There is such a fine line between lust and initial feelings of love for a person to whom you are attracted. So much of our attraction appears to be subconscious, and what begins as lust can become mature love over time if we work at it.
While I agree it is never right to have an affair, it's interesting that we seem to put that behavior at the top of our hierarchy of sins in marriage/partnerships. There are so many ways to mistreat and abuse your partner. Having a Catholic and Protestant background, I find it interesting that sex is frequently the emphasis (even today with some Americans blaming LGBTQ people for bringing down the rest of the country and calling them dangerous). In my mind, the best application of this canto to our lives today is to ask ourselves what overwhelming desires we have that are hurting ourselves, our partners and the people around us.
The character Dante's compassion is lovely to see. Apparently Dante, himself, may felt conflicted about how our hearts can be so taken with another person. How tragic that there is no hope (line 44) for these people who, supposedly, loved wrongly. Irrationality in love is the human condition, and analysing our feelings when we are newly in love surely decreases the joy we feel.
I am also reading The Complete Danteworlds by Guy Raffa. He makes an interesting application to today: What is our responsibility regarding the depiction of sex, violence, and love in the media we create or consume?
Three observations, and then a comment about what I believe is one of the most intensely personal cantos for our poet.
First: Minos is fascinating — he’s not a sinner, but rather an administrator and servant of divine justice — part of the bureaucratic apparatus of Hell, endlessly enforcing its order. “Next. Next. Next.” (I wonder if he’s questioning “lifetime appointments” for judges. One could also be inclined to ask if there is a PreCheck line for lawyers…😚)
Second: The inaugural mention of “pity” occurs here. One of the most fascinating progressions in the Commedia is the treatment of pity, compassion, mercy and justice as Dante “matures.” He has to learn to reconcile human emotion to the divine will — thus his encounter with Francesca reminds me of the adage “First the test, then the lesson.” His resolve is stress-tested by a beguiling enchantress, and it is a withering experience. The pilgrim swoons; the poet leaves it to us to discern the appropriate response to her “affliction,” which Isaiah 30:15 captures: “This is what the Sovereign Lord, the Holy One of Israel, says: “In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it.”
Third: It’s interesting to see his treatment of courtly love evolve from the traditional form and the conventions he used in his earlier works. Now he begins to shed or transform its rules, and their focus on personal desire, to fit a broader spiritual and theological framework.
And now my TLDR comment: I grant you pride of place for Dido, but to me this is an intense and personally revealing canto for Dante. First, he is embarking on the painful process of relearning how to love, including deconstructing his poetic commitment to courtly love. Second, it’s his first encounter with a sinner (a charming immoralist no less), and he is almost completely unarmored for “battle” (Remember Canto 2, line 3-4?). Canto V screams “Thicken your armor and harden your heart!” A suit of unassailable armor is being built for and by him — *if* he completes his journey.
There’s a tale from Roman military yore (retold in the modern military) that’s an analogous to his experience here: When centurions conducted their inspections of legionaries, it was the custom that each soldier, on the approach of the centurion, would strike the armor breastplate that covered his heart with his right fist — where it had to be strongest to protect the heart — and shout “Integritas!” (Indicating not only wholeness and completeness of his armor, but also of his commitment to protect the Empire). That declaration was changed a century later to “Integer!” (undiminished – complete – perfect, indicating not only that the armor was sound, but that the soldier was sound of character.) The legionaire’s heart had to be as sound and rightly-ordered as his armor. The word integrity derives from “Integer;” in this canto, integrity means living in harmony with the meting out of divine justice — even for those “lightly carried by the wind.” At the end of his journey, that integrity will be rewarded with divine love and eternal happiness. Dante (barely) passes this test, but it has thickened his armor and hardened his heart. He is learning the lesson of Proverbs 11:3: “The integrity of the upright guides them, but the unfaithful are destroyed by their duplicity.”
Pity. Yes, pity, compassion, mercy, and justice. I always wondered why Aristotle emphasized catharsis of fear and pity. Dante’s journey is a mental test, from which he must grow … or perish, self-condemned. At the end of this canto Dante falls asleep, having drunk the waters of Lethe … or pity.
