- the anti-spiration of un-love freezes the icy core of the universe
- Lucifer as sensate matter/animate death
- Lucifer, once the most beautiful of created beings, betrays his Creator
- as Dante knows, Lucifer once held the place in the hierarchy of being that is now held by “the Seraph closest unto God” (Par. 4.28)
- Dante is focused on the transition from highest of created beings to lowest: Lucifer is the embodiment of transition in malo
- Satanic physics: “tu passasti ’l punto / al qual si traggon d’ogne parte i pesi” (you passed the point to which, from every part, all weights are drawn [Inf. 34.110-11])
- Dante-poet invents a story about the creation of Purgatory
- the emptying out of earth to create Hell reminds us that sin is precisely that which empties us: “colpa vòta” (sin empties [Par. 7.83])
[1] The travelers reach the fourth zone of Cocytus, whose name is Giudecca, dwelling-place of the traitors of masters and benefactors. This name is offered only in verse 117, after the travelers have already left Cocytus in their wake. Chiavacci Leonardi comments on the word “Giudecca” thus: “‘Giudecca’ is not a word coined by Dante, like the names of the other zones of the ninth circle, but was an existing word that refers to the quarters of cities inhabited by Jews” (nome questo non coniato da Dante come gli altri tre, ma già esistente ad indicare i quartieri delle città abitati dagli ebrei, o giudei [Chiavacci Leonardi commentary to Inferno 34, at verse 117, my trans.]). While Chiavacci Leonardi draws out no further implications of the name “Giudecca”, besides connecting it to the presence of Judas in one of Satan’s mouths, Sylvia Tomasch views the name as a negative characterization of Jews, an assessment that I find persuasive. (See the essay by Tomasch cited in Coordinated Reading.)
[2] The previous canti have prepared us for arrival at the pit of Hell and the sighting of Lucifer. The giants in Inferno 31 are approximations of Lucifer in their vast and hulking brute matter. Now the giants are invoked, in Inferno 34.30-1, in order to make the point that for all their bulk they are insignificant in size — in their matter — when compared to the “emperor of the despondent kingdom”: “Lo ’mperador del doloroso regno” (Inf. 34.28).
[3] Most of all, the giants differ from Lucifer in that they are not yet devoid of all cognition. To the degree that there is still a spark of cognition in the giants, they are not reduced to only matter. This reduction to matter is part of what Dante is seeking to convey about his Lucifer, a creature whom the pilgrim mistakes for a structure or edifice, an “[e]dificio” like a windmill seen at night in the distance: “par di lungi un molin che ’l vento gira, / veder mi parve un tal dificio allotta” ([as] a windmill seems to wheel when seen far off, / then I seemed to see that sort of structure [Inf. 34.7]).
[4] In Inferno 34 Dante presses his fantasia to create the category of sensate matter, as in Inferno 33 he invents the analogous category of living dead (hence “zombie” in my title “The Wolf and the Zombie”): souls who are sent to Hell at the moment of betrayal but whose bodies are still living on earth. Inferno 33 ends with the declaration that the bodies of the traitors of Tolomea appear to be alive on earth (“in corpo par vivo ancor di sopra”), while their souls are already “bathing in Cocytus”:
trovai di voi un tal, che per sua opra in anima in Cocito già si bagna, e in corpo par vivo ancor di sopra. (Inf. 33.155-57)
I found one of you such that, for his acts, in soul he bathes already in Cocytus and up above appears alive, in body.
[5] While we know that Branca Doria’s soul is in Cocytus, nonetheless his body is somehow animated by the devil who inhabits him on earth, with the result that he is functional and does all the things that living humans do: “mangia e bee e dorme e veste panni” (he eats and drinks and sleeps and puts on clothes [Inf. 33.141]). Thus, we are in the presence of sensate matter, of animate death.
[6] This concept of sensate matter/animate death — neither dead nor alive — seems to be what is at stake for Dante in his idea of Lucifer. Lucifer is a gigantic, hulking, masticating, and undead creature. Lucifer masticates, but he does not speak: lack of speech signifies the lack of that spark of cognition preserved in the giant Antaeus in Inferno 31. The undead zombie Branca Doria “eats and drinks and sleeps and puts on clothes” (Inf. 33.141), despite his soul no longer inhabiting his body — an absence that makes him literally “inanimate”. Likewise, Lucifer is animate death: sensate matter who moves, bats his wings, drools, and chews.
