Dante's Inferno, The Indiana Critical Edition

Dante's Beloved Yet Damned Virgil

Dante's Beloved Yet Damned Virgil GUY P. RAFFA A great Latin poet who "sang of arms and of a man" and who made the founding of the Roman Empire the subject of his Aeneid, Virgil articulated the goal of Dante's political philosophy: a universal monarchy headed by a strong and just ruler. He also told of heroic descents to the Underworld -Aeneas in the Aeneid (Book VI) and Orpheus in the Georgia (Book IV)-which gave Dante models for imagining his own infernal journey. Just as important, however, was Virgil's reputation as a prophet in the Middle Ages. According to this legend, the Latin poet unknowingly predicted the birth of Christ in his Fourth Eclogue (Virgil died in 19 B.C.). Together, these three aspects of Virgil's poetry and literary reputationEmpire , Underworld and Prophecy-help to explain Dante's decision to choose him as the pilgrim's guide through the circles of Hell and around the terraces of Purgatory. But Dante's Virgil, particularly in the Inferno, is far more than a prophetic author and exemplary guide. He is also a tragic figure whose intellectual, emotional and psychological complexity accounts for much of the dramatic energy in Dante's poem. After all; most of the action of the journey through Hell involves Virgil in some way, usually through his relationship to the pilgrim, himself a creation of the poet. Although Virgil appears most often as a wise guide and a source of knowledge for the pilgrim, there are crucial moments when Dante the poet seems to undermine Virgil's authority and credibility in order to enrich the aesthetic and moral structure of his poetic universe.' Virgil, as the author of the Eclogues, the Georgia, and the Aeneid, provided Dante with an abundance of mythological, historical and political material. While the Eclogues (the earliest Latin pastoral poetry) and the Georgia (four long poems treating farm life) are significant works of Latin literature in themselves, Virgil's fame as a poet is due far more to the Aeneid, his tale of Aeneas's wanderings from the fall of Troy to the foundation of a new civilization in Italy. More than any other poet, Virgil exemplified for Dante the relentless hard work necessary for translating a poetic vision into well-wrought verse. Working within the demanding 266 constraints of dactylic hexameter (six feet according to precise metrical patterns), Virgil's attention to the nuances of style and poetic structure served as both a model and a challenge for Dante. The Italian poet answered that challenge admirably with the 14,233 lines of terza rima (Dante's invention) that make up the Divine Comedy. Dante clearly drew on his knowledge of Virgil's poetry in his conception of the Inferno. In Aeneid VI, the story of Aeneas's visit to the world of shades, Dante found themes, characters, and topographical features that he could transform to meet the demands of his own poem. Of course, Dante does not take all of the Virgilian elements, he adds innumerable touches of his own, and much (if not most) of what he does borrow from Virgil is barely recognizable in its new setting. For example, Dante inserts most of the rivers and marshes of Virgil's Underworld-Acheron, Styx, Phlegethon and Cocytus2-into an elaborate, interconnected hydraulic system whose source is the flow of tears from the Old Man of Crete, an immense statue symbolizing the degradation of civilization from a mythological Golden Age to the religious and political corruption of Dante's time (Canto XIV). Virgilian creatures from Aeneid VI who inhabit Dante's Hell include Charon the demonic ferryman (Canto III), Minos the infernal judge (Canto V), Cerberus the three-throated dog (Canto VI), Phlegyas (Canto VIII), the Furies and the Medusa (Canto IX), the Minotaur and the Centaurs (Canto XII), the Harpies (Canto XIII), Geryon (Cantos XVI-XVII) and several Giants (Canto XXXI). The very name of Virgil's Underworld -"House of Dis"-comes to designate Dante's Lower Hell where heresy, violence, and fraud are punished. Dante's Underworld and the figures contained therein are generally more sharply drawn and tangible than their Virgilian counterparts. For example, whereas Virgil's Minotaur appears as one of Daedalus's sculpted figures on Apollo's temple, Dante brings the hybrid monster to life as the guardian and symbolic representative of the entire circle of violence. And Geryon, whom Virgil only mentions in Aeneid VI as a "three-bodied shade," is one of...