I was struck by the line “Always a swarming multitud awaits.” In other words, we are all in danger of landing at that gate, there but for the grace of God, etc. Dante’s compassion for those condemned by love, and the overwhelming numbers of those thus condemned hints at an ambivalence on the poet’s part about whether they really deserve to be punished. To me lust is the obsession with filling a physical desire at the expense of the people used to fulfill it. Falling in love with someone when that love might cause pain to other people, the sin here is not loving, but acting on it and causing that pain. Dante seems to me to be pondering the significance of that difference.
The other thing about that line which hit me, not really to do with the story, was an image of the swarming multitud of beings who have existed since the beginning of time, so so many, yet our own existence feels so much more than the speck of dust that it seems when viewed as a totality.
Is it my imagination? - Or, perhaps the consistency with which the illustrations created for this canto always depict the offenders as ... young. In youth, it is the urge to "love" and to be loved that buffet and worry us. There is tremendous anxiety that, engine like, can propel encounter after encounter - none of which yield peace. Or, as Dante seems to suggest here: Rest. In contrapasso, these are beings in a state of unrelenting urgency. Certainly, their clothing is always whipping about in the wind, exposing firm thighs and tautly muscled chests! -All very effectively illustrated by the many artists inspired by this Canto. I am old. My spouse is too. We survived those years of buffeting and chasing. Our bodies no longer have the vibrancy of those beautiful young bodies in the paintings, prints and illustrations. But we have peace. I'm convinced: That's the love that Dante sees these these poor souls deprived of.
1) “Gentle heart” is a fundamental concept for the Stilnovists: it means soul nobility. Francesca speaks as a courtly lady that has read many courtly books. She “feels” as a courtly lady. Dante shows us the identity that she had made up for herself and the invented narrative that she is believing unto death!
2) “If the King of the Universe…”. God died for us, but she tells that He is not her friend, because she intends it as in that junk literature where it means lover. She completely misunderstood which is the true Lover.
3) She invokes pity and we know that pity is not possible in hell. Did she have pity of anybody during her life?
4) She considers love independent from her free will and compelling her without choice to love back. What about the Love of God for her? He was her First Lover, did she ever thought to love God back? Was He not compelling? Is True Love compelling or it can exist only with free will?
BTW, The description of Paolo is purely physical, there is no mention of his personality, which, seems very different from what she is looking for, as in the second speech.
6) She is offended by the violence of the ending of their life, but she does not care of the offense and damage she has given to her family and society through her adultery. LET ALONE GOD! Repentance is not an option, because after death it is impossible. She is frozen in the attitude of her last minute of life. We must learn to have on our lips always a request of mercy, so we can die with it as last words and be saved, as we will see in Purgatorio, where someone is saved by a little last minute tear or the name of Mary.
7) Her final hope is that her husband that killed them would be in the bottom of hell. Therefore, she was not able to forgive him before dying. A last good reason to be in hell.
We cannot deny the beauty of Francesca words in the anaphor, but that is Dante’s point. What beauty are we looking for? What poetry? Is this kind of poetry the one that bring us to God? or to hell?
That kind of poetry is a trap that brings in our heart a storm of emotions that obfuscate our reason and make us believe Francesca story, because it is deceiving, it is fake. And I am not speaking of the book they were reading…check how the love of Guinevere and Lancelot ends up to destroy the Kingdom. If they would have finished the book …instead of stopping at that point and act it out.
We Readers feel as she feels, we are the Pilgrim fainting, because we are trapped in the physical realm and that poetry makes us forget that there is something more, something better, something higher, that worth suffering for, that worth giving up our narrative to discover it.
Precisely as she was trapped, she tries to trap us. The trap for her was the feeling that she perceived toward Paolo, when she stopped to use her reason. When we abandon reason, we are moved by a hurricane of emotions that overwhelms our free will.
And this is the point: love is not to abandon our reason and free will. We can love only when we are using our reason and free will. Or it is not love!