[7] Lucifer as a figure of animate death marks an important moment in Dante’s long meditation on animate versus inanimate, a meditation that he begins in earnest in Vita Nuova 25, but that he already begins to explore in an early sonnet like Piangete, amanti (see Dante’s Lyric Poetry, especially pp. 75-76). In Vita Nuova 25 Dante claims that a poet can talk to inanimate things and can make inanimate things talk among each other:
Dunque, se noi vedemo che li poete hanno parlato a le cose inanimate, sì come se avessero senso e ragione, e fattele parlare insieme; e non solamente cose vere, ma cose non vere. (VN 25.8)
Therefore, if we see that poets have addressed inanimate things as if they had sense and reason, and also have made them talk — and not only real things but imaginary things as well. (Frisardi trans.)
[8] In his Lucifer, Dante embodies the Augustinian idea that evil is the absence of good. Augustine conceives the wages of sin in terms of loss and alienation: it is ‘‘to be lost out of the kingdom of God, to be an exile from the city of God, to be alienated from the life of God, to have no share in that great goodness which God hath laid up for them that fear Him, and hath wrought out for them that trust in Him’’ (Augustine, Enchiridion 112). Hell for Augustine is “[t]his perpetual death of the wicked” (Enchiridion 113; for the full citation, see “Medieval Multiculturalism and Dante’s Theology of Hell”, cited in Coordinated Reading).
[9] In Inferno 34 Dante gives shape to Augustine’s anti-Manichaeism, to the idea that there is no transcendent principle of evil. His representation of Lucifer is an attempt to make the point that evil is not something, but the lack of something: evil is the not-good. Hence all of Lucifer’s attributes are the negation of divine attributes, because his being is characterized only by what it is not. The canto begins in this spirit, via intertextual negation. The deliberate mis-citation of the first verse of Venantius Fortunatus’s hymn in honor of Christ the king and His cross adds the word “inferni” to the original “Vexilla regis prodeunt” (the banners of the king advance), so that the advancing banners of the king now become the advancing banners of “the king of Hell”: “Vexilla regis prodeunt inferni” (Inf. 34.1). These are revealed to be Lucifer’s six bat wings.
[10] Lucifer breathes un-love just as God breathes the warm breath of love. The verb “spira” (from spirare, to breathe), used of the freezing wind in Inferno 34.4, echoes technical theological language. In the theology of the Trinity, the procession from the Son to the Holy Spirit is called “spiration”. Here in the pit of Hell we encounter an “anti-spiration”: the breathing forth of hate and death in place of love and life.
[11] Lucifer’s bat-wings blow a freezing wind of un-love. We are now at the frozen core: the frozen heart of the universe. As I have noted previously, Dante uses sparingly the conventional iconography for Hell, the biblical fire and brimstone, that we find in popular renditions. He is original in producing ice at the pit of hell. This icy cold is the absence of love and warmth and life. Hell, the absence of the good, is also the absence of love and warmth and life.
[12] Under each of Lucifer’s three faces sprout two large bat wings: “Sotto ciascuna uscivan due grand’ ali . . . Non avean penne, ma di vispistrello” (Beneath each face of his, two wings spread out . . . They had no feathers, but were fashioned like a bat’s [Inf. 34.46 and 49]). In physical terms, the three cold winds blowing from Lucifer’s three pairs of bat-wings (six wings in all, like his six eyes, two for each face) freeze the lake of Cocytus at the core of the earth: “sì che tre venti si movean da ello: / quindi Cocito tutto s’aggelava” (three winds made their way out from him — / and all Cocytus froze before those winds [Inf. 34.51-52]). The core of the earth is made not of hot molten lava but of frozen death.
[13] In spiritual terms, Lucifer of the three faces is the antithesis of the Divine Trinity. Lucifer spirates death where the Trinity spirates love. Dante pauses to note the marvel of Lucifer’s three faces on one head, an infernal mis-appropriation of God’s Triune but Single nature as simultaneously Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: “Oh quanto parve a me gran maraviglia / quand’io vidi tre facce a la sua testa!” (I marveled when I saw that, on his head, he had three faces [Inf. 34.37-38]).
[14] Lucifer’s three mouths chew on the three greatest traitors of human history, as Dante sees human history. Two are from Roman history (the betrayers of Caesar, namely Brutus and Cassius) and one is from biblical history (Judas, the betrayer of Christ). Once more, here at the end of Inferno, we note the interweaving of the classical with the biblical that is an absolute signature of Dante’s imaginary practice. This practice will continue into Purgatorio and Paradiso.
