Inferno · Canto XXII ·
Inferno XXII — The March Along the Dike
Reading Divine Comedy · canto 22 of 100 · Inferno, Canto XXII
Before reading
The canto picks up where XXI left off. The squad of ten devils — Barbariccia, Alichino, Calcabrina, Cagnazzo, Libicocco, Draghignazzo, Ciriatto, Graffiacane, Farfarello, Rubicante — escorts the two poets along the dike of the fifth bolgia, looking for any pitch-boiled barrator who tries to surface. The canto plays out the longest comic episode in the whole Commedia: a Navarrese sinner is hooked out, interrogated, mauled, and finally pulls off a small confidence trick at the devils' expense. Two of the devils end up in the pitch themselves.
Where the canto sits
This is the second of the two cantos (XXI–XXII) given to the barrators and to their fantastic policing apparatus. Together they form the Inferno's longest tonal departure: a sustained comic mode that the poem will not attempt again. Read this canto as the second half of a two-canto unit; the closing scene here sets up the entry into the sixth bolgia in canto XXIII, where the devils, having been outwitted, will pursue the poets in fury, and Virgil will discover what Malacoda lied to him about.
What it helps to know
The canto turns on the figure of an unnamed Navarrese sinner — usually identified by commentators as Ciampolo, a courtier of King Thibault II of Navarre (r. 1253–1270), about whom otherwise nothing certain is known. He is hooked out of the pitch by Graffiacane, interrogated by Virgil, told to name names by Barbariccia, mauled by Ciriatto's tusks and Libicocco's grapnel, and finally bargains for his life by promising to whistle up seven more sinners if the devils will only step back. The devils, suspicious but greedy, partially comply; the Navarrese times his moment and dives. Two devils — Alichino and Calcabrina — quarrel about who is to blame, fall on each other, and tumble together into the boiling pitch.
The named figures the Navarrese names from inside the bolgia are real Sardinian magistrates of Dante's near-past, drawn from a part of medieval Italy the Comedy otherwise barely mentions. Friar Gomita was the Pisan-installed administrator of the Sardinian judicato (kingdom) of Gallura under Nino Visconti in the 1290s, notoriously corrupt; the canto's phrase vessel of all fraud — vasel d'ogne froda — would have read in 1300 as a citizen's plain judgement on a recent public figure. Don Michael Zanche of Logudoro was the chief minister of King Enzo of Sardinia (illegitimate son of Frederick II) and reputedly murdered by his son-in-law Branca Doria — who will return in canto XXXIII among the worst frauds in the bottom of Hell. The two named souls of canto XXII are therefore links forward to the worst of Inferno.
The two devils who fall into the pitch — Alichino and Calcabrina — are the canto's contrapasso on the devils themselves. They were sent to police fraud; they fall to a small fraud committed by their own prey; they become, momentarily, the very thing they were guarding. The episode is the only place in the Inferno where Hell's staff takes the punishment Hell's clients receive.
What to read for
Listen for the opening simile. The canto begins with a survey of military music — trumpets, bells, kettle-drums, signals of the castle — and ends the list with the famous obscene cue from the end of XXI. But never yet with bagpipe so uncouth did I see horsemen move. The canto is announcing its tonal continuity with the previous: the Comedy is still in the comic register, and the language is still allowing itself things it allows nowhere else.
Listen for the menagerie. The canto runs through an entire bestiary of similes — dolphins, frogs, otters, mice, cats, ducks, falcons, sparrowhawks. The damned and the devils are being deliberately animalised. The lower Hell is becoming, increasingly, a place where the human image fails and the bestial breaks through.
And feel the rhythm of the trick. The Navarrese's escape is built as a small piece of stagecraft. He proposes; the devils consult; one or two object; he times the moment; he leaps. The reader sees the trick coming because the canto sets it up patiently. The pleasure of the canto is partly the pleasure of watching a confidence game in progress.
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 played out the longest comic episode in the Comedy and did several formal jobs at once. It introduced a sustained menagerie of similes — dolphins, frogs, otters, mice, cats, ducks, falcons, sparrowhawks — that systematically reduced both damned and devils to animals. It produced the Inferno's only named encounter with a Navarrese soul, a small unknown courtier of King Thibault II called by commentators Ciampolo, and used him as the pivot of a confidence trick on the entire devil squad. It introduced two recent Sardinian magistrates — Friar Gomita and Don Michael Zanche — and thereby extended the Inferno's political reach to a part of medieval Italy it otherwise barely visits. And it ended with two of the Inferno's devils, Alichino and Calcabrina, falling into the pitch they had been guarding. The bolgia took its own.
