrigo Mainardi?
Pier Traversaro e Guido di Carpigna?
Oh Romagnuoli tornati in bastardi!
Quando in Bologna un Fabbro si ralligna?
quando in Faenza un Bernardin di Fosco,
verga gentil di picciola gramigna?
Non ti maravigliar s'io piango, Tosco,
quando rimembro, con Guido da Prata,
Ugolin d'Azzo che vivette nosco,
Federigo Tignoso e sua brigata,
la casa Traversara e li Anastagi
(e l'una gente e l'altra è diretata),
le donne e ' cavalier, li affanni e li agi
che ne 'nvogliava amore e cortesia
là dove i cuor son fatti sì malvagi.
O Bretinoro, ché non fuggi via,
poi che gita se n'è la tua famiglia
e molta gente per non esser ria?
Ben fa Bagnacaval, che non rifiglia;
e mal fa Castrocaro, e peggio Conio,
che di figliar tai conti più s'impiglia.
Ben faranno i Pagan, da che 'l demonio
lor sen girà; ma non però che puro
già mai rimagna d'essi testimonio.
O Ugolin de' Fantolin, sicuro
è 'l nome tuo, da che più non s'aspetta
chi far lo possa, tralignando, scuro.
Ma va via, Tosco, omai; ch'or mi diletta
troppo di pianger più che di parlare,
sì m'ha nostra ragion la mente stretta.”
Noi sapavam che quell' anime care
ci sentivano andar; però, tacendo,
facëan noi del cammin confidare.
Poi fummo fatti soli procedendo,
folgore parve quando l'aere fende,
voce che giunse di contra dicendo:
“Anciderammi qualunque m'apprende”;
e fuggì come tuon che si dilegua,
se sùbito la nuvola scoscende.
Come da lei l'udir nostro ebbe triegua,
ed ecco l'altra con sì gran fracasso,
che somigliò tonar che tosto segua:
“Io sono Aglauro che divenni sasso”;
e allor, per ristrignermi al poeta,
in destro feci, e non innanzi, il passo.
Già era l'aura d'ogne parte queta;
ed el mi disse: “Quel fu 'l duro camo
che dovria l'uom tener dentro a sua meta.
Ma voi prendete l'esca, sì che l'amo
de l'antico avversaro a sé vi tira;
e però poco val freno o richiamo.
Chiamavi 'l cielo e 'ntorno vi si gira,
mostrandovi le sue bellezze etterne,
e l'occhio vostro pur a terra mira;
onde vi batte chi tutto discerne.”
"Who is this one that goes about our mountain,
Or ever Death has given him power of flight,
And opes his eyes and shuts them at his will?"
"I know not who, but know he's not alone;
Ask him thyself, for thou art nearer to him,
And gently, so that he may speak, accost him."
Thus did two spirits, leaning tow'rds each other,
Discourse about me there on the right hand;
Then held supine their faces to address me.
And said the one: "O soul, that, fastened still
Within the body, tow'rds the heaven art going,
For charity console us, and declare
Whence comest and who art thou; for thou mak'st us
As much to marvel at this grace of thine
As must a thing that never yet has been."
And I: "Through midst of Tuscany there wanders
A streamlet that is born in Falterona,
And not a hundred miles of course suffice it;
From thereupon do I this body bring.
To tell you who I am were speech in vain,
Because my name as yet makes no great noise."
"If well thy meaning I can penetrate
With intellect of mine," then answered me
He who first spake, "thou speakest of the Arno."
And said the other to him: "Why concealed
This one the appellation of that river,
Even as a man doth of things horrible?"
And thus the shade that questioned was of this
Himself acquitted: "I know not; but truly
'Tis fit the name of such a valley perish;
For from its fountain-head (where is so pregnant
The Alpine mountain whence is cleft Peloro
That in few places it that mark surpasses)
To where it yields itself in restoration
Of what the heaven doth of the sea dry up,
Whence have the rivers that which goes with them,
Virtue is like an enemy avoided
By all, as is a serpent, through misfortune
Of place, or through bad habit that impels them;
On which account have so transformed their nature
The dwellers in that miserable valley,
It seems that Circe had them in her pasture.
'Mid ugly swine, of acorns worthier
Than other food for human use created,
It first directeth its impoverished way.
Curs findeth it thereafter, coming downward,
More snarling than their puissance demands,
And turns from them disdainfully its muzzle.
It goes on falling, and the more it grows,
The more it finds the dogs becoming wolves,
This maledict and misadventurous ditch.
Descended then through many a hollow gulf,
It finds the foxes so replete with fraud,
They fear no cunning that may master them.
Nor will I cease because another hears me;
And well 'twill be for him, if still he mind him
Of what a truthful spirit to me unravels.
Thy grandson I behold, who doth become
A hunter of those wolves upon the bank
Of the wild stream, and terrifies them all.
He sells their flesh, it being yet alive;
Thereafter slaughters them like ancient beeves;
Many of life, himself of praise, deprives.
Blood-stained he issues from the dismal forest;
He leaves it such, a thousand years from now
In its primeval state 'tis not re-wooded."
As at the announcement of impending ills
The face of him who listens is disturbed,
From whate'er side the peril seize upon him;
So I beheld that other soul, which stood
Turned round to listen, grow disturbed and sad,
When it had gathered to itself the word.
The speech of one and aspect of the other
Had me desirous made to know their names,
And question mixed with prayers I made thereof,
Whereat the spirit which first spake to me
Began again: "Thou wishest I should bring me
To do for thee what thou'lt not do for me;
But since God willeth that in thee shine forth
Such grace of his, I'll not be chary with thee;
Know, then, that I Guido del Duca am.
My blood was so with envy set on fire,
That if I had beheld a man make merry,
Thou wouldst have seen me sprinkled o'er with pallor.
From my own sowing such the straw I reap!
O human race! why dost thou set thy heart
Where interdict of partnership must be?
This is Renier; this is the boast and honour
Of the house of Calboli, where no one since
Has made himself the heir of his desert.
And not alone his blood is made devoid,
'Twixt Po and mount, and sea-shore and the Reno,
Of good required for truth and for diversion;
For all within these boundaries is full
Of venomous roots, so that too tardily
By cultivation now would they diminish.
Where is good Lizio, and Arrigo Manardi,
Pier Traversaro, and Guido di Carpigna,
O Romagnuoli into bastards turned?
When in Bologna will a Fabbro rise?
When in Faenza a Bernardin di Fosco,
The noble scion of ignoble seed?
Be not astonished, Tuscan, if I weep,
When I remember, with Guido da Prata,
Ugolin d' Azzo, who was living with us,
Frederick Tignoso and his company,
The house of Traversara, and th' Anastagi,
And one race and the other is extinct;
The dames and cavaliers, the toils and ease
That filled our souls with love and courtesy,
There where the hearts have so malicious grown!
O Brettinoro! why dost thou not flee,
Seeing that all thy family is gone,
And many people, not to be corrupted?
Bagnacaval does well in not begetting
And ill does Castrocaro, and Conio worse,
In taking trouble to beget such Counts.
Will do well the Pagani, when their Devil
Shall have departed; but not therefore pure
Will testimony of them e'er remain.
O Ugolin de' Fantoli, secure
Thy name is, since no longer is awaited
One who, degenerating, can obscure it!
But go now, Tuscan, for it now delights me
To weep far better than it does to speak,
So much has our discourse my mind distressed."
We were aware that those beloved souls
Heard us depart; therefore, by keeping silent,
They made us of our pathway confident.
When we became alone by going onward,
Thunder, when it doth cleave the air, appeared
A voice, that counter to us came, exclaiming:
"Shall slay me whosoever findeth me!"
And fled as the reverberation dies
If suddenly the cloud asunder bursts.
As soon as hearing had a truce from this,
Behold another, with so great a crash,
That it resembled thunderings following fast:
"I am Aglaurus, who became a stone!"
And then, to press myself close to the Poet,
I backward, and not forward, took a step.
Already on all sides the air was quiet;
And said he to me: "That was the hard curb
That ought to hold a man within his bounds;
But you take in the bait so that the hook
Of the old Adversary draws you to him,
And hence availeth little curb or call.
The heavens are calling you, and wheel around you,
Displaying to you their eternal beauties,
And still your eye is looking on the ground;
Whence He, who all discerns, chastises you."
These words do not, as we might assume, issue from Sapia, but from a new speaker, the dominant presence in this canto. He is Guido del Duca, as we will discover at verse 81 (see the note to that verse). His rather salty way of responding to the news (broadcast at Purg. XIII.142, when Guido overheard Dante speaking to Sapia) that Dante is here in the flesh, a man 'who can open his eyes at will and shut them,' will turn out to be typical of his bluntness, which finds its foil in the indirect and extremely polite ways of his interlocutor, Rinieri da Calboli. Guido cannot see that Dante can see him (we recall that Dante was sensitive about his favored status in this respect at Purg. XIII.73-74) but surmises that, as a living soul, Dante has the ocular power that is taken from all those who are purging their envy on this terrace. This does not make him a source of envy for these souls, but of wonder (see vv. 13-14).
We can sense the extraordinary care with which Dante measures off this poetic space, sense him watching us mark in our margins the precisions found here (who these two will turn out to be; what they've overheard Dante saying; what they are like; and how that reflects in their relations). The passage presents a brief epitome of how carefully he invites us to read his text.
The phrase 'before he has been given wings by death' was anticipated by Benvenuto da Imola earlier in his commentary (to Purg. X.126): 'at death the soul flies at once to justice, as is elsewhere stated.'