[15] In Dante’s conception, Lucifer is a gigantic hulk of vacant, vastly un-charismatic, non-cognitive matter. But most fascinating about Lucifer for Dante is not what he is, but how he became what he is. Lucifer is for Dante the embodiment of transition in malo, of negative conversion.
[16] Lucifer was the most beautiful of the angels, who aspired to be greater than his maker. His sin of overweening pride led to his fall. The angels who fell with him became devils. To this account, rooted in Isaiah 14:12-15, Dante adds the idiosyncratic idea that the angels who did not choose between God and Satan, between good and evil, are found in the vestibule of Hell with the souls of those who were neither good nor bad. See the Commento on Inferno 3 for more on Dante’s theologically implausible idea that the insufficiently evil are not allowed into Hell.
[17] The grandeur of what Lucifer was stands in stark contrast to the monstrous vacancy of what he now is. We remember that Lucifer (the name means “light bearer”) was the highest and greatest and most beautiful of all created beings. On those occasions in Paradiso when Dante refers to the highest of created beings, he is referring to a position in the ladder of being that was once occupied by Lucifer. When Dante refers to the Seraph who is highest among the Seraphim (the highest of the high, for the Seraphim are the highest of angelic orders), he is referring to a position held by Lucifer. When Dante refers to the Seraph “who most in-Gods himself” — “D’i Serafin colui che più s’india” (Par. 4.28) — he coins divine language to conjure the particular rung in the hierarchy of creation that he knows once belonged to Lucifer.
[18] Dante uses a similar formulation for the highest of created beings on more than one occasion in Paradiso, and it is clear that he is fascinated by the absolute nature of the fall from highest of created beings to lowest. In Inferno 34 it is this transition that Dante emphasizes. Very important in his language about Lucifer is the use of the past absolute, the tense that most underlines the absolute fissure between then and now.
[19] In verse 18 Lucifer is called “the creature who had beauty in his appearance” — “la creatura ch’ebbe il bel sembiante” — where the emphasis is on the verb “ebbe” (the past absolute of avere). The reference is to the attribute of beauty that was once possessed, and is now utterly lost (perhaps echoing Ezekiel 28:17: “Your heart was proud because of your beauty; you corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor”).
[20] Lucifer’s irretrievably lost beauty — and the quantity of that lost beauty — provides the measure whereby we can construe his current brutishness. And his brutishness, quantified and construed as the precise inverse of his lost beauty, provides a moral compass. For if so beautiful a creature could turn pridefully against his maker (verse 35), then — Dante’s thinking proceeds here by precise steps — we can well understand how all sorrow could result from his action:
S’el fu sì bel com’elli è ora brutto, e contra ’l suo fattore alzò le ciglia, ben dee da lui proceder ogne lutto. (Inf. 34.34-36)
If he was once as handsome as he now is ugly and, despite that, raised his brows against his Maker, one can understand how every sorrow has its source in him!
[21] Dante’s argument here is based on measurement, but also on transition. It is the original change from most beautiful to most ugly that is the catalyst for the subsequent claim: all sorrow has its source in Lucifer. Starting with the degree of original beauty, Dante’s discourse moves startlingly from physical to moral and metaphysical. If a being created so beautiful could turn against his creator — could, despite the degree to which he was endowed, betray his creator — then any betrayal is possible, and all sadness can be accounted for.
* * *
[22] Abruptly, after naming the three sinners masticated in Satan’s three mouths, Virgilio announces that it is time to leave, for there is nothing left to see: “Ma la notte risurge, e oramai / è da partir, ché tutto avem veduto” (But night is come again, and it is time / for us to leave; we have seen everything [Inf. 34.68-69]). And, indeed, leaving is very much the subject of this canto.
[23] Accordingly, I will turn now to the issue of transition itself. Verse 34 captures Lucifer in the space of irretrievable transition: from absolute beauty to absolute ugliness. This is the space of a becoming, tellingly signified in the transition from “fu” in the past absolute to “è” in the present: “S’el fu sì bel com’elli è ora brutto” (If he was once as handsome as he is now ugly [Inf. 34.34]). He who was once the “Son of Dawn” (Isaiah 14:12) is now, in the present and for all time, only brute ugliness.
