The Inferno by Dante Alighieri & Robert Hollander & Jean Hollander

Author:Dante Alighieri & Robert Hollander & Jean Hollander
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw3
Tags: Classics, Poetry
ISBN: 9780345803108
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2012-07-11T00:00:00+00:00

INFERNO IV

1–9. The last canto had come to its dramatic conclusion with a shaking of the earth accompanied—indeed perhaps caused by—a supernatural lightning bolt that made Dante fall into a fainting “sleep.” In medieval opinion such earthquakes were caused by winds imprisoned in the earth. Now he is awakened by the following thunder. As the last verse of Inferno III has him overcome by sleep (“sonno”), so in the first line of this canto that sleep is broken, overriding the sharp line of demarcation that a canto ending or beginning seems to imply, as at the boundary between Inferno II and III.

There has been a centuries-long debate over the question of whether this “thunder” (truono), the noise made by the sorrowing damned (v. 9), is the same as the thunderclap of v. 2 (truono [the reading in most MSS and editions]). Mazzoni (Mazz.1965.1), pp. 45–49, summarizes that debate. It seems best to understand that this noise is not the one that awakens Dante, but the one that he first hears from the inhabitants of Limbo, i.e., that the two identical words indicate diverse phenomena. [return to English / Italian]

13. That, even according to Virgil, who dwells in it, the world of Limbo is “blind” might have helped hold in check some of the more enthusiastic readings of this canto as exemplary of Dante’s “humanistic” inclinations. For important discussions along these lines see Mazzoni, Introduzione (Mazz.1965.1), pp. 29–35; Padoan (Pado.1965.1). And see Virgil’s own later “gloss” to Limbo (Purg. VII.25–30), where he describes his punishment for not believing in Christ-to-come as consisting in his being denied the sight of the Sun. Dante describes Limbo as being without other punishment than its darkness (and indeed here it is described as a “blind world” [cieco mondo]), its inhabitants as sighing rather than crying out in pain (v. 26). Had he wanted to make Limbo as positive a place as some of his commentators do, he surely would have avoided, in this verse, the reference to the descent that is necessary to reach it. Such was not the case for the neutrals in the previous circle, who apparently dwell at approximately the same level as the floor of the entrance through the gate of hell. This is the first downward movement within the Inferno. [return to English / Italian]

16–17. Virgil’s sudden pallor (v. 14) causes Dante to believe that his guide is fearful, as he himself had been at the end of the previous canto (III.131). [return to English / Italian]

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.