The second speaker, Rinier da Calboli (see the note to vv. 88-90), a sort of precursor of one of Marcel Proust's famously overpolite great-aunts, addresses Dante only through his companion, Guido. The characterization of the two respondents to Dante's presence is reminiscent, in its handling of such dramatically differing personalities, of the representation of character in the colloquy among Dante, Farinata, and Cavalcante in Inferno X.
We here learn that these are speakers we have not heard before. For a moment it is as though we were as 'blind' as the penitents and dependent on what we hear said by the narrator to understand who is involved in this colloquy.
Sapia (Purg. XIII.130) had wanted to know Dante's identity; his response was to identify himself only as a person who had (at least until now) been prideful in his life. Now Guido (the speaker is not identified, but we safely assume, both from the rotation of speakers and from the forthright quality of his question, that it is he) asks to know both his homeland and his name; Dante will modestly offer only the first piece of information. He has learned, we surmise, something about Pride in his few hours on that terrace.
Guido's amazement at Dante's condition does two things quickly and neatly; it shows that he (and Rinieri) are not envious of his condition and it allows Dante not to have to insist pridefully on his uniqueness, something that Guido has done for him. Once we find out who these two are, we realize that these now fraternal souls were, on earth, a Ghibelline (Guido) and a Guelph (Rinieri). These details may remind us of the far less fraternal interaction between Farinata (a Ghibelline) and Cavalcante (a Guelph) in Inferno X.
The protagonist introduces its controlling image to the canto, the river Arno. Its source is in the Apennines at Mt. Falterona and it then makes its way, as we shall hear, through the Casentino, then the cities of Arezzo, Florence, and Pisa, before it reaches the sea. Giovanna Ioli (La Divina Commedia: Purgatorio, ed. G. Ioli [Turin: S.E.I., 1989]), p. 210, points out that the verb saziare (slake) introduces the theme of hunger to this description of the Arno. The river seems, in order to satisfy its own appetites, not to extend far enough, despite all the harm its ca. 150 miles (and not Dante's 100) produces.
The protagonist identifies himself as a Tuscan, not as a Florentine. This is perhaps less the result of modesty than the poet's reflection on his wandering condition in his exile, much of which was to be spent in Tuscany, though not in Florence.
Dante's modesty here is gainsaid by his previous inclusion among the great poets of all time in Inferno IV.100-102. There are those who claim that in 1300 he had not indeed become particularly famous and that this is the reason for his modesty here. It would rather seem to be that he is keeping in mind the lessons in humility he has just learned on the last terrace. Further, he clearly expects that fame will one day find him. However, the only time his name is used in the Commedia it is spoken, not for praise, but in denunciation of his disloyalty by Beatrice (Purg. XXX.55).
The rhyme word accarno, a hapax, derives, as commentators point out, from the word used to describe an animal that has caught another and is biting into its flesh (carne). Guido's third speech unravels the fairly simple riddle that conceals the river's name.
Rinieri once again addresses Guido in order to pose a question for Dante to answer. We can now see that this is the central trait of his personality as explored in this canto. (He only speaks twice, a total of six lines, and yet we feel we know him. We will see his sad expression in vv. 70-72 but he will not speak again.) Guido's peremptory, forward manner in some ways matches, in bono, the Tuscan (western) side of the Apennines, presented as being ferocious; Rinieri's diffident attitude is perhaps meant to reflect his connection with the good folk (now long gone) from the eastern side of those mountains, in the Romagna.
Guido's opening verbal gesture of disdain sets the stage for his serial denunciation of the mountain hamlets and cities of the plain along the Arno. For the resonance of Job (18:17): 'Memoria illius pereat de terra' (and may memory of him vanish from the earth), see Tommaseo (comm. to these lines).
Guido first indicates the length of the entire river, from the mountain range (the Apennines) 'from which Pelorus was broken off' to the sea on the other side of Pisa, where the river deposits its waters to replace that moisture drawn by the sun from the sea and subsequently dropped into the mountains where the Arno has its source. The natural cycle of renewal that typifies the river is not replicated by the inhabitants along it; these go from bad to worse as the river descends. (Compare the descent of the rivers that eventually make up the Po, falling from Lake Garda to the Adriatic Sea in Inf. XX.61-81.)
Pelorus, the promontory at the northeast end of Sicily, was believed to have been cut off by the sea (the Strait of Messina) from the southwest end of the Apennine range. Virgil testifies to this phenomenon, as was first noted by Gabriele (comm. to vv. 31-32) and then by Portirelli (comm. to vv. 22-36), at Aeneid III.410-419, as does Lucan (Phars. II.437-438 – a citation first offered by Daniello [comm. to vv. 32-33]).
Casini/Barbi (comm. to verse 17) cite Ermenegildo Pistelli for the opinion that, far from being indicative of a certain enviousness on his part, Guido's polemic reveals a magnanimous and passionate opposition to such low sentiments in his zeal to correct the Tuscans.
The word for 'snake,' biscia, deployed a third and final time (see also Purg. VIII.98 for its use to indicate the serpent in the garden) in the poem, recalls Inferno IX.77: the angelic messenger compared to a snake from which frogs flee. Mercury is the veiled common denominator in these scenes. In Inferno IX the angel (the archangel Michael? – see the note to Inf. IX.85) 'imitates' Mercury in the Thebaid (II.1-11) as well as in Ovid's Metamorphoses (II.819), opening the door to Herse's chamber (we'll find Aglauros, the envious sister of Herse, as exemplar of envy at verse 139 of this canto). In all these scenes and in Dante's redoing of them the magical instrument that accomplishes its task is a virga or verghetta, a magic wand, in Virgil associated, variously, with Mercury, the Sibyl, and Circe (see verse 42, where her wand is not referred to but is clearly meant to be understood as the instrument of the Arno-dwellers' metamorphoses, just as we understood the same of the companions of Ulysses at Inf. XXVI.91, in Circe's only other nominal appearance in the poem).
The cause for the immoderate behavior of the valley's inhabitants, expressed as uncertain ('whether some curse / is on the place or evil habits goad them on'), is eventually explicitly identified as the result of the misapplied freedom of the will (i.e., the second cause alluded to here) by Marco Lombardo (Purg. XVI.67-83), as was pointed out, uniquely among the early commentators, by Benvenuto da Imola (comm. to vv. 31-39). All of the Arno-dwellers seem to have been turned to brutes by the sorceress Circe, most particularly those described in the next tercet.
After the glosses found in the Codice Cassinese (comm. to verse 43), this porcine part of the Casentino is usually associated with the Conti Guidi (see the note to Inf. XXX.58-61) and in particular with the branch of the family who ruled in Porciano, a fortified town near Mt. Falterona along the shallow stream that will grow to become the Arno. Non-Tuscan readers may be surprised at commentators' certainty about the identities of all the unnamed towns or cities referred to in this part of the diatribe, but Dante counts on a reader familiar with the major points of habitation along the river.
Next downstream is Arezzo, from which city the river turns sharply away in order to head northwest toward Florence as though it wanted to avoid the nasty 'whelps' of Arezzo. Like the Texas rancher who is all hat and no cattle, these little dogs are all snarl or bark and no bite – or so the Ottimo (comm. to vv. 46-47) thought.
Florence seems to be associated, unsurprisingly, with avarice. (For the wolf as representing avarice see the note to Inf. VII.8.)
If Florence is associated with avarice, Pisa is presented as full of fraud. Foxes are referred to in two other passages in the poem (Inf. XXVII.75: Guido da Montefeltro refers to his former 'vulpine' strategies; Purg. XXXII.119: a fox, generally understood as heresy, invades the cart of the chariot of the Church).
Pietro di Dante (Pietro1, comm. to vv. 49-51) and Daniello (comm. to vv. 52-54) both think of a passage in Boethius as Dante's source for the animals in Guido's outburst. See De consolatione philosophiae IV.iii(pr).57-60: 'You will say that the man who is driven by avarice to seize what belongs to others is like a wolf; the restless, angry man who spends his life in quarrels you will compare to a dog. The treacherous conspirator who steals by fraud may be likened to a fox;... the man who is sunk in foul lust is trapped in the pleasures of a filthy sow' (trans. Richard Green). (The accompanying poem in Boethius begins with Circe, who turned the companions of Ulysses into animals by means of her poisoned potions.)
This passage offers the occasion for a dispute among the commentators: does altri refer to Rinieri or to Dante? (According to most early commentators, the former; to most later ones, the latter). The major problem with the older hypothesis is that one has a hard time seeing what good it can do Rinieri to hear this news (and Guido's locution points to a potential benefit to his auditor), since he cannot intervene in worldly events, while Guido's unseen mortal interlocutor still has a life to live back on the earth – indeed in Tuscany – and may profit from this prophetic warning.
Casini/Barbi (comm. to verse 57) seem to have been the first to cite, for Dante's phrase vero spirto, John 16:13, 'Spiritus veritatis' (the Spirit of truth – i.e., the prophetic capacity of the Holy Spirit); notice of this passage has become fairly commonplace, but represents a relatively recent discovery. Guido openly calls upon the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit (John 16:7), as the guarantor of the truth in his words; Dante's own prophetic status in the poem is not put before us so straightforwardly, but is nonetheless perceptible. See the note to Purgatorio XXIV.52-54.
