Lextura Dantis :: The Divine Comedy

Dante varies his presentation greatly throughout Malebolge. Each bolgia has its own particular atmosphere, and the abrupt tonal and morphologic 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, sear get upg outstanding 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 in the beginning bolgia begs for psychological readings the latter frustrates them. The expressions of these cantos present a similar incongruity. Ulysses and Guido are presumption ample opportunity for leisurely expansion, and their stories have a smooth evolution and denouement. Each is the absolute star of his canto, and Da nte records both their coming and going with worshipful 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 Dantes desire to present the contrapasso in as many ship canal 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, Curios tongue hacked out, Moscas ordnance lopped off, and Bertran de Born neatly decapitated __ a near Baroque transition on a single theme. One horror follows on the heels of another, and all(prenominal) permutation replaces the memory of the earlier 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 sixer compact episodes, four of wh ich are fundamentally identical __ even clean 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 scioltedicer del sangue e de le piaghe a pienochi ora vidi, per narrar pi volte? Ogne lingua per certo verria menoper lo nostro sermone e per la mente