The truth is in the last tercet. It is a truth and a visible fact, with tangible proofs, ready for us Readers. The Poet is coaching us as investigators in hell: SHE IS NOT ABLE TO FORGIVE HER HUSBAND AND REPENT. Of course, she would be in Purgatorio, because our Lord loves us so much that and if we repent, he will give us the ticket for Paradiso and the training (Purgatorio) to be ready for it.
This fake love brings the twos to physical and spiritual death. This is not true love. God, who is love, brings us to spiritual life and bodily resurrection.
She has refused to forgive; therefore, she has refused God, she has refused life!
At this point, it is unavoidable to remember the style of Beatrice in Inferno 2. She used the language of her authority, as “blessed”, and her words were straight because of her communion with Jesus. “Love has moved me and makes me speak”. She just spoke to Virgil’s soul directly about her worry for her “friend, that may be already so lost”. She was concerned about Dante salvation and not worried about the danger of hell, because she knew that “misery cannot touch” her, since she is “made by God, in His mercy”. She shed tears for Dante. That was true pity!
Italians love the story of Paolo and Francesca and, unfortunately, often misinterpret it. In Italy, reading Dante is mandatory at the Liceo, the scientific and classic high school. We read a canticle, starting with Inferno, in 11th, 12th and 13th grade (yes, we have 5 years of high school, 3 of middle school and 5 of elementary). Nevertheless, still, the majority of Italians interprets the DC in a very superficial way. Partially this is due to Dante’s popularity.
Paolo and Francesca story, together with Ulysses and Ugolino, are probably the main known and misunderstood cantos. We have plenty of music and painting and dramas dedicated to this story and this has contributed to the general misunderstanding that was exported all over Europe. Especially, followers of Romanticism, which rejected the celebration of reason and instead prized emotion above rationality, transformed the character of Francesca from a sinner languishing in hell into an exemplar of female agency and a cultural icon. I love their art, but I can’t accept their interpretation after having read Cornish, Barolini, Herzman and Freccero (and many other American critics) that gave me clues to how to read such an unforgettable master piece.
The romantic readers mystified the Christian conceptions of the afterlife, misrepresented Francesca as a pre-feminist heroine and used the story as an excuse to bring forward an agenda that is evidently in contrast with Dante’s intention. Still today people is under their influence.
OK, NOT ALL OF THEM! And all this was already started with Boccaccio, just few years after Dante’s death, who in his comment to the DC recounts a fake version of the story of Paolo and Francesca, in which Francesca is tricked into marrying Giovanni. Boccaccio’s rendering of the story describes Giovanni, now called Gianciotto (“Crippled John”), as a villain, describing him as disfigured and brutish. I guess the Romantic movement simply tapped into Boccaccio story, because it was congruent with their idea that submissing reason to the passions was the goal of a life well lived. Therefore, despite Dante condemning them to Inferno, Paolo and Francesca deserved Paradiso.
At today, there are more than 40 famous classical musical adaptations, tons of paintings, sculptures and literary compositions, not only created from 1850 to 1950, but also contemporary productions are still coming out every year, especially in Italy, completely contrary to what Dante intended. It’s baffling!
Generally, in Italy, the description of the meaning of the fifth canto, even in some school books, goes like this…and I am not joking: “While reading about Lancelot and Guinevere's love, Paolo and Francesca realize that they do not want to hide their love and that they want to live completely the feeling, despite the risks involved. Dante is greatly struck by Francesca's nobility of spirit and kindness and the cruelty of the consequences of sin. Love is stronger than hell.”
It seems so strange that, since they are in hell, someone can think that Dante has made a mistake, or that God has made a mistake!!! this canto is really the moment when I understand Singleton point that one should believe the fiction. If the Reader refuses to believe the words of the author, he will go really on the wrong path of interpretation…isn’t it like with the Bible!
It’s amazing to me that we needed an American contemporary critic to get the point! (I am so happy to live in this country! and not only for this…)
Therefore, the point is that this emphasis on the romantic aspects of the tale is directed to show to the Readers how attractive sin could be, while discouraging them from pitying the damned and fall in the same sin. Not a case that Virgil scolds the Pilgrim precisely for his pity. Also, as we know, the Pilgrim is on a penitential path, therefore his strong involvement is a confession of his own sin of lust (but not only).
