Inferno · Canto IX ·
Inferno IX — The Furies on the Wall
Reading Divine Comedy · canto 9 of 100 · Inferno, Canto IX
Before reading
This is the second half of the crisis at the walls of Dis. Canto VIII left the pilgrim and Virgil stranded outside the city, the gates slammed in Virgil's face, the one by whose means the city shall be opened announced but not yet arrived. This canto is the arrival. It is also the most explicitly signposted canto in the Inferno — the only one in which the narrator interrupts to tell the reader, in so many words, that there is doctrine hidden under the verse.
Where the canto sits
Cantos VIII and IX are a single dramatic unit. Together they mark the structural division of Hell into upper (incontinence) and lower (malice). The canto is on the threshold and the doctrine of the threshold is the doctrine of the canto. The lower Hell that begins inside the walls is no longer punishing what the soul could not control. It is punishing what the soul built — heresies, violences, frauds, treacheries. The opening of the walls of Dis is the moment the Commedia announces this change.
What it helps to know
The figures who appear on the wall above the gate are the three Furies — Megaera, Alecto, and Tisiphone — the avenging deities of Greek tragedy, with the limbs of women and serpents for hair. They are the active threat. The threat behind them is Medusa, the Gorgon whose gaze turned the looker to stone. Medusa never quite appears in the canto. She is summoned, she is promised, and Virgil shields the pilgrim's eyes before she can come. The reader is being told something specific by the obstruction: the deepest threat at the boundary of lower Hell is the threat that the seer be petrified. Read Medusa allegorically — most readers since Boccaccio have — as the temptation to be paralysed by what Hell is. The pilgrim who looks too long at the deepest evil becomes stone, and stone cannot finish the journey.
The figure who eventually arrives is unnamed in the canto. Commentators have called him the Heavenly Messenger, messo da ciel, since the fourteenth century. He walks across the Styx without wetting his feet, parts the foul air with his left hand alone, opens the gate with a small rod, scolds the fallen angels for kicking against the divine will, and departs without speaking to either pilgrim or guide. He is not addressed. He does not pause. His face is not described except by a single gesture of disgust at the place he has entered. Read the figure as a category: an angel sent down from above without explanation, whose work is to enforce a decree that does not need defending. The medieval allegorical tradition has read him as the angel Gabriel, as Mercury (Christian-Hermetic), as a personification of grace, or as the philosophical reason that defeats heresy. The text does not choose.
The opening lines refer to Erichtho, a Thessalian witch from Lucan's Pharsalia who is said to have summoned Virgil's own shade back from Limbo, in the early years of his stay there, to bring a message to one of the deeper circles. The detail is Dante's invention — Lucan does not say that the shade summoned was Virgil — and the function is exact: it explains how Virgil knows the geography of lower Hell, and it gives him a personal vulnerability to Hell's older powers.
What to read for
Listen for the most unusual line in the Inferno. It is one tercet long; the narrator stops the action and tells the reader, directly, O ye who have intellect, mark doctrine that under the strange verses now lies hid. Few cantos receive this instruction; this is the most prominent example. When Dante says mark doctrine, he means that the surface scene contains a teaching the reader is required to extract. He is not usually so direct.
Notice the blindfolding. Virgil turns the pilgrim around, has him close his eyes, and — trusted not unto my hands so far as not to blind me with his own — places his own hands over Dante's eyes. The gesture is one of the most tender in the Inferno; it is also doctrinally precise. There is a sight in Hell against which even the seer must be defended.
When the messenger finally walks across the Styx, watch the canto's careful work to not show his face. Compare it with the way Dante usually describes a celestial figure.
From here on: illustrations and analysis. The three images below are scenes from the canto, and after them comes the close reading — famous lines quoted in full, paradoxes explained, political and theological freight unpacked. If you have not yet read the canto, stop here — read it, then come back.
After reading
What the canto did
The canto resolves the crisis at the walls of Dis by introducing a power that needs no negotiation. Virgil is afraid; the Furies appear on the parapet and threaten to summon Medusa; Virgil blindfolds the pilgrim with his own hands; the Heavenly Messenger walks across the Styx, parts the foul air with his left hand alone, opens the gate with a small rod, scolds the demons for resisting a will from which the end can never be cut off, and departs. The two poets enter. They find a cemetery of open sarcophagi flickering with fire — the heretics in their tombs — and the canto closes with the geography of lower Hell now visible. The architectural pattern that has held since canto III has changed: from now on each major division of Hell will be marked by a physical boundary that has to be crossed by something other than Virgil's word.
