The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (13 inch ebook reader .txt) 📕

a long time in doubt concerning the author’s meaning in this line; but being by chance at this monastery of San Benedetto, in company with the abbot, he told me that there had once been a discussion among the Counts who owned the mountain, about building a village near the waterfall, as a convenient place for a settlement, and bringing into it their vassals scattered on neighboring farms; but the leader of the project dying, it was not carried into effect; and that is what the author says, Ove dovea per mille, that is, for many, esser ricetto, that is, home and habitation.”

Doubtless grammatically the words will bear this meaning. But evidently the idea in the author’s mind, and which he wished to impress upon the reader’s, was that of a waterfall plunging at a single leap down a high precipice. To this idea, the suggestion of buildings and inhabitants is wholly foreign, and adds neither force nor clearness. Whereas, to say that the river plunged at one bound over a precipice high enough for a thousand cascades, presents at once a vivid picture to the imagination, and I have interpreted the line accordingly, making the contrast between una scesa and mille. It should not be forgotten that, while some editions read dovea, others read dovria, and even potria. ↩

This cord has puzzled the commentators exceedinglv. Boccaccio, Volpi, and Venturi do not explain it. The anonymous author of the Ottimo, Benvenuto da Imola, Buti, Landino, Vellutello, and Daniello, all think it means fraud, which Dante had used in the pursuit of pleasure⁠—“the panther with the paintedskin.” Lombardi is of opinion that, “by girding himself with the Franciscan cord, he had endeavored to restrain his sensual appetites, indicated by the panther; and still wearing the cord as a Tertiary of the Order, he makes it serve here to deceive Geryon, and bring him up.” Biagioli understands by it “the humility with which a man should approach Science, because it is she that humbles the proud.” Fraticelli thinks it means vigilance; Tommaseo, “the good faith with which he hoped to win the Florentines, and now wishes to deal with their fraud, so that it may not harm him”; and Gabrielli Rossetti says, “Dante flattered himself, acting as a sincere Ghibelline, that he should meet with good faith from his Guelf countrymen, and met instead with horrible fraud.”

Dante elsewhere speaks of the cord in a good sense. In Purgatorio, VII 114, Peter of Aragon is “girt with the cord of every virtue,” In Inferno, XXVII 92, it is mortification, “the cord that used to make those girt with it more meagre”; and in Paradiso, XI 87, it is humility, “that family which had already girt the humble cord.”

It will be remembered that St. Francis, the founder of the Cordeliers (the wearers of the cord), used to call his body asino, or ass, and to subdue it with the capestro, or halter. Thus the cord is made to symbolize the subjugation of the animal nature. This renders Lombardi’s interpretation the most intelligible and satisfactory, though Virgil seems to have thrown the cord into the abyss simply because he had nothing else to throw, and not with the design of deceiving. ↩

As a man does naturally in the act of throwing. ↩

That Geryon, seeing the cord, ascends, expecting to find some moine défroqué, and carry him down, as Lombardi suggests, is hardly admissible; for that was not his office. The spirits were hurled down to their appointed places, as soon as Minos doomed them. Inferno, V 15. ↩

Even to a steadfast heart. ↩

In this Canto is described the punishment of Usurers, as sinners against Nature and Art. See Inferno XI 109:⁠—

“And since the usurer takes another way,
Nature herself and in her follower
Disdains he, for elsewhere he puts his hope.”

The monster Geryon, here used as the symbol of Fraud, was born of Chrysaor and Callirrhoe, and is generally represented by the poets as having three bodies and three heads. He was in ancient times King of Hesperia or Spain, living on Erytheia, the Red Island of sunset, and was slain by Hercules, who drove away his beautiful oxen. The nimble fancy of Hawthorne thus depicts him in his Wonder-Book, p. 148:⁠—

“But was it really and truly an old man? Certainly at first sight it looked very like one; but on closer inspection, it rather seemed to be some kind of a creature that lived in the sea. For on his legs and arms there were scales, such as fishes have; he was web-footed and web-fingered, after the fashion of a duck; and his long beard, being of a greenish tinge, had more the appearance of a tuft of seaweed than of an ordinary beard. Have you never seen a stick of timber, that has been long tossed about by the waves, and has got all overgrown with barnacles, and at last, drifting ashore, seems to have been thrown up from the very deepest bottom of the sea? Well, the old man would have put you in mind of just such a wave-tost spar.”

The three bodies and three heads, which old poetic fable has given to the monster Geryon, are interpreted by modern prose as meaning the three Balearic Islands, Majorca, Minorca, and Ivica, over which he reigned. ↩

Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, XIV 87, Rose’s Tr., thus depicts Fraud:⁠—

“With pleasing mien, grave walk, and decent vest,
Fraud rolled her eyeballs humbly in her head;
And such benign and modest speech possest,
She might a Gabriel seem who Ave said.
Foul was she and deformed in all the rest;
But with a mantle, long and widely spread,
Concealed her hideous parts; and evermore
Beneath the