- a manifesto of the mixed style: “ma ne la chiesa / coi santi, e in taverna coi ghiottoni” (in church with saints, with rotters in the tavern [Inf. 22.14-15])
- from urban corruption in Lucca to the courtly setting of the kingdom of Navarre: the issues of “wealth management” as discussed in the Introduction to Inferno 16 are here applied to the hangers-on of a great court
- Sardinian barraters, part of an intratextual “Sardinian network” that will be reprised in Inferno 32-33
- a specific micro-society is formed by the sinners of the fifth bolgia, one that includes communication systems and sporting events
- the “nuovo ludo” (new sport [Inf. 22.118]) has features of the beffa from the novella tradition (see “buffa” in Inf. 22.133 and “beffa” in Inf. 23.14)
Act 2, Continued. Inferno 22, verses 1-30
[1] Inferno 22 continues the drama initiated in Inferno 21, into which a secondary drama will soon be inserted. The canto opens with a mock-heroic passage that continues the military imagery from Inferno 21 and is a repertory of different kinds of military communication and semiosis. In the context of the bolgia that treats corrupt governance, the emphasis on the sign-systems necessary for effective communication in the military, and on the trust that we place in shared sign-systems in a healthy and functioning society, is a way of commenting on the break-down in governance and trust in the Italian cities.
[2] For the same reason, the mock-heroic opening of Inferno 22 takes the form of an apostrophe addressed to the citizens of Arezzo: “Aretini” (Inf. 22.5). The continuing references throughout Malebolge to Italian city-states — evoked through the presence of citizens, as well as through rhetorical devices like the simile of the Venetian arsenal in Inferno 21.7-18 and this apostrophe implicating Arezzo — is a way of continuing the connection between Italy and the fraudulent tar in which its citizens are caught.
[3] The targeting of the citizens of Arezzo in the apostrophe that opens Inferno 22 recalls Dante’s own participation in the recent military history of Florence. Dante tells us in Inferno 21.95 that he participated in the seige of Caprona, which occurred in August 1289. A few months earlier, in June 1289, Dante was among the cavalry at the battle of Campaldino, the battle in which Guelf Florence defeated Ghibelline Arezzo.
[4] This opening passage is thus a way of returning to the military context as one that bespeaks the functioning of society and one that is replete with sign-systems and forms of semiosis. It is also a way to return to the last verse of Inferno 21 and the cenno (signal) given there: “ed elli avea del cul fatto trombetta” (And he had made a trumpet of his ass). In all his past experience of military forms of communication, says the narrator, an experience that is replete with trumpets (“trombe” [7]), bells (“campane” [7]), drums (“tamburi” [8]), and signals from castle walls (“cenni di castella” [Inf. 22.8]), he has never seen troops moved by so strange a bugle (“sì diversa cennamella” [10]) as that resounding fart at the end of Inferno 21.
[5] The “cenni di castella” of Inferno 22.8 recall the signs exchanged between diabolic watch-towers in a similar semiotic activity described as “render cenno” (to return a sign [Inf. 8.5]). This signal exchage occurs as the travelers approach the city of Dis at the beginning of Inferno 8:
Io dico, seguitando, ch’assai prima che noi fossimo al piè de l’alta torre, li occhi nostri n’andar suso a la cima per due fiammette che i vedemmo porre e un’altra da lungi render cenno tanto ch’a pena il potea l’occhio tòrre. (Inf. 8.1-6)
I say, continuing, that long before we two had reached the foot of that tall tower, our eyes had risen upward, toward its summit, because of two small flames that flickered there, while still another flame returned their signal, so far off it was scarcely visible.
[6] We are reminded that all encounters with devils have involved challenge, obstruction, and, most significantly, the need to decode hostile semiosis.