I particularly like three comments of Prof. Barolini.
1) “Love as an overwhelming force that cannot be withstood is a staple of the vernacular love lyric tradition. Giacomo da Lentini, the leader of the first Italian school of poetry, the Sicilian school, offers the language of passive surrender to love that Francesca will later use.”
This comment clarifies that we will find again and again a Golden Thread in the Comedy about the poetry of Dante. He is shedding his old poetry and developing, slowly during this journey, the new one. This is a fiction, because the Comedy IS the new poetry, but it is interesting to see how this poet is showing us his own artistic development through the journey.
It helps also us to remember that this new poetry is profoundly connected with his morality, therefore we must read it as a real spiritual journey, not just an artistic one.
2) “The idea of a love that leads to death is pervasive in medieval lyric and romance, but its most philosophically sophisticated exponent is Dante’s “first friend” and contemporary, Guido Cavalcanti. Dante is here evoking the Cavalcantian love that held sway over him in an earlier phase of his lyric development; see, for instance, the canzone Lo doloroso amor”
This will be extremely useful in Inferno 10, when we will have to deal with the drama of Cavalcanti. Also, shows again that the moral journey accompany the artistic one.
3) FRANCESCA STORY IS “…a sinful narrative defined by a frame of romance in which moral responsibility and personal agency are suspended by an all-consuming sentiment. Sympathy for Francesca is male gallantry moved by lust. She is powerless in her society, but she renounces to power also in morality where she is free…she could have chosen better…she is not helpless as seen by her power on her lover…her desire is to be desired…”. it’s a bit aggressive, but denotes that, even forgetting God in all this, even only from a rational point of view, Francesca is clearly wrong.
Yes, it's the first subsection of circle 9, which is dedicated to treachery. Caina is specifically for treachery against blood relatives, which is why Francesca says their murderer will be found there. Assuming he doesn't repent I suppose!
There is such a fine line between lust and initial feelings of love for a person to whom you are attracted. So much of our attraction appears to be subconscious, and what begins as lust can become mature love over time if we work at it.
While I agree it is never right to have an affair, it's interesting that we seem to put that behavior at the top of our hierarchy of sins in marriage/partnerships. There are so many ways to mistreat and abuse your partner. Having a Catholic and Protestant background, I find it interesting that sex is frequently the emphasis (even today with some Americans blaming LGBTQ people for bringing down the rest of the country and calling them dangerous). In my mind, the best application of this canto to our lives today is to ask ourselves what overwhelming desires we have that are hurting ourselves, our partners and the people around us.
The character Dante's compassion is lovely to see. Apparently Dante, himself, may felt conflicted about how our hearts can be so taken with another person. How tragic that there is no hope (line 44) for these people who, supposedly, loved wrongly. Irrationality in love is the human condition, and analysing our feelings when we are newly in love surely decreases the joy we feel.
I am also reading The Complete Danteworlds by Guy Raffa. He makes an interesting application to today: What is our responsibility regarding the depiction of sex, violence, and love in the media we create or consume?
Three observations, and then a comment about what I believe is one of the most intensely personal cantos for our poet.
First: Minos is fascinating — he’s not a sinner, but rather an administrator and servant of divine justice — part of the bureaucratic apparatus of Hell, endlessly enforcing its order. “Next. Next. Next.” (I wonder if he’s questioning “lifetime appointments” for judges. One could also be inclined to ask if there is a PreCheck line for lawyers…😚)
Second: The inaugural mention of “pity” occurs here. One of the most fascinating progressions in the Commedia is the treatment of pity, compassion, mercy and justice as Dante “matures.” He has to learn to reconcile human emotion to the divine will — thus his encounter with Francesca reminds me of the adage “First the test, then the lesson.” His resolve is stress-tested by a beguiling enchantress, and it is a withering experience. The pilgrim swoons; the poet leaves it to us to discern the appropriate response to her “affliction,” which Isaiah 30:15 captures: “This is what the Sovereign Lord, the Holy One of Israel, says: “In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it.”
Third: It’s interesting to see his treatment of courtly love evolve from the traditional form and the conventions he used in his earlier works. Now he begins to shed or transform its rules, and their focus on personal desire, to fit a broader spiritual and theological framework.
