Inferno XXXI — The Towers That Are Giants

Before reading

This is a transitional canto. The architecture of Hell is about to change for the third and last time, from the bolge of Malebolge to the frozen lake of Cocytus. The wall between the two is guarded by giants, half-buried in the rock of the well that drops to the bottom. The canto is short on action and long on scale, and its work is largely to teach the reader how big the bottom of the universe is going to be.

Where the canto sits

The pilgrim and Virgil have left the bolgia of the falsifiers — and with it the whole of Malebolge, the eighth circle. The two ten-bolgia circles are behind them. Ahead is the ninth and final circle, the frozen lake of Cocytus, at the bottom of which Lucifer is locked in ice. Between the eighth and ninth circles stands a great well — a vertical drop. The well is ringed by giants whose feet are in the lake and whose upper bodies rise above the rim, half-visible from the level of Malebolge. The first half of the canto is the gradual recognition that what the pilgrim thought were towers in the distance are in fact the chests and faces of standing giants. The second half is the descent: one of the giants, Antaeus, picks the two poets up in his hand and lowers them onto the floor of Cocytus.

What it helps to know

The giants Dante names are not the friendly figures of folklore. They come from two distinct traditions: the Greek mythological giants who in the Gigantomachy warred against Olympus, and the biblical giants of Genesis 6 and the Nimrod of Genesis 10–11. Dante does not separate the two; he treats them as members of one rebellious race who challenged divine authority in any of its forms, and he places them on the same architectural ring.

Nimrod, in the medieval reading of Genesis, was the king who built the Tower of Babel and so brought down the divine punishment that scattered the languages of the earth. Dante shows him gibbering in a tongue no one can understand — a fitting punishment for the man whose pride confused human speech. The single line he is given — Raphel mai amech zabi almi — is the Commedia's most famous untranslatable line.

Ephialtes is the giant who, in Greek myth, attempted with his brother Otus to pile mountains on each other to reach Olympus and so dethrone Jupiter. Dante shows him bound with great iron chains across his chest, his rebellious arms permanently restrained. He twitches like an earthquake when the pilgrim addresses him.

Antaeus is different. In Greek myth he was the son of Earth, invincible while his feet touched his mother's body — Hercules killed him by lifting him off the ground. Dante's reason for using Antaeus here, rather than Ephialtes or one of the others, is buried in classical learning: in Lucan's Pharsalia (book IV), Antaeus is said to have lived in the Bagrada valley in North Africa during the lifetime of Hercules but to have died before the Gigantomachy — that is, before the giants' war against the gods. Antaeus alone, of the giants Dante mentions, had not rebelled against Jove. He is therefore not bound, and he can be petitioned to perform the descent.

The famous Bolognese landmark Dante invokes at the canto's climax is the Garisenda tower, a leaning tower in the centre of Bologna built in the 1110s and already, in Dante's day, slightly inclined. When a cloud passes above the tower on the side away from its lean, the observer at its base experiences the illusion that the tower itself is falling toward him. The simile is the most famous Italian piece of pre-modern observational physics, and it does for Antaeus what no other image in the canto could do: it makes the giant feel, for a single tercet, as large as a famous building.

What to read for

Listen for the sound of Roland's horn at the very start of the descent. Virgil silences the pilgrim's first attempt to call out by reference to Roland at Roncesvalles — the dying horn-blast that summoned Charlemagne too late. The reference is Dante quietly telling the reader that the registers of the next descent will be epic — not mock-heroic, not allegorical, but the same register the Chanson de Roland worked in.

Notice that Antaeus puts the two poets down like a mast in a ship. Pay attention to the simile. The image is of the bottom of Hell rising up under them rather than of them descending into it. The geography of canto XXXIV will make sense of the inversion.

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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.