[7] The high-style opening of Inferno 22 was interpreted by Pietro di Dante as an indirect stylisltic apology for the exceedingly vulgar ending of Inferno 21. Pietro di Dante comments à propos the opening of canto 22 as follows: “unde excusat se auctor si ita turpiter hic modo hoc recitat ratione loci et qualitatis materie, nam multa in taberna dicta et facta tollerantur, ut dicitur hic in textu, que in Ecclesia improbantur” (the author excuses himself if at this point he writes in such vulgar fashion because of the nature of the place and the material, for indeed many things may be said and tolerated in a tavern that are not approved in church, as here is said in the text). (The Latin text is from the critical edition: Pietro Alighieri, Comentum super poema Comedie Dantis: A Critical Edition of the Third and Final Draft of Pietro Alighieri’s Commentary on Dante’s Divine Comedy, ed. Massimiliano Chiamenti [Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2002], p. 223; also available online through the Dartmouth Dante Project.)
[8] Jacopo della Lana writes of the end of canto 21: “Circa la qual locuzione si può scusare l’autore a chi l’accusasse di parladura sporca e villana sì in questo luogo, come eziandio in lo XVIII, di Taide; chè la materia e l’atto del luogo lo costrinse, cioè l’inferno, in lo quale è ogni inordinazione e disconcio” (Regarding this language, we can excuse the author to those who accuse him of shameful and lowly speech, both in this place and also in the 18th canto of Thais; for it is the material treated and the nature of the place that constrain him: namely Hell, in which exist all disorder and filth). (The Italian text is from the critical edition: Comedia di Dante degli Allaghieri col Commento di Jacopo della Lana bolognese, ed. Luciano Scarabelli, 3 vols. [Bologna, Tipografia Regia, 1866-67], vol. 1, p. 363; also available online through the Dartmouth Dante Project.)
[9] Pietro di Dante considered the exordium of Inferno 22 a way of making amends for the offensively low conclusion of the preceding canto. I agree that the two passages are intended to contrast with each other. In my view, the opening of canto 22 draws attention to the purposefulness of the conclusion of canto 21 and to the constraint under which the author operates: as Jacopo della Lana says, he must capture Hell, a place that contains all disorder — moral and hence stylistic. These canti are in this sense an intentional recital of the disparate elements that make up the mixed style.
[10] The canti of Malebolge are notable for their stylistic plenitude, for their fearless veering from high to low. Following the arrival of Geryon and the announcement of the word comedìa at the end of Inferno 16, Dante more aggressively promotes the mixed style. Comedìa is not qualified by an adjective that limits it, like Vergil’s alta tragedìa in Inferno 20.113. Comedìa is not the opposite of alta tragedìa because it is not limited to one manner. It is not low, but it includes low; it is not high, but it includes high.
[11] These canti are a manifesto for the mixed style; like the mock-heroic exordium of Inferno 22, they are neither high nor low. Language must adapt to represent all facets of reality.
[12] The poet turns to proverbial language in verses 14-15 in order to synthesize the comedìa’s manifesto of stylistic decorum. The travelers join up with the band of devils — “Noi andavam con li diece demoni. / Ahi fiera compagnia! (We made our way together with ten demons: / ah, what ferocious company! [Inf. 22.13-14]) — and the poet explains the travelers’ counter-intuitive behavior with a proverbial comment: “ma ne la chiesa / coi santi, e in taverna coi ghiottoni” (in church with saints, with guzzlers in the tavern [Inf. 22.14-15]).
[13] The proverb justifying the plot development described above is transferable from plot to style. Dante is effectively declaring that reality dictates behavior (the decision to join the band of devils) and also representation. The requirements of place dictate both our companions (either sants or guzzlers), and also the manner of our speech: “ma ne la chiesa / coi santi, e in taverna coi ghiottoni” (Inf. 22.14-15). In church we are with saints, and we behave and speak accordingly. Likewise in the tavern.
Act 3. Inferno 22, verse 31-end
[14] Into the overarching plot-line about Dante, Virgilio and the devils (a more elaborate version of the encounter with devils at the gate of Dis in Inferno 8–Inferno 9), the poet now inserts a remarkable secondary plot about the devils and their interaction with one of the damned souls of this bolgia.