The canto's largest formal achievement is the demonstration that Hell is not, in fact, under control. The administrative apparatus of the lower Hell — devils with names and squad-leaders and ranks — has just been outwitted by one of its prisoners, and two of its enforcers have been added to the punishment they were administering. The seriousness of the Inferno depends partly on its picture of an unbreakable order; in this canto the order breaks. The breakage is comic, but the implication is theological. Even the staff of Hell can be made to look stupid.
The animal similes
The canto opens with a military simile (horsemen moving camp, foragers, tournaments, kettle-drums) but quickly turns to the animal kingdom. The damned surface like dolphins arching their backs to warn sailors; they ride at the rim of the pitch like frogs in a ditch; the Navarrese is hooked up like an otter; he is among malicious cats like a mouse; Alichino in pursuit is a falcon and the Navarrese a duck; the falling devils are sparrowhawks. The seven similes in three hundred lines are concentrated more densely than anywhere else in the Inferno. The poem is doing something deliberate: in the bolgia where humans cheated other humans by behaving like animals — predators on the public good — the poem will use animal language as the only language adequate to what is happening.
The animalisation extends to the devils as well as the damned. Cagnazzo lifts his muzzle; Farfarello rolls his bird-eyes; Barbariccia enforks the Navarrese; the squad members gnash teeth. The supernatural beings have been pulled all the way down into the bestiary. The whole eschatological dignity of Hell has been re-staged as a small pond fight.
Friar Gomita and Don Michael Zanche
The two named souls inside the bolgia carry the canto's serious historical work. Friar Gomita was the vicar of the judicato (kingdom) of Gallura in north-east Sardinia under Nino Visconti of Pisa, who held Gallura in the 1280s and 1290s. Gomita is reported by contemporary sources to have systematically taken bribes to release prisoners; Nino, when he discovered the corruption, had Gomita hanged. The canto's phrase vasel d'ogne froda — vessel of all fraud — would have read in Dante's first audience as a recent and pungent civic judgement. Notice that Nino Visconti himself will appear in Purgatorio VIII, where Dante meets him among the late-repentant rulers and gives him a tender embrace. The Comedy is keeping its books with care: the hanged corrupt official is in the pitch; the lord who hanged him is on the way to Heaven.
Don Michael Zanche of Logudoro was vicar of the judicato of Logudoro under Enzo, illegitimate son of Frederick II and king of Sardinia; he was reputedly murdered by his son-in-law Branca Doria. Branca Doria will appear in canto XXXIII among the worst frauds in the bottom of Hell — his soul already in the ice while his body, the poem insists, still walks the streets of Genoa. The naming of Don Michael here is a quiet setup for the appalling revelation of Branca many cantos later. The Inferno never wastes a name.
The trick
The Navarrese's escape is one of the most carefully staged small dramas in the Inferno. He offers the devils a deal: if you step back, I will whistle up seven sinners for you to play with. Cagnazzo, the most experienced of the devils, smells the trick immediately: Just hear the trick which he has thought of, down to throw himself! Alichino, more eager, says he will catch the sinner if he dives and beats his wings above the pitch. The devils consult; some are reluctant; eventually the squad averts its eyes. The Navarrese times the moment. He leaps. The Navarrese selected well his time; planted his feet on land, and in a moment leaped, and released himself from their design.
The canto's phrasing is the Comedy's deepest small joke at the devils' expense. The verb is liberossi — he liberated himself. A barrator in the pitch liberates himself from the agents of divine justice by deploying the very fraud his damnation was supposed to put a stop to. The structural irony is heavy. The lower Hell, supposed to be where fraud is finally punished, is the very place where fraud is still operating — and operating, in this small instance, successfully. The eschatological order is, momentarily, defeated by its own tools.
Alichino and Calcabrina
The two devils' fall is the canto's comic climax and the most striking small image of contagion in the Inferno. Alichino, having missed his prey, is stung with shame. Calcabrina, who had hoped the Navarrese would escape so he could pick a fight with Alichino, now turns on him. The two grapple in mid-air above the pitch and tumble together into the boiling. The heat is a sudden intercessor: it pulls them apart. But their wings are belimed — coated with pitch — and they cannot fly. Barbariccia has to send four other devils with grapnels to fish them out.
The image is funny, but the moral logic is exact. The devils' job was to keep the damned in the pitch by force; they have now to be rescued from the pitch by force. The roles have been contagious. Whatever you administer, the canto is telling us, you can be administered. The poets, meanwhile, leave them busied. The last line of the canto is a small piece of stagecraft: the squad is occupied with rescuing its own; the poets are allowed to slip away unnoticed. Canto XXIII will open on the chase.