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After reading

What the canto did

The canto did three structural things. It closed Malebolge by leading the pilgrim out of the eighth circle and along the rim of the great central well; it introduced the giants who guard the wall between the eighth and the ninth circles; and it dropped the two travellers, by Antaeus's hand, onto the ice of Cocytus. Almost nothing of moral content happens in the canto's hundred and forty lines — there is no named sinner, no famous speech, no theological argument. What the canto does is scale. The previous twenty-eight cantos have steadily reduced the size of the architecture: each bolgia narrower than the one above it, each ditch tighter, each crowd of sinners more closely packed. Canto XXXI reverses the contraction. The pilgrim looks across the well and sees figures the size of towers. The reader who has spent thirty cantos learning the dimensions of Hell is suddenly required to recalibrate. The bottom of the universe, the canto announces in advance, is not small.

The opening simile

The canto opens on Virgil's tongue:

One and the self-same tongue first wounded me, So that it tinged the one cheek and the other, And then held out to me the medicine. (Inf. XXXI.1–3)

The previous canto ended with Virgil rebuking the pilgrim for taking pleasure in the quarrel of Master Adam and Sinon; the rebuke had reddened Dante's cheeks with shame. Canto XXXI opens with the same tongue offering consolation. The two-faced simile — wound and medicine — names the relationship the Commedia assumes between guide and pilgrim, and by extension between poem and reader: the same instrument that cuts also heals, the same authority that rebukes also restores. The canto begins on a small private reconciliation before it turns to the architectural sublime.

The towers that are giants

The first twenty lines after the opening simile are a sustained piece of optical mistake. The pilgrim sees what he takes to be a city of high towers ringing the well; Virgil corrects him; the towers gradually resolve as the upper bodies of giants standing in the wall. The mistake is doing more than dramatic delay. It is the Commedia's most explicit acknowledgment that Hell's deepest architecture is populated — that what looks like masonry from above is, on closer reading, monstrous bodies. The giants stand in the wall as caryatids in a Greek temple stand in the entablature: they do not merely guard the boundary, they are the boundary. The wall between the bolge and Cocytus is partly made of them.

Dante uses the Roland reference here for a reason:

After the dolorous discomfiture When Charlemagne the holy emprise lost, So terribly Orlando sounded not. Short while my head turned thitherward I held When many lofty towers I seemed to see, Whereat I: Master, say, what town is this? (Inf. XXXI.16–21)

The horn of Roland at Roncesvalles, blown so hard that the saint's veins burst, is the medieval West's most famous image of vain heroic sound. Nimrod's horn — the canto will, a few lines later, show one slung at his neck — is the Inferno's parody of Roland's. The hunter who in life summoned crowds to the building of Babel now blows his horn at a Hell that pays no attention.

Nimrod's untranslatable line

The most famous line in the canto, and one of the most famous in the Inferno, is unintelligible:

Raphel mai amech zabi almi, Began to clamor the ferocious mouth, To which were not befitting sweeter psalms. (Inf. XXXI.67–69)

Seven centuries of scholarship have tried to make a language of raphèl mai amècche zabì almi and failed. The line is the Commedia's deliberate piece of nonsense, the punishment in the speaker's own mouth of the man who, by the medieval reading of Genesis 10–11, built the Tower of Babel and so brought down the divine confusion of human speech. Virgil's response carries the canto's most concise small joke:

He doth himself accuse; This one is Nimrod, by whose evil thought One language in the world is not still used. Here let us leave him and not speak in vain; For even such to him is every language As his to others, which to none is known. (Inf. XXXI.76–81)

Nimrod's punishment is symmetric: he cannot be understood by anyone, and he cannot understand anyone. The pride that broke the unity of human speech leaves him, in eternity, with no speech of his own and no one whose speech he can hear. The canto offers, in a single tercet, one of the Inferno's most economical pictures of the consequences of an act of metaphysical hubris.

Ephialtes and the unbound Antaeus

The other bound giant is Ephialtes, whose participation in the Greek war against Olympus is punished by chains around the chest. He twitches like an earthquake when addressed; his rebellious arms are restrained for eternity. The unbound giant is Antaeus, the son of Earth who in Greek myth lived in the Bagrada valley of North Africa during Hercules' lifetime and was killed by Hercules before the Gigantomachy — that is, before the war the other giants waged against the gods. The detail comes from Lucan's Pharsalia (book IV). Antaeus did not rebel against Jove; he is not bound; he is therefore the one who can be petitioned to perform the descent. Virgil knows the classical record exactly, and he uses it. He flatters Antaeus with the memory of his African strength — thou whose Hercules once felt thy hands — and asks the favour. Antaeus bends.

