Landscapes II:
The Floor of Heaven
In Cocito the pilgrim approaches the center of the earth ("il punto / al qual si traggon d'ogne parte i pesi," Inferno 34. 111). The punto is the lowest point in the physical cosmos ("Quell'è il più basso loco e 'l più oscuro / e 'l più lontan dal ciel che tutto gira," 9.28–29). It corresponds to the winter solstice—the sun's lowest position in the ecliptic (il punto della rota ), endured by the poet of "Io son venuto"—and to the central stanza of "Amor, tu vedi ben," dominated by the rhyme-word freddo.
The transposition of the solstice in "Io son venuto" to the geocenter of Cocito is a continuation, in a much greater spatial range, of the pattern of descent to the earth in "Io son venuto." The assistance that Virgilio and the pilgrim receive from the giant Anteo both causes and signifies their descent to the punto, for the grip of a son of the earth ("figli della terra," 31.121) is by metonymy the grip of earth itself. The predominance of earth and cold in Cocito echoes its predominance in the fifth stanza of "Io son venuto." Sixteen terms from that fifth stanza, many with thematic force, recur in Inferno 31–34: acque, vapor, terra (and its rhymes guerra and serra ), ventre, abisso, freddura, verno (vernare ), smalto (vetro ), tornare, morte. We may speak of a sedimentation of terms from the lowest realm of "Io son venuto" in the lowest realm of Hell. Such a concentration is itself mimetic, as the center of the earth was, in Dante's scientific lore, the darkest, densest place in the cosmos.[55]
The domination of earth means the domination of cold. At the winter solstice of "Io son venuto," the stella d'Amor is remote, and Saturn, distant and malefic, rains cold on the earth. In Hell, the pilgrim is most distant from the Empyrean in a frigid realm dominated by Satan, the infernal Saturn. Fallen, dark, immobilized, parricidal (he has his "children" in his mouths), Satan, as Georg Rabuse showed, is a figure of Chronos-Saturn who devoured his children, who presides over winter, cold, death, heaviness (his metal is lead, his element earth), and who is thought of as cast down, at the imum coeli.[56] The remoteness of Saturn from the earth is inverted in the remoteness of Satan from the warmth of the Empyrean.
Saturnine Cocito harks back to the petrose for the effects of cold on water: the "acqua morta che si converte in vetro" of "Io son venuto" (60) is closely echoed in Inferno 32.23–24:
. . . un lago che per gelo
avea di vetro e non d'acqua sembiante.
This language, as well as that for the lady in "Al poco giorno" ("gelata come neve all'ombra," 8) and the terms for the transformation of ice to crystal in "Amor, tu vedi ben":
Segnor, tu sai che per algente freddo
l'acqua diventa cristallina petra
là sotto tramontana ov'è il gran freddo,
(25–27)
return in the gelatina (32.60), the gelati guazzi (32.72), the gelata (33–91), and the visiere di cristallo (33.98) of the fredda crosta (33.109).
The references to crystal and ice in Cocito continue the microcosmic implications of the natural science of "Amor, tu vedi ben." Tears condensed from pneumatic "thought" and driven from the lover's eye ("e quel pensiero . . . / mi si converte tutto in corpo freddo / che m'esce poi per mezzo de la luce," 34–36) reappear in the tears forced from the fratricides in Caina (32.38–39) and in the frozen tears ("visieri di cristallo," 33.98) of the treacherous in Tolomea. The hard visors ("duri veli," 33.112) are cognates of the icy velo of Cocito. In the presentation of Alberigo as blind, and of Cocito itself as a darkened glass (vetro ) or crystal, Dante suggests that it is like a great blind eye, a sphere whose diaphaneity will never be informed by light. "Lucerna corporis tui est oculus tuus . . . si autem oculus tuus fuerit nequam: totum corpus tuum tenebrosum erit" (Matthew 6:22–23); and Lucifer, formerly the light-bearer, has become dark ("per non aspettar lume, cadde acerbo," Paradiso 19.48). In the implicit continuities we recognize again the poetics of "Amor, tu vedi ben."