[24] Lucifer’s transition out of good and into evil is a trajectory that is crossed, in the chiasmic diegesis of Inferno 34, by Dante’s transition out of evil and into good.
[25] Dante is leaving Hell. Of his departure from Hell there is no doubt. A sinner in Inferno 16 describes the pilgrim as one who will exit the dark precincts of Hell and, in words that anticipate the last verse of Inferno 34, will see the beautiful stars above: “a riveder le belle stelle” (Inf. 16.83). These are the very stars that greet the pilgrim in this canto’s last verse: “E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle” (we emerged to see — once more — the stars [Inf. 34.139]). The same proleptic passage of Inferno 16 characterizes the pilgrim as one who will be able to say “io fui” — “I was” — about having been in Hell:
se campi d’esti luoghi bui e torni a riveder le belle stelle, quando ti gioverà dicere “I’ fui” (Inf. 16.82-84)
if you can escape these lands of darkness and see the lovely stars on your return, when you repeat with pleasure, “I was there”
[26] We know that Dante’s departure from Hell is foreordained, that Hell and Lucifer will be safely relegated to the passato remoto. Nonetheless, the pilgrim’s viewing of Lucifer provokes a fascinating response. When he considers Lucifer, and considers the violence of Lucifer’s transition from most beautiful to most ugly, the pilgrim enters briefly into a liminal space — neither dead nor alive — that in The Undivine Comedy I call “the space between the tenses” (p. 97). In Inferno 34 the narrator briefly freezes time, in order to create a nanosecond in which he imagines himself frozen, “gelato” in verse 22, a participant in the primary lexical feature of icy Cocytus. He is neither dead nor alive — “Io non mori’ e non rimasi vivo” (I did not die and did not remain alive) — in a state perilously similar to the animate death that he here witnesses:
Io non mori’ e non rimasi vivo; pensa oggimai per te, s’hai fior d’ingegno, qual io divenni, d’uno e d’altro privo. (Inf. 34.25-27)
I did not die, and I was not alive; think for yourself, if you have any wit, what I became, deprived of life and death.
[27] In these canti where Dante has troped and troped again the idea of a liminal state that is neither dead nor alive, it seems that he here signals a participation whose peril is implicit in the significance of the adjective “privo”, “deprived”, in “qual io divenni, d’uno e d’altro privo” (what I became, deprived of life and death [Inf. 34.27]). The process of becoming leads him to be deprived of both life and death. Deprivation is the very essence of Hell in Augustine’s understanding of Hell, as discussed above.
[28] But, in Dante’s case, such participation is transitory. The pilgrim is in a process of becoming, and the poet is intent on capturing pure becoming-ness, with respect to himself, as we can see in the triple use of the verb “divenni” (“I became”):
“Com’io divenni allor gelato e fioco” (how I then became frozen and faint [22])
“qual io divenni, d’uno e d’altro privo” (what I became, deprived of one and of the other [27])
“s’io divenni allora travagliato” (if I became then confused [91])
[29] The last of the three verses that contain divenire — “s’io divenni allora travagliato” (91) — addresses the pilgrim’s confusion at passing the point at the center of the earth. This point was believed to be, in physical terms, “the center / to which all weight is drawn”: “lo mezzo / al quale ogne gravezza si rauna” (Inf. 32.73-74). This concept, of all weight congregated at the center, first stated in Inferno 32, is repeated in Inferno 34, where we learn that, as a result of passing through the center of gravity, the pilgrim has transited “the point / to which, from every part, all weights are drawn”: “tu passasti ’l punto / al qual si traggon d’ogne parte i pesi” (Inf. 34.110-11).
[30] As we have seen throughout Inferno, Dante uses an inhabitant of Hell as the vehicle of his transition through and ultimately out of Hell. Thus, in the way that the travelers flew down to Circle 8 on Geryon’s back, and in the way that Antaeus the giant lifted them from Circle 8 to Circle 9, now Dante is instructed by Virgilio to clasp him around the neck (70) while Virgilio negotiates grabbing onto Lucifer’s “vellute coste” (shaggy flanks [Inf. 34.73]) and — carrying the pilgrim — descending “di vello in vello”: from tuft of hair to tuft of hair (Inf. 34.74). Lucifer’s thick and matted hair is the medium through which they transition.
[31] Dante and Virgilio climb first down Lucifer (“giù discese” [74]) and then — to the pilgrim’s surprise — up Lucifer; indeed, the pilgrim thinks that they are returning to Hell: “sì che ’n inferno i’ credea tornar anche” (I thought that we were going back to Hell [Inf. 34.81]). But they have crossed the earth’s center of gravity and experienced the great inversion: what was upside down, physically and morally, is now turned right-side up again. No longer will they — and we — be in a realm where our interpretation is based on a principle of inversion: on the principle that “here pity lives when it is truly dead” (“qui vive la pietà quand’è ben morta” [Inf. 20.28]), or the principle that “it was courteous to be rude to him” (“e cortesia fui lui esser villano” [Inf. 33.150]).
[32] We reach a point of transition in the hermeneutic voyage as well: for us as readers and interpreters, the traversing of this point signifies that we will no longer have to extrapolate the proper understanding of events from their upside-down — “sottosopra” (104) — variant. We have concluded the section of the Commedia that engages in a “backward pedagogy” (for a fuller discussion, see “Dante, Teacher of his Reader”, in Coordinated Reading, and the last section of the Commento on Inferno 26).
[33] The transiting of this point, a transiting that is emphasized with the repeated phrase passare il punto — “quel punto ch’io avea passato” (that point that I had crossed [Inf. 34.93]) — recalibrates the travelers. The result of this recalibration is that Lucifer’s legs, which Dante had thought to see extending down below him back into Hell, are now viewed extending upwards:
Io levai li occhi e credetti vedere Lucifero com’io l’avea lasciato, e vidili le gambe in sù tenere; e s’io divenni allora travagliato, la gente grossa il pensi, che non vede qual è quel punto ch’io avea passato. (Inf. 34.88-93)
I raised my eyes, believing I should see the half of Lucifer that I had left; instead I saw him with his legs turned up; and if I then became perplexed, do let the ignorant be judges — those who can not understand what point I had just crossed.
[34] Dante narrates Satanic physics by splicing together the abstract “scientific” language devoted to the point at the center of the earth — “tu passasti ’l punto / al qual si traggon d’ogne parte i pesi” (you passed the point to which, from every part, all weights are drawn [Inf. 34.110-11]) — with startlingly material language devoted to the Satanic body: Satan’s furry hair, his legs, his thigh, his hip. The crossing of the center of gravity occurs on Satan’s body at “the point at which the thigh / revolves, just at the swelling of the hip” (76-7). This is the point at which Virgilio must struggle mightily to turn his head and the pilgrim’s head to where their legs had been. He must “convert”, turning himself and Dante upside down:
Quando noi fummo là dove la coscia si volge, a punto in sul grosso de l’anche, lo duca, con fatica e con angoscia, volse la testa ov’ elli avea le zanche, e aggrappossi al pel com’ om che sale, sì che ’n inferno i’ credea tornar anche. (Inf. 34.76-81)
When we had reached the point at which the thigh revolves, just at the swelling of the hip, my guide, with heavy strain and rugged work, reversed his head to where his legs had been and grappled on the hair, as one who climbs — I thought that we were going back to Hell.
[35] Lucifer’s physical characteristics are narrated with great precision: the colors of his three faces (for the black face, which recalls people from the Nile valley, see the Appendix on Ethiopians in the Commento on Paradiso 19), the precise physical way that the three faces are joined as one head, his wings specifically without feathers, like those of a bat (“vipistrello” in verse 49), his chewing and drooling from each of his three mouths. When the time comes for the travelers to climb onto Lucifer and up his body, and thus to pass through the point at the center of earth, the narrator details their waiting for the moment when Lucifer’s wings are open enough for them to safely attach themselves to the body (as today we wait for the right moment to approach a helicopter). Subsequently, in narrating the climb, Lucifer’s corporeality is reckoned in great detail, with a catalogue of body parts.
[36] By passing through the point at the center of earth, and out of Hell, everything is “righted”: what was wrong is now right. The narrator makes this point in the lovely series of questions that the pilgrim puts to Virgilio:
ov’ è la ghiaccia? e questi com’ è fitto sì sottosopra? e come, in sì poc’ ora, da sera a mane ha fatto il sol tragitto? (Inf. 34.103-5)
Where is the ice? And how is he so placed head downward? Tell me, too, how has the sun in so few hours gone from night to morning?
[37] Everything has changed: in a kind of Dantean jet lag effect, it is now morning instead of evening, and what was once upside down — “sottosopra” (104) — is now turned right-side up, both physically and morally. Physically, Dante expects to see Lucifer as he was before, to see “Lucifero com’ io l’avea lasciato” (Lucifer as I had left him [Inf. 34.89]); instead, Dante now sees Lucifer inverted, his legs turned upward: “e vidili le gambe in sù tenere” (instead I saw him with his legs turned up [Inf. 34.90]). Morally, we are no longer in a world of which it must be said that “here pity lives when it is truly dead” (Inf. 20.28).
[38] Dante transitions, he keeps becoming. The pilgrim has passed the point at the center of the earth and righted himself. Unlike Lucifer, who is for all eternity “still fixed as he was before” — “fitto è ancora sì come prim’era” (Inf. 34.120) — the pilgrim moves on and transits out. Lucifer stands in utter contrast to becoming-ness itself, for Lucifer is the essence of what it is to have become. We should specify that Lucifer is the essence of what it is to have become in malo, negatively: paradise too will afford the condition of having become, although the having-become of heaven is vital, never static, never fixed.
[39] The essence of Lucifer is indeed the essence of Hell itself, for Hell is the place whose denizens — because they sinned and did not repent their sins — are not afforded the opportunity to continue becoming. They are fixed, as Lucifer is fixed: “fitto è ancora sì come prim’era” (Inf. 34.120). This is what Capaneo told us, when he declares in Inferno 14: “Qual io fui vivo, tal son morto” (That which I was in life, I am in death [Inf. 14.51]).
[40] Dante’s afterworld offers the possibility of non-fixity after death, the possibility of continued becoming. The opportunity to continue becoming after death occurs, in the Catholic imaginary, in Purgatory. When Dante passes through the center of earth, he passes into the southern hemisphere (hence the transition from evening to morning), the hemisphere where he situates his Mount Purgatory. Not surprisingly, therefore, it is to the story of the creation of Purgatory that Dante turns in the last section of Inferno 34.
[41] Notable is Dante’s demiurgic myth-making at the end of Inferno. Dante-narrator devotes himself to conjuring an explanation as to how Lucifer’s fall succeeds in creating both Hell and Purgatory. Thus Dante makes his very own Creation story, contributing his own narrative to the many accounts of Creation that he will present in Paradiso.
[42] Lucifer’s fall is the sin that created Hell, but God, simultaneously, used that fall to create the remedy: Purgatory. Lucifer fell and the earth fled him, leaving an “empty space” where he had been: “per fuggir lui lasciò loco vòto” (to flee from him it left this empty space [Inf. 34.125]). Thus Lucifer excavated the earth and created the empty cone of Hell. Having fled Lucifer, the displaced earth became Mount Purgatory, a cone of earth that rises up in the middle of the water that covers the southern hemisphere. Dante is the first to conceive of Purgatory as a mountain. This is the mountain that his Ulysses sees in the distance after many months of sailing:
quando n’apparve una montagna, bruna per la distanza, e parvemi alta tanto quanto veduta non avëa alcuna. (Inf. 26.133-35)
when there before us rose a mountain, dark because of distance, and it seemed to me the highest mountain I had ever seen.
[43] The emptying out of earth to create Hell reminds us that sin is precisely that which empties us. As stipulated in Paradiso 7, the Augustinian canto that recounts the history of mankind’s original sin and Christ’s redemption: “colpa vòta” (sin empties [Par. 7.83]). Where sin is emptiness — literally in the form of the Hell-hole that extends under Jerusalem to the earth’s core — Purgatory is made of the earth that fled Lucifer and is a place of fullness, “dove tempo per tempo si ristora” (where time is restored for time [Purg. 23.84]). Purgatory is a place that is devoted to refilling that emptiness.
[44] The travelers climb up along a path carved into the rock by a little stream (“ruscelletto” of verse 130) that flows down from the southern hemisphere. Chiavacci Leonardi claims that this stream is Lethe, flowing down from the Earthly Paradise at the top of Mount Purgatory, carrying back down to Hell the memories of the sins of which the souls cleanse themselves at the end of their purgation. After winding their way up the narrow path carved by the stream, the travelers return to the world of light and to the stars: “E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle” (and so we emerged, to see — once more — the stars [Inf. 34.139]).
[45] And Hell, teeming with apparent life as we turn its pages in awe and wonderment, is left behind us: fixed for eternity, frozen — only animate death, after all.
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