4.1 FLATTERY AS FORM OF TRANSGRESSIVE SPEECH
4.1.2 Ornaments of speech: seduction and flattery in Canto XVIII of the
After encountering various sinful manifestations of the human disposition toward incontinence and violence, punished in the upper and middle sections of hell, respectively, we enter Malebolge (‘Evil claws’): the eighth circle of hell, by far the most extended and detailed substructure in Dante’s underworld.164
Minutely divided into ten ditches, Malebolge comprises ten different species of fraud.165 Thus, whereas in the upper and middle parts of hell the sinners have in common the incapacity to anchor their passions in reason, the fraudulent sinners in Malebolge stand out by a certain type of cleverness, guile, more exactly, they manifested while alive. Their defect is not the suppression of reason, as in the case of the incontinent and the violent, but the willful perversion of it. Fraudulent sinners used their intellectual gifts not for supporting the common good but for the appropriation of the objects of their desires to the detriment of their neighbors.
The main means the sinners in the eighth circle of hell used to attain their purposes was deceit--‘inganno’--, a conscious and willful immoral practice bound to injure people. La nostra
164 As far as etymology is concerned, Georges Güntert considers Maleboge “un nome violentamente realistico della tradizione volgare, (…), in cui riecheggiano i nomi diabolici Malacoda e Malebranche, e forse anche il Malabocca del Fiore, un calco del Malebouche del Roman de la Rose, come suppone, ipotizzando una lontana origine francese, Gianfranco Contini.” “Inferno XVIII.” Lectura Dantis Turicensis. Inferno, Vol. 1 (Firenze: Franco Cessati, 2000), 245.
165 Unlike the sins of incontinence and violence, fraud is specific only to man, as a being endowed with reason and speech, and therefore is more distasteful to God: Ma perchè frode è dell’uom proprio male/più spiace a Dio (Inf. XI. 26).
ragione, said Dante in the Convivio, a quattro maniere d’operazioni, (…), operazioni che essa considera e fa nel proprio atto suo, le quali si chiamano razionali, si come sono arti di parlare
(IV.IX. 5: 252; ‘our reason is related to four kinds of activities (…) activitities which it contemplates and performs by its own act, and these are called rational, as for example the art of speech’). Speech and verbal exchanges are for Dante manifestations of reason, “arts” that play an important role in human relationships. In this light, the perversion of the intellectual faculties also entails the alteration of the natural functions of human speech. By the same token, if we examine some of the sinners Dante places in the area of fraud, we will find them being punished for sins of a verbal nature: flattery, divination, evil counsel, sedition and the falsifying of words, so many habits that are treated by medieval moralists as forms of transgressive speech.
Forming a large part of hell, the ten subdivisions of fraud occupy no less than thirteen cantos. The first of these is Canto XVIII that synthetically describes two ditches: the one inhabited by pimps and seducers, and the one inhabited by flatterers.166
These categories of sinners share an obsession with erotic concerns: pimps take advantage of the lust of others for personal profit, and seducers abuse the innocent with calculated words and deeds. Common to these two categories is, thus, the deliberation with which they practice their evil methods: the panderers turn the female body into an object of constant traffic, selling, to use Joan Ferrante’s words “something they do not possess,” and seducers lead women astray by premeditated erotic techniques. The panders are represented by Venedico Caccianemico, a Bolognese credited with the selling of his sister Ghisabella to one of
166 The character who volunteers the name of the latter sin is Alessio Interminei da Lucca, who explains his presence in this ditch of Malebolge by the lusinghe (‘flatteries’) he systematically uttered while alive. But before this canto, already in Inferno XI, Virgil names this sin as lusinghe, when he explains to the pilgrim the overall structure of Hell.
Adulatori or lusinghieri are the vernacular terms Domenico Cavalca adopted in reference to the practitionners of adulatio. In his treatment of this sin, Cavalca brings no significant elements of novelty with respect to Peraldus,
the rich of the day (presumably Obizzo d’Este). Venedico admits to Dante that the ditch is full with other people native to Bologna, an assertion that indicates not only Dante’s assessment of Bologna but also the frequency of this type of trade. The dialogue between the two is cut short by a horned devil who flays the sinner both with his whip and his words: Via, ruffian!/ Qui non
son femmine da conio (‘Away, pimp! here there are no/ females to coin’; 65-66). Uttered with
sharp irony, this monetary allusion is strong and intended to cancel the equivalence between female flesh and money, on which panders rest their trade. Ruffian, as a linguistic label, is an infamous appellation (speech here becomes an instrument of torture), and the moral corrective applied to Venedico restores the right angles of the feminine image, conveying that women cannot be equated with profit-bringing merchandise. The base language used by the devil corresponds to a base type of commerce, and here words are associated with human trade, carnal slavery, more exactly, to highlight the sordidness of the sin.
Also, that the “profession” of pimp has a linguistic side has been acknowledged by several Dante scholars: in order to convince women to yield to their evil traffic, the panders have to use, among other means, persuasive words and flattery.167 Symbolic is also, in the text, that the Bolognese are designated with the assertive particle sipa, ‘yes’, the “word of their trade,” in Wayne Storey’s view.
