INFERNO, Episode 120. Virgil And His Fraudulent Poem The Aeneid: Inferno, Canto XX, Lines 52 - 99
Virgil--and/or Dante, our poet--has already rewritten Ovid, Statius, and Lucan's poems. Now in a bit of insane daring, Virgil takes on this own poem, THE AENEID. He retells the story of the founding of Mantua, rewriting the version he tells in his own poem inside of Dante's poem, and then daring us then to call his own poem fraudulent.
This passage may be one of the most striking smacks against Virgil in COMEDY. But maybe it has to be so. Maybe writers have to decide that the texts of other writers are up for grabs. Maybe it's the only way you can write into the predictive space of storytelling and find your own voice to diagnose the human condition.
Here are the segments of this episode of the podcast WALKING WITH DANTE:
[01:13] My English translation of the passage: INFERNO, Canto XX, lines 52 - 99. If you'd like to read along, just scroll down this page.
[05:03] An overall impression of the passage: We've left hell and entered open, airy, beautiful, green space in the real world.
[07:23] Virgil tells the story of the founding of his hometown, Mantua. Except it's not the same story he tells in THE AENEID. Here are some of the differences.
[11:58] What's going on here? One interpretive possibility is that Dante the poet is trying to save Virgil, who was often seen a magician or a practitioner of the dark arts in medieval folklore.
[13:30] Another interpretive possibility is that Dante the poet is smacking his master, Virgil, by forcing him to call THE AENEID fraudulent.
[15:11] Maybe there's a third understanding of this passage: every writer has to figure out how to use the texts of the past and of his contemporaries to write what she or he wants to say about the human condition.
[18:43] The emotional center of the passage: "beautiful Italy." Maybe there's a hope here expressed for a peaceful and even united Italy.
[22:11] Which way are these sinners walking? Don't answer too quickly. It's more difficult a question than you might think.
[25:51] There's a contemporary moment in the passage, a reference to the Guelph and Ghibelline struggles in Mantua. If "beautiful Italy" is the hope, the peninsula is still a bloodbath.
Here’s my English translation of Inferno, Canto XX, Lines 52 – 99
And that woman who covers her breasts,
With her unkempt hair so that you can’t see them,
And whose hairy bits then look as if they’re on the wrong side—
She was Manto, who searched many a land
Before she finally made a home in the place I was born.
I hope it pleases you to hear me out a bit on this subject.
After her father had exited this life
And Bacchus’ city had been reduced to servitude,
She wandered around the world for a long time.
Way up there in beautiful Italy there’s a lake
At the foot of those Alps that border Germany
On up above the Tyrol. That lake is called Benaco [Lago di Garda].
I believe a thousand springs, maybe more, bathe
Those parts up there between Garda, Val Camonico,
And Pennino—and all that water eventually pools in the lake.
In the middle of it there’s an island
If the bishops of Trest, Brescia, and Verona ever went there,
They might give their blessings.
Peschiera is situated there—it’s a beautiful and strong armory
Made to hold back the Brecians and the Bergamese.
It sits down at the lowest point on the shoreline.
All the water that Benaco [Lago di Garda] cannot contain
In its bosom cascades down and flows out
To become a river that courses through green pastures.
At the point where the river leaves it source,
Not far from Benaco [Lago di Garda], it’s called Mincio
All the way down to Governol, where it joins the Po.
It doesn’t have long to go before it joins the lowlands
Where it fans out into a marsh in the flatlands
And where it becomes a bit fetid in the summer.
When the cruel virgin passed that way,
She saw the land in the middle of the fens,
All devoid of inhabitants or agriculture works.
There, to avoid any contact with men,
She stopped with her servants, practiced her arts,
Lived out her life, and died an empty corpse.
After all that, the people around that place
Settled in that very spot, a stronghold
Because of the swamp that encircled it.
They construted a city over her dead bones
And called it Mantua, without any further augury,
Only because she had first chosen the spot.
There were more people there once than now,
Before the idiot Casalodi
Felt the force of Pinamonte’s treachery.
So take care: If you should ever
Hear another account of the origins of my city,
Don’t let those tales turn the truth into a fraud.”