The causes of ice and stone in the petrose and in Cocito are homologous in each case to the poetic principles at work. In the petrose, harsh rhymes and exacting forms represent a mimesis of the rigor and pressure of cold in hopes of fashioning the perfect, efficacious crystal. Cocito echoes the specific effect of cold in each petrosa: the burdensome thought of the lover ("ond'io son carco," 11) mirrored in the downward thrust in the stanzas of "Io son venuto" returns in the ubiquitous gravity ("ogni gravezza," 32.74; also 32.3, 34.111);[57] the lover hemmed in by his love in the sestina ("che m'ha serrato . . . ," 17; "chiuso intorno," 30) in the constriction of the brothers ("sì stretti," 32.41, 47); cold as a cause at the center of "Amor, tu vedi ben" ("Per cagion del freddo . . . ," 25, 30) is repeatedly invoked ("per la freddura," 32.53; also 31.123, 32.70–71, 33.101).[58] The association of cold with the chattering of teeth and jaws ("sonar con le mascelle," 32.107; also 32.36, 108) echoes the rime aspre of "Così nel mio parlar."[59] Indeed, if the four petrose had not been linked by tradition, the reading of Cocito would have ensured their association.
In Cocito, the poet's art of enclosing words in meter imitates the pressure on the central point.[60] Invoking the myth of Amphion, who made stones come together in the walls of Thebes, the poet imagines his poetics as the enclosure of the punto itself.[61] Evidence of this cen-
tripetal art appears everywhere: in verbal juxtapositions ("legno legno," 32.49), in the proximity of the brothers Napoleone and Alessandro, in the poet's call to draw Capraia and Gorgona to the mouth of Arno (33.82).
The poet's imitation is announced in verses that closely echo the first verse of "Così nel mio parlar":
S'ïo avessi le rime aspre e chiocce,
come si converrebbe al tristo buco
sovra '1 qual pontan tutte l'altre rocce,
io premerei di mio concetto il suco
più pienamente . . .
(32.1–5; emphasis added)
Later terminology ("il dolor che'l cor mi preme," 33.5; "Il duol che'l cor m'impregna, 33.113) suggests a continuum linking the gravity at the center to the inner grief of Ugolino and Alberigo and to the poetic effort required for their presentation. The convergence of material fact, moral state, and poetics is what the poet asks of Amphion's Muses: the convenientia or decorum, which fits subject matter to language "sì che dal fatto il dir non sia diverso." Such a decorum is already manifest in the opening of Canto 32, cited above, which promotes terms with the con prefix to the status of rhyming word (converrebbe, concetto, conduco ).[62]
As in the petrose, the poetics of the text derives from the specific cosmological feature described. Like a giant press, the accumulation of physical weight and grief at the center presses down on the poet, extruding the harsh rhymes ("premerei di mio concetto il suco"). The poet is like a telamon bearing the weight of the entire cosmos—not merely of the Inferno, as reference to the poem as a soma or ponderoso tema later in the Commedia will suggest.[63] The petrose figure both as a basis to the poetics of the rest of the Commedia and as part of the burden the poet has borne. Thus the dramatic confrontation of the lover and the petra imagined in "Così nel mio parlar" is pointedly recalled in the episode of Ugolino and Ruggieri.
Virtually all the narrative elements of "Così nel mio parlar" are alluded to: betrayal and revenge, blows, barking, gnawing, cries, cruel language. To mention only the most striking parallels: the terms bruca, manduca, and rode in the canzone are developed in Ugolino's feast on Ruggieri's skull ("come'l pan per fame si manduca," 32.127; "non altrimenti Tidëo si rose le tempie a Melanippo," 32.130–131); Ugolino
dreams that his children are pierced by the teeth of Ruggieri's dogs ("fender il fianchi," 33.36) in what is a rehearsal of his own doglike attack on Ruggieri ("coi denti . . . come d'un can, forti," 33.77–78), just as the speaker of "Così" imagines the lady pierced by love's sword ("vedess'io fender . . . lo core," 53–54) in retaliation for his own suffering of Love's strokes ("mi fiede sotto il braccio," 48); Ugolino gazes at his progeny ("guardai nel viso," 33.47–48), as the "Così" speaker imagines staring at his lady ("guarderei presso e fiso," 76); Ugolino turns to stone within ("sì dentro impetrai," 33.49), as the lady in the canzone opts for cruelty ("impetra maggior durezza," 3–4); the child stretched out before his father ("si gittò disteso," 33.68) recalls the speaker supine before Love ("disteso a riverso," 42).