The Garisenda simile

The closing image of the canto is one of the Inferno's most observed pieces of pre-modern physics:

As seems the Carisenda, to behold Beneath the leaning side, when goes a cloud Above it so that opposite it hangs; Such did Antæus seem to me, who stood Watching to see him stoop, and then it was I could have wished to go some other way. (Inf. XXXI.136–141)

The Garisenda is the leaning tower in Bologna that Dante, as a young man, would have stood under more than once. When a cloud passes above the tower on the side away from its lean, the observer at its base experiences a visual illusion that the tower itself is falling toward him. The simile makes Antaeus the size of a famous building and gives him the apparent motion of one collapsing. The pilgrim's wishing to go some other way — e fu tal ora ch'i' avrei voluto ir per altra via — is the canto's most honest small confession of fear.

The descent itself is given in four laconic lines:

But lightly in the abyss, which swallows up Judas with Lucifer, he put us down; Nor thus bowed downward made he there delay, But, as a mast does in a ship, uprose. (Inf. XXXI.142–145)

The abyss, which swallows up Judas with Lucifer. The geography is announced. The first names of the last circle are spoken before any soul of that circle has been seen. And the closing simile — as a mast does in a ship, uprose — turns the picture upside down. The giant did not lower the poets; he straightened, and the lake rose to meet them. The reader who notices the inversion is being prepared for the more radical geographical inversion at the bottom of canto XXXIV.

Famous and meaningful passages

The opening simile of the tongue.

One and the self-same tongue first wounded me, So that it tinged the one cheek and the other, And then held out to me the medicine. (Inf. XXXI.1–3)

The wound and the medicine in the same mouth. The model of guidance the Commedia assumes.

The horn-blast of Roland.

After the dolorous discomfiture When Charlemagne the holy emprise lost, So terribly Orlando sounded not. (Inf. XXXI.16–18)

The reference to the Chanson de Roland sets the canto's register. The descent ahead will be heroic in the same sense Roland was heroic, and as unavailing.

Nimrod's nonsense.

Raphel mai amech zabi almi, Began to clamor the ferocious mouth, To which were not befitting sweeter psalms. (Inf. XXXI.67–69)

The most famous untranslatable line in the Commedia. Memorise it. The whole sin of pride, in five Italianised syllables that mean nothing.

Virgil's response.

He doth himself accuse; This one is Nimrod, by whose evil thought One language in the world is not still used. Here let us leave him and not speak in vain; For even such to him is every language As his to others, which to none is known. (Inf. XXXI.76–81)

The economical statement of the contrapasso. The man who broke human speech speaks now to no one, and is heard by no one.

The Garisenda.

As seems the Carisenda, to behold Beneath the leaning side, when goes a cloud Above it so that opposite it hangs; Such did Antæus seem to me, who stood Watching to see him stoop, and then it was I could have wished to go some other way. (Inf. XXXI.136–141)

The Commedia's most precise piece of observational physics. The illusion of the falling tower is exactly the illusion of the bending giant.

The descent.

But lightly in the abyss, which swallows up Judas with Lucifer, he put us down; Nor thus bowed downward made he there delay, But, as a mast does in a ship, uprose. (Inf. XXXI.142–145)

The names of the bottom — Judas with Lucifer — spoken before the bottom is seen. The mast simile is the first piece of evidence that the geography is about to invert.

What to watch for

Watch the ice. The next three cantos are set entirely on the frozen lake of Cocytus — a single continuous landscape, divided into four progressively colder rings: Caïna (traitors to kin), Antenora (traitors to political community), Ptolomea (traitors to guests), and Judecca (traitors to benefactors and lords). The geography is small but its moral pressure is the heaviest in the Inferno. The catalogue of sins is closing.

Watch the inversion. The bottom of the universe, as canto XXXIV will reveal, is not a place at all but a point — and the descent through it requires the pilgrim to turn upside down without noticing he has done so. The mast simile of this canto's last line is the first hint of the gravitational reversal that awaits.

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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.