[15] We recall that at the end of canto 21 Malacoda sent a reconnaissance party, led by Barbariccia, on a mission to make sure that no damned souls are outside of the boiling pitch. At that time Malacoda also instructed his troop to accompany Dante and Virgilio to the next intact bridge over the bolgia: “costor sian salvi infino a l’altro scheggio / che tutto intero va sovra le tane” (keep these two safe and sound till the next ridge / that rises without break across the dens [Inf. 21.125-26]). Accordingly, the travelers — reassured by Malacoda’s having granted them apparent safe passage — have set out with ten devils: “Noi andavam con li diece demoni” (We made our way together with ten demons [Inf. 22.13]). Occasionally they see a sinner show his back above the surface like a dolphin (19-24), but most of all they see sinners partly exposed at the edges of the bolgia, like frogs at the margins of a ditch (25-28). These souls rush to submerge themselves when the devils approach, but one unlucky soul is captured by Graffiacane:
e Graffiacan, che li era più di contra, li arruncigliò le ’mpegolate chiome e trassel sù, che mi parve una lontra. (Inf. 22.34-36)
And Graffiacane, who was closest to him, then hooked him by his pitch-entangled locks and hauled him up; he seemed to me an otter.
[16] This grafter, protagonist of the forthcoming episode, is not named in the text, but is commonly known in the commentary tradition as Ciampolo. (This is an Italian corruption of the French name Jean Paul.) Ciampolo explains that he is from the kingdom of Navarre in France, that his mother placed him in the service of a lord — “Mia madre a servo d’un segnor mi puose” (My mother made me servant of a lord [Inf. 22.49]) — and that his father was a rake who squandered his possessions and killed himself: “che m’avea generato d’un ribaldo, / distruggitor di sé e di sue cose” ([my mother] had had me by a wastrel, / destroyer of himself and his possessions [Inf. 22.50-51]). Eventually he moved up and served in the household of King Thibaut II of Navarre, where he began to practice graft: “Poi fui famiglia del buon re Tebaldo: / quivi mi misi a far baratteria” (Then I was in the household of the worthy / King Thibault; there I started taking graft [Inf. 22.52-53]).
[17] Ciampolo’s brief but rich narrative transitions the poet’s lens from the urban graft of Lucca in central Italy in the previous canto to a courtly setting in the south of France. Suddenly we are transferred to the homeland of the courtly culture to which Dante had been so drawn as a young poet. Thibaut II was King of Navarre from 1253 to his death at 1270. His father Thibaut I was a courtly poet who wrote in French. Thibaut I is the only Old French poet named and cited in Dante’s linguistic treatise, De vulgari eloquentia, where he is specifically called “King of Navarre”.
[18] The language that Ciampolo uses is taken from feudal and courtly culture. The word “famiglia” in verse 52 — “Poi fui famiglia del buon re Tebaldo” (Inf. 22.52) — indicates that he became a familiaris of King Thibaut: familiaris is the technical term for a courtier in the service of a lord. For instance, the poet Sordello whom the travellers meet in Purgatorio 6 was a courtier and protégé of Charles I of Anjou, and was described by Charles as “dilectus familiaris et fidelis noster” (our faithful and beloved servant) in a document granting him certain feudal castles in the Abruzzi. (The reference is from the Introduction to Sordello: Le Poesie, ed. Marco Boni [Bologna: Libreria Antiquaria Palmaverde, 1954], p. xcviii.)
[19] In his brief account, Ciampolo depicts an upward arc. He outlines nothing less than his successful transtion from “servo” of a minor lord, the role he was placed in by his mother — “Mia madre a servo d’un segnor mi puose” (Inf. 22.49) — to familiaris of the king: “Poi fui famiglia del buon re Tebaldo” (Inf. 22.52). Anna Maria Chiavacci Leonardi glosses the word famiglia in verse 52 thus: “da servo dunque di un barone del re, divenne per la sua industria famiglia, cioè cortegiano, degli uomini di fiducia del re stesso” (from the servant of a baron of the king, he became through his hard work a bonafide member of the famiglia, in other words a courtier, one of the trusted men of the king himself). (See Chiavacci Leonardi, ed., Inferno [Milan: Mondadori, 2005], p. 662; also available through the Dartmouth Dante Project.)