Guido's prophecy concerns the grandson of Rinieri, Fulcieri da Calboli, 'member of the illustrious Guelf family of that name at Forlì; he was Podestà of Florence in 1302/3, after the return of the Neri [the Black Guelphs] through the influence of Charles of Valois, and proved himself a bitter foe of the Bianchi' (Toynbee, “Fulcieri da Calboli” [Concise Dante Dictionary]). His enmity was shown not only to White Guelphs but to Ghibellines, as he had leaders of both these parties arrested and tortured and killed. See Villani's Cronica (VIII.59) for a detailed report of Fulcieri's iniquities (available in English in Singleton's comment to verse 58). Or see the only slightly modified version of Villani's narrative in the commentary of the Anonimo Fiorentino (comm. to vv. 58-63).
Fulcieri bargained with his employers (the Black Guelphs) over the fates of his prisoners, thus currying the favor of the Black leaders while shoring up his position as podestà; he eventually handed many of the captives over to be put to death by their enemies, selling them like cattle.
The metaphoric reference to Florence as a trista selva (wretched wood) in verse 64 may draw our attention back to the second verse of the poem, in which the protagonist discovers himself in a selva oscura (dark wood). The language of this tercet also identifies the better days of Florence as Edenic and suggests that the good old days are now gone for a very long time indeed.
A much more difficult verse than is readily apparent. First of all, what exactly does it mean? Second, what is its import for our recognition of the inner condition of Rinieri? Early commentators paid no heed to this part of the problem at all. In fact, the first commentator to pay attention to the relation of this verse, 'no matter where the threat may bare its fangs,' to the condition of Rinieri was Andreoli (comm. to this line): 'whatever may be the role he might have in the dire events predicted. The ones predicted by Guido only touch Rinieri with respect to his care for the good name of his own family.' Mattalia (comm. to this verse) goes farther, if in a different direction. According to him the clause would be meaningless unless we keep in mind 'the premise that, since it is in response to things regarding a close relative, the reaction [in a living soul] would have had to have been much more intense, while [Rinieri] reacts with equanimity, not making distinctions between one kind of danger and another.' The point is well taken, yet it seems based on a desire to make sense out of what does not quite seem to do so.
Guido reminds Dante that he has not furnished his own name, but relents upon considering Dante's special relationship to the Divine plan that is manifest in his mere presence on the mountain in the flesh.
'Guido del Duca, gentleman of Bertinoro, near Forlì, in Romagna, son of Giovanni del Duca of the Onesti family of Ravenna. The earliest mention of Guido occurs in a document dated May 4, 1199, in which he is described as holding the office of judge to the Podestà of Rimini. In 1202, and again in 1204, he is mentioned as playing an important part in the affairs of Romagna, both times in connexion with Pier Traversaro (Purg. XIV.98), whose adherent he appears to have been. In 1218, Pier Traversaro, with the help of his Ghibelline friends, and especially of the Mainardi of Bertinoro, made himself master of Ravenna, and expelled the Guelfs from the city. The latter, in revenge, seized Bertinoro, destroyed the houses belonging to the Mainardi, and drove out all Piero's adherents; among them was Guido del Duca, who at this time apparently, together with his family, betook himself to Ravenna, his father's native place, and resided there under the protection of Pier Traversaro. Some ten years later (in 1229) Guido's name appears as witness to a deed at Ravenna; he was alive in 1249...' (Toynbee, “Guido del Duca” [Concise Dante Dictionary]).
Guido's wry self-knowledge, similar to that of Sapia (Purg. XIII.110-111), practically defines the sin of envy as Dante understood it. Pietro di Dante (Pietro1, comm. to vv. 16-27) cites Horace (Epistles I.ii.57): 'The envious man grows lean when his neighbor prospers.' The citation is apt, even if Dante's knowledge of the Epistles is not assured. A more certain source is found in Aquinas, as is variously noted, first by Poletto (comm. to Purg. XVII.118-120): tristitia de alienis bonis (sadness at another's possessions). But see Jacopo della Lana (comm. to Inf. XVI.73-75), who attributes the phrase to John of Damascus (8th century): 'tristitia de bonis alienis.'
For the gray-blue color of envy see the note to Purgatorio XIII.8-9.
The phrasing (sowing and reaping) is obviously biblical, as Lombardi (comm. to this verse) was perhaps the first to note (in 1791), citing St. Paul (Galatians 6:8): 'Quae enim seminaverit homo, haec et metet' (For what a man sows, that shall he reap). Tommaseo (comm. to vv. 85-87) cites another five biblical passages that also rely on this metaphor, but the passage in Paul is favored by the commentators once it enters the tradition. Here Guido, in purgation, harvests the straw of expiation for his sins on earth; his wheat awaits him in paradise.
Guido's denunciation, in the form of an apostrophe of the human race, places the blame for our envious lot in our not being able to seek goods that are shared. His phrase, 'things that of necessity cannot be shared,' will come back to be scrutinized in the next canto (XV.45), there offering Virgil occasion for a lengthy gloss (XV.46-75).
'Rinier da Calboli, member of the illustrious Guelf family of that name at Forlì.... Rinieri, who played an important part in the affairs of Romagna, was born probably at the beginning of Cent. xiii; he was Podestà of Faenza in 1265 (the year of Dante's birth). In 1276 he made war upon Forlì, but was compelled to retire to his stronghold of Calboli, in the upper valley of the Montone, where he was besieged by Guido da Montefeltro (Inf. XXVII), at that time Captain of Forlì, who forced him to surrender, and destroyed the castle. In 1292, while for the second time Podestà of Faenza..., Rinieri captured Forlì, and expelled... many... powerful Ghibellines. Two years later, however (in 1294), Rinieri and his adherents were in turn expelled. In 1296 Rinieri and the Guelfs once more made themselves masters of Forlì, but the Ghibellines... quickly retook the city and killed many of the Guelfs, Rinieri among the number' (Toynbee, “Rinier da Calboli” [Concise Dante Dictionary]).
Guido now describes the boundaries of Romagna, a large area on the right-hand side of Italy, separated from Tuscany (subject of the first half of the canto's exploration of sins along the Arno) by the Apennines, lying south and west of Romagna. The rough boundaries include the river Reno, just to the west of Bologna, the river Po, flowing into the Adriatic north of Ravenna, the Adriatic as the eastern limit, and the hills of Montefeltro at the southern edge.
Once virtuous, peopled by such as Rinieri, Romagna is now turned to an unweeded garden.
Guido's second speech on a set topic, a version of the 'ubi sunt?' (where are [the good folk of the past] today?) topos, as Sapegno (comm. to verse 97) insists, pointing to a general sense of source in the Bible and in medieval Latin hymns, includes references to ten additional worthy individuals, four families, and three towns, each of which is gone or has come upon hard times. The three categories are intermingled.
Lizio [di Valbona, a castle near Bagno], a Guelph, fought alongside Rinieri in the losing battle at Forlì in 1276. Lizio is a character in one of the novelle (V.iv) of the Decameron. Arrigo Mainardi, a Ghibelline from Bertinoro, associated with Guido del Duca, was still living in 1228. Thus this first pair is divided equally between the two protagonists of the canto and their two political parties.
Pier Traversaro, the most distinguished member of the powerful Ghibelline family of Ravenna and renowned for his patronage of poets, was an ally of Guido del Duca. At the end of his life in 1225 he was the unofficial ruler of Ravenna, where he had earlier been podestà for three separate terms, but his son Paolo, who succeeded him as the central political figure in the city, became a Guelph and, at his death in 1240, the Traversaro influence in Ravenna, which had been strong for nearly 300 years, came to its end. Guido di Carpigna, a Guelph whose family was related to the counts of Montefeltro, was once podestà of Ravenna (in 1251).
The relationship between the first four names and the present-day inhabitants of Romagna is oppositional, a notion that escaped some of the early commentators, who thought Dante was vilifying at least the next two names.
Fabbro [de' Lambertazzi], leader of the Bolognese Ghibellines, served as podestà of seven Italian cities (of three more than once) between 1230 and 1258.
Bernardin di Fosco, sprung from ordinary folk (the Ottimo, comm. to these lines, says he was a peasant), apparently exhibited such personal gentility that the nobles of Faenza eventually looked upon him as one of their own. While no commentator seems to know enough about him to identify his political party, the fact that he seems to have been involved in the defense of Faenza against the emperor (Frederick II) in 1240 would ordinarily suggest that he was a Guelph; on the other hand he apparently was in the emperor's favor in 1248 and 1249 when he was made podestà of Pisa and then of Siena – positions that would suggest his alignment with the Ghibellines. However, Isidoro Del Lungo (comm. to vv. 100-102), the only commentator to deal with the issue, simply states that he was a Guelph.
Of Guido da Prata so little is known that one commentator, Luigi Pietrobono (comm. to this verse), is of the opinion that, in light of the small amount of information that has come down to us, Dante had overestimated his worth. Prata is a village in the Romagna, between Forlì and Faenza; Guido seems to have been active in the political life of Ravenna.
Ugolino d'Azzo was born in Tuscany, but at some point moved to Faenza (and thus, in Guido's words, 'lived among us'). He was the son of Azzo degli Ubaldini and thus related to both the cardinal Ottaviano degli Ubaldini (Inf. X.120) and the archbishop Ruggieri degli Ubaldini (Inf. XXXIII.14). He was married to a daughter of Provenzan Salvani (Purg. XI.121) and died at a ripe old age in 1293.