And now my TLDR comment: I grant you pride of place for Dido, but to me this is an intense and personally revealing canto for Dante. First, he is embarking on the painful process of relearning how to love, including deconstructing his poetic commitment to courtly love. Second, it’s his first encounter with a sinner (a charming immoralist no less), and he is almost completely unarmored for “battle” (Remember Canto 2, line 3-4?). Canto V screams “Thicken your armor and harden your heart!” A suit of unassailable armor is being built for and by him — *if* he completes his journey.
There’s a tale from Roman military yore (retold in the modern military) that’s an analogous to his experience here: When centurions conducted their inspections of legionaries, it was the custom that each soldier, on the approach of the centurion, would strike the armor breastplate that covered his heart with his right fist — where it had to be strongest to protect the heart — and shout “Integritas!” (Indicating not only wholeness and completeness of his armor, but also of his commitment to protect the Empire). That declaration was changed a century later to “Integer!” (undiminished – complete – perfect, indicating not only that the armor was sound, but that the soldier was sound of character.) The legionaire’s heart had to be as sound and rightly-ordered as his armor. The word integrity derives from “Integer;” in this canto, integrity means living in harmony with the meting out of divine justice — even for those “lightly carried by the wind.” At the end of his journey, that integrity will be rewarded with divine love and eternal happiness. Dante (barely) passes this test, but it has thickened his armor and hardened his heart. He is learning the lesson of Proverbs 11:3: “The integrity of the upright guides them, but the unfaithful are destroyed by their duplicity.”
Pity. Yes, pity, compassion, mercy, and justice. I always wondered why Aristotle emphasized catharsis of fear and pity. Dante’s journey is a mental test, from which he must grow … or perish, self-condemned. At the end of this canto Dante falls asleep, having drunk the waters of Lethe … or pity.
It’s too bad Paolo and Francesca didn’t read to the end of Lancelot and Guenivere’s story, to see how badly it ended for them.
Dante does a brilliant job of making us think. Amazing canto.
Yes. Read to the end. Ha!
I was struck by the line “Always a swarming multitud awaits.” In other words, we are all in danger of landing at that gate, there but for the grace of God, etc. Dante’s compassion for those condemned by love, and the overwhelming numbers of those thus condemned hints at an ambivalence on the poet’s part about whether they really deserve to be punished. To me lust is the obsession with filling a physical desire at the expense of the people used to fulfill it. Falling in love with someone when that love might cause pain to other people, the sin here is not loving, but acting on it and causing that pain. Dante seems to me to be pondering the significance of that difference.
The other thing about that line which hit me, not really to do with the story, was an image of the swarming multitud of beings who have existed since the beginning of time, so so many, yet our own existence feels so much more than the speck of dust that it seems when viewed as a totality.
Is it my imagination? - Or, perhaps the consistency with which the illustrations created for this canto always depict the offenders as ... young. In youth, it is the urge to "love" and to be loved that buffet and worry us. There is tremendous anxiety that, engine like, can propel encounter after encounter - none of which yield peace. Or, as Dante seems to suggest here: Rest. In contrapasso, these are beings in a state of unrelenting urgency. Certainly, their clothing is always whipping about in the wind, exposing firm thighs and tautly muscled chests! -All very effectively illustrated by the many artists inspired by this Canto. I am old. My spouse is too. We survived those years of buffeting and chasing. Our bodies no longer have the vibrancy of those beautiful young bodies in the paintings, prints and illustrations. But we have peace. I'm convinced: That's the love that Dante sees these these poor souls deprived of.
A THEOLOGY OF COURTLY LOVE IN FRANCESCA’S WORDS:
1) “Gentle heart” is a fundamental concept for the Stilnovists: it means soul nobility. Francesca speaks as a courtly lady that has read many courtly books. She “feels” as a courtly lady. Dante shows us the identity that she had made up for herself and the invented narrative that she is believing unto death!
2) “If the King of the Universe…”. God died for us, but she tells that He is not her friend, because she intends it as in that junk literature where it means lover. She completely misunderstood which is the true Lover.