[20] Of the term that Ciampolo uses for his father, “ribaldo” in verse 50, Chiavacci Leonardi notes that it originally signified a man of the court and subsequently took on negative connotations, and that the shift in the word occurred precisely because of the negative habits associated with courtiers: “in origine uomo di corte, devoto a signore (Tommaseo); termine poi passato a cattivo senso, per i costumi propri dei cortigiani” (originally man of the court, dedicated to the service of the lord [Tommaseo]; the term subsequently took on a negative sense, because of the habits typical of courtiers [Chiavacci Leonardi, op. cit., p. 662]).
[21] Sapegno adds to our understanding of “ribaldo” in his commentary, citing Barbi:
Il vocabolo era usato per estensione a indicare ogni uomo che menasse un’esistenza viziosa e dissipata, frequentando assiduamente bische, taverne e postriboli. Il padre di Ciampolo è detto qui ribaldo, «non perché tale di condizione sociale (ha un patrimonio da distruggere), ma perché menava vita da ribaldo, in ciò che aveva di meno umiliante, ma di piú vizioso, cioè giocare, gozzovigliare e stare in bordello» (cfr. BARBI, Probl., I, 212-13, 242).
(The word was used by extension to indicate any man who led a vicious and dissipated life, who assiduously frequented taverns and brothels. The father of Ciampolo is here called ribaldo, “not because this was his social condition — he had a patrimony to destroy — but because he lived a ribald form of life, in its less humiliating but more vicious features: that is gaming, extravagant feasting, and frequenting brothels”.)
(Natalino Sapegno, ed., Inferno [Firenze: La Nuova Italia, 1968], p. 244; also available through the Dartmouth Dante Project)
[22] The life of a ribaldo is thus the dissipated life of a rake: a man who gambles, drinks, and whores. It is the life evoked by the “taverna” in the proverb cited above: “ma ne la chiesa / coi santi, e in taverna coi ghiottoni” (in church with saints, with guzzlers in the tavern [Inf. 22.14-15]). The life of Ciampolo’s father is a veritable rake’s progress, as he proceeds from dissipation of his possessions to destruction of his self, from squandering to suicide: he is, in his son’s words, “distruggitor di sé e di sue cose” (destroyer of himself and of his possessions [Inf. 22.51]). Verse 51 encapsulates both types of violence against the self featured in the second rung of the circle of violence (Inferno 13).
[23] Ciampolo’s story and the story of his father offer a keyhole onto the world of a court and its satellites, onto the ethically-challenged lives of the hangers-on who inhabit the margins of a great court. Ciampolo’s story is poignant: after all, he worked his way up the courtly ladder from a baron’s servant to a king’s courtier before his fall. Most of all, it suggests the difficulty of maintaining equilibrium — “misura” is Dante’s word — toward material goods in such an environment.
[24] Let us unpack a bit more. Ciampolo was the son of a ribaldo. His father was not poor; as Barbi points out in Sapegno’s above citation, he had an inheritance to squander. Ciampolo’s father destroyed first his means and then himself. In other words, Ciampolo was born into an environment of profound dismisura. Such a man is then put into service, into a life in which he is surrounded by luxury and magnificence that is not his. His biography sounds like a recipe for the making of an embezzler.
[25] I think of Dante’s canzone Poscia ch’Amor, where he inveighs against those who squander their wealth while posing as generous citizens. I am not suggesting that Ciampolo’s father falls into the latter camp; he was a ribaldo, a rake pure and simple, never mistakenly considered a good citizen like the men whom Dante castigates in his canzone.
[26] But the story of Ciampolo’s father, like Ciampolo’s own, does suggest the pressures generated by life in an environment where financial prudence was much less valued than largesse in spending. For more on these issues, and for the contradictions between courtly and Christian values regarding material goods, see the essays “Sociology of the Brigata”, “Aristotle’s Mezzo, Courtly Misura, and Dante’s Canzone Le dolci rime”, and “Dante on Wealth and Society, between Aristotle and Cortesia”, cited in Coordinated Reading. See too the Commentary on Inferno 16 in this commentary.