Of Federigo Tignoso practically nothing is known. Benvenuto says he was a rich nobleman of Rimini and that he had heard tell that Federigo had a great shock of yellow hair, so that his sobriquet, Tignoso, which is the adjective from the noun tigna (or 'mange'), was a playful misnomer. Federigo's companions were, apparently, those who took part in his hospitable way of life. Those who attempt to date his life set it in the first half of the thirteenth century.
Dante suddenly switches from munificent individuals to munificent families. Of the Traversari of Ravenna we have heard tell in the person of Piero (see the note to verse 98); now we hear of another great Ghibelline family of that city, the Anastagi. When we consider that the last years of Dante's life were spent at Ravenna as a result of the hospitality of Guido Novello da Polenta it is striking that the Polentani, perhaps the greatest of all the families of Ravenna (along with the Traversari), are not mentioned here. Writing after 1317, Dante would surely have included them, since their Guelph allegiance would apparently have been no bar to being included in the cast assembled here, containing roughly as many Guelphs as Ghibellines.
Both these families have by 1300 nearly died out – a fate that is not the unmitigated disaster it might seem, as we shall soon see.
These verses served Ariosto (1474-1533) as the model for the opening of his epic poem, Orlando furioso: 'Le donne, i cavalier, l'arme, gli amori, / le cortesie, l'audaci imprese io canto' (Ladies and knights, weapons and love, courteous acts, bold-hearted deeds: all these I sing). The good old days have yielded to an iron age; it is perhaps better not to breed. That is the message that begins to be hammered home. For the themes of cortesia and nobiltà, see Renzo Lo Cascio (“La nozione di cortesia e di nobiltà dai siciliani a Dante,” in Atti del Convegno di studi su Dante e la Magna Curia [Palermo: Luxograph, 1967], pp. 113-84).
Bertinoro begins the list of four towns of Romagna that interrupts the series of families, which had interrupted the series of named individuals. The sequence, chiastic in shape, runs as follows:
9 individuals
2 families
all 4 towns
final family (v. 118)
final individual (v. 121)
Bertinoro, between Forlì and Cesena, was renowned for the generosity of its noble families, as the early commentators, beginning with the Anonymous Lombard (comm. to these verses) told. The family referred to as having left may be the Mainardi (mentioned in verse 97) or some other; some commentators want to see the term as generic (i.e., all the good people of the town) but this is probably not warranted.
Bagnacavallo, between Imola and Ravenna, a Ghibelline stronghold in Dante's time, is congratulated for not having male offspring by its counts (the Malvicini family), extinguished, in their male line, by 1300.
Castrocaro, near Forlì, was a Ghibelline stronghold of the counts of Castrocaro until 1300, when it passed into the hands of the local Ordelaffi family and then, subsequently, into the possession of the Florentine Black Guelphs. Conio, a castle near Imola, was in the possession of Guelph counts. Both these strongholds are seen as breeding worse and worse stock.
To conclude the brief list of families, Dante refers to the Pagani. They were Ghibelline lords of Faenza. Rather than praise their good early stock, Dante fixes on their 'Devil,' Maghinardo Pagano da Susinana, a truly impressive warrior and statesman. A Ghibelline, he also favored the Florentine Guelphs because of their decent treatment of him when he was a child and in their protection. On one side of the Apennines he fought on the side of Guelphs; on the other, of Ghibellines. What undoubtedly took any possibility of a dispassionate view of this extraordinary man from Dante was the fact that he entered the city in November 1301 at the side of Charles of Valois, the French conqueror of Florence (in collaboration with Corso Donati).
Maghinardo is the only name mentioned in this passage of a person alive at the imagined date of the vision (he died in 1302). Everyone else is of thirteenth-century provenance, and of the persons and events datable in this welter of historical material, nothing before 1200 or after 1293 is alluded to, thus reinforcing the notion that Dante is talking, through the mouth of Guido del Duca, of the 'good old days' in Romagna. A similar and longer discourse in historical romanticism will be put forth by Cacciaguida in Paradiso XVI, an entire canto given over to the moral supremacy of a Florence that is now long gone.
The last name to resound in Guido's list is that of Ugolino de' Fantolini. A Guelph from Cerfugnano, near Faenza, he was several times podestà of Faenza. Dead in 1278, he was survived by his two sons, both of whom died well before 1300, so that this Ugolino's name may be preserved from being sullied by any additional Fantolinian progeny.
Guido's juxtaposition of tears and speech may remind the reader of Francesca's similar gesture – as well as Ugolino's. See Inferno V.126 and XXXIII.9, as is suggested by Mattalia (comm. to this verse). And see the note to Inferno XXXIII.9.
His final words of lament, after the extraordinary vivacity and range of his styles (noble, earthy, ironic, cynical, but always sharply honed), are the last word on Romagna, which was once so fair and now is foul, a transformation that leaves only grief in its wake.
The voices overhead that greeted the travelers as they entered this terrace (Purg. XIII.25-27) return, again moving against the direction of their movement, but now presenting negative exemplars. Cain's words are translated from the Vulgate (Genesis 4:14): 'Every one who finds me shall slay me,' spoken before God marked his forehead after the murder of his brother, Abel, so that he would not, indeed, be slain. For Cain's association with Envy, according to some fathers of the Church, see Anthony Cassell (“The Letter of Envy: Purgatorio XIII-XIV,” Stanford Italian Review 4 [1984]), p. 17.
See Ovid, Metamorphoses II.797-819, where Mercury turns Aglauros to stone because she wants him for herself and stations herself outside her sister Herse's door in order to prevent his entry to Herse's bedchamber. Mercury then opens the door with a touch of his caduceus. That scene has already been (tacitly) present in Inferno IX.89-90, where the Mercury-like angel opens the gates of Dis to Virgil and Dante. See the note to that passage.
Cain and Aglauros share the condition of envy of a sibling, Cain of Abel, Aglauros of Herse. The second exemplar of Charity, Pylades, was in a brotherly relationship with Orestes, even though they were not related by blood (Purg. XIII.32).
It is noteworthy that the voices presenting the exemplars of Charity are courteous and inviting (Purg. XIII.25-27), while these, presenting exemplars of Envy, are like lightning and thunder and cause the protagonist to be fearful.
Virgil's language in this passage is biblical: Psalm 31:9 (32:9): 'Be not as the horse, or as the mule, which have no understanding: whose mouth must be held in with bit [Vulgate: camo] and bridle [Vulgate: freno]...' (a passage also cited by Dante in Monarchia III.xv.9, as was first noted by Tommaseo [comm. to verse 144]); Ecclesiastes 9:12: 'as the fishes that are taken in an evil net [Vulgate: hamo (hook)], and as the birds that are caught in the snare; so are the sons of man snared....' See Purgatorio XIII.40 for Dante's first use of freno on the terraces and see the note to XIII.37-42. The devil sets his snares or hooks to trap humankind. The next passage presents God's way of hunting us.
God's 'lure' (richiamo), a technical term from falconry, is part of this magnificent final image, which turns our human expectations upside down. God is seen as a falconer in the Empyrean spinning his lures, the stars that end each cantica, over his head, as it were, while we are falcons that are not drawn to this amazing bait, but look down to the earth for our temptations. Compare that other disobedient falcon, the monster Geryon, at Inferno XVII.127-132. The language of this passage is Boethian. See De consolatione philosophiae III.m8: '[Humans] dig the earth in search of the good, which soars above the star-filled heavens' (trans. R. Green).
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“Chi è costui che 'l nostro monte cerchia
prima che morte li abbia dato il volo,
e apre li occhi a sua voglia e coverchia?”
“Non so chi sia, ma so ch'e' non è solo;
domandal tu che più li t'avvicini,
e dolcemente, sì che parli, acco'lo.”
Così due spirti, l'uno a l'altro chini,
ragionavan di me ivi a man dritta;
poi fer li visi, per dirmi, supini;
e disse l'uno: “O anima che fitta
nel corpo ancora inver' lo ciel ten vai,
per carità ne consola e ne ditta
onde vieni e chi se'; ché tu ne fai
tanto maravigliar de la tua grazia,
quanto vuol cosa che non fu più mai.”
E io: “Per mezza Toscana si spazia
un fiumicel che nasce in Falterona,
e cento miglia di corso nol sazia.
Di sovr' esso rech' io questa persona:
dirvi ch'i' sia, saria parlare indarno,
ché 'l nome mio ancor molto non suona.”
“Se ben lo 'ntendimento tuo accarno
con lo 'ntelletto,” allora mi rispuose
quei che diceva pria, “tu parli d'Arno.”
E l'altro disse lui: “Perché nascose
questi il vocabol di quella riviera,
pur com' om fa de l'orribili cose?”
E l'ombra che di ciò domandata era,
si sdebitò così: “Non so; ma degno
ben è che 'l nome di tal valle pèra;
ché dal principio suo, ov' è sì pregno
l'alpestro monte ond' è tronco Peloro,
che 'n pochi luoghi passa oltra quel segno,
infin là 've si rende per ristoro
di quel che 'l ciel de la marina asciuga,
ond' hanno i fiumi ciò che va con loro,
vertù così per nimica si fuga
da tutti come biscia, o per sventura
del luogo, o per mal uso che li fruga:
ond' hanno sì mutata lor natura
li abitator de la misera valle,
che par che Circe li avesse in pastura.
Tra brutti porci, più degni di galle
che d'altro cibo fatto in uman uso,
dirizza prima il suo povero calle.
Botoli trova poi, venendo giuso,
ringhiosi più che non chiede lor possa,
e da lor disdegnosa torce il muso.
