Inferno
Canto X
Passing between the flaming sepulchres and the rampart circling the city, Dante is accosted from one of the tombs by Farinata, chief of the Ghibellines of Florence, who foretells to Dante the length of his exile and explains the nature of the foreknowledge possessed by the dead. He is interrupted by his companion in the tomb, the father of Guido Cavalcanti (Dante’s greatest friend, poet and son-in-law of Farinata), who not seeing Guido with Dante is anxious to know if he is alive or dead: but Dante does not enlighten him. In reply to a question, Farinata says that Frederick II, the emperor, “stupor mundi,” whose half-Oriental court in Sicily was so brilliant in the thirteenth century, and the Cardinal Ottaviano degli Ubaldini, are among the heretics entombed.
NOW journeying along a secret track
Between the ramparts and the sufferers
My Master goes, and I behind his back.
“O sovran Virtue, who down the circling tiers
Of the impious leadest me where thou dost bid,
Satisfy,” I said, “the wish that in me stirs.
The people who in these sepulchres are hid,
May they be seen? None watches; none keeps guard.
And see! already raised is every lid.”
And he to me: “All shall be fast and barred [10]
When from Jehosophat they shall hither hie
Each with the body he left under the sward.
This is the quarter wherein buried lie
Epicurus and all those his doctrine swayed,
Who with the body make the soul to die.
Therefore unto the question thou hast made
Here within soon shalt thou an answer find
And also to the wish thou hast not betrayed.”
And I: “I keep not from thee, Escort kind,
My thought, save that, as thou too didst require [20]
Ere now, I speak but in few words my mind.”[i]21. On the day of Judgment all souls, having recovered their bodies, will gather in the Valley of Jehoshaphat, whence, after hearing their sentence, they will return to Heaven or Hell.
“Tuscan, who goest through the city of fire
Alive, with comely speech upon thy tongue,
Halt here, if thou wilt tarry at my desire.[ii]24. Although all heresies are punished in this circle, the only one that concerns Dante is that called “Epicurean,” a name bestowed, in his day, upon materialistic free-thinking which denied the immortality of the soul and regarded a comfortable life as the highest good. There is grim irony in the eternal burial of sinners who affirmed that the spirit perishes with the body. Epicurus himself, pagan though he was, is with them.
The speech thou usest manifests thee sprung
From that famed country which, it may be, I tried
And I perhaps with too much trouble wrung.”
Suddenly in my ear this sound was cried
From out one of those coffers; and I drew,
In fear, a little closer to my Guide. [30]
And he to me spoke: “Turn! What dost thou do?
See Farinata, raising himself amain![iii]32. This famous heretic is Manente degli Uberti, called Farinata, chief of the Florentine Ghibellines, a wise and valiant leader, who died in 1264, a year before Dante’s birth. In 1260 he had taken part in the battle of Montaperti, where the Guelfs of Florence suffered a fearful defeat from the Sienese, the exiled Ghibellines, and King Manfred’s Germans. After this rout the neighbouring towns and barons held a council at Empoli, and all but Farinata were in favour of destroying Florence; he, however, opposed the project so stoutly that it was abandoned. In 1283 the inquisitor, Salmone da Lucca, condemned him (nearly twenty years dead), his wife, his sons, and his grandsons, as heretics; his bones were cast out, his property confiscated and sold. His brave and haughty spirit is not quelled even by his fiery punishment: he appears with head and chest erect.
From the waist all of him shall rise in view.”
My gaze from him I could not now have ta’en:
And he rose up to front me, face and breast,
As if of Hell he had a great disdain.
With prompt, inspiriting hands my Guide then prest
Me towards him, past the other sepulchres,
Counselling: “Use the words thou findest best.”
When I was where his tomb its front uprears, [40]
He looked at me a little, and with a kind
Of scorn he questioned: “Who were thy forbears?”
I, who had it to obey him in my mind,
Concealed nothing from him, but told all out,
At which his brows upward a little inclined:
Then he said: “Fiercely did they use to flout
Me and my forefathers; and since they spurned
My party, twice I scattered them in rout.”[iv]48-51. Farinata scattered the Guelfs in 1248 and 1260; but they returned to Florence in 1251, after the death of Frederick I, and in 1266, after the battle of Benevento; they then expelled the Ghibellines, who never “tightly learned” the art of returning.
“If they were chased, on all sides they returned,
Both times,” I answered, “from adversities; [50]
But yours that art have not so rightly learned.”
Beside him then a shadow by degrees[v]52. The “Shadow” is Cavalcante de’ Cavalcanti, a noble and wealthy Florentine, the father of that Guido whom Dante calls his “first friend.” This Guido Cavalcanti, a little older than Dante, was a famous poet and student, and an ardent partisan.
Emerged, and was discovered to the chin:
I think he had raised himself upon his knees.
He looked around as if he had thought to win
Sight of some other who might be with me;
And when that hope was wholly quenched within,
Cried weeping: “If through this blind prison, free,
Thou goest by virtue of thy nature’s height,
Where is my son? Why is he not here with thee?” [60]
And I to him: “Tis not by my own right[vi]61-63. Dante hastens to explain Guido’s absence by the assurance that it is not his own wit, but Virgil's, which directs him, adding that Guido may not have duly esteemed the ancient sage.
I come; he that waits yonder leads me here,
Of whom perhaps thy Guido had despite.”
His words, and manner of penance, made appear
His name, as if I had read it on his brow,
Therefore my answer had I made thus clear.
Suddenly erect, he cried: “What saidest thou?
He had? Lives he not, then, in the sweet air?
Does the sun’s light not strike upon him now?”
When of a certain pause he was aware [70]
Ere I replied, where he had risen to stand
Down he fell backward, and so vanished there.
But, haughty of spirit, that other, at whose demand
I had halted, changed not aspect, nor his head
Moved, nor his side bent, no, nor stirred a hand.
“And if,” continuing his own words, he said,
“To learn that art they have so little wit,
It tortureth me more than doth this bed.
But fifty times shall not afresh be lit[vii]79-81. “The Lady who reigns here” is Hecate, who in the sky appears as the moon. Before fifty months have passed, Dante is to learn how hard is the art of returning from exile.
The countenance of the Lady who reigns here [80]
Ere thou shalt know the cost of learning it.
And, so thou would’st return back to the dear
Earth, tell me why in each of its decrees
That people against my people is so severe?”[viii]84. In 1280, when most of the Ghibellines were allowed to come back, several of the Uberti were expressly excluded.
Then I: “The havoc and the butcheries[ix]85-86. “The butcheries” refers to the battle of Montaperti, beside the Arbia river (cf. the note at line 32).
That made the Arbia dyed all red to run
Hath filled our temple with such litanies.”
He sighed, shaking his head; and then spoke on:
“In that I was not single; nor, I swear,
Would I in ill cause with the rest have gone. [90]
But single I was in that place yonder, where[x]91. “In that place yonder”: at the diet of Empoli; (cf. the note at line 32).
All on the ruin of Florence had agreed.
I only with open face defended her.”
“Ah, so may peace come also to thy seed,
Resolve me,” I prayed him, “this hard knot that ties
My judgment in it, and the riddle read.
It seemeth, if I hear aright, your eyes
Perceive beforehand what Time brings with him,
But with the present ye use otherwise.”
“We see like those for whom the light is dim,” [100][xi]100-108. The damned, while aware of the past and indistinctly cognisant of the future, have no knowledge of present events on earth. Just how much the “present” embraces we are ‘not told. After the Judgment Day, when earthly life shall cease and the foresight of lost souls shall thus come to an end, their blindness will be unrelieved.
He answered me, “the things that are remote;
So much still shines for us the Lord Supreme.
When they come near, or are, then avails not
Our understanding, and we know no more,
Save what is told us, of your human lot.
Easily may’st thou understand, therefore,
That all we have of knowledge shall be dead
From that time when the Future shuts its door.”
Then pricked in conscience for my fault, I said,
“Will you not now acquaint that fallen one [110]
His child is not yet from the living fled?’
And if before to his answer I made none
Tell him it was my thought that was not free,
Being in that knot which now you have undone.”
And now my Master was recalling me.
Therefore more earnestly the spirit I prest
To tell me who were those with him. And he:
“With more than a thousand I lie here opprest.
Yonder the Second Frederic is inurned,[xii]119. The great Emperor Frederick II (1194-1250), who was long engaged in strife against the Papacy, was generally regarded as an Epicurean.
The Cardinal also: I speak not of the rest.” [120][xiii]120. “The Cardinal” Ottaviano degli Ubaldini, apostolic legate in Lombardy and Romagna against Frederick, in the Kingdom of Naples against Manfred, was accused of unbelief and of sympathy with the Imperial cause. Several of the early commentators report him as saying: “If there is a soul, I have lost it for the Ghibellines.”
With that he hid himself. My steps I turned
Back toward the ancient Poet, pondering
That saying wherein some menace I discerned.
He moved, and as we went: “What is this thing,”
He said to me, “which teases so thy mind?”
I satisfied him in his questioning.
“Keep in thy memory what thine ears divined
To be against thee,” warned the Sage. “Attend
Now,” and with finger lifted he enjoined:
“When thou before the radiance shalt bend [130]
Of that Lady, whose beauteous eyes see all,[xiv]131. “Of that Lady”: Beatrice.
Thou shalt learn thy life’s journey unto its end.”
Then to the left he turned his steps; the wall
We quitted, toward the middle advancing by
A path that strikes into a valley’s fall,
Wherefrom the fume rose noisome even thus high.