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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
By his detailed account of his journey through Hell, Dante invited close attention from his readers. Factual-minded ones of a mathematical bias have become fascinated with the working out of the details as in a puzzle. In their zeal they have made diagrams to illustrate their views, such as appear in Giovanni Agnelli's Topo-Cronografia del Viaggio Dantesco. These and other charts have been widely circulated. For instance, Dinsmore's Aids to the Study of Dante gives those of Il Duca Michelangelo Caetani di Sermoneta. Having seen such diagrams from our earliest knowledge of Dante, we take them for granted as showing his plan of the lower world. Even Croce, in La Poesia di Dante, admits some use in making charts of the physical topography of the poem, on the ground that “quella struttura Dante la volle ed esegui, ed esiste nel suo libro” (p. 61). If it is in the book, it should be made clear. But what if it is not?
Note 1 in page 287 This volume, though obviously intended for readers who do not use Italian, is mentioned with approval by Professor Grandgent in the bibliography of his edition of the Comedy; it well deserves its nine printings totaling 3380 copies. It presumably has had corresponding influence on American opinion.
Note 2 in page 288 This initial impossibility was observed by Blanc (Vernon, Readings on Inferno 29.9, p. 459).
Note 3 in page 289 This edition was published with the poem. The separate edition, of which I have used two copies, has neither place nor date; it may be of about 1510.
G. Milanesi, Operette istorische di A. Manetti, p. xvii, tells of a codex of the Divine Comedy (Magliabecchiana Ms. Pal. 133), dated 1462, in Manetti s hand, which has some pen drawings to explain the architecture and fabric of the Inferno.
Something on geometric explanations after Manetti is furnished by Giovanni Agnelli's Topo-Cronografia del Viaggio Dantesco (Milano, 1891), and by W. W. Vernon's Readings on the Inferno of Dante (London, 1906), I, xxxviii.
Note 4 in page 289 Millard Meiss, “The Problem of Francesco Traini, The Art Bulletin, xv (1933), 127–171. Bernhard Berenson, Pitture Italiene del Rinascimento, Milano, n.d., p. 499.
Note 5 in page 290 How Dantesque is debatable. Perhaps, like the Inferno, they owe something to the mosaics of the Baptistery in Florence. See Ernest H. Wilkins, “Dante and the Mosaics of his Bel San Giovanni,” Speculum, ii (1927), 1–10.
Note 6 in page 290 Comento alla “Divina Commedia” (Bari, 1918), e.g., Proemio, lect. 1 (vol. 1, p. 124); lect. 35 (vol. 3, pp. 8, 9). The genuineness of the first passage is questioned.
Note 7 in page 291 The word lacca in 7.16 is sometimes explained as ditch. The Anonimo Fiorentino calls attention to its meaning part “della coscia da lato dell' animale,” and so “la costa del monte” (Commento alla “Divina Commedia” d'anonimo Fiorentino del secolo XIV [Bologna, 1866], p. 188). It is tempting to call it haunch, as a figure for the projection on the side of the cone of Hell made by the circle. In any case lacca seems to be a synonym for cerchio that rimes properly.
Note 8 in page 291 Dante, con l'espositioni di Christoforo Landino (Venetia, 1576), p. 41, on Canto 7. This is also the opinion of Jacopo della Lana (Commento [Bologna, 1866], p. 171, on Canto 7),
Note 9 in page 292 The comment of the Anonimo Fiorentino runs: “Vanno costoro a percuotersi per uno Camino fatto a modo d'uno cerchio, a dimostrare che queste loro peni sieno eterni” (pp. 184–185). Botticelli's drawing of this circle shows stones rolled in various directions.
Note 10 in page 293 The singular and the plural of porta, used indifferently, seems to refer to but one opening through the walls, and but one tower, as for a gate, is alluded to.
Note 11 in page 295 This seems true of the Ottimo Commento, which promises a figure, unhappily not in the codex.
The Anonimo Fiorentino also contemplates but one scoglio: “Rende similitudine, come molti fossi l'uno innanzi all' altro cingono uno castello, così quelli cerchietti, era l'uno innanzi all' altro, et come i ponticelli sono sopra i fossi per poter passare, cosl uno scoglio si movea che attraversa quegli cerchietti infino al pozzo; et in quella schiena dove questo scoglio si parte dalla ripa, dice l'Auttore ch'egli lascia Gerione” (Canto 18, pp. 405–406). This is confirmed by Canto 21, pp. 466–467, and Canto 23: “Ch‘è uno scoglio che ricide i fossi et fa ponte dall’ uno all' altro fosso, salvo che in questo presente è rotto, et giace per modo che, come che malagevolmente, pure per su vi si può ire” (p. 497).
Benvenuto da Imola seems equally clear: “Imaginare et finge tibi in mente tua unum castellum rotundum in magna planitie campestri, quod habet circa se plures et plures fossas, et juxta portam castelli a ripa infima incipit una volta pontis, quae cooperit primam fossam usque ad secundam ripam; et ita secunda volta incipit a secunda ripa, et cooperit secundam fossam usque ad tertiam ripam; et ita de omnibus usque ad decem; ita quod sint decem arcus contigui successive unus post alium, et tarnen sit totus unus pons rectus” (Comentum super Dantis Comoediam [Florence, 1887], on Canto 18, p. 3). Cf. also Canto 21, p. 117; Canto 23, p. 184.
Note 12 in page 295 Is it possible to suggest that Dante originally had a bridge over bolgia 6 and revised it out, but did not change these succeeding references? Benvenuto da Imola makes quel di pria apply to bridge 6, and explains erto assai as meaning that bridge 7 “qui erat integer, erat altior.” Vernon accepts Scartazzini's opinion that the comparison is between two of the lines of bridges, or bridgeways, from the outer wall of Malebolge to the seventh bolgia.
Note 13 in page 296 Benvenuto da Imola calls it pons generalis, Canto 23, vol. 2, p. 184.
Note 14 in page 296 Professor Grandgent's note on 18.18.
Note 15 in page 296 Professor Grandgent's note ends with the words “at the edge of which they stop.”
In his explanation of raccogli in this passage Tommaseo writes: “ivi finiscon il corso loro” (Dizionario [Torino, 1924], vol. 6, p. 13).
Cf. the following:
Tommaseo in his Dizionario explains the last verb in the last passage as fermarli, arrestarli.
Note 16 in page 297 W. W. Vernon's note on ponticelli is as follows: “I have translated this ‘narrow bridges.‘ If one adopts Vellutello's view that the valleys were half a mile, or a mile, broad, one could not well say that they were traversed by little bridges” (Readings, Canto 18, st. 15).
P. H. Wicksteed, finding the happenings at the fourth and fifth bolge so numerous and therefore so time-consuming “as to constitute a serious difficulty” in his attempt to explain the chronology of the Inferno, writes: “In mitigation of the difficulty, however, it may be noted that the 5th bolgia, like some at least of the others, appears to be very narrow, xxii.145–50” (The Inferno, in The Temple Classics [London, 1906], p. 397).
Note 17 in page 298 Is Virgil trying to get back to the route he followed in his former visit to Hell (9.22–30) when the bridge was yet unbroken?
Note 18 in page 299 Possibly it strengthens this possibility that various commentators admit a loop in the course at 9.134; a little one is also indicated at 17.43, 78.
Botticelli's drawing for Inferno 23 shows the poets sliding down the bank and, after turning to the right, going along the base of the bank in a direction opposite to the one they had followed while on its top; they tread on the crucified sinners.
Note 19 in page 299 It is in the early Ottimo Commento (Canto 29, line 4).
Note 20 in page 301 This seems to be correct. The fortress does not now give the full Dantesque effect, since the towers have been lowered (L. V. Bertarelli, Toscana [Milano, 1935], p. 381).
Note 21 in page 301 I have not included passages in the other cantiche sometimes interpreted as bearing on the Inferno.
Incidentally, it should be remarked that the topography of the Mount of Purgatory has been dealt with in somewhat the same mathematical way as that of Hell (Agnelli, Topo-Cronografia, pp. 52–57, 87–88, tables 6–9). The more extreme conclusions, in spite of their absurdity, are still not without influence. Professor Grandgent, though not troubling to present them, obviously intended to protect readers against them when in his edition he wrote: “There is no reason to believe that he [i.e., Dante] regarded as it enormously higher than a real mountain might be” (p. 318).
Note 22 in page 302 The extent to which factual truth hidden in a poem can be brought to light by later research is an important problem for students of literature. Perhaps it appears most often, as for Dante and Spenser, in the supposed discovery of cryptic references to contemporary affairs.
Note 23 in page 304 Giovanni Agnelli, Topo-chronografia del viaggio Dantesco (Milano, 1891), p. 65.
Note 24 in page 304 For exposition of this see Josephine Waters Bennett, The Evolution of “The Faerie Queene” (Chicago, 1942).
Note 25 in page 305 Botticelli is also sometimes overcome by the spirit of diagram in his representation of details. His Geryon waits for passengers at the top of a shaft so confined that he might plump straight down it but could hardly soar like a falcon (17.127) in a space so vast that Dante does not see the walls of Malebolge but only the beast on which he rides (17.113). See Fig. 4.
Note 26 in page 305 On illustrations of poetry see Rensselaer Lee, “Ut Pictura Poesis,” in The Art Bulletin, xxii (1940), 197–269.
Note 27 in page 306 This may be illustrated from Professor Grandgent's edition (1933). He writes: “Between 11. 126 and 127, Dante seems to skip the whole journey between the centre of the earth and the outlet opposite the one where he entered. We are not told the nature of the passage beyond Satan's feet: whether it is a winding corridor, a vast conical cavity similar to an inverted Hell, or a big cylindrical hole” (On Inf. 34.127). In other words, the nature of the passage is entirely unknown. Yet in the chart there is represented a “Winding Passage from Hell to Purgatory” (p. vii), with no accompanying suggestion that this is one of at least three possibilities in a matter of which Dante says nothing. Obviously Professor Grandgent did not intend this chart to be taken as exact.