3) She invokes pity and we know that pity is not possible in hell. Did she have pity of anybody during her life?
4) She considers love independent from her free will and compelling her without choice to love back. What about the Love of God for her? He was her First Lover, did she ever thought to love God back? Was He not compelling? Is True Love compelling or it can exist only with free will?
BTW, The description of Paolo is purely physical, there is no mention of his personality, which, seems very different from what she is looking for, as in the second speech.
6) She is offended by the violence of the ending of their life, but she does not care of the offense and damage she has given to her family and society through her adultery. LET ALONE GOD! Repentance is not an option, because after death it is impossible. She is frozen in the attitude of her last minute of life. We must learn to have on our lips always a request of mercy, so we can die with it as last words and be saved, as we will see in Purgatorio, where someone is saved by a little last minute tear or the name of Mary.
7) Her final hope is that her husband that killed them would be in the bottom of hell. Therefore, she was not able to forgive him before dying. A last good reason to be in hell.
We cannot deny the beauty of Francesca words in the anaphor, but that is Dante’s point. What beauty are we looking for? What poetry? Is this kind of poetry the one that bring us to God? or to hell?
That kind of poetry is a trap that brings in our heart a storm of emotions that obfuscate our reason and make us believe Francesca story, because it is deceiving, it is fake. And I am not speaking of the book they were reading…check how the love of Guinevere and Lancelot ends up to destroy the Kingdom. If they would have finished the book …instead of stopping at that point and act it out.
We Readers feel as she feels, we are the Pilgrim fainting, because we are trapped in the physical realm and that poetry makes us forget that there is something more, something better, something higher, that worth suffering for, that worth giving up our narrative to discover it.
Precisely as she was trapped, she tries to trap us. The trap for her was the feeling that she perceived toward Paolo, when she stopped to use her reason. When we abandon reason, we are moved by a hurricane of emotions that overwhelms our free will.
And this is the point: love is not to abandon our reason and free will. We can love only when we are using our reason and free will. Or it is not love!
The truth is in the last tercet. It is a truth and a visible fact, with tangible proofs, ready for us Readers. The Poet is coaching us as investigators in hell: SHE IS NOT ABLE TO FORGIVE HER HUSBAND AND REPENT. Of course, she would be in Purgatorio, because our Lord loves us so much that and if we repent, he will give us the ticket for Paradiso and the training (Purgatorio) to be ready for it.
This fake love brings the twos to physical and spiritual death. This is not true love. God, who is love, brings us to spiritual life and bodily resurrection.
She has refused to forgive; therefore, she has refused God, she has refused life!
At this point, it is unavoidable to remember the style of Beatrice in Inferno 2. She used the language of her authority, as “blessed”, and her words were straight because of her communion with Jesus. “Love has moved me and makes me speak”. She just spoke to Virgil’s soul directly about her worry for her “friend, that may be already so lost”. She was concerned about Dante salvation and not worried about the danger of hell, because she knew that “misery cannot touch” her, since she is “made by God, in His mercy”. She shed tears for Dante. That was true pity!
Italians love the story of Paolo and Francesca and, unfortunately, often misinterpret it. In Italy, reading Dante is mandatory at the Liceo, the scientific and classic high school. We read a canticle, starting with Inferno, in 11th, 12th and 13th grade (yes, we have 5 years of high school, 3 of middle school and 5 of elementary). Nevertheless, still, the majority of Italians interprets the DC in a very superficial way. Partially this is due to Dante’s popularity.
Paolo and Francesca story, together with Ulysses and Ugolino, are probably the main known and misunderstood cantos. We have plenty of music and painting and dramas dedicated to this story and this has contributed to the general misunderstanding that was exported all over Europe. Especially, followers of Romanticism, which rejected the celebration of reason and instead prized emotion above rationality, transformed the character of Francesca from a sinner languishing in hell into an exemplar of female agency and a cultural icon. I love their art, but I can’t accept their interpretation after having read Cornish, Barolini, Herzman and Freccero (and many other American critics) that gave me clues to how to read such an unforgettable master piece.