[27] The same courtly culture of southern France, whose literature and values were of vital importance to Dante in his youth and throughout his life, will be featured in Paradiso 6, 112-42. Here Dante (through the character of Justinian) will tell of a man called Romeo of Villeneuve (1170-1250). Romeo was minister and chamberlain to Count Raymond Berenger IV of Provence (reigned 1209-1245) and was the opposite of a barattiere: rather than using his position of trust to practice corruption, Romeo enhanced the Count’s prestige. He successfully married Raymond’s four daughters, giving him back a return greater than he had received: “che li assegnò sette e cinque per diece” (given ten, Romeo gave Raymond five and seven [Par. 6.138]). Nonetheless Romeo is unjustly exiled, due to the envy that bedevils courts (a phenomenon on which Dante comments in Pier della Vigna’s story in Inferno 13). Once again Dante depicts the pathology of courtly life and suggests the difficulty of achieving balanced and ethical deployment of material goods in a courtly setting.
* * *
[28] Now begins the build-up to a diabolic sport, which will culminate at the canto’s end. We might — if we were to remain within the courtly codes that mark this canto — consider this sport akin to an infernal jousting match: “the clash of tournaments, the rush of jousts” are after all present in the canto’s mock epic opening (“fedir torneamenti e correr giostra” [Inf. 22.6]). The poet draws our attention to this sport with a solemn address to the reader (also reminiscent of the mock epic opening of this canto), which features the severely out of place Latin word ludus (play or game), here barely vernacularized as ludo: “O tu che leggi, udirai nuovo ludo” (O you who read, hear now of this new sport [Inf. 22.118]). This is a nuovo ludo: a novel game, a new sport never seen anywhere else.
[29] Dante sets out to recount the trick that Ciampolo will play on the devils. In a wonderful emblem of the mixed style, Dante mixes Latinate “ludo” (sport) and vernacular “beffa” (trick), high and low styles. The term beffa signals the tricks and tricksters of the novella tradition, and carries connotations of literary genre: the great novella writer Giovanni Boccaccio devotes many stories of the Decameron to narrating beffe played by one person upon another. That the sport played by devils and grafters in Hell is both ludo and beffa — both Latin and vernacular, both high and low — testifies to the mixed mode that the author of the Commedia is forging.
[30] The word beffa refers to a deceitful trick that involves not only words but also deeds, a trick of the sort that in English we call a practical joke. To use Boccaccio as a reference point again, the beffe of the Decameron are action-oriented affairs. Dante designs a “novel sporting event” — “nuovo ludo” (Inf. 22.118) — that is effectively also a “beffa”, a trick that gets the better of and therefore enrages the devil Calcabrina: “Irato Calcabrina de la buffa” (But Calcabrina, raging at the trick [Inf. 22.133]).
[31] Dante uses “buffa” in Inferno 22.133, followed by the now standard spelling “beffa” in Inferno 23.14. Here we learn that the devils’ malice toward the travelers has been stoked by the beffa that has successfully been played on them by a sinner:
Io pensava così: “Questi per noi sono scherniti con danno e con beffa sì fatta, ch’assai credo che lor nòi.” (Inf. 23.13-15)
I thought: “Because of us, they have been mocked, and this inflicted so much hurt and scorn that I am sure they feel deep indignation.”
[32] The sport that is played in Hell — a “nuovo ludo” with features of the vernacular and burlesque beffa from the novella tradition — is a reflection of the infernal society that invented it: it is a game of interlocking and mutual and complete deception. But it is also important to stipulate that it is a game, in other words that Dante intends his optic on human society and human cultural artifacts to be broad enough to take in those essential staples of human life: games, play, and sport. We think back to the Aeneid, the Latin poem that Dante just told us he knew entirely, “tutta quanta” (Inf. 20.114), and remember that Vergil devoted Book 5 of his epic to games played by the displaced Trojans.
