Dante's Invention by James Burge

Author:James Burge
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780752464398
Publisher: The History Press
Published: 2011-08-13T00:00:00+00:00

Virgil identifies some of the lovers as they are swept by. There are those of whom we have heard: Cleopatra, Helen of Troy, Dido Queen of Carthage (it is Virgil again who wrote about her fling with Aeneas which is the reason she is there). Others are not so well known: Semiramis, for example, who became ruler of Assyria when her husband died and was so prey to lust that she made licentiousness a legal obligation in her country. Men are represented as well – Paris, Tristan and Achilles – but, of those we hear about, the lustful women easily outnumber them. James Joyce memorably called the Inferno ‘Through Hell with the Papes (mostly boys)’.e That is fair comment; in fact, it is only in the circle of the lustful that gender equality is properly respected. This may be possibly an insight into Dante’s psychology but it is more likely a sad but predictable manifestation of the inherent misogyny of the Middle Ages.

Dante’s attention is caught by one particular couple. They are pressed tight together, floating ‘weightless in the wind’. He asks Virgil if he can speak to them. If you call them in the name of their love they will speak, he is told. When he calls out they peel away from the main body of souls and glide towards him, not storm-tossed now but like a dove approaching its dovecote with its wings locked for the final glide. It transpires that they are a celebrity couple from the late thirteenth century, Paolo Malatesta and Francesca da Rimini. They died when Dante was about 15 years old and it is just possible that he had met them – we know that at least one of them visited Florence at that time. Francesca was married to Paolo’s brother, the Lord of Rimini. When the brother discovered their affair he killed them both. We are told that a place much deeper down in Hell is being kept open for him. The couple themselves will fly in the wind for eternity, locked together naked as they were when they died. The audience is left to judge for itself whether this is the consolation of perpetual togetherness or the endless punishment of sharing a single bed when one is no longer a teenager.

Francesca does the talking while Paolo remains mute and tearful. She is charming and eloquent. When Dante asks her the key question, ‘How was it that you came to start the affair?’ her answer is prefaced with another famous line from the Comedy: ‘There is no greater pain than to remember past happiness in present sorrow.’6 She follows the remark with an observation which includes Virgil in the conversation: ‘and this your teacher also knows.’ Perhaps she does this out of good manners or perhaps it is out of a desire to make herself feel better by reminding Virgil that he is only one level better than she is.

She recounts the simple tale of how the couple’s close proximity turned effortlessly into sexual liaison.

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