But there are crucial differences: Ugolino, mute in his hatred ("stemmo tutti muti," 33.65) offers no help as his sons die ("padre mio, ché non m'aiuti?" 33.69); in the canzone, the speaker imagines offering help to the lady as she sinks in the caldo borro ("Io vi soccorro," 61). Ugolino's speech to his dead offspring ("due dì li chiamai . . . ," 33.74) is pointless, but the lover's fantasy of reciprocal cries begins an exchange of gestures, and the poem itself is an utterance that would compel hearing, a richiamo to heed Love's call, as the children's example in the mews is a call to heed the message of forgiveness. The speaker's struggle to escape the interiority of his suicidal frustration is mirrored, though in reverse, by Ugolino's withdrawal into a petrified silence. Ugolino desires revenge, but the lover's desire is both for his own survival and for the transformation of the lady. Ugolino's silence and despair represent the possible final phase of both lover and lady in the petrose: the lady hardened in refusal, the lover petrified by her Medusa-like power. The implicit solution, in both cases, is the offer of words that shatter the isolation and withdrawal of despair. And it is this offer that the petrose, however problematically, attempt.
Thus the Ugolino episode, and Cocito in general, stage a simplification of the ambiguities of "Così nel mio parlar"; the theme of the rigidity of the petra as traceable to an obscure and perverse sensuality reappears in Ugolino as the refusal of both pietas and Christian forgiveness. The reciprocal violence of the traitors echoes the speaker's struggle with the petra, but in a context of exasperated political faction and demonic cruelty that justifies the pilgrim's treatment of the traitors Bocca and Alberigo.[64] The poet's reiteration of the language of "Così nel mio parlar" in Cocito implicitly acknowledges his own violence; but
it also marks his distance from the personal aggression of "Così." The Medusa—darkly alluded to in Ugolino's stoniness and in the poet's reference to "Gorgona" (33.82)—loses its sexual content and returns to an orthodox role as an instrument of justice, indeed of the justice visited by the poet on the traitors when he encloses them in Cocito. In this sense, the rime aspre of Cocito augur (like the rime aspre of "Così") the poet's victory. Like a new Perseus, he makes the power of the Gorgon his own.
Thus, it ought not to be thought that reference to the petrose in Cocito means their rejection. Far from rejecting the petrose, the poet compares his art to the walling of Thebes by the power of song. It is of course more than that: it is a cosmogonic poetics, marking out the foundation of the universe (discriver fondo a tutto l'universo ); it is the poet's equivalent and reflects the Creator's drawing of his compass around the heavens ("Colui che volse il sesto / a lo stremo del mondo," Paradiso 19.40–41); it is evidence of the penetration of the poet's gift, of his microcosmic poetics, as far as the dark center of the cosmos. It also reiterates the poetics of the petrose in that it marks a moment of birth.
Ironically for its tenants, but auspiciously for the pilgrim, Cocito includes references to birth and childhood: Ugolino's figliuoli who are the new life ("l'età novella," 33.88); Napoleone and Alessandro, who are uterine brothers ("d'un corpo usciro," 32.58); Anteo who is figlio della terra. Implicit is a countermotive to the oppressiveness of the center—or, rather, a redefinition of its meaning. To the asperity of the speech of Cocito, with its imitation of clucking and chattering jaws, Dante opposes the equally onomatopoetic speech of the infant, who speaks the puerilia of mamma and babbo (32.9). The child's call to his parents for nourishment and protection affirms the bonds of kinship so spectacularly violated by the traitors of Caina; it draws our attention, moreover, to the words of Alberigo, the pilgrim's last interlocutor in Hell, who portrays himself as pregnant with pain ("il duol che'l cor m'impregna," 33.113). For Alberigo's pain there will be no accouchement. But the pilgrim, by passing through the center of the earth, is uprooted from the cave of Hell (". . . prima ch'io dell'abisso mi divella," 34.10). What for Satan and the damned is a devouring maw ("il fondo . . . che divora / Lucifero con Giuda," 31.142–143) is for the pilgrim a womb in which he prepares for the labor of rebirth on the shores of Purgatory ("Prima ch'io dell'abisso mi divella," 34.100). That the icy veil of Cocito is a legacy of the poet's natal ingegno along with the bel nido of Gemini will emerge in the heaven of Gemini itself, where we will also have to
reckon with the fantasy of the power of poetry figured in Amphion's moving of the stones.