[33] Baratteria is the corruption of civic governance, and the result of civic graft is the corruption of the social order. Hence in the canti devoted to baratteria Dante will create the contours of a specific micro-society that is deeply corroded by mutual and absolute lack of trust. That small society is on display in Inferno 22, a canto that emphasizes distinctive features of human societies, such as courtly life and novel sport.
[34] Let us reconstruct the events that lead up to the nuovo ludo that concludes Inferno 22. The devils hook Ciampolo, and then offer the travelers the opportunity to speak with the sinner before they shred him (Inf. 22.31-63). Virgilio knows what interests Dante, and he asks Ciampolo whether there are any Italians under the pitch: “Or dì: de li altri rii / conosci tu alcun che sia latino / sotto la pece?” (Now tell: among the sinners / who hide beneath the pitch, / do you know any who are Italian?” [Inf. 23.64-66]). In detailing the fellow sinners from whose company he has recently parted, Ciampolo focuses on two important figures from Sardinia: Frate Gomita and Michele Zanche (Inf. 22.81-90).
[35] The two Sardinian grafters are part of a Sardinian network in the Commedia. Describing Frate Gomita, Ciampolo refers to the lord whom Frate Gomita betrayed using the Sardinian term “donno” (from dominus) for “lord”: “ebbe i nemici di suo donno in mano” (he had his master’s enemies in hand [Inf. 22.83]). Sardinia was conquered by Pisa in 1117, and Frate Gomita’s lord was Nino Visconti, who ruled the giudicato of Gallura on behalf of Pisa from 1275-1296. (Sardinia was divided into four giudicati in the Middle Ages.) Nino Visconti was grandson of the Pisan noble Ugolino della Gherardesca and Sardinia will be implicated in the story of Ugolino in Inferno 32. Nino Visconti was also Dante’s personal friend, as we learn in Purgatorio 8, where he notably carries his Sardinian title of “judge” (because he ruled a giudicato): “giudice Nin gentil” (Noble Judge Nino [Purg. 8.53]). In effect, Inferno 32 and 33 will be the dark locus in which the corruption and politics of Pisa — and therefore of its possession Sardinia — will come to a head.
[36] The other Sardinian grafter is “donno Michel Zanche / di Logodoro” (lord Michel Zanche of Logodoro [Inf. 22.88-89]). Here again Dante uses the Sardinian “donno” for “lord”. Michel Zanche will also be linked intratextually to Inferno 33. Michele Zanche’s son-in-law is the traitor Branca Doria, whose soul is in the ninth circle. As we shall see, Branca Doria had his father-in-law Michele Zanche murdered in order to acquire his lands and dominion. Branca’s sin was so heinous that his soul went to Hell at the moment of his betrayal, while his body — only apparently alive — remained on earth, now inhabited by a devil.
[37] The in-credible account — the fact that a devil came to inhabit the traitor Branca Doria’s body at the moment that he killed his father-in-law Michele Zanche — becomes a wonderful intratextual opportunity for Dante-poet in Inferno 33. In order to support the truth of the unbelievable assertion that Branca Doria’s body on earth is inhabited by a devil, the soul who recounts the event (Frate Alberigo) invokes . . . the bolgia of the barattieri. Frate Alberigo conjures the moment when Michele Zanche arrives at the fifth bolgia, saying that Michele had not yet arrived “nel fosso sù . . . de’ Malebranche” (in the Malebranche’s ditch above [Inf. 33.142]) when a devil entered Branca’s body:
“Nel fosso sù”, diss’ el, “de’ Malebranche, là dove bolle la tenace pece, non era ancora giunto Michel Zanche, che questi lasciò il diavolo in sua vece nel corpo suo.” (Inf. 33.142-46)
“There in the Malebranche’s ditch above, where sticky pitch boils up, Michele Zanche had still not come,” he said to me, “when this one left a devil in his stead inside his body.”