The canto contains the Inferno's most explicit invitation to allegorical reading — the famous tercet beginning O ye who have intellect — and it asks that invitation in the middle of the action, exactly when the pilgrim is being blindfolded. The placement is the point. The poem is saying: at the moment of greatest visible danger, the most important danger is the one you are being prevented from seeing.
Why Virgil falters
The crisis is in Virgil before it is on the wall. The canto opens with the colour of Dante's cowardice and Virgil's matching colour — that hue which cowardice brought out on me, beholding my Conductor backward turn, sooner repressed within him his new colour. Virgil is mastering his face. His speech is broken by aposiopesis: Still it behoveth us to win the fight, began he; else… Such offered us herself… O how I long that some one here arrive. He cannot finish the sentence. The trailing else… is the syntactic image of the unspoken alternative — they could turn back, they could be defeated. Virgil then tries to reassure the pilgrim by recalling the only previous time he descended this far: true is it, once before I here below was conjured by that pitiless Erictho. The detail is Dante's own invention; Lucan's Pharsalia names no such errand for Virgil's shade. But it does necessary work for the poem — it explains Virgil's geographical knowledge of lower Hell, and it reminds the reader that the guide has a personal history with the dark powers that may be exerting itself here.
The Furies, Medusa, and the address to the reader
The Furies appear with the greenest hydras begirt. They are the visible threat. The invisible threat is the one they call for: Medusa come, so we to stone will change him. The Gorgon never arrives. Virgil turns the pilgrim around and places his own hands over Dante's eyes — trusted not unto my hands so far as not to blind me with his own. The double layer (Dante's hands plus Virgil's hands) is the canto's most precise small image of the kind of defence the moment requires.
Then the narrator stops the action:
O ye who have intellect, mark doctrine that under the strange verses now lies hid.
Few addresses to the reader in the Commedia are this direct. Mirate la dottrina che s'asconde sotto 'l velame de li versi strani. What is the doctrine? Most commentators have read the Furies as the three subordinate temptations to despair, lust, and pride — or as the three passions that make a soul refuse to look at itself — and Medusa as the master temptation under which they operate: the temptation to be petrified by one's own sin. To look directly at one's own deepest evil without the protection of a higher narrative is to be made stone. The canto's placement of this teaching at the threshold of lower Hell is exact. The descent into the city of the malicious would, by itself, freeze any soul attempting it; Dante is shielded because the journey has been authorised from above.
The more searching reading takes the same observation a half-step further. The Gorgon at the wall of Dis is also a figure for the Commedia's own seduction. Hell is fascinating; the reader who has been moved by Francesca, who has gloated with Argenti, who has felt the picturesque sweep of the Styx, is the reader most in danger of being petrified by what the poem is showing her. The blindfold is also a reminder that the poem's narrator survived this passage only because something above the poem reached down to cover his eyes.
The messenger and what is not described
The Heavenly Messenger is the second great externally-sent figure to intervene in the journey, after the chain of Mary → Lucia → Beatrice → Virgil at the start of canto II. He is described in deliberately partial terms: a wind impetuous, one passing dry-footed over the Styx, with his left hand he wafted the gross air before his face, he reached the gate, and with a little rod he opened it. We do not see his face. We are not told his name. He scolds the demons in two tercets — why kick against the will from which the end can never be cut off? — and leaves like one whom other care constrains. The canto does not turn him into a character. He is, like Beatrice's first descent in canto II, a function of grace: deployed, effective, untheologised.
Commentators have read him as Gabriel, as Mercury, as Christ a second time, as the angel of the Apocalypse, as a personification of philosophical reason. The text does not choose, and the lack of choice is itself a teaching. Hell's gates open at a power that is not the power of the Aeneid. Virgil is shielded from having to acknowledge whose servant the figure is.
What is in the tombs
Inside the walls the geography is named: here are the Heresiarchs, with their disciples of all sects, and much more than thou thinkest laden are the tombs. The canto stops there. The encounter with the heretics is held for canto X. What the canto wants the reader to register first is the architecture of the punishment: the cemetery, the open sarcophagi, the fire, the lids ready to close at the Last Judgment. Heresy is figured as a perpetual living burial. The sin that consisted in the fixed assertion of a wrong doctrine receives the contrapasso of fixedness in a stone box that fire occupies but cannot consume.
