The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 02
The early dichotomy is noted by Natalino Sapegno, "UIisse," Letture classensi 7 (1979): 93-98. In what follows I make no attempt to give an exhaustive resume of the Ulysses querelle but rather to highlight those critical writings that have proved most useful to me. Ample references may be found in Anthony K. Cassell, "Ulisseana: A Bibliography of Dante's Ulysses to 1981," Italian Culture 3 (1981): 23-45. *

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 03
Mario Fubini, "11 peccato d'Ulisse" and "11 canto XXVI dell'lnferno," in 11 peccato d'Ulisse e altri scritti danteschi (Milan: Ricciardi, 1966), 1-76. Much of this material is repeated in Fubini's "Ulisse" in the ED. His supporters include Sapegno, in the previously cited essay, Antonino Pagliaro ("Ulisse," in Ulisse: Ricerche semantiche sulla "Divina Commedia," 2 vols. [Messina: G. D'Anna, 1967], 1: 371-432), Fiorenzo Forti ("'Curiositas' o 'fol hardement'7," in Magnanimitade: Studi su un tema dantesco [Bologna: Patron, 1977], 161-206), and Lino Pertile, "Dante e l'ingegno di Ulisse," Stanford Italian Review 1 (1979): 35-65.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 04
John A. Scott, "L'Ulisse dantesco," in Dante magnanimo (Florence: Olschki, 1977),117-93, provides a review of the critical issues raised in the debate over Ulysses; his stated goal is to right the balance that had tipped too far toward Ulysses' heroic aspect. On the problems with knowing what sin to ascribe to this bolgia, see John Ahern, "Dante's Slyness: The Unnamed Sin of the Eighth Bolgia," Romanic Review 73 (1982): 275-91. The poet's avoidance of a label has provided fertile soil for the collocation fallacy discussed in chapter l; Pertile, for instance, claims that the nature of Ulysses' discourse is not a cause for damnation, "che se fosse un falsario di parole, dovremmo trovarlo piu giu nell'lnferno insieme al suo commilitone Sinone" ("Dante e l'ingegno d'Ulisse," 42). For another example of the fallacy at work, see note 34 below.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 05
Scholars who have emphasized the orazion itself as the manifestation of Ulysses' sinfulness include Giorgio Padoan, "Ulisse 'fandi fictor' e le vie della sapienza," 1960, rpt. in 11 pio Enea, I'empio Ulisse (Ravenna: Longo, 1967), 170-99, and Anna Dolfi, "11 canto di Ulisse: occasione per un discorso di esegesi dantesca," Forum Italicum 7-8 (1973-1974): 22-45. The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 06
"La tragedia di Ulisse," 1937, rpt. in Dante e la cultura medievale, 2d ed. rev. (Bari: Laterza, 1949), 153-65. Nardi's position is endorsed by Amilcare A. Iannucci, who comments that "it is difficult not to see in Ulysses' 'mad flight' a conscious act of rebellion against a divine law, and, more specifically, a re-enactment of the Fall" ("Ulysses' folle volo: The Burden of History," Medioevo romanzo 3 [1976]: 410-45; quotation, 426).

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 07
"Con l'ammirazione per l'eroe che scaglia la sua vita nell'ignoto contrasta appunto, nella coscienza di Dante, la riprovazione del folle ardimento, per parte del teologo" ("La tragedia di Ulisse," 165).

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 08
"Ulisse e la tragedia intellettuale di Dante," in La struttura morale dell'universo dantesco (Rome: Ausonia, 1935), 26-40.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 09
For Freccero, Ulysses' voyage is an allegory of Dante's own previous intellectual adventurism, especially as represented by the philosophical detour of the Convivio; see "Dante's Prologue Scene," 1966, and "Dante's Ulysses," 1975, rpt. in Dante: The Poetics of Conversion, ed. Rachel Jacoff (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,1986). The same line of argument is pursued by David Thompson in "Dante's Ulysses and the Allegorical Journey,n 1967, rpt. in Dante's Epic Journeys (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974). Maria Corti sees Ulysses as a symbol of the radical Aristotelians, an in malo version of what Siger represents in bono; see Dante a un nuovo crocevia (Florence: Libreria Commissionaria Sansoni, 1981), 8597.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 10
Fubini writes of "un certo gusto dannunziano a cui inconsapevolmente ha ceduto il severo studioso" (ED, s.v. "Ulisse," 5:806).