[38] In the above passage Dante has Frate Alberigo drive his point home by referring back, intra-textually, to “the ditch above”: to the tar of the fifth bolgia. In effect, the poet appeals to his own creation — his own possible world — as guarantor of the truth of that world. I analyze this moment in the poem in The Undivine Comedy:
How does Alberigo — the creature in the fiction — persuade the pilgrim to believe him? By appealing to “reality,” namely the fiction to which he belongs. His reply is one of the most remarkable intratextual moments within the Commedia, as the text buttresses the text, the fiction supports the credibility of the fiction: “‘Nel fosso sù,’ diss’el, ‘de’ Malebranche, / là dove bolle la tenace pece, / non era ancora giunto Michel Zanche, / che questi lasciò il diavolo in sua vece / nel corpo su’” (“In the ditch of the Malebranche above,” he said, “there where boils the sticky pitch, Michel Zanche had not yet arrived when this one [Branca] left a devil in his place in his own body” [Inf. 33.142-46]). With these references to the text of the Inferno — to the Malebranche and the boiling pitch of the bolgia of the barraters — the pilgrim is convinced; and the poet, who has mirrored and thereby mounted a sneak attack on the reader’s reluctance to believe, concludes the canto by stating as simple fact what he learned from Alberigo: in this place he found — “trovai” (155) — a spirit whose soul was in Cocytus, while his body was on earth. Now that the fiction has been accepted as reality, reality — in a typically Dantesque inversion — can be revealed to be a fiction: “e in corpo par vivo ancor di sopra” (and in body he still appears alive up above [Inf. 33.157]). (The Undivine Comedy, p. 95)
[39] After telling of the Sardinians, Ciampolo offers to call other Italians for Dante and Virgilio. He says he will use the sign-system shared by the sinners to indicate that the coast is clear, and that by whistling he will succeed in obtaining Tuscans and Lombards for Dante and Virgilio to interview (Inf. 22.97-105). He has deduced that Dante and Virgilio will be particularly interested in “Toschi o Lombardi” (99): we know that Dante speaks like a Tuscan, because Farinata recognizes him on the basis of his Tuscan speech, but does Virgilio then sound like a Lombard? We will return to this question in the Commento on Inferno 27.
[40] Ciampolo is offering to abuse the trust of his companions in order to secure Tuscans and Lombards. In return, the travelers will induce the devils to stand away from him. He is trying to negotiate a truce like the one under whose terms the Pisan foot-soldiers left the castle of Caprona (see Inferno 21.94-96). The castle of Caprona is one of the castles whose delivery to the Florentines was involved in Ugolino’s fall from power in Pisa: again, all roads lead to Inferno 32-33.
[41] Ciampolo tries to secure the devils’ compliance by stressing the magnitude of his offer to deceive his fellows; he must be telling them the truth because he is offering to harm his friends! There is a brief standoff as each “team” tries to ascertain the level of deceit of the other (Inf. 22.106-117). Then mayhem ensues as Ciampolo finds a moment to free himself and to dive back into the pitch — here is the culmination of the “nuovo ludo” — with the devils in hot pursuit (Inf. 22.121-123). In their anger and spite at being deceived by a sinner, the devils turn upon each other and, at canto’s end, the “cooks are cooked”: “ch’eran già cotti dentro da la crosta” (they were already cooked within that crust [Inf. 22.150]).
[42] In sum: Ciampolo offers to betray his fellows in order to betray the devils, who betray each other in their eagerness to betray the sinners and in their enthusiasm to have Ciampolo betray his comrades.
[43] A complex and perverse social order unfolds in Inferno 22: a micro-society furnished with its own sign-systems and even its own sports. The sinners have their own communications and codes of governance, all deeply rooted in malice and betrayal.
[44] The narrator uses Ciampolo’s “nuovo ludo” and the subsequent havoc to conclude Inferno 22 and to delay the next Act of his novella in four Acts: Act 4, which returns to the overarching plot-line of the deceit practiced by Malacoda on Dante and Virgilio, resumes in the next canto. Inferno 22, like Inferno 8 and Inferno 16 before it, ends in medias res, as Dante again works to script suspense into his overdetermined plot. The devils have been humiliated: instead of being the “cooks” engaged in submerging the sinners, they are now themselves cooked within the tar. Will they seek to avenge themselves on Dante and Virgilio?
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