Vassi caggendo; e quant ella più 'ngrossa,
tanto più trova di can farsi lupi
la maladetta e sventurata fossa.
Discesa poi per più pelaghi cupi,
trova le volpi sì piene di froda,
che non temono ingegno che le occùpi.
Né lascerò di dir perch' altri m'oda;
e buon sarà costui, s'ancor s'ammenta
di ciò che vero spirto mi disnoda.
Io veggio tuo nepote che diventa
cacciator di quei lupi in su la riva
del fiero fiume, e tutti li sgomenta.
Vende la carne loro essendo viva;
poscia li ancide come antica belva;
molti di vita e sé di pregio priva.
Sanguinoso esce de la trista selva;
lasciala tal, che di qui a mille anni
ne lo stato primaio non si rinselva.”
Com' a l'annunzio di dogliosi danni
si turba il viso di colui ch'ascolta,
da qual che parte il periglio l'assanni,
così vid' io l'altr' anima, che volta
stava a udir, turbarsi e farsi trista,
poi ch'ebbe la parola a sé raccolta.
Lo dir de l'una e de l'altra la vista
mi fer voglioso di saper lor nomi,
e dimanda ne fei con prieghi mista;
per che lo spirto che di pria parlòmi
ricominciò: “Tu vuo' ch'io mi deduca
nel fare a te ciò che tu far non vuo'mi.
Ma da che Dio in te vuol che traluca
tanto sua grazia, non ti sarò scarso;
però sappi ch'io fui Guido del Duca.
Fu il sangue mio d'invidia sì rïarso,
che se veduto avesse uom farsi lieto,
visto m'avresti di livore sparso.
Di mia semente cotal paglia mieto;
o gente umana, perché poni 'l core
là 'v' è mestier di consorte divieto?
Questi è Rinier; questi è 'l pregio e l'onore
de la casa da Calboli, ove nullo
fatto s'è reda poi del suo valore.
E non pur lo suo sangue è fatto brullo,
tra 'l Po e 'l monde e la marina e 'l Reno,
del ben richesto al vero e al trastullo;
ché dentro a questi termini è ripieno
di venenosi sterpi, sì che tardi
per coltivare omai verrebber meno.
Ov' è 'l buon Lizio e Arrigo Mainardi?
Pier Traversaro e Guido di Carpigna?
Oh Romagnuoli tornati in bastardi!
Quando in Bologna un Fabbro si ralligna?
quando in Faenza un Bernardin di Fosco,
verga gentil di picciola gramigna?
Non ti maravigliar s'io piango, Tosco,
quando rimembro, con Guido da Prata,
Ugolin d'Azzo che vivette nosco,
Federigo Tignoso e sua brigata,
la casa Traversara e li Anastagi
(e l'una gente e l'altra è diretata),
le donne e ' cavalier, li affanni e li agi
che ne 'nvogliava amore e cortesia
là dove i cuor son fatti sì malvagi.
O Bretinoro, ché non fuggi via,
poi che gita se n'è la tua famiglia
e molta gente per non esser ria?
Ben fa Bagnacaval, che non rifiglia;
e mal fa Castrocaro, e peggio Conio,
che di figliar tai conti più s'impiglia.
Ben faranno i Pagan, da che 'l demonio
lor sen girà; ma non però che puro
già mai rimagna d'essi testimonio.
O Ugolin de' Fantolin, sicuro
è 'l nome tuo, da che più non s'aspetta
chi far lo possa, tralignando, scuro.
Ma va via, Tosco, omai; ch'or mi diletta
troppo di pianger più che di parlare,
sì m'ha nostra ragion la mente stretta.”
Noi sapavam che quell' anime care
ci sentivano andar; però, tacendo,
facëan noi del cammin confidare.
Poi fummo fatti soli procedendo,
folgore parve quando l'aere fende,
voce che giunse di contra dicendo:
“Anciderammi qualunque m'apprende”;
e fuggì come tuon che si dilegua,
se sùbito la nuvola scoscende.
Come da lei l'udir nostro ebbe triegua,
ed ecco l'altra con sì gran fracasso,
che somigliò tonar che tosto segua:
“Io sono Aglauro che divenni sasso”;
e allor, per ristrignermi al poeta,
in destro feci, e non innanzi, il passo.
Già era l'aura d'ogne parte queta;
ed el mi disse: “Quel fu 'l duro camo
che dovria l'uom tener dentro a sua meta.
Ma voi prendete l'esca, sì che l'amo
de l'antico avversaro a sé vi tira;
e però poco val freno o richiamo.
Chiamavi 'l cielo e 'ntorno vi si gira,
mostrandovi le sue bellezze etterne,
e l'occhio vostro pur a terra mira;
onde vi batte chi tutto discerne.”
"Who is this one that goes about our mountain,
Or ever Death has given him power of flight,
And opes his eyes and shuts them at his will?"
"I know not who, but know he's not alone;
Ask him thyself, for thou art nearer to him,
And gently, so that he may speak, accost him."
Thus did two spirits, leaning tow'rds each other,
Discourse about me there on the right hand;
Then held supine their faces to address me.
And said the one: "O soul, that, fastened still
Within the body, tow'rds the heaven art going,
For charity console us, and declare
Whence comest and who art thou; for thou mak'st us
As much to marvel at this grace of thine
As must a thing that never yet has been."
And I: "Through midst of Tuscany there wanders
A streamlet that is born in Falterona,
And not a hundred miles of course suffice it;
From thereupon do I this body bring.
To tell you who I am were speech in vain,
Because my name as yet makes no great noise."
"If well thy meaning I can penetrate
With intellect of mine," then answered me
He who first spake, "thou speakest of the Arno."
And said the other to him: "Why concealed
This one the appellation of that river,
Even as a man doth of things horrible?"
And thus the shade that questioned was of this
Himself acquitted: "I know not; but truly
'Tis fit the name of such a valley perish;
For from its fountain-head (where is so pregnant
The Alpine mountain whence is cleft Peloro
That in few places it that mark surpasses)
To where it yields itself in restoration
Of what the heaven doth of the sea dry up,
Whence have the rivers that which goes with them,
Virtue is like an enemy avoided
By all, as is a serpent, through misfortune
Of place, or through bad habit that impels them;
On which account have so transformed their nature
The dwellers in that miserable valley,
It seems that Circe had them in her pasture.
'Mid ugly swine, of acorns worthier
Than other food for human use created,
It first directeth its impoverished way.
Curs findeth it thereafter, coming downward,
More snarling than their puissance demands,
And turns from them disdainfully its muzzle.
It goes on falling, and the more it grows,
The more it finds the dogs becoming wolves,
This maledict and misadventurous ditch.
Descended then through many a hollow gulf,
It finds the foxes so replete with fraud,
They fear no cunning that may master them.
Nor will I cease because another hears me;
And well 'twill be for him, if still he mind him
Of what a truthful spirit to me unravels.
Thy grandson I behold, who doth become
A hunter of those wolves upon the bank
Of the wild stream, and terrifies them all.
He sells their flesh, it being yet alive;
Thereafter slaughters them like ancient beeves;
Many of life, himself of praise, deprives.
Blood-stained he issues from the dismal forest;
He leaves it such, a thousand years from now
In its primeval state 'tis not re-wooded."
As at the announcement of impending ills
The face of him who listens is disturbed,
From whate'er side the peril seize upon him;
So I beheld that other soul, which stood
Turned round to listen, grow disturbed and sad,
When it had gathered to itself the word.
The speech of one and aspect of the other
Had me desirous made to know their names,
And question mixed with prayers I made thereof,
Whereat the spirit which first spake to me
Began again: "Thou wishest I should bring me
To do for thee what thou'lt not do for me;
But since God willeth that in thee shine forth
Such grace of his, I'll not be chary with thee;
Know, then, that I Guido del Duca am.
My blood was so with envy set on fire,
That if I had beheld a man make merry,
Thou wouldst have seen me sprinkled o'er with pallor.
From my own sowing such the straw I reap!
O human race! why dost thou set thy heart
Where interdict of partnership must be?
This is Renier; this is the boast and honour
Of the house of Calboli, where no one since
Has made himself the heir of his desert.
And not alone his blood is made devoid,
'Twixt Po and mount, and sea-shore and the Reno,
Of good required for truth and for diversion;
For all within these boundaries is full
Of venomous roots, so that too tardily
By cultivation now would they diminish.
Where is good Lizio, and Arrigo Manardi,
Pier Traversaro, and Guido di Carpigna,
O Romagnuoli into bastards turned?
When in Bologna will a Fabbro rise?
When in Faenza a Bernardin di Fosco,
The noble scion of ignoble seed?
Be not astonished, Tuscan, if I weep,
When I remember, with Guido da Prata,
Ugolin d' Azzo, who was living with us,
Frederick Tignoso and his company,
The house of Traversara, and th' Anastagi,
And one race and the other is extinct;
The dames and cavaliers, the toils and ease
That filled our souls with love and courtesy,
There where the hearts have so malicious grown!
O Brettinoro! why dost thou not flee,
Seeing that all thy family is gone,
And many people, not to be corrupted?
Bagnacaval does well in not begetting
And ill does Castrocaro, and Conio worse,
In taking trouble to beget such Counts.
Will do well the Pagani, when their Devil
Shall have departed; but not therefore pure
Will testimony of them e'er remain.
O Ugolin de' Fantoli, secure
Thy name is, since no longer is awaited
One who, degenerating, can obscure it!