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 11
For Cassell, "Ulysses, far from being the exceptional paragon imagined by romantic-minded critics, was chosen by the Poet as the exemplary ambitious, dissembling pretender to noble counsel, one whose aims and posturing advice were as deceptive as the rest of the 'lordura' held in this ditch of Malebolge"; see Dante's Fearful Art of Justice (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984), 95.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 12
Fubini's thesis shows obvious strains as he argues that "certo Ulisse va incontro a un limite, a un limite che aveva ignorato e che gli s'impone con quella catastrofe, ma non e, ripeto, una punizione" and that "soprattutto non vi e parola di 'divieto" (ED, s.v. "Ulisse," 5:807, 808).

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 13
Vergil is also a sinner who is named in each canticle, but as a major protagonist of the poem, rather than as a figure encountered only once. Nimrod appears in Inf. 31, is listed among the examples of pride in Purg. 12, and is invoked by Adam in Par. 26. He attests to the indissoluble link between pride and creativity: our creativity leads to the invention and use of language, and our pride is responsible for its disruption. Another figure mentioned in each canticle is Phaeton, not a sinner in the Commedia but a further emblem of the problematic that both Ulysses and Nimrod represent.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 14
On Dante's use of folle/follia, associated with excess and intellectual pride, see Umberto Bosco, "La 'follia' di Dante," 1958, rpt. in Dante vicino, 2d ed. (Caltanisetta: Sciascia, 1972), 55-75. For textual recalls of Ulyssean motifs, see Franco Fido, "Writing Like God‹or Better? Symmetries in Dante's 26th and 27th Cantos," Italica 63 (1986): 25>64.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 15
Croce's strictures against the stretches of "non poesia" in the Commedia echo those of Edgar Allan Poe vis-a-vis Paradise Lost in "The Philosophy of Composition": "What we term a long poem is, in fact, merely a succession of brief ones‹that is to say, of brief poetical effects. It is needless to demonstrate that a poem is such, only inasmuch as it intensely excites, by elevating, the soul; and all intense excitements are, through a psychal necessity, brief. For this reason, at least one half of the Paradise Lost is essentially prose‹a succession of poetical excitements interspersed, inevitably, with corresponding depressions (Literary Criticism of Edgar Allan Poe, ed. Robert L. Hough [Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1965], 2223).

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 16
Likewise, vis-a-vis Nardi's alignment of Ulysses with Lucifer, also considered anachronistic, D'Arco Silvio Avalle points out that the Libro de Alexandre's Alexander the Great is explicitly compared to Lucifer; see "L'ultimo viaggio di Ulisse," in Modelli semiologici nella "Commedia" di Dante (Milan: Bompiani, 1975), 60. 1

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 17
"'Ne dolcezza di fig]io,'" 1965, rpt. in Dante vicino, 173-96.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 18
I refer the reader to Scott, who demonstrates four fundamental oppositions: Ulysses vs. Aeneas, Ulysses vs. Cato, Ulysses vs. Solomon, and Ulysses vs. Dante. Another way to state the terms of the critical debate would be to divide critics into those who see Ulysses as a precursor of the pilgrim and those who see him as his antithesis; see Adriano Bozzoli, "Ulisse e Dante," Convivium 34 (1966): 345-53. Jurij M. Lotman writes "Ulisse e l'originale doppio di Dante" (96); see "11 viaggio di Ulisse nella Divina Commedia di Dante," Testo e contesto (Bari: Laterza, 1980), 81-102.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 19
Although not elaborated systematically, Giuseppe Mazzotta suggests a similar position: "He will reappear again, even in Paradiso, as a constant reminder to the poet of the possible treachery of his own language and the madness of his own journey" (Dante, Poet of the Desert [Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press 1979], 105). More explicitly, Giuliana Carugati views Ulysses "come figura emble matica di un tema che , debordando dai confini del canto 26 dell 'lnferno, assume valore di struttura portante, di metafora centrale della scrittura dantesca" (Dalla menzogna al silenzio: La scrittura mistica della "Commedia" di Dante [Bologna: 11 Mulino, 1991], 89).

