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The Epistle of James in ‘Inferno’ 26
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 July 2016
Extract
The fundamental interpretative difficulty in cantos 26 and 27 of the Inferno, especially in recent years, has been to reconcile the diverse crimes of two characters as unlike each other as Ulysses and Guido da Montefeltro, by identifying one sin that would account for their common collocation in the eighth degree of the circle of fraud. Guido da Montefeltro, a relatively pedestrian brand of con artist and a near contemporary of Dante's, is dwarfed by his juxtaposition with the great hero of antiquity, Ulysses, whose epic adventure beyond the known world tends to trivialize any of his particular fraudulent acts enumerated by Dante's guide Virgil (Inf. 26.58–63). Classification is no idle issue, especially for a figure who, apart from his ancient notoriety, has enormous appeal for our own age, an attractiveness he acquired by the grace of the same literary creator who condemned him to hell. Dante's Ulysses, epitome of the most ambitious of secular aspirations — a believer, we might say, in the promise of science and technology, pioneer of research and exploration, and figurehead of enlightened humanism — burns in a tongue of flame as does Guido, a wily military strategist, little more than a common crook. Even if we can organize the various crimes of Ulysses and Guido under one heading of sin, the inescapable focus of both cantos is not on each character's lifetime of trickery but on the moment of his death, where the magnanimity of Ulysses and the pusillanimity of Guido appear most opposed. One of the harshest ironies of the Inferno is that such a gaping discrepancy in chronology, grandeur, historical importance, and apparent moral fiber can be cancelled out completely by a single form of torment. Such a stratification means, in other words, that from the divine perspective Ulysses and Guido are without differentiation.
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References
1 Hatcher, Anna (‘Dante's Ulysses and Guido da Montefeltro,’ Dante Studies 88 (1970) 109–17) effectively demonstrated the inadequacy of the label ‘fraudulent counsel’ to the sin punished in the eighth bolgia. Representative efforts at redefinition have been made by Truscott, James, ‘Ulysses and Guido,’ Dante Studies 91 (1973) 47–72; Kay, Richard, ‘Two Pairs of Tricks: Ulysses and Guido in Dante's Inferno XXVI–XXVII,’ Quaderni d'Italianistica 1.2 (1980) 103–24; and Ahern, John, ‘Dante's Slyness: The Unnamed Sin in the Eighth Bolgia,’ Romanic Review (1982) 275–91.Google Scholar
2 Petri Allegherii super Dantis ipsius genitoris Comoediam commentarium ed. Vincenzo Nannucci (Florence 1845) 231. Recently a number of critics have re-invoked James 3.6 for its resemblance to the tongues of flame in Dante's eighth bolgia; e.g., Truscott, , op. cit., and Ferrante, Joan, ‘The Relation of Speech to Sin in the Inferno,’ Dante Studies 87 (1969) 41. Corti, Maria, Dante a un nuovo crocevia (Florence 1981) 93–94, and John Scott, A., ‘Inferno XXVI: Dante's Ulysses,’ Lettere Italiane 23.2 (1971) 145–86, call attention to the nautical imagery preceding the image of the tongue as fire. Scott, rightly I think, makes further claims for other passages in the Epistle that show affinity with Dante's canto of Ulysses, such as James 4.9, ‘risus vester in luctum convertatur et gaudium in moerorem,’ reminiscent of Ulysses’ ‘Noi ci allegrammo, et tosto tornò in pianto’ (Inf. 26.136).Google Scholar
3 See Corti, Maria, La felicità mentale (Turin 1983) and her Dante a un nuovo crocevia (Florence 1981), especially chapter 3, ‘Aristotelismo radicale’ 77–101.Google Scholar
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Omne datum optimum
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26 Opera omnia (Rome 1882ff.) VIII 158 and 156 respectively.Google Scholar
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33 Bede, , Sup. Epist. Cath. (PL 93.37D) interprets the early and late rains in this way: ‘Accipietis etenim vos temporalem fructum, vitam videlicet animae post mortem. Accipietis et serotinum, carnis incorruptionem in judicio.’ Hugh of Cher, St., Opera omnia in universum Vetus et Novum Testamentum (Lyon 1669) VII fol. 321v, comments: ‘temporaneum et serotinum sunt gratia praeueniens et gratia subsequens; vel gratia in praesenti; et gloria in futuro; vel stola animae, et stola corporis’ (italics mine).Google Scholar
34 See especially Dante's discussion of the Milky Way in Convivio 2.14 (pp. 63–64): ‘… la Galassia, cioè quello bianco cerchio che lo vulgo chiama la Via di Sa’ Iacopo …’ and ‘… li Pittagorici dissero che ‘I Sole alcuna fiata errò ne la sua via e, passando per altre parti non convenienti al suo fervore, arse lo luogo per lo quale passò, e rimasevi quella apparenze de l'arsura: e credo che si mossero da la favola di Fetonte, la quale narra Ovidio nel principio di Metamorfoseos.’Google Scholar