But go now, Tuscan, for it now delights me
To weep far better than it does to speak,
So much has our discourse my mind distressed."
We were aware that those beloved souls
Heard us depart; therefore, by keeping silent,
They made us of our pathway confident.
When we became alone by going onward,
Thunder, when it doth cleave the air, appeared
A voice, that counter to us came, exclaiming:
"Shall slay me whosoever findeth me!"
And fled as the reverberation dies
If suddenly the cloud asunder bursts.
As soon as hearing had a truce from this,
Behold another, with so great a crash,
That it resembled thunderings following fast:
"I am Aglaurus, who became a stone!"
And then, to press myself close to the Poet,
I backward, and not forward, took a step.
Already on all sides the air was quiet;
And said he to me: "That was the hard curb
That ought to hold a man within his bounds;
But you take in the bait so that the hook
Of the old Adversary draws you to him,
And hence availeth little curb or call.
The heavens are calling you, and wheel around you,
Displaying to you their eternal beauties,
And still your eye is looking on the ground;
Whence He, who all discerns, chastises you."
These words do not, as we might assume, issue from Sapia, but from a new speaker, the dominant presence in this canto. He is Guido del Duca, as we will discover at verse 81 (see the note to that verse). His rather salty way of responding to the news (broadcast at Purg. XIII.142, when Guido overheard Dante speaking to Sapia) that Dante is here in the flesh, a man 'who can open his eyes at will and shut them,' will turn out to be typical of his bluntness, which finds its foil in the indirect and extremely polite ways of his interlocutor, Rinieri da Calboli. Guido cannot see that Dante can see him (we recall that Dante was sensitive about his favored status in this respect at Purg. XIII.73-74) but surmises that, as a living soul, Dante has the ocular power that is taken from all those who are purging their envy on this terrace. This does not make him a source of envy for these souls, but of wonder (see vv. 13-14).
We can sense the extraordinary care with which Dante measures off this poetic space, sense him watching us mark in our margins the precisions found here (who these two will turn out to be; what they've overheard Dante saying; what they are like; and how that reflects in their relations). The passage presents a brief epitome of how carefully he invites us to read his text.
The phrase 'before he has been given wings by death' was anticipated by Benvenuto da Imola earlier in his commentary (to Purg. X.126): 'at death the soul flies at once to justice, as is elsewhere stated.'
The second speaker, Rinier da Calboli (see the note to vv. 88-90), a sort of precursor of one of Marcel Proust's famously overpolite great-aunts, addresses Dante only through his companion, Guido. The characterization of the two respondents to Dante's presence is reminiscent, in its handling of such dramatically differing personalities, of the representation of character in the colloquy among Dante, Farinata, and Cavalcante in Inferno X.
We here learn that these are speakers we have not heard before. For a moment it is as though we were as 'blind' as the penitents and dependent on what we hear said by the narrator to understand who is involved in this colloquy.
Sapia (Purg. XIII.130) had wanted to know Dante's identity; his response was to identify himself only as a person who had (at least until now) been prideful in his life. Now Guido (the speaker is not identified, but we safely assume, both from the rotation of speakers and from the forthright quality of his question, that it is he) asks to know both his homeland and his name; Dante will modestly offer only the first piece of information. He has learned, we surmise, something about Pride in his few hours on that terrace.
Guido's amazement at Dante's condition does two things quickly and neatly; it shows that he (and Rinieri) are not envious of his condition and it allows Dante not to have to insist pridefully on his uniqueness, something that Guido has done for him. Once we find out who these two are, we realize that these now fraternal souls were, on earth, a Ghibelline (Guido) and a Guelph (Rinieri). These details may remind us of the far less fraternal interaction between Farinata (a Ghibelline) and Cavalcante (a Guelph) in Inferno X.
The protagonist introduces its controlling image to the canto, the river Arno. Its source is in the Apennines at Mt. Falterona and it then makes its way, as we shall hear, through the Casentino, then the cities of Arezzo, Florence, and Pisa, before it reaches the sea. Giovanna Ioli (La Divina Commedia: Purgatorio, ed. G. Ioli [Turin: S.E.I., 1989]), p. 210, points out that the verb saziare (slake) introduces the theme of hunger to this description of the Arno. The river seems, in order to satisfy its own appetites, not to extend far enough, despite all the harm its ca. 150 miles (and not Dante's 100) produces.
The protagonist identifies himself as a Tuscan, not as a Florentine. This is perhaps less the result of modesty than the poet's reflection on his wandering condition in his exile, much of which was to be spent in Tuscany, though not in Florence.
Dante's modesty here is gainsaid by his previous inclusion among the great poets of all time in Inferno IV.100-102. There are those who claim that in 1300 he had not indeed become particularly famous and that this is the reason for his modesty here. It would rather seem to be that he is keeping in mind the lessons in humility he has just learned on the last terrace. Further, he clearly expects that fame will one day find him. However, the only time his name is used in the Commedia it is spoken, not for praise, but in denunciation of his disloyalty by Beatrice (Purg. XXX.55).
The rhyme word accarno, a hapax, derives, as commentators point out, from the word used to describe an animal that has caught another and is biting into its flesh (carne). Guido's third speech unravels the fairly simple riddle that conceals the river's name.
Rinieri once again addresses Guido in order to pose a question for Dante to answer. We can now see that this is the central trait of his personality as explored in this canto. (He only speaks twice, a total of six lines, and yet we feel we know him. We will see his sad expression in vv. 70-72 but he will not speak again.) Guido's peremptory, forward manner in some ways matches, in bono, the Tuscan (western) side of the Apennines, presented as being ferocious; Rinieri's diffident attitude is perhaps meant to reflect his connection with the good folk (now long gone) from the eastern side of those mountains, in the Romagna.
Guido's opening verbal gesture of disdain sets the stage for his serial denunciation of the mountain hamlets and cities of the plain along the Arno. For the resonance of Job (18:17): 'Memoria illius pereat de terra' (and may memory of him vanish from the earth), see Tommaseo (comm. to these lines).
Guido first indicates the length of the entire river, from the mountain range (the Apennines) 'from which Pelorus was broken off' to the sea on the other side of Pisa, where the river deposits its waters to replace that moisture drawn by the sun from the sea and subsequently dropped into the mountains where the Arno has its source. The natural cycle of renewal that typifies the river is not replicated by the inhabitants along it; these go from bad to worse as the river descends. (Compare the descent of the rivers that eventually make up the Po, falling from Lake Garda to the Adriatic Sea in Inf. XX.61-81.)
Pelorus, the promontory at the northeast end of Sicily, was believed to have been cut off by the sea (the Strait of Messina) from the southwest end of the Apennine range. Virgil testifies to this phenomenon, as was first noted by Gabriele (comm. to vv. 31-32) and then by Portirelli (comm. to vv. 22-36), at Aeneid III.410-419, as does Lucan (Phars. II.437-438 – a citation first offered by Daniello [comm. to vv. 32-33]).
Casini/Barbi (comm. to verse 17) cite Ermenegildo Pistelli for the opinion that, far from being indicative of a certain enviousness on his part, Guido's polemic reveals a magnanimous and passionate opposition to such low sentiments in his zeal to correct the Tuscans.
The word for 'snake,' biscia, deployed a third and final time (see also Purg. VIII.98 for its use to indicate the serpent in the garden) in the poem, recalls Inferno IX.77: the angelic messenger compared to a snake from which frogs flee. Mercury is the veiled common denominator in these scenes. In Inferno IX the angel (the archangel Michael? – see the note to Inf. IX.85) 'imitates' Mercury in the Thebaid (II.1-11) as well as in Ovid's Metamorphoses (II.819), opening the door to Herse's chamber (we'll find Aglauros, the envious sister of Herse, as exemplar of envy at verse 139 of this canto). In all these scenes and in Dante's redoing of them the magical instrument that accomplishes its task is a virga or verghetta, a magic wand, in Virgil associated, variously, with Mercury, the Sibyl, and Circe (see verse 42, where her wand is not referred to but is clearly meant to be understood as the instrument of the Arno-dwellers' metamorphoses, just as we understood the same of the companions of Ulysses at Inf. XXVI.91, in Circe's only other nominal appearance in the poem).
The cause for the immoderate behavior of the valley's inhabitants, expressed as uncertain ('whether some curse / is on the place or evil habits goad them on'), is eventually explicitly identified as the result of the misapplied freedom of the will (i.e., the second cause alluded to here) by Marco Lombardo (Purg. XVI.67-83), as was pointed out, uniquely among the early commentators, by Benvenuto da Imola (comm. to vv. 31-39). All of the Arno-dwellers seem to have been turned to brutes by the sorceress Circe, most particularly those described in the next tercet.
After the glosses found in the Codice Cassinese (comm. to verse 43), this porcine part of the Casentino is usually associated with the Conti Guidi (see the note to Inf. XXX.58-61) and in particular with the branch of the family who ruled in Porciano, a fortified town near Mt. Falterona along the shallow stream that will grow to become the Arno. Non-Tuscan readers may be surprised at commentators' certainty about the identities of all the unnamed towns or cities referred to in this part of the diatribe, but Dante counts on a reader familiar with the major points of habitation along the river.
Next downstream is Arezzo, from which city the river turns sharply away in order to head northwest toward Florence as though it wanted to avoid the nasty 'whelps' of Arezzo. Like the Texas rancher who is all hat and no cattle, these little dogs are all snarl or bark and no bite – or so the Ottimo (comm. to vv. 46-47) thought.