The romantic readers mystified the Christian conceptions of the afterlife, misrepresented Francesca as a pre-feminist heroine and used the story as an excuse to bring forward an agenda that is evidently in contrast with Dante’s intention. Still today people is under their influence.
OK, NOT ALL OF THEM! And all this was already started with Boccaccio, just few years after Dante’s death, who in his comment to the DC recounts a fake version of the story of Paolo and Francesca, in which Francesca is tricked into marrying Giovanni. Boccaccio’s rendering of the story describes Giovanni, now called Gianciotto (“Crippled John”), as a villain, describing him as disfigured and brutish. I guess the Romantic movement simply tapped into Boccaccio story, because it was congruent with their idea that submissing reason to the passions was the goal of a life well lived. Therefore, despite Dante condemning them to Inferno, Paolo and Francesca deserved Paradiso.
At today, there are more than 40 famous classical musical adaptations, tons of paintings, sculptures and literary compositions, not only created from 1850 to 1950, but also contemporary productions are still coming out every year, especially in Italy, completely contrary to what Dante intended. It’s baffling!
Generally, in Italy, the description of the meaning of the fifth canto, even in some school books, goes like this…and I am not joking: “While reading about Lancelot and Guinevere's love, Paolo and Francesca realize that they do not want to hide their love and that they want to live completely the feeling, despite the risks involved. Dante is greatly struck by Francesca's nobility of spirit and kindness and the cruelty of the consequences of sin. Love is stronger than hell.”
It seems so strange that, since they are in hell, someone can think that Dante has made a mistake, or that God has made a mistake!!! this canto is really the moment when I understand Singleton point that one should believe the fiction. If the Reader refuses to believe the words of the author, he will go really on the wrong path of interpretation…isn’t it like with the Bible!
It’s amazing to me that we needed an American contemporary critic to get the point! (I am so happy to live in this country! and not only for this…)
Therefore, the point is that this emphasis on the romantic aspects of the tale is directed to show to the Readers how attractive sin could be, while discouraging them from pitying the damned and fall in the same sin. Not a case that Virgil scolds the Pilgrim precisely for his pity. Also, as we know, the Pilgrim is on a penitential path, therefore his strong involvement is a confession of his own sin of lust (but not only).
I particularly like three comments of Prof. Barolini.
1) “Love as an overwhelming force that cannot be withstood is a staple of the vernacular love lyric tradition. Giacomo da Lentini, the leader of the first Italian school of poetry, the Sicilian school, offers the language of passive surrender to love that Francesca will later use.”
This comment clarifies that we will find again and again a Golden Thread in the Comedy about the poetry of Dante. He is shedding his old poetry and developing, slowly during this journey, the new one. This is a fiction, because the Comedy IS the new poetry, but it is interesting to see how this poet is showing us his own artistic development through the journey.
It helps also us to remember that this new poetry is profoundly connected with his morality, therefore we must read it as a real spiritual journey, not just an artistic one.
2) “The idea of a love that leads to death is pervasive in medieval lyric and romance, but its most philosophically sophisticated exponent is Dante’s “first friend” and contemporary, Guido Cavalcanti. Dante is here evoking the Cavalcantian love that held sway over him in an earlier phase of his lyric development; see, for instance, the canzone Lo doloroso amor”
This will be extremely useful in Inferno 10, when we will have to deal with the drama of Cavalcanti. Also, shows again that the moral journey accompany the artistic one.
3) FRANCESCA STORY IS “…a sinful narrative defined by a frame of romance in which moral responsibility and personal agency are suspended by an all-consuming sentiment. Sympathy for Francesca is male gallantry moved by lust. She is powerless in her society, but she renounces to power also in morality where she is free…she could have chosen better…she is not helpless as seen by her power on her lover…her desire is to be desired…”. it’s a bit aggressive, but denotes that, even forgetting God in all this, even only from a rational point of view, Francesca is clearly wrong.
Caina? Is this Cain of Cain and Abel? V, 107.
Yes, it's the first subsection of circle 9, which is dedicated to treachery. Caina is specifically for treachery against blood relatives, which is why Francesca says their murderer will be found there. Assuming he doesn't repent I suppose!
Thank You. I had the same question.
Thank you.