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 20
It is worth noting that an anonymous story ascribing the authorship of the Commedia to the holy spirit ("che quello libro di Monarchia si dovesse e potesse bene intitolare a Dante, ma la Comedia piu tosto allo Spirito Sancto che a Dante") offers Purg. 24 as its clinching argument: "Non vedi tu che dice qui chiaro che, quando l'amore dello Spirito Sancto lo spira dentro al suo intellecto, che nota la spirazione e poi la significa secondo che esso Spirito gli dicta e dimostra? volendo dimostrare che le cose sottili e profonde, che tratto e tocco in questo libro, non si potevano conoscere sanza singulare grazia e dono di Spirito Sancto" (Dante, secondo la tradizione e i novellatori, ed. Giovanni Papanti [Leghom: Vigo, 1873], 85-88).

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 21
The advantage is compounded by the fact that, as Augustine points out, there is no way to check as to the truth of the scribe's transcription: "But how should I know whether what he [Moses] said was true? . . . Since, then, I cannot question Moses, whose words were true because you, the Truth, filled him with yourself, I beseech you, my God, to forgive my sins and grant me the grace to understand those words, as you granted him, your servant, the grace to speak them" (Conf 11.3- trans. R. S. Pine-Coffin [London: Penguin, 1961]).

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 22
Impresa is a Ulyssean term in the Commedia, appearing twice regarding the pilgrim's undertaking in Inf. 2, once regarding the poet's undertaking in Inf. 32, and in a way calculated to conflate pilgrim and poet in Par. 33.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 23
For Hawkins, see "Virtuosity and Virtue: Poetic Self-Reflection in the Commedia," Dante Studies 98 (1980): 1-18; citing Dante's "chastening conversation with Oderisi" (12), his humble "willingness to fly 'di retro al dittator'" (13), and the "redeemed poesis" (14) of Paradiso, Hawkins concludes that "the story of Ulysses is rewritten by the 'tempered' life of the pilgrim and the 'tempered' pen of the poet" (15). For Taylor, see "From superbo IIi6n to umile Italia: The Acrostic of Paradiso 19," Stanford Italian Review 7 (1987): 47-65; since the acrostic of Purg. 12 "edges dangerously close to Lucifer's presumption," it "requires revision" (55), which Dante provides in the acrostic of Par. 19 (for the manner in which the second acrostic is alleged to correct the first, see chapter 6, note 17).

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 24
See Dalla menzogna al silenzio, 79; the two poles of Carugati's reading, "mensonge" versus "Silence," are derived from Michel De Certeau's study of the mystical enterprise as a linguistic enterprise, La fable mystique (Paris: Gallimard, 1982).

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 25
"The Fate of Writing: The Punishment of Thieves in the Inferno," Dante Studies 102 (1984): 51-60; quotation, 55.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 26
"The Imageless Vision and Dante's Paradiso," Dante Studies 90 (1972): 7791; quotation, 81.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 27
Dante and Difference: Writing in the "Commedian (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 125.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 28
Of this apostrophe, Anna M. Chiavacci Leonardi writes that "tutto il testo e costruito sulle parole stesse pronunciate da Ulisse nell'lnferno" (La guerra de la pietate [Naples: Liguori, 1979], 171). For Lucia Battaglia Ricci, the Ulyssean passages cited here indicate that "non e l'eroe Dante a essere l'antagonista di Ulisse, ma il Dante narratore" (Dante e la tradizione letteraria medievale [Pisa: Giardini, 1983], 173). Our positions differ however, since Battaglia Ricci couples Ulysses/Dante-narrator in order to set up the same reversal usually operated with respect to Ulysses/ Dante-pilgrim: the Ulyssean imagery used by the poet in the Paradiso indicates how confident and secure a guide he is to his readers, how unlike Ulysses to his crew, and how sure of a positive outcome to his voyage. The Ulyssean elements of the address of Par. 2 are treated also by Gino Rizzo, "Dante's Ulysses," Arts: The Journal of the Sydney University Arts Association 12 (1984): 7-21, and Carugati, Dalla menzogna al silenzio, 99-103.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 29
It is difficult, in the context of so explicit a statement of poetic originality, not to see a double meaning in the locution "nove Muse."

