{"id":2842,"date":"2025-02-02T21:25:59","date_gmt":"2025-02-02T21:25:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/?p=2842"},"modified":"2025-02-02T21:25:59","modified_gmt":"2025-02-02T21:25:59","slug":"time-eternity-and-terza-rima-in-dantes-inferno-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/?p=2842","title":{"rendered":"Time, eternity and terza rima in Dante’s Inferno 5"},"content":{"rendered":"

I wish I could remember exactly what Edward Wilson-Lee said on today\u2019s The Verb about the way rhyme worked in Keats\u2019 sonnet \u2018On First Looking Into Chapman\u2019s Homer\u2019 \u2013 something about how by folding ideas together the rhymes created a kind of palimpsest of impressions transcending the movement of time. I thought it was beautifully put and gelled with my own much more inarticulate feelings. It\u2019s the way syntax, metre and rhyme work together in Dante\u2019s Commedia<\/em>, for example, that make me feel it\u2019s vital to read key cantos in the original, however gropingly dependent on parallel texts you may be in doing so, as I certainly am. I\u2019d like to glance at a small bit of the fifth canto of Inferno<\/em> with Wilson-Lee\u2019s comment in mind.<\/p>\n

The whole canto is brilliantly and poignantly structured to move through a vast, dark scenario of elliptical, fragmentary, swirling impressions to something that unfolds in tiny, intimately focused, hesitant steps that force one to empathise, reflect and question, where earlier one was simply overwhelmed by the bombardment of terrifying revelations. As readers of the Commedia<\/em> will know, after Virgil has brought Dante into the second circle of hell, past the judge of the damned in the entrance, they find themselves in a tempestuous darkness where vast numbers of souls condemned for lust are blown around helplessly like flocks of starlings, crying out like cranes. Dante calls to two of them \u2013 Francesco and her brother-in-law lover Paolo who were murdered by her husband. She tells him how they fell into sin. Poignancy arises \u2013 for those of us who do find her sympathetic and her fate pitiable \u2013 because she speaks so gently and courteously in terms that evoke her yearning for the human sympathy that Dante shows and that is so alien to hell. It hurts her to remember and speak, she says, but she will do it in gratitude for Dante\u2019s sympathy and courtesy. When she comes to the critical moment she says<\/p>\n

\u201cNoi leggiavamo un giorno per diletto
\ndi Lancialotto come amor lo strinse;
\nsoli eravamo e sanza alcun sospetto.<\/p>\n

Per pi\u00f9 f\u00efate li occhi ci sospinse
\nquella lettura, e scolorocci il viso;
\nma solo un punto fu quel che ci vinse.<\/p>\n

Quando leggemmo il dis\u00efato riso
\nesser basciato da cotanto amante,
\nquesti, che mai da me non fia diviso,<\/p>\n

la bocca mi basci\u00f2 tutto tremante.
\nGaleotto fu ‘l libro e chi lo scrisse:
\nquel giorno pi\u00f9 non vi leggemmo avante.\u201d<\/p>\n

If you can read Italian at all you can feel the double movement here \u2013 on the one hand how slowly, step by step, and in what sharp focus, metre, rhyme and syntax make us see and imaginatively inhabit what\u2019s happening to the pair, and on the other how relentlessly we\u2019re drawn to what follows by the way the second line of each tercet rhymes with the first and third line of the tercet that follows. This slowing does so many things. It gives weight to every line, both making us feel on our pulses how momentous the moment is and creating a mental space in which suggestions and reflections can flow around the words. It makes us feel how raptly Francesca is remembering the moment in all the tenderness and terror and joy it had at the time and in all the dreadfulness of its consequences. Most terrifyingly and movingly \u2013 most in tune with Wilson-Lee\u2019s words about rhyme it makes us see things simultaneously from the perspective of time and eternity<\/em> \u2013 so that we\u2019re intently absorbed in the moment and momentary feelings of that kiss and at the same time see, as the lovers didn\u2019t then but do now, how their fate for all eternity depended on what they did then. Solo un punto fu quel che ci vinse<\/em> echoes with that horrified realisation. Quel giorno pi\u00f9 non vi legemmo avante<\/em> seems to me to echo with the same poignant irony. That<\/em> day they saw no further into the consequences of what they were drawn into.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s how the passage is rendered into English by Robert and Jean Hollander in their magnificent translation of Inferno<\/em> for Anchor Books:<\/p>\n

\u2018One day, to pass the time in pleasure,
\nwe read of Lancelot, how love enthralled him.
\nWe were alone, without the least misgiving.<\/p>\n

\u2018More than once that reading made our eyes meet
\nand drained the colour from our faces.
\nStill, it was a single instant overcame us:<\/p>\n

\u2018When we read how the longed-for smile
\nwas kissed by so renowned a lover, this man,
\nwho never shall be parted from me,<\/p>\n

\u2018all trembling, kissed me on my mouth.
\nA Galeotto was the book and he that wrote it.
\nThat day we read in it no further.\u2019<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I wish I could remember exactly what Edward Wilson-Lee said on today\u2019s The Verb about the way rhyme worked in Keats\u2019 sonnet \u2018On First Looking Into Chapman\u2019s Homer\u2019 \u2013 something about how by folding ideas together the rhymes created a kind of palimpsest of impressions transcending the movement of time. I thought it was beautifully […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dante"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2842"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2842"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2842\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2843,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2842\/revisions\/2843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}