Famous and meaningful passages
The opening menagerie of trumpets, ended on the previous canto's obscenity.
But never yet with bagpipe so uncouth Did I see horsemen move, nor infantry, Nor ship by any sign of land or star. (Inf. XXII.10–12)
Sampogna — bagpipe — is the canto's name for the trombetta of the previous canto. The whole opening is a small mock-epic survey of military signals that culminates in the rude noise just heard.
The dolphin and frog similes.
Even as the dolphins, when they make a sign To mariners by arching of the back, That they should counsel take to save their vessel, Thus sometimes, to alleviate his pain, One of the sinners would display his back, And in less time conceal it than it lightens. As on the brink of water in a ditch The frogs stand only with their muzzles out, So that they hide their feet and other bulk, So upon every side the sinners stood. (Inf. XXII.19–28)
Two similes in two tercets, both from the natural world, both reducing the damned to small beach-side animals. The dolphin warning sailors is the canto's first quiet sympathy with the damned; the frog is the canto's first reduction of them.
The hooked Navarrese.
Grappled him by his tresses smeared with pitch, And drew him up, so that he seemed an otter. (Inf. XXII.35–36)
Sì che parea una lontra. The most economic small visual in the canto.
The Navarrese confesses.
I in the kingdom of Navarre was born; My mother placed me servant to a lord, For she had borne me to a ribald knave, Destroyer of himself and of his things. Then I domestic was of good King Thibault; I set me there to practise barratry, For which I pay the reckoning in this heat. (Inf. XXII.48–54)
The first-person small life-summary delivered before the devils begin to maul him. The Navarrese is given the dignity of a brief biography.
The mauling.
Among malicious cats the mouse had come; But Barbariccia clasped him in his arms, And said: Stand ye aside, while I enfork him. (Inf. XXII.58–60)
The mouse-and-cats simile and the infork of the squad-leader. The barrator's body is now squad property.
Friar Gomita and Don Michael Zanche.
It was the Friar Gomita, He of Gallura, vessel of all fraud, Who had the enemies of his Lord in hand, And dealt so with them each exults thereat; Money he took, and let them smoothly off, As he says; and in other offices A barrator was he, not mean but sovereign. Foregathers with him one Don Michael Zanche Of Logodoro; and of Sardinia To gossip never do their tongues feel tired. (Inf. XXII.81–90)
Two corrupt Sardinian magistrates of the recent past, given the canto's only sustained naming. Vasel d'ogne froda — vessel of all fraud — is the canto's headline phrase for Gomita.
The reader is warned.
O thou who readest, thou shalt hear new sport! (Inf. XXII.118)
The third direct address to the reader in the Inferno. The verb udir (hear) and the noun novo gioco (new sport) hand the reader, in one line, both the comic mode and the expectation of a stunt.
The leap.
The Navarrese selected well his time; Planted his feet on land, and in a moment Leaped, and released himself from their design. (Inf. XXII.121–123)
E liberossi dal proposto loro. He liberated himself from their design. The verb is the canto's punchline.
The fall of the two devils.
Infuriate at the mockery, Calcabrina Flying behind him followed close, desirous The other should escape, to have a quarrel. And when the barrator had disappeared, He turned his talons upon his companion, And grappled with him right above the moat. But sooth the other was a doughty sparhawk To clapperclaw him well; and both of them Fell in the middle of the boiling pond. (Inf. XXII.133–141)
The most economical small image of the contagious nature of the bolgia. Two devils, attempting to police it, end up in it.
The closing line.
They stretched their hooks towards the pitch-ensnared, Who were already baked within the crust, And in this manner busied did we leave them. (Inf. XXII.149–151)
The poets walk away while the squad is rescuing its own. E in tal modo intrigati li lasciammo. The poem closes on the small comic victory.
What to watch for
Watch the chase. Canto XXIII opens with the poets fleeing the dike at speed, because the devils, once the rescue is finished, will pursue them for revenge. Virgil will discover that Malacoda lied to him about the bridges over the sixth bolgia. The comedy will end abruptly, and lower Hell will resume its weight.
Watch the hypocrites. The sixth bolgia, just ahead, contains the souls of those who appeared one thing and were another. The transition from the canto on barrators (corruption inside an office) to the canto on hypocrites (corruption of one's own outward sign) is one of the Inferno's most thoughtful structural sequences.
Watch Branca Doria. The Don Michael Zanche named in this canto was murdered by his son-in-law Branca; Branca's soul is in the bottom of Hell already, the canto XXXIII will say, while his body still walks. The Comedy never plants a name without harvesting it later.
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.