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 30
Robert Hollander gathers together all these passages under the rubric of "Dante's Voyage," chapter 5 of Allegory in Dante's "Commedia" (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1969). For him, however, the Neptune analogy contains the following figural identities: "The Pilgrim is Jason, on the way to getting the Fleece; the Poet is Neptune, watching him do 50" (230-31) . And yet Jason is identified with the poet in Par. 2, since it is the poet who will create in us the wonder elicited by Jason from his crew, and there is no doubt that Neptune's wonder serves as a figure for the wonder of the pilgrim in the face of "La forma universal di questo nodo" (Par.33.91). By the same token, Glaucus serves as a model for the pilgrim, not the poet, in Par. 1: "tal dentro mi fei, / qual si fe Glauco nel gustar de l'erba / che 'I fe consorto in mar de li altri dei" [67-69]). Apropos Glaucus, we might note that his "gustar de l'erba" is a variant of Adam's "gustar del legno," indicating once again how fine is the line between transgression and transformation.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 31
On the "words that tie Ulysses' experience to Dante's in the first canto of the poem," see Hollander, Allegory in Dante's "Commedia," 120.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 32
Whether registered negatively, as a fear, or positively, as an aspiration, a comparison indicates a likeness, with the result that Inf. 2.32 constitutes a classic example of the content signifying in one way while the form signifies in another.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 33
One reader who states this view very clearly is Jorge Luis Borges, in the essay on the Commedia contained in Seven Nights, trans. Eliot Weinberger (New York: New Directions, 1984): "To what do we owe the tragic weight of this episode? I think there is an explanation, the only valid one, and that is that Dante felt, in some way, that he was Ulysses. I don't know if he felt it in a conscious way‹it doesn't matter. In some tercet of the Commedia he says that no one is permitted to know the judgments of Providence. We cannot anticipate them; no one can know who will be saved and who condemned. But Dante has dared, through poetry, to do precisely that. He shows us the condemned and the chosen. He must have known that doing so courted danger. He could not ignore that he was anticipating the indecipherable providence of God. For this reason the character of Ulysses has such force, because Ulysses is a mirror of Dante, because Dante felt that perhaps he too deserved this punishment. Writing the poem, whether for good or ill, he was infringing on the mysterious laws of the night, of God, of Divinity" (24).

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 34
For a reading of the canto in this key, see my "True and False See-ers in Inferno SX^" Lectura Dantis: A Forum for Dante Research and Interpretation 4 (1989): 42-54. Apropos the connection between Ulysses and the diviners,Alessandro Chiappelli demonstrates the collocation fallacy in his denial of any such link: "E se invece fosse colpa quel suo voler veder troppo, come di lui disse il Petrarca, ei forse starebbe invece fra i miseri che fan petto delle spalle" ("L:Odissea dantesca," in Pagine di critica letteraria [Florence: Le Monnier; 1911], 314).

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 35
In seeking to achieve God's perspective, from which there is nothing new to see because everything has been foreseen, the diviners are the opposite of Neptune who sees not no new things but plenty of them: "Tra l'isola di Cipri e di Maiolica / non vide mai si gran fallo Nettuno, / non da pirate, non da gente argolica" (Inf. 28.8244). Note the phrasing "non vide mai," which anticipates "mai non vide" in Purg. 10.94.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 36
In light of Rocco Montano's suggestion that Ulysses' quest for knowledge degenerates into vana curiositas ("I modi della narrazione di Dante," Convivium 26 11958]: 546-67), it is worth noting that St. Thomas, in his critique of curiosity as a vice that derives from the "inordinateness of the appetite and effort to find out," includes those who seek "to foretell the future by recourse to demons" (ST 2a2ae.167.1; trans. and ed. Thomas Gilby, Blackfriars 1972, 44:203). Cato is contrasted to Ulysses by Scott in part for his refusal to ask an oracle for a message and thus go beyond the limits set for human knowledge. On Ulysses and the sin of curiosity, see also Albert E. Wingell, "The Forested Mountaintop in Augustine and Dante," Dante Studies 99 (1981): 9-48.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 37
See Michael Riffaterre, Fictional Truth (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), 21 and 30, where the author also notes that "signs of fictionality in a text are not veiled or blunted or compensated for by corrective verisimilitude that suspends disbelief; rather, it is these very signs that point to a truth invulnerable to the deficiencies of mimesis or to the reader's resistance to it" (33). Riffaterre's list of "signs pointing to the fictionality of fiction" include many used by Dante: "authors' intrusions; narrators' intrusions; multiple narrators; humorous narrative that acts as a representation of the author or of a narrator or that suggests an outsider's viewpoint without fully intruding; metalanguage glossing narrative language; generic markers in the titles and subtitles, in prefaces, and in postfaces; emblematic names for characters and places; incompatibilities between narrative voice and viewpoint and characters' voices and viewpoints; incompatibilities between viewpoint and verisimilitude, especially omniscient narrative; signs modifying the narrative's pace and altering the sequence of events (backtracking and anticipation, significant gaps, prolepsis, and analepsis); mimetic excesses, such as unlikely recordings of unimportant speech or thought (unimportant but suggestive of actual happenings, of a live presence, creating atmosphere or characterizing persons); and, finally, diegetic overkill, such as the representation of ostensibly insignificant details, the very insignificance of which is significant in a story as a feature of realism" (29-30).