Famous and meaningful passages
The colour exchange.
That hue which cowardice brought out on me, Beholding my Conductor backward turn, Sooner repressed within him his new colour. (Inf. IX.1–3)
The canto opens on a face-reading. Dante's pallor reads Virgil's; Virgil masters his and reverses the reading. The whole crisis is set in two lines of mutual diagnosis.
Virgil's broken sentence.
Still it behoveth us to win the fight, Began he; Else… Such offered us herself… O how I long that some one here arrive! (Inf. IX.7–9)
Pur a noi converrà vincer la punga, cominciò el, se non… Tal ne s'offerse… The aposiopesis is one of Dante's most exposing pieces of psychological scoring. Virgil cannot finish the sentence.
The Erichtho memory.
True is it, once before I here below Was conjured by that pitiless Erictho, Who summoned back the shades unto their bodies. (Inf. IX.22–24)
A detail Dante invented. Virgil's shade was once compelled by a Thessalian witch into the bottom of Hell. The history that gives him his geography of lower Hell.
The Furies.
The three infernal Furies stained with blood, Who had the limbs of women and their mien, And with the greenest hydras were begirt (Inf. IX.37–39)
Greek tragedy's avengers given Christian theological office. The serpents are the greenest — alive, fresh, moving.
The call for Medusa.
Medusa come, so we to stone will change him! All shouted looking down; in evil hour Avenged we not on Theseus his assault! (Inf. IX.52–54)
The summons. The Gorgon never arrives. The reference to Theseus — who in myth was rescued from Hell by Heracles — is the demons' grievance: they let the previous living visitor go, and they will not make the mistake again.
The blindfold.
Turn thyself round, and keep thine eyes close shut, For if the Gorgon appear, and thou shouldst see it, No more returning upward would there be. (Inf. IX.55–57)
The most tender command Virgil ever gives. To see Medusa is to make the upward journey impossible.
The address to the reader.
O ye who have intellect, mark doctrine That under the strange verses now lies hid. (Inf. IX.61–62)
Mirate la dottrina che s'asconde sotto 'l velame de li versi strani. The clearest invitation to allegorical reading in the Inferno. The instruction is set into the exact moment of the blindfold.
The messenger walks the water.
More than a thousand ruined souls I saw, Thus fleeing from before one who on foot Was passing o'er the Styx with soles unwet. (Inf. IX.76–78)
The image is a Christian one — walking on water — set into a pagan river. The synthesis the Comedy keeps making.
The opening of the gate.
He reached the gate, and with a little rod He opened it, for there was no resistance. (Inf. IX.89–90)
A wand and no resistance. The whole crisis of cantos VIII–IX dissolved in two lines.
The scolding.
O banished out of Heaven, people despised! Thus he began upon the horrid threshold; Whence is this arrogance within you couched? (Inf. IX.91–93)
The messenger does not negotiate. He calls the fallen angels by category and asks the question that is the Comedy's answer to all damnation: why?
The cemetery.
Soon as I was within, cast round mine eye, And see on every hand an ample plain, Full of distress and torment terrible. (Inf. IX.109–111)
The first sight inside the city. An ample plain. Lower Hell is geography on a different scale.
The heresiarchs.
Here are the Heresiarchs, With their disciples of all sects, and much More than thou thinkest laden are the tombs. (Inf. IX.127–129)
Più che non credi son le tombe carche. The tombs are heavier than the pilgrim imagines. The canto closes on a number.
What to watch for
Watch the first sustained encounter in lower Hell. In canto X, Farinata will rise from one of these tombs and speak as if the cemetery were a salon. The contrast between the architecture of the cemetery and the conduct of its noblest inmate is the Inferno's sharpest piece of staging.
Watch the messenger's grammar of departure. Then he returned along the road impure, and to us said no word, but had the look of one whom other care constrains and goads. The figure who saves the journey will not interact with the journey. Grace in the Comedy is often impersonal.
Watch the address to the reader. The Inferno has only a handful of these. When one appears, it is signalling that the canto contains a doctrine to be excavated rather than admired.
This post is part of Reading Divine Comedy, a slow daily companion to Dante's Commedia in the Longfellow translation — read one canto at a time, with a short orientation before and a close reading after. From Inferno I to Paradiso XXXIII.