Lextura Dantis :: The Divine Comedy

Dante varies his presentation greatly throughout Malebolge. Each bolgia has its own particular atmosphere, and the abrupt tonal and structural shifts between them make the move from bolgia to bolgia a medley of styles and techniques. But no shift is so striking as that between the eighth and ninth, in which the reader leaves a bolgia marked by two eloquent, searching dramatic monologues for one characterized by pithy, epigrammatic comments. The heroic exhortation of Ulysses and the sinuous self-revelation of Guido da Montefeltro give way to the truncated, compressed rhetoric of Mohammed, Pier da Medicina, Mosca, and Bertran de Born. The earlier bolgia begs for psychological readings; the latter frustrates them. The structures of these cantos present a similar incongruity. Ulysses and Guido are given ample opportunity for leisurely expansion, and their stories have a smooth development and denouement. Each is the absolute star of his canto, and Dante records both their coming and going with reverent attention. Inferno XXVIII, however, presents a rapid succession of scenes, and the cuts between them are as savage and inexorable as those delivered by the devil to the damned. The canto seems unified only by Dante's desire to present the contrapasso in as many ways as he can. Those who sowed discord in life are hewn in imaginative ways __ Mohammed split from chin to anus, Ali sliced from chin to hairline, Pier da Medicina clipped and nicked in different places, Curio's tongue hacked out, Mosca's arms lopped off, and Bertran de Born neatly decapitated __ a near Baroque variation on a single theme. One horror follows on the heels of another, and each permutation replaces the memory of the ea rlier one. Despite this profusion in the particulars of the punishments, the structure of the twenty-eighth canto is relentlessly schematic. The canto can be easily divided into six compact episodes, four of which are fundamentally identical __ even somewhat repetitive. The canto begins with a familiar epic gesture: the ineffability topos. Dante despairs of ever doing justice to what he must describe (vv. 1-6): Chi poria mai pur con parole sciolte dicer del sangue e de le piaghe a pieno ch'i' ora vidi, per narrar pià ¹ volte? Ogne lingua per certo verria meno per lo nostro sermone e per la mente