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 38
For a full-fledged exposition of the analysis regarding Dante's use of comedia, tragedia, and teodia that informs this paragraph, see the last chapter of Teodolinda Barolini, Dante's Poets: Textuality and Truth in the "Comedy" (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984).

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 39
The paradigm that emerges from the Eclogues is of particular significance because these works belong to the last years of Dante's life, 1320-1321, and, in the case of the second eclogue, perhaps to his last months (see Cecchini's introduction to his edition, 64>49). One could see these texts as proposing a final succinct statement of Dantesque poetics, in which we move from the first eclogues's defense of comica verba (2.52) to the second's suggestion that the province of such verba is mira vera.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 40
It is significant that both these passages constitute addresses to the reader moments of exposed narrativity, as discussed in chapter 1.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 41
"Dante Theologus-Poeta,n 1976, rpt. in Studies in Dante (Ravenna: Longo, 1980), 76.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 42
"Gerione non rappresenta soltanto la frode come categoria morale, ma anche come categoria estetica: egli e anche la personificazione della menzogna poetica" ("Comedia,n 1971; rpt. in II poema del desiderio [Milan: Leonardo, 1990], 99). Ferrucci reads Geryon as Dante's indication to us that his poem is merely metaphorical, made of lies; he is seconded by Carugati, Dalla menzogna al silenzio, 68-70. In Dante's Poets, 214 and passim, I disagree with Ferrucci's position, taking Geryon rather as Dante's paradoxical confirmation that the comedia, even when it appears to be lying, always tells truth. A similar position is that of Zygmunt G. Baranski, who claims that Dante makes explicit his poem's sharing in the allegory of theologians "by associating his 'comedy' with Geryon, who, as a divinely created mirabile‹ and hence like the Bible and the universe in general‹was an allegoria in factis and not simply in verbis" ("The 'Marvellous' and the 'Comic': Toward a Reading of Infemo XVI," Lectura Dantis: A Forum for Dante Research and Interpretation 7 [1990]: 7295; quotation, 87).

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 43
The last interpretation is that of Antonio Lanza, who provides a resume of critical reactions in "L'allegoria della corda nel canto XV1 dell'lnferno," Rassegna della letteratura italiana 84 (1980): 97-100.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 44
Semantica di Gerione: 11 motivo del viaggio nella "Commedia" di Dante (Rome: Bulzoni, 1984). Franco Masciandaro also stresses the relation between the Geryon episode and the first canto in "Appunti sulla corda di Gerione e la cinturaserpente della dialettica," Revue des etudes italiennes 25 (1979): 259-72; for him the cord represents the excessively confident intellectualism associated with the Convivio.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 45
The traditional interpretation is supported by Mario Marti: "Ebbene, diro subito che fra la compatta interpretazione degli antichi , che videro nella corda aggroppata e ravvolta il simbolo della frode, e le numerosissime spiegazioni dei moderni esegeti, che vi colsero o la buona fede, o la continenza, o la castita (e in questo caso s'identificherebbe col cordiglio francescano), o l'umilta, o la contrizione, o la mortificazione della came, o la legge e l'osservanza della legge, o la temperanza, o la dirittura della coscienza morale, o altro ancora, io sto con gli antichi" ("Tematica e dimensione verticale del XVI dell'lnferno," 1968; rpt. in Studi su Dante [Galatina: Congedo, 1984], 74).

