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August 13, 2010

Dante blogging Canto XXXII

Canto XXXII

Antaeus lowered Dante and Virgil to the frozen river of Cocytus and the region of the traitors. They move in tis canto through Caina, where those who betrayed family are punished (Cain, first fratricide), to Antenora, where traitors to their country suffer (Antenor, a bad Trojan prince).

The damned souls are mainly topical Tuscans and not of much interest to me -- but the poetry and the poet's increasing recognition of his power are.  

The canto starts and ends with sound effects that remind us that this is not only a poem on the page -- oral performance is very important.  I'm doing this on the iPad so my formatting may not be as nice as usual, but I'll try.

S'io avessi le rime aspre e chiocce,
Come si converrebe al tristo buco
Sovra 'l qual 

Oh I'll go back and put in the Italian in a bit...word completion is driving me nuts!

Dante starts by talking about his inability as a poet to make the "bitter and crack-throated rhymes" he would need for this lowest part of Hell--not with the tongue that says mama and daddy in Tuscan!  The canto ends with his promise to Ugolino to tell his story: "I will/ make you a good trade in the world above,/unless my tongue should wither to the root."

That's a canto about tongues -- inadequacy of language, mother dialect, and the poet's art as currency!  Things are getting thick here at the end of Hell.  In between we have lots of vile activity, with Ugolino the vilest.  But I will pass over that for now because his story is really told in XXXIII.

The idea that Dante has something to offer the Damned has come up before, but it shows up repeatedly in this canto. Here at the end of the canticle Dante is feeling his power as a poet, even if he's denying his ability to write that kind of rhyme.  He will make the same off in Purgatory, but there he thinks his poem will stimulate prayers for the souls. The Damned have no such motive, only reknown -- that very pagan form if the afterlife.  Even that doesn't interest one if his interlocutors, Bocca (c. Lines 76-115).  If. Dante revealed that he's in Hell everyone will finally be sure that he WAS guilty of the betrayal of the Guelphs for which he was exiled from Florence.  Dante doesn't oblige and we all still know. 

Posted by CrankyProfessor at August 13, 2010 4:37 PM