The seducers are exemplified by a remarkable mythological character, who came down to the medieval culture as an “uncontaminated” legendary hero, a model of valiance and tenacity. Reflections of this ancient perception can be detected in Inferno XVIII, where Jason is introduced
167 Georges Güntert labels Venedico an “adulatore” (op. cit, 253), and Caretti interprets the phrase femmine da conio as: “non solo o semplicemente ‘donne da ingannare’, ma anche ‘donne da ingannare nel modo particolare usato da Venedico per Ghisabella, cioè donne da lusingare (emphasis mine) e quindi indurre, per ricavarne denaro, alla ‘vogla’ altrui, ovvero al venale ‘coniugio’). [“Inferno XVIII.” Lectura Dantis Scaligera. (Firenze: Le Monnier, 1967), 597].
with the same reverence and high style that Dante reserves for the major figures of antiquity (Capaneus for instance, or Ulysses): Guarda quel grande che vene,/e per dolor non par lagrime
spanda:/ quanto aspetto reale ancor ritene! (83-85; ‘Look at that tall one coming, who does not
seem to/be shedding any tear for the pain:/how regal is his bearing still!’). A prototype of the winner in the Argonautic myth, Jason becomes in Dante’s interpretation, a defeated man. For, although Virgil introduces Jason as one who per cuore e per senno/li Colchi del monton privati
féne (86-87; ‘by courage and wit robbed the Colchians of the ram’), making thus reference to the
brave enterprise for which the hero became so famous, Virgil suggests that Jason’s courage and his wisdom also had a counterpart: con segni e con parole ornate/Isifile ingannò (91-92; ‘with tokens and elaborate words he deceived Hypsipyle’). Used in the service of a noble ideal, that of acquiring the Golden Fleece, Jason’s senno had a positive connotation: it was the power of the mind capable of overcoming the harshest obstacle imaginable. His wisdom, however, turns into guile, when through deeds and skillful words he outwits a giovinetta, whom he seduces to satisfy his lust. He is a lingua dolosa, a fraudulent speaker, to use Peter the Cantor’s synecdoche. Jason’s sin, the deceitful technique he used to ensnare Hypsipyle, is predicated on the misuse of language, and the adjective ornate, used to describe his seductive talk, is indicative of this. The verbal skills he possessed were used to satisfy his wicked desires, and the embellishments he attached to his rhetoric were in fact morally empty and nocuous.168 Used first in the Commedia to describe in a highly positive way Virgil’s poetic art, the reoccurrence of ornate in a morally negative context draws attention to Dante’s constant assessment of speech as the main means
168For William H.V. Reade, Jason’s sins would rather consist in the “nocumetum proximi involved in the false promises made to Isifile.” [The Moral System of Dante’s Inferno. (New York: Kennikat Press, 1969), 340]. Although Reade does not mention this, in the Middle Ages false promise was considered a “sin of the tongue,” treated for instance by Radulfus Ardens, William Peraldus and Thomas Aquinas. Both the word ornate in the text and Reade’s interpretation of Jason’s empty promises point to the fact that Jason’s main transgression was his wicked use of the rhetorical power of speech. He willfully and repeatedly misused words to achieve his selfish purposes.
used by people in their social interactions. The same fine words that can be used in poetry can also be used as means of persuasion for the perpetration of evil.169 What distinguishes the beauty of a human utterance from another enchanting one, produced in a different context, is the context itself, or, more specifically, the intention that moves the speaker. Virgil used the seductive power of his language to create art, Jason used the same tool to manipulate and destroy other people’s lives. As a seducer he is also mentioned in the text in relationship with Medea, his other lover, whom he abandoned as well, after making her false promises. Through the invocation of Medea, Jason’s adorned words acquire an even wider range of action; the history of the couple Jason- Medea testifies to the fact that the man and the sinners he is supposed to represent use their great manipulative art not only to satisfy their lust, but also, as Ferrante put it, “to ensure their safety or success in other ventures.”170 Both language and love are subservient in Jason to his ambitions, an aspect that had already been highlighted, before Dante, by Jean de Meun in the
Romance of the Rose. For Jean, Jason is guilty before all else of lying to Medeea: Que refist Jason de Medee/Qui si vilment refu boulee/Que li faus sa foi li menti/Puis qu’el l’ot de mort
169 Steven Botterill asserts in this sense that “the moral validity of eloquence is not, in Dante’s thinking, a given,” and that: “Jason’s ‘parole ornate’ are morally quite different from Virgil’s: instead of saving they betray, instead of embodying the truth they act as a vehicle of deceit. Their ornamental quality is specious, employed to conceal the speaker’s malicious and self-seeking intent; eloquence here has become the means of bringing about another’s harm.” [“Dante’s Poetics of the Sacred Word.” Philosophy and Literature 20.1 (1996), 155-157). The discussion of the same word (ornate) used to qualify both Virgil (in Inferno II) and Jason’s speech has, on the contrary, prompted Teodolina Barolini to contend that classical culture is associated, through both Virgil and Jason, with linguistic ornament and deceit. This is how Barolini explains the fact that, toward the end of Canto XVIII, Dante will become vulgar on the level of style: he would thus intend to dissociate himself from flatterers, to mark a clear distance between fraudulent speakers and himself. (The Undivine Comedy, 77). Due to the semantic elasticity of the adjective
ornate, I believe that Dante used it for Virgil with an esthetic value, to characterize the Latin poet’s elegant style,
and for Jason with a moral value, to denounce his sweet-sounding but empty rhetoric. As it is often the case with ambiguous, or polysemic words such as this, it is the context that disambiguates the lexeme. Moreover, a careful reading of Inferno II disallows the interpretation of Virgil’s parola ornata as a general symbol of classical linguistic deceit. In verse 113, Virgil’s speech is described by Beatrice as a parlare onesto, a mode of speech on account of which she can come to him in all confidence. She trusts him specifically for the quality of truthfulness of his talk. Along the same lines, in v. 126, Virgil himself characterizes his words as ‘l mio parlar che tanto ben ti promette. His words promise to bring comfort and enlightenment to the pilgrim, a promise that the narrative of the Inferno and the
Purgatorio will fully accomplish.
170 Joan Ferrante, “Malebolge (Inf. XVIII-XXX) as the Key to the Structure of Dante