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 46
On the Geryon similes, see Richard H. Lansing, From Image to Idea: A Study of the Simile in Dante's "Commedia" (Ravenna: Longo, 1977), 124-27. Uberto Limentani notes that Inf. 17 contains more similes (15) than any other canto in the poem and suggests that the "constant and exceptionally frequent use of comparisons serves to make Geryon and the circumstances of his extraordinary appearance more credible" (Dante's "Comedy" [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985], 49). Marino Barchiesi comments that canto 17 "e il piu ricco di comparazioni, brevi e lunghe, adunate intorno alla presenza simulatrice di Gerione" ("Arte del prologo e arte della transizione," Studi danteschi 44 [1967]: 147).

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 47
The description of the suicides' souls as bound "in questi nocchi" (Inf. 13.89) is anticipated by the branches of their wood, "non rami schietti, ma nodosi e 'nvolti" (13.5) .

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 48
This emphasis is certainly related to "la lonza a la pelle dipinta" (Inf. 16.108) "che di pel macolato era coverta" (Inf. 1.33).

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 49
Speaking of the book of his life in Par. 17, according to the conflation between life and text that is a hallmark of his poetics from the time of the Vita Nuova, Dante writes of Cacciaguida that "si mostro spedita / l'anima santa di metter la trama / in quella tela ch'io le porsi ordita" (100-102).

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 50
Mercuri sees Phaeton and Icarus as allusions to Ulysses (Semantica di Gerione, 85); he connects these two figures to Arachne, writing "Dante e esempio di umilta antitetico agli 'exempla' di superbia incarnati da Icaro, Fetonte, Aracne e Gerione" (153). On the pilgrim as a "corrected" Phaeton, see Kevin Brownlee, "Phaeton's Fall and Dante's Ascent," Dante Studies 102 (1984): 135"4.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 51
The third use of navicella occurs in the tableaux of the earthly paradise, where it refers to the chariot that represents the church: "O navicella mia, com' mal se' carca!" (Purg. 32.129). In these three usages Dante seems to give us instances of three fundamental voyages: the voyage of the individual life in the first, the voyage of the text in the second, and the voyage of providential history in the third.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 52
A similar pun occurs in a similarly metapoetic canto, to be discussed shortly, Inf. 8: when the pilgrim refers to Vergil as "O caro duca mio, che piu di sette / volte m'hai sicurta renduta e tratto / d'alto periglio che 'ncontra mi stette" (97-99), we are reminded that Vergil has escorted his charge through seven previous cantos.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 53
Dante equates himself to Paul in Par. 1 and to the disciples in Purg. 32; he also draws an analogy between his own visionary experience and that of St. John, to be discussed in chapter 7. Guido da Pisa writes as follows: "Unde ait nos admonens quod illi vero, quod habet faciem mendacii, debemus claudere labia quousque possumus, idest tantum tacere debemus quousque necessitas postulabit. Et ideo beatus Paulus Apostolus, licet raptus fuerit usque ad tertium celum, tamen quia illud verum faciem falsi poterat in auribus audientium generare, ideo illud annis xiiii occultavit. Et Christus mandavit illis tribus apostolis qui suam transfigurationem viderant, quod nemini dicerent visionem quousque ipse fuisset a mortuis suscitatus. Nam si ante suam resurrectionem illam visionem dixissent, audientes nullatenus credidissent. Sed probata et manifestata resurrectione, illud tale verum iam non habuerit faciem falsi, sed veri" (Expositiones et glose super "Comediam" Dantis, ed. Vincenzo Cioffari [Albany: State University of New York Press, 1974], 306).

