Notes for Cantos XXV & XXVI

Notes for Cantos XXV & XXVI
By the way, did you catch that last (and transitional line) in Canto XXIV?


"'And I have told you this that it may grieve you.'" In other words, he is not doing him any favors here.


Canto XXV:


Bolgia 7--the Theives


Vanni blasphemes God and Cacus chases him. Know Vanni and Cacus. Know about the Noble Thieves of Florence. Knwo how they change. It is really cool.


Note the descriptive nature and the concise nature of this passage: "'Where is Cainfa?' he cried; / 'Why has he fallen back?' I placed a finger across my lips as a signal to my Guide./ Reader, should you doubt what next I tell,/ it will be no wonder, for though I saw it happen,/ I can scarce believe it possible, even in Hell./ For suddenly, as I watched, I saw a lizard/ come darting forward on six great taloned feet/ and fasten itself to a sinner from crotch to gizzard./ Its middle feet sank in the sweat and grime/ of the wretch's paunch, its forefeet clamped its arms, its teeth bit throuh both hceeks./ At the same time/ its hind feet fastened on the sinners thighs: its tail thrust forward through his legs and its coil/ over his loins!" (40-54) Very descriptive and very grotesque!


Great description of their metamorphosis: "No ivy ever grew about a tree/ as tightly as that monster wove itself/ limb by limb about the sinner's body;/ they fused like hot wax, and their colors ran/ together until neither wretch nor monster/ appeared what he had begun when he began: / just so, before the running edge of the heat/ on a burning page, a brown discoloration/ changes to black as the white dies from the sheet./ The other two cried out as they looked on:/ 'Alas! Alas! Agnello, how you change!/ Already you are neither two nor one!'/ The two heads had already blurred and blended;/ now two new semblances appeared and faded,/ one face where neither face began nor ended./ From the four upper limbs of man and beast/ two arms were made, then members never seen/ grew from the thighs and legs, belly and breast./ Their former likenesses mottled and sank/to something that was both of them and neither;/ and so transformed, it slowly left our bank./ As lizards at high noon of a hot day/ dart out from hedge to hedge, from shade to shade, / and flash like lightning when they cross the way,/ so toward the bowesls of th ohter two,/ shot a smal monster; livid, furious,/ and black as a pepper corn. Its lunge bit thorgh the part of one of them from which man receives/ his earliest nourishment; then it fell back/and lay sprawled out in front of the two thieves./ Its victim stared at it but did not speak:/ indeed, he stood there like a post, and yawned/ as if lack of sleep, or a feer, had left him week./ The reptile stared at him, he at the reptile;/ two smokes poured out and mingled, dark and vile" (55- 90).


Another great but gross description:
"Responding sympathetically to each other,/ the reptile cleft his tail into a fork,/ and the wounded sinner drew his feet together./ The sinner's legs and thighs began to join:/ they grew together so, that soon no trace/ of juncture could be seeen from toe to loin./ Point by point the reptile's cloven tail/ grew to the form of what the sinner lost;/ one skin began to soften, one to scale./ The armpits swallowed the arms, and the short shank/ of the reptile's forefeet simultaneously lengthened by as much as the man's arm shrank" (100-111).






Now for Canto XXVI:



Know about the prophesy.


Know that this is about "men of gift who abused their genius, perverting it to wiles and stratagems" (1250). Know how these men of gift are punished.


Here Dante encounters Ulysses (Odysseus) and Diomede. Let me give you a context for this. What, you ask, did Ulysses (Odysseus) do wrong? He kept trying to get back home.


First, it has nothing to do with the flings with the nymphs or goddesses. As I said, they don't count.


Here is the medieval context:


Medieval man and woman were supposed to stay focused on the next world, not this one. That is one reason there were no major scientific discoveries until the Renaissance. That is also why it took so long to find the New World.


All works were to be done for the glory of God, not for personal glory. Medieval artists did not sign their paintings. Well, there are some exceptions in the late middle ages....