Florence seems to be associated, unsurprisingly, with avarice. (For the wolf as representing avarice see the note to Inf. VII.8.)
If Florence is associated with avarice, Pisa is presented as full of fraud. Foxes are referred to in two other passages in the poem (Inf. XXVII.75: Guido da Montefeltro refers to his former 'vulpine' strategies; Purg. XXXII.119: a fox, generally understood as heresy, invades the cart of the chariot of the Church).
Pietro di Dante (Pietro1, comm. to vv. 49-51) and Daniello (comm. to vv. 52-54) both think of a passage in Boethius as Dante's source for the animals in Guido's outburst. See De consolatione philosophiae IV.iii(pr).57-60: 'You will say that the man who is driven by avarice to seize what belongs to others is like a wolf; the restless, angry man who spends his life in quarrels you will compare to a dog. The treacherous conspirator who steals by fraud may be likened to a fox;... the man who is sunk in foul lust is trapped in the pleasures of a filthy sow' (trans. Richard Green). (The accompanying poem in Boethius begins with Circe, who turned the companions of Ulysses into animals by means of her poisoned potions.)
This passage offers the occasion for a dispute among the commentators: does altri refer to Rinieri or to Dante? (According to most early commentators, the former; to most later ones, the latter). The major problem with the older hypothesis is that one has a hard time seeing what good it can do Rinieri to hear this news (and Guido's locution points to a potential benefit to his auditor), since he cannot intervene in worldly events, while Guido's unseen mortal interlocutor still has a life to live back on the earth – indeed in Tuscany – and may profit from this prophetic warning.
Casini/Barbi (comm. to verse 57) seem to have been the first to cite, for Dante's phrase vero spirto, John 16:13, 'Spiritus veritatis' (the Spirit of truth – i.e., the prophetic capacity of the Holy Spirit); notice of this passage has become fairly commonplace, but represents a relatively recent discovery. Guido openly calls upon the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit (John 16:7), as the guarantor of the truth in his words; Dante's own prophetic status in the poem is not put before us so straightforwardly, but is nonetheless perceptible. See the note to Purgatorio XXIV.52-54.
Guido's prophecy concerns the grandson of Rinieri, Fulcieri da Calboli, 'member of the illustrious Guelf family of that name at Forlì; he was Podestà of Florence in 1302/3, after the return of the Neri [the Black Guelphs] through the influence of Charles of Valois, and proved himself a bitter foe of the Bianchi' (Toynbee, “Fulcieri da Calboli” [Concise Dante Dictionary]). His enmity was shown not only to White Guelphs but to Ghibellines, as he had leaders of both these parties arrested and tortured and killed. See Villani's Cronica (VIII.59) for a detailed report of Fulcieri's iniquities (available in English in Singleton's comment to verse 58). Or see the only slightly modified version of Villani's narrative in the commentary of the Anonimo Fiorentino (comm. to vv. 58-63).
Fulcieri bargained with his employers (the Black Guelphs) over the fates of his prisoners, thus currying the favor of the Black leaders while shoring up his position as podestà; he eventually handed many of the captives over to be put to death by their enemies, selling them like cattle.
The metaphoric reference to Florence as a trista selva (wretched wood) in verse 64 may draw our attention back to the second verse of the poem, in which the protagonist discovers himself in a selva oscura (dark wood). The language of this tercet also identifies the better days of Florence as Edenic and suggests that the good old days are now gone for a very long time indeed.
A much more difficult verse than is readily apparent. First of all, what exactly does it mean? Second, what is its import for our recognition of the inner condition of Rinieri? Early commentators paid no heed to this part of the problem at all. In fact, the first commentator to pay attention to the relation of this verse, 'no matter where the threat may bare its fangs,' to the condition of Rinieri was Andreoli (comm. to this line): 'whatever may be the role he might have in the dire events predicted. The ones predicted by Guido only touch Rinieri with respect to his care for the good name of his own family.' Mattalia (comm. to this verse) goes farther, if in a different direction. According to him the clause would be meaningless unless we keep in mind 'the premise that, since it is in response to things regarding a close relative, the reaction [in a living soul] would have had to have been much more intense, while [Rinieri] reacts with equanimity, not making distinctions between one kind of danger and another.' The point is well taken, yet it seems based on a desire to make sense out of what does not quite seem to do so.
Guido reminds Dante that he has not furnished his own name, but relents upon considering Dante's special relationship to the Divine plan that is manifest in his mere presence on the mountain in the flesh.
'Guido del Duca, gentleman of Bertinoro, near Forlì, in Romagna, son of Giovanni del Duca of the Onesti family of Ravenna. The earliest mention of Guido occurs in a document dated May 4, 1199, in which he is described as holding the office of judge to the Podestà of Rimini. In 1202, and again in 1204, he is mentioned as playing an important part in the affairs of Romagna, both times in connexion with Pier Traversaro (Purg. XIV.98), whose adherent he appears to have been. In 1218, Pier Traversaro, with the help of his Ghibelline friends, and especially of the Mainardi of Bertinoro, made himself master of Ravenna, and expelled the Guelfs from the city. The latter, in revenge, seized Bertinoro, destroyed the houses belonging to the Mainardi, and drove out all Piero's adherents; among them was Guido del Duca, who at this time apparently, together with his family, betook himself to Ravenna, his father's native place, and resided there under the protection of Pier Traversaro. Some ten years later (in 1229) Guido's name appears as witness to a deed at Ravenna; he was alive in 1249...' (Toynbee, “Guido del Duca” [Concise Dante Dictionary]).
Guido's wry self-knowledge, similar to that of Sapia (Purg. XIII.110-111), practically defines the sin of envy as Dante understood it. Pietro di Dante (Pietro1, comm. to vv. 16-27) cites Horace (Epistles I.ii.57): 'The envious man grows lean when his neighbor prospers.' The citation is apt, even if Dante's knowledge of the Epistles is not assured. A more certain source is found in Aquinas, as is variously noted, first by Poletto (comm. to Purg. XVII.118-120): tristitia de alienis bonis (sadness at another's possessions). But see Jacopo della Lana (comm. to Inf. XVI.73-75), who attributes the phrase to John of Damascus (8th century): 'tristitia de bonis alienis.'
For the gray-blue color of envy see the note to Purgatorio XIII.8-9.
The phrasing (sowing and reaping) is obviously biblical, as Lombardi (comm. to this verse) was perhaps the first to note (in 1791), citing St. Paul (Galatians 6:8): 'Quae enim seminaverit homo, haec et metet' (For what a man sows, that shall he reap). Tommaseo (comm. to vv. 85-87) cites another five biblical passages that also rely on this metaphor, but the passage in Paul is favored by the commentators once it enters the tradition. Here Guido, in purgation, harvests the straw of expiation for his sins on earth; his wheat awaits him in paradise.
Guido's denunciation, in the form of an apostrophe of the human race, places the blame for our envious lot in our not being able to seek goods that are shared. His phrase, 'things that of necessity cannot be shared,' will come back to be scrutinized in the next canto (XV.45), there offering Virgil occasion for a lengthy gloss (XV.46-75).
'Rinier da Calboli, member of the illustrious Guelf family of that name at Forlì.... Rinieri, who played an important part in the affairs of Romagna, was born probably at the beginning of Cent. xiii; he was Podestà of Faenza in 1265 (the year of Dante's birth). In 1276 he made war upon Forlì, but was compelled to retire to his stronghold of Calboli, in the upper valley of the Montone, where he was besieged by Guido da Montefeltro (Inf. XXVII), at that time Captain of Forlì, who forced him to surrender, and destroyed the castle. In 1292, while for the second time Podestà of Faenza..., Rinieri captured Forlì, and expelled... many... powerful Ghibellines. Two years later, however (in 1294), Rinieri and his adherents were in turn expelled. In 1296 Rinieri and the Guelfs once more made themselves masters of Forlì, but the Ghibellines... quickly retook the city and killed many of the Guelfs, Rinieri among the number' (Toynbee, “Rinier da Calboli” [Concise Dante Dictionary]).
Guido now describes the boundaries of Romagna, a large area on the right-hand side of Italy, separated from Tuscany (subject of the first half of the canto's exploration of sins along the Arno) by the Apennines, lying south and west of Romagna. The rough boundaries include the river Reno, just to the west of Bologna, the river Po, flowing into the Adriatic north of Ravenna, the Adriatic as the eastern limit, and the hills of Montefeltro at the southern edge.
Once virtuous, peopled by such as Rinieri, Romagna is now turned to an unweeded garden.
Guido's second speech on a set topic, a version of the 'ubi sunt?' (where are [the good folk of the past] today?) topos, as Sapegno (comm. to verse 97) insists, pointing to a general sense of source in the Bible and in medieval Latin hymns, includes references to ten additional worthy individuals, four families, and three towns, each of which is gone or has come upon hard times. The three categories are intermingled.
Lizio [di Valbona, a castle near Bagno], a Guelph, fought alongside Rinieri in the losing battle at Forlì in 1276. Lizio is a character in one of the novelle (V.iv) of the Decameron. Arrigo Mainardi, a Ghibelline from Bertinoro, associated with Guido del Duca, was still living in 1228. Thus this first pair is divided equally between the two protagonists of the canto and their two political parties.
Pier Traversaro, the most distinguished member of the powerful Ghibelline family of Ravenna and renowned for his patronage of poets, was an ally of Guido del Duca. At the end of his life in 1225 he was the unofficial ruler of Ravenna, where he had earlier been podestà for three separate terms, but his son Paolo, who succeeded him as the central political figure in the city, became a Guelph and, at his death in 1240, the Traversaro influence in Ravenna, which had been strong for nearly 300 years, came to its end. Guido di Carpigna, a Guelph whose family was related to the counts of Montefeltro, was once podestà of Ravenna (in 1251).
The relationship between the first four names and the present-day inhabitants of Romagna is oppositional, a notion that escaped some of the early commentators, who thought Dante was vilifying at least the next two names.
Fabbro [de' Lambertazzi], leader of the Bolognese Ghibellines, served as podestà of seven Italian cities (of three more than once) between 1230 and 1258.
Bernardin di Fosco, sprung from ordinary folk (the Ottimo, comm. to these lines, says he was a peasant), apparently exhibited such personal gentility that the nobles of Faenza eventually looked upon him as one of their own. While no commentator seems to know enough about him to identify his political party, the fact that he seems to have been involved in the defense of Faenza against the emperor (Frederick II) in 1240 would ordinarily suggest that he was a Guelph; on the other hand he apparently was in the emperor's favor in 1248 and 1249 when he was made podestà of Pisa and then of Siena – positions that would suggest his alignment with the Ghibellines. However, Isidoro Del Lungo (comm. to vv. 100-102), the only commentator to deal with the issue, simply states that he was a Guelph.
Of Guido da Prata so little is known that one commentator, Luigi Pietrobono (comm. to this verse), is of the opinion that, in light of the small amount of information that has come down to us, Dante had overestimated his worth. Prata is a village in the Romagna, between Forlì and Faenza; Guido seems to have been active in the political life of Ravenna.
Ugolino d'Azzo was born in Tuscany, but at some point moved to Faenza (and thus, in Guido's words, 'lived among us'). He was the son of Azzo degli Ubaldini and thus related to both the cardinal Ottaviano degli Ubaldini (Inf. X.120) and the archbishop Ruggieri degli Ubaldini (Inf. XXXIII.14). He was married to a daughter of Provenzan Salvani (Purg. XI.121) and died at a ripe old age in 1293.
Of Federigo Tignoso practically nothing is known. Benvenuto says he was a rich nobleman of Rimini and that he had heard tell that Federigo had a great shock of yellow hair, so that his sobriquet, Tignoso, which is the adjective from the noun tigna (or 'mange'), was a playful misnomer. Federigo's companions were, apparently, those who took part in his hospitable way of life. Those who attempt to date his life set it in the first half of the thirteenth century.
Dante suddenly switches from munificent individuals to munificent families. Of the Traversari of Ravenna we have heard tell in the person of Piero (see the note to verse 98); now we hear of another great Ghibelline family of that city, the Anastagi. When we consider that the last years of Dante's life were spent at Ravenna as a result of the hospitality of Guido Novello da Polenta it is striking that the Polentani, perhaps the greatest of all the families of Ravenna (along with the Traversari), are not mentioned here. Writing after 1317, Dante would surely have included them, since their Guelph allegiance would apparently have been no bar to being included in the cast assembled here, containing roughly as many Guelphs as Ghibellines.
Both these families have by 1300 nearly died out – a fate that is not the unmitigated disaster it might seem, as we shall soon see.
These verses served Ariosto (1474-1533) as the model for the opening of his epic poem, Orlando furioso: 'Le donne, i cavalier, l'arme, gli amori, / le cortesie, l'audaci imprese io canto' (Ladies and knights, weapons and love, courteous acts, bold-hearted deeds: all these I sing). The good old days have yielded to an iron age; it is perhaps better not to breed. That is the message that begins to be hammered home. For the themes of cortesia and nobiltà, see Renzo Lo Cascio (“La nozione di cortesia e di nobiltà dai siciliani a Dante,” in Atti del Convegno di studi su Dante e la Magna Curia [Palermo: Luxograph, 1967], pp. 113-84).
Bertinoro begins the list of four towns of Romagna that interrupts the series of families, which had interrupted the series of named individuals. The sequence, chiastic in shape, runs as follows:
9 individuals
2 families
all 4 towns
final family (v. 118)
final individual (v. 121)
Bertinoro, between Forlì and Cesena, was renowned for the generosity of its noble families, as the early commentators, beginning with the Anonymous Lombard (comm. to these verses) told. The family referred to as having left may be the Mainardi (mentioned in verse 97) or some other; some commentators want to see the term as generic (i.e., all the good people of the town) but this is probably not warranted.
Bagnacavallo, between Imola and Ravenna, a Ghibelline stronghold in Dante's time, is congratulated for not having male offspring by its counts (the Malvicini family), extinguished, in their male line, by 1300.
Castrocaro, near Forlì, was a Ghibelline stronghold of the counts of Castrocaro until 1300, when it passed into the hands of the local Ordelaffi family and then, subsequently, into the possession of the Florentine Black Guelphs. Conio, a castle near Imola, was in the possession of Guelph counts. Both these strongholds are seen as breeding worse and worse stock.
To conclude the brief list of families, Dante refers to the Pagani. They were Ghibelline lords of Faenza. Rather than praise their good early stock, Dante fixes on their 'Devil,' Maghinardo Pagano da Susinana, a truly impressive warrior and statesman. A Ghibelline, he also favored the Florentine Guelphs because of their decent treatment of him when he was a child and in their protection. On one side of the Apennines he fought on the side of Guelphs; on the other, of Ghibellines. What undoubtedly took any possibility of a dispassionate view of this extraordinary man from Dante was the fact that he entered the city in November 1301 at the side of Charles of Valois, the French conqueror of Florence (in collaboration with Corso Donati).
Maghinardo is the only name mentioned in this passage of a person alive at the imagined date of the vision (he died in 1302). Everyone else is of thirteenth-century provenance, and of the persons and events datable in this welter of historical material, nothing before 1200 or after 1293 is alluded to, thus reinforcing the notion that Dante is talking, through the mouth of Guido del Duca, of the 'good old days' in Romagna. A similar and longer discourse in historical romanticism will be put forth by Cacciaguida in Paradiso XVI, an entire canto given over to the moral supremacy of a Florence that is now long gone.
The last name to resound in Guido's list is that of Ugolino de' Fantolini. A Guelph from Cerfugnano, near Faenza, he was several times podestà of Faenza. Dead in 1278, he was survived by his two sons, both of whom died well before 1300, so that this Ugolino's name may be preserved from being sullied by any additional Fantolinian progeny.
Guido's juxtaposition of tears and speech may remind the reader of Francesca's similar gesture – as well as Ugolino's. See Inferno V.126 and XXXIII.9, as is suggested by Mattalia (comm. to this verse). And see the note to Inferno XXXIII.9.
His final words of lament, after the extraordinary vivacity and range of his styles (noble, earthy, ironic, cynical, but always sharply honed), are the last word on Romagna, which was once so fair and now is foul, a transformation that leaves only grief in its wake.
The voices overhead that greeted the travelers as they entered this terrace (Purg. XIII.25-27) return, again moving against the direction of their movement, but now presenting negative exemplars. Cain's words are translated from the Vulgate (Genesis 4:14): 'Every one who finds me shall slay me,' spoken before God marked his forehead after the murder of his brother, Abel, so that he would not, indeed, be slain. For Cain's association with Envy, according to some fathers of the Church, see Anthony Cassell (“The Letter of Envy: Purgatorio XIII-XIV,” Stanford Italian Review 4 [1984]), p. 17.
See Ovid, Metamorphoses II.797-819, where Mercury turns Aglauros to stone because she wants him for herself and stations herself outside her sister Herse's door in order to prevent his entry to Herse's bedchamber. Mercury then opens the door with a touch of his caduceus. That scene has already been (tacitly) present in Inferno IX.89-90, where the Mercury-like angel opens the gates of Dis to Virgil and Dante. See the note to that passage.
Cain and Aglauros share the condition of envy of a sibling, Cain of Abel, Aglauros of Herse. The second exemplar of Charity, Pylades, was in a brotherly relationship with Orestes, even though they were not related by blood (Purg. XIII.32).
It is noteworthy that the voices presenting the exemplars of Charity are courteous and inviting (Purg. XIII.25-27), while these, presenting exemplars of Envy, are like lightning and thunder and cause the protagonist to be fearful.
Virgil's language in this passage is biblical: Psalm 31:9 (32:9): 'Be not as the horse, or as the mule, which have no understanding: whose mouth must be held in with bit [Vulgate: camo] and bridle [Vulgate: freno]...' (a passage also cited by Dante in Monarchia III.xv.9, as was first noted by Tommaseo [comm. to verse 144]); Ecclesiastes 9:12: 'as the fishes that are taken in an evil net [Vulgate: hamo (hook)], and as the birds that are caught in the snare; so are the sons of man snared....' See Purgatorio XIII.40 for Dante's first use of freno on the terraces and see the note to XIII.37-42. The devil sets his snares or hooks to trap humankind. The next passage presents God's way of hunting us.
God's 'lure' (richiamo), a technical term from falconry, is part of this magnificent final image, which turns our human expectations upside down. God is seen as a falconer in the Empyrean spinning his lures, the stars that end each cantica, over his head, as it were, while we are falcons that are not drawn to this amazing bait, but look down to the earth for our temptations. Compare that other disobedient falcon, the monster Geryon, at Inferno XVII.127-132. The language of this passage is Boethian. See De consolatione philosophiae III.m8: '[Humans] dig the earth in search of the good, which soars above the star-filled heavens' (trans. R. Green).
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