Inferno: Canto XVII

Longfellow, 1867 · <a href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Divine_Comedy_(Longfellow_1867)/Volume_1/Notes">source</a>

1. Stanza 1, line 1 In this Canto is described the punishment of Usurers, as sinners against Nature and Art. See Inf. XI. 109:—
   
   "And since the usurer takes another way,
   
   Nature herself and in her follower
   
   Disdains he, for elsewhere he puts his hope."
   
   The monster Geryon, here used as the symbol of Fraud, was born of Chrysaor and Callirrhoe, and is generally represented by the poets as having three bodies and three heads. He was in ancient times King of Hesperia or Spain, living on Erytheia, the Red Island of sunset, and was slain by Hercules, who drove away his beautiful oxen. The nimble fancy of Hawthorne thus depicts him in his Wonder-Book, p. 148:—
   
   "But was it really and truly an old man? Certainly at first sight it looked very like one; but on closer inspection, it rather seemed to be some kind of a creature that lived in the sea. For on his legs and arms there were scales, such as fishes have; he was web-footed and web-fingered, after the fashion of a duck; and his long beard, being of a greenish tinge, had more the appearance of a tuft of sea-weed than of an ordinary beard. Have you never seen a stick of timber, that has been long tossed about by the waves, and has got all overgrown with barnacles, and at last, drifting ashore, seems to have been thrown up from the very deepest bottom of the sea? Well, the old man would have put you in mind of just such a wave-tost spar."
   
   The three bodies and three heads, which old poetic fable has given to the monster Geryon, are interpreted by modern prose as meaning the three Balearic Islands, Majorca, Minorca, and Ivica, over which he reigned.
2. Stanza 4, line 10 Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, XIV. 87, Rose's Tr., thus depicts Fraud:—
   
   "With pleasing mien, grave walk, and decent vest, Fraud rolled her eyeballs humbly in her head; And such benign and modest speech possest, She might a Gabriel seem who Ave said. Foul was she and deformed in all the rest; But with a mantle, long and widely spread, Concealed her hideous parts; and evermore Beneath the stole a poisoned dagger wore."
   
   The Gabriel saying Ave is from Dante, Purgatory, X. 40:—
   
   "One would have sworn that he was saying Ave."
3. Stanza 6, line 17 Tartars nor Turks, "who are most perfect masters therein," says Boccaccio, "as we can clearly see in Tartarian cloths, which truly are so skilfully woven, that no painter with his brush could equal, much less surpass them. The Tartars are . . . ." And with this unfinished sentence close the Lectures upon Dante, begun by Giovanni Boccaccio on Sunday, August 9, 1373, in the church of San Stefano, in Florence. That there were some critics among his audience is apparent from this sonnet, which he addressed "to one who had censured his public Exposition of Dante." See D. G. Rosetti, Early Italian Poets, p. 447:—
   
   "If Dante mourns, there wheresoe'er he be, That such high fancies of a soul so proud Should be laid open to the vulgar crowd, (As, touching my Discourse, I'm told by thee,) This were my grievous pain; and certainly My proper blame should not be disavowed; Though hereof somewhat, I declare aloud, Were due to others, not alone to me. False hopes, true poverty, and therewithal The blinded judgment of a host of friends, And their enteaties, made that I did thus. But of all this there is no gain at all Unto the thankless souls with whose base ends Nothing agrees that's great or generous."
4. Stanza 6, line 18 Ovid, Metamorph. VI.:—
   
   "One at the loom so excellently skilled That to the Goddess she refused to yield."
5. Stanza 19, line 57 Their love of gold still haunting them in the other world.
6. Stanza 20, line 59 The arms of the Gianfigliacci of Florence.
7. Stanza 21, line 63 The arms of the Ubbriachi of Florence.
8. Stanza 22, line 64 The Scrovigni of Padua.
9. Stanza 23, line 68 Vitaliano del Dente of Padua.
10. Stanza 25, line 73 Giovanni Bujamonte, who seems to have had the ill-repute of being the greatest usurer of his day, called here in irony the "sovereign cavalier."
11. Stanza 25, line 74 As the ass-driver did in the streets of Florence, when Dante beat him for singing his verses amiss. See Sacchetti, Nov. CXV.
12. Stanza 26, line 78 Dante makes as short work with these usurers, as if he had been a curious traveller walking through the Ghetto of Rome, or the Judengasse of Frankfort.
13. Stanza 36, line 107 Ovid, Metamorph. II., Addison's Tr.:—
    
    "Half dead with sudden fear he dropt the reins; The horses felt 'em loose upon their manes, And, flying out through all the plains above, Ran uncontrolled where'er their fury drove; Rushed on the stars, and through a pathless way Of unknown regions hurried on-the day. And now above, and now below they flew, And near the earth the burning chariot drew. ····· At once from life and from the chariot driv'n, Th' ambitious boy fell thunder-struck from heav'n. The horses started with a sudden bound, And flung the reins and chariot to the ground: The studded harness from their necks they broke, Here fell a wheel, and here a silver spoke, Here were the beam and axle torn away; And, scatter'd o'er the earth, the shining fragments lay. The breathless Phaeton, with flaming hair, Shot from the chariot, like a falling star, That in a summer's ev'ning from the top Of heav'n drops down, or seems at least to drop; Till on the Po his blasted corpse was hurled, Far from his country, in the Western World."
14. Stanza 36, line 108 The Milky Way. In Spanish El camino de Santiago; in the Northern Mythology the pathway of the ghosts going to Valhalla.
15. Stanza 37, line 109 Ovid, Metamorph. VIII., Croxall's Tr.:—
    
    "The soft'ning wax, that felt a nearer sun, Dissolv'd apace, and soon began to run. The youth in vain his melting pinions shakes, His feathers gone, no longer air he takes. O father, father, as he strove to cry, Down to the sea he tumbled from on high, And found his fate; yet still subsists by fame, Among those waters that retain his name. The father, now no more a father, cries, Ho, Icarus! where are you? as he flies: Where shall I seek my boy? he cries again, And saw his feathers scattered on the main."
16. Stanza 46, line 136 Lucan, Pharsal. I.:—
    
    "To him the Balearic sling is slow, And the shaft loiters from the Parthian bow."