People were not to seek glory abroad, but to remain at home, to live as simply as possible, and to pray, pray, pray. The more one suffered or denied oneself, the better one was. Ulysses and Diomede were wanderers. Besides, Ulysses was always on about how he was "the great tactician," "the master this and that," yadi-yadi-yadi. And I guess the trickery aspect of the Trojan horse and the fact that they killed lots of people instead of turning the other cheek....


Let's just get to the good stuff:


"I stood on the bridge, and leaned out from the ledge / without being pushed. And seeing me so intent, / my Guide said: 'There are souls within those flames; / each sinner swathes himself in his own torment.' / 'Master,' I said, 'your words make me more sure, / but I had already seen already that it was so / and meant to ask what each spirit must endure / the pains of that great flame which splits away / in two great horns, as if it rose from the pyre / where Eteocles and Polynices lay?'" (43-54).


By the way, know the story of Eteocles and Polynices. See the footnotes in your book.


"'Forever round this path / Ulysses and Diomede move in such dress, / united in pain as they once were in wrath; / there they lament the ambush of the Horse / which was the door through which the noble seed / of the Romans issued from its holy source; / there they mourn that for Achilles slain / sweet Deidamia weeps even in death; / there they recall the Palladium in their pain'" (55-63).


Now pay special attention to this wonderfully characterizing dialog. Note the deferential tone:


"And when the flame had come where time and place / seemed fitting to my Guide, I heard him say / these words to it: 'O you two souls who pace / together in one flame!--if my days above / won favor in your eyes, if I have earned / however much or little of your love / in writing my High Verses, do not pass by, / but let one of you be pleased to tell where he, / having disappeared from the world, went to die'" (73-81).


Note the spin that Ulysses (Odysseus) gives to his story!


"As if it fought the wind, the greater prong / of the ancient flame began to quiver and hum; / then moving its tip as if it were a tongue / that spoke, gave out a voice above the roar. / 'When I left Circe,' it said, 'who more than a year / detained me near Gaeta long before* / Aeneas came and gave the place that name, / not fondness for my son, nor reverence / for my aged father, nor Penelope's claim / to the joys of love, could drive out of my mind / the lust to experience the far-flung world/ and the failings and felicities of mankind. / I put out on the high and open sea / with a single ship and only those few souls / who stayed true when the rest deserted me. / As far as Morocco and as far as Spain / I saw both shores; and I saw Sardinia / and the other islands of the open main. / I and my men wee stiff and slow with age / when we sailed at last into the narrow pass / where, warning all men back from further voyage, / Hercules' Pillars rose upon our sight. / Already I had left Ceuta on the left; / Seville now sank behind me on the right. / "Shipmates," I said, "who through a hundred thousand / perils have reached the West, do not deny / to the brief remaining watch our senses stand / experience of the world beyond the sun. / Greeks! You were not born to live like brutes, / but to press on toward manhood and recognition!** / With this brief exhortation I made my crew / so eager for the voyage I could hardly / have held them back from it when I was through; / and turning our stem toward morning, our bow toward night, / we bore southwest out of the world of man; / we made wings of our oars for our fool's flight. / That night we raised the other pole ahead / with all its stars, and ours had so declined / it did not rise out of its ocean bed. / Five times since we had dipped our bending oars / beyond the world, the light beneath the moon / had waxed and waned, when dead upon our course / we sighted, dark in space, a peak so tall / I doubted any man had seen the like. / Our cheers were hardly sounded, when a squall / broke hard upon our bow from the new land: /three times it sucked the ship and the sea about / as it pleased Another to command./ At the fourth, the poop rose and the bow went down / till the sea closed over us and the light was gone'" (82-131).


*Note the passive nature of what he says. Circe detained him for a year. He says it as though he had no say in the matter.


**Not only was Ulysses guilty of wanderlust, but he corrupted the men who admired him to also be guilty of the same sin. Not only that, but this corruption led to their deaths!