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 54
On Geryon and the falcon imagery of the Purgatorio, see Mercuri, Semantica di Gerione, 163-64.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 55
Although critics like Mercuri and Masciandaro have made much of the relation between Inf. 16 and Inf. 1, less attention has been paid to the importance of Inf. 8 in this progression of new beginnings. Amilcare A. Iannucci discusses Christ's descent into hell as typological model for both Inf. 2 and 9: "Queste intrusioni divine risolvono il pauroso dilemma del pellegrino e fanno si che il viaggio prima possa iniziare e poi possa continuare" ("Dottrina e allegoria in Infemo Vlll, 67-lX, 105," Dante e le forme dell'allegoresi, ed. Michelangelo Picone [Ravenna: Longo, 1987], 122).

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 56
Both words occur for the first time in canto 3 vis-a-vis Charon, and for the second time in canto 8 vis-a-vis Phlegyas. The third use of nocchiero refers to the angel in Purg. 2.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 57
This represents the first appearance of barca, whose last appearance is in the -' Ulyssean passage of Par. 23; Phlegyas's "barca" is also called "legno," like the ship in k the address of Par. 2.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 58
In demonstrating that "Dante's aeronautical imagination proves every bit as > lively and exact as Leonardo's," Glauco Cambon compares Geryon's movement to that of the angelo nocchiero (Dante's Craft [Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1969], 86). Mercuri notes that "Gerione puo essere considerato l'antitesi t dell'angelo nocchiero" (Semantica di Gerione, 22). Shankland makes the comparison to Ulysses, pointing out that "the wing navigation of this 'celestial nocchiero' can be i. read as a serene enactment of the extravagant rhetorical phrase which the foolhardy p human captain had used to describe the eager start of his adventure" ("Dante Aliger 0 and Ulysses," 30).

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 59
The correre of the purgatorial ship-text ("Per correr miglior acque alza le vele . / omai la navicella del mio ingegno") echoes the correre of Phlegyas's boat in Inf. 8.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 60
Mark Musa stresses the suspense generated by the last line of canto 7 and the interruption created by the flashback in canto 8; whereas the flashback is normally interpreted as extending through verse 12 of canto 8, i.e., until the arrival of Phlegyas, Musa argues (unconvincingly, in my opinion) for its extension through 8.81 (see "At the Gates of Dis," in Advent at the Gates [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1974], 65-84). Aldo Vallone outlines the history of the biographical explanation of the flashback in "A proposito di Inf. VIII, 'lo dico, seguitando,'" Dal Medioevo al Petrarca: Miscellanea di studi in onore di Vittore Branca (Florence: Olschki, 1983), 285-87.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 61
The use of gia is important; it signifies forward motion, the antithesis of hell. The gia at the end of canto 8 looks forward to the emphatic adverb that greets the angel's arrival in canto 9: "E gia venia su per le torbide onde / un fracasso d'un suon" (9.64-65). The poet uses gia to manipulate narrative time, most tellingly in the final verses of the poem, where its use in "ma gia volgeva il mio disio e '1 velle" helps create the illusion of all time conflated into an eternal present. Edoardo Sanguineti refers to Dante's gia as a "'iam'' narrativo," and notes its frequent use in canto openings (Interpretazione di Malebolge [Florence: Olschki, 1961], 72n and 257).

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 62
G. A. Borgese writes of the Filippo Argenti episode that "structurally, Dante proves able for the first time to handle three persons at once: Argenti, Virgil, and himself" ("The Wrath of Dante," Speculum 13 [1938]: 184). Pride‹with its Ulyssean connotations‹is present not only through the devils, but also through the figure of Argenti, whose anger stems from his pride; see Forti, "11 magnate non magnanimo: la praesumptio,n in Magnanimitade, 137-60.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 63
"Sol si ritorni per la folle strada" also echoes "io sol uno" in Inf. 2.3, the pilgrim's fear leads him to renounce his journey in canto 2 and again in canto 8: "ritroviam l'orme nostre insieme ratto" (8.102).

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 64
I do not agree with Kirkpatrick, Dante's "Inferno": Difficulty and Dead Poetry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), that the poet is ashamed of the "dead poetry of hell; rather, being able to emulate God's scritta morta is a source of pride. Being aware of the dangers of such pride does not mean that it is not genuine, as we shall see in chapter 6.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 65
The semiotic nature of these signals is stressed by the questions the pilgrim addresses to his guide: "Questo che dice? e che risponde / quell'altro foco? e chi son quei che '1 fenno?" (Inf. 8.8-9).

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 66
Giorgio Barberi Squarotti describes the angel as a source of impetuous movement able to break "l'incanto infernale e demoniaco, che ha congelato cosi a lungo il movimento"; see "L:interruzione del viaggio," L'artificio deII'eternita (Verona: Fiorini, 1972), 225.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 67
Vergil's word seems to have lost ground since canto 2, where it was not "parola tronca" but "parola ornata." Although Vergil's cautionary verses ("Volgiti 'n dietro e tien lo viso chiuso; / che se '1 Gorgon si mostra e tu '1 vedessi, / nulla sarebbe di tornar mai suso" [9.55-57] ) demonstrate his susceptibility to the pagan Furies, it is possible that his advice‹although given for the wrong reasons‹is not wrong per se. There are occasions in hell when backward motion is necessary, when the wrong turn becomes the right turn. The principle is best dramatized by the use of hell's denizens‹ Geryon, Antaeus, and Lucifer‹as vehicles in the pilgrim's progress; in fact, the entire journey through hell is itself an example of backward motion becoming forward motion, the wrong way becoming the right way. In hell, a perverse place, the apparently "perverse order" of backward motion, of "andare indietro e non innanzi" ( "Ciascuna cosa che da perverso ordine procede e laboriosa , e per consequente e amara e non dolce, si come dormire lo die e vegghiare la notte, e andare indietro e non innanzi" [Conv. 1.7.4] ), may be the most appropriate. It is interesting that both of the Inferno's significant deviations from the pilgrim's usual infernal progress to the left, instances of right rather than left turns, should occur in transitional cantos, cantos 9 and 17: perhaps these "wrong" turns to the right are connected to the need to go backward in order to spiral forward.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 68
Barchiesi considers the art of transition in Western literature and the narrative technique of ordo artificiosus in "Arte del prologo e arte della transizione," 156-77. Battaglia Ricci characterizes the Commedia's narrative structure as a contamination of medieval parataxis (ordo naturalis) with epic hypotaxis (ordo artificiosus) in Dante e la tradizione letteraria medievale ( 156-57) . E. H. Wilkins notes the interruptions of cantos 8 and 17 in "Cantos, Regions, and Transitions in the Divine Comedy" (The Invention of the Sonnet and Other Studies in Italian Literature [Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1959], 105).

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 69
Paolo Cherchi notes that Inf. 17 "follows a mortise technique"; see "Geryon's Canto," Lectura Dantis: A Forum for Dante Research and Interpretation 2 (1988): 31 44; quotation, 34.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 70
Again, the adjective solo in canto 17 echoes canto 8 ("Sol si ritorni") and canto 2 ("io sol uno"); the pilgrim is excluded from Vergil's colloquy with Geryon as he was by his guide's negotiations with the devils.

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 71
Marti asks why the symbol of fraud should be treated before the pilgrim has finished exploring the circle of violence, pointing out that the encounter with the usurers and the arrival of Geryon are narrative units that could be substituted for each other without affecting the lengths of their respective cantos. He concludes that Dante wishes to preserve the Florentines of canto 16 from the degredation that makes the usurers quasi participants in the "bassa vita delle incipienti Malebolge" ("Tematica e dimensione verticale del XVI dell'lnferno," 77).

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 72
Canto 16's transitional concerns resonate in the particularly forwardlooking justification of his journey offered by the pilgrim in verses 61-63 ("Lascio lo fele e vo per dolci pomi / promessi a me per lo verace duca- / ma 'nfino al centro pria convien ch'i'' torni") and in the sodomites' equally farsighted captatio benevolentiae, with its anticipation of Inferno's last verse and reference to a future when the pilgrim will look back on this present as the past: "Pero, se campi d'esti luoghi bui / c torni a riveder le belle stelle, / quando ti giovera dicere '1' fui,' / fa che di noi a la gente favelle" (82-85).

The Undivine Comedy, ch. 03: 73
The pilgrim's backward motion from the usurers to Geryon is emphasized "torna'mi in dietro da l'anime lasse" (17.78). Geryon responds to Vergil's instructions to move out and down in a spiral configuration ("moviti omai: / le rote larghe e lo scender sia poco" [97-98] ) by backing up from his berth: "Come la navicella esce di loco / in dietro in dietro" (10> 101).