Dante's Inferno, The Indiana Critical Edition

Preface

PREFACE Accompanying my verse translation of Dante's Inferno are ten essays which offer diverse approaches to a number of different aspects of the first canticle of the Divine Comedy. In the opening essay Lawrence Baldassaro regards the "starting point that necessitates the pilgrim's difficult journey through Hell" to be the allegoricallandscape of Canto I of Inferno, "a physical manifestation of the pilgrim's contaminated soul." Because of his fallen condition, the way up and out of the "selva oscura" is closed. Climbing the hill is impossible because of the pilgrim's pride, which will be erased in Purgatory in a similarly allegorical setting. Baldassaro asks, if Inferno is a representation of universal sinfulness and Purgatory a point-by-point erasure of sin, how does Inferno exhibit these sins? The allegory of Canto I gives way to dramatic manifestations, he says, in which the pilgrim interacts and gradually arrives at a "subjective awareness of his own capacity for wrongdoing," recognizing step by step the degree of his own contamination. Dante uses himself as an example; he depicts his sinners "not as awkward allegorical representations of specific sins, but as compelling human beings." The pilgrim 's "mimetic response to the sinners he encounters" brings him and them to life dramatically, not didactically. The allegorical first scene is "negative potentiality" and the rounds of Hell fulfillment of it. This is not a fact-finding journey the pilgrim is taking. His behavior that "calls attention to itself" reflects the "ironic stance that distinguishes the voice of the poet from that of the pilgrim." Each of the sinners the pilgrim meets is a "potential other self." The pilgrim is a "reader" who tests "'texts'" in the Inferno, one who cannot see the whole and whose limitations are indicated by his imitative responses. In turn, the reader is a pilgrim to whom Dante speaks directly in his addresses to the reader. But Baldassaro disagrees with Auerbach that Dante misleads us by misleading his protagonist; rather he gives us credit for being able to sort out the "ironic duality of the distinct voices of the poet ix and pilgrim." The compelling reality of the action does not distract from the "professed redemptive function of the poem," as Auerbach concluded, but is "part of the poet's strategy, part of the challenge he poses both to his protagonist and to his reader." The goal is to gain perspective by completing the journey. In XX, 19-26, for example, what seems a request for pity is instead a subtle acting out of the sin depicted, the pilgrim weeping for suffering which is God's just punishment. The pilgrim "fails to read the text properly," allowing himself to be seduced and beguiled by sin. Why does Dante place "stumbling blocks" in the way of our understanding? To force us to work to understand him. Dante's characters in the Inferno, in fact, are sometimes so real "they may seem to be living human beings temporarily misplaced in the eternal environment of Hell." However, they are not "lead players" but signs, leading the way to redemption; each one points out a necessary first step. Guy P. Raffa stresses in his essay Virgil's importance for Dante as articulator of a shared political philosophy, as explorer of the fictional Underworld, and as prophet, but even more to the point, as a faulted man: "a tragic figure whose intellectual. emotional and psychological complexity accounts for much of the dramatic energy" of the Divine Comedy, especially in the Inferno. Dante mined Virgil for mythological, historical , and political material and for the mechanism, or structure, for translating his poetic vision into verse form. He created his own terza rima with Virgil's model in mind, borrowing from him extensively while transforming the material into something entirely new. Raffa ranks Virgil's importance for Dante according to three measures : his poetic.excellence first, then his wisdom regarding poetic truth, and lastly his susceptibility to falsehood. In the beginning, Dante refers and defers to Virgil as a respected "author" and "authority," whose pagan religious views he will christianize in the Divine Comedy on the strength of the Fourth Eclogue (where the appearance of the virgin and new-born son will bring about a golden age). Dante's debt to him is so great that he attributes his own reputation to him and places him first among his teachers. His "'deep love'" for him is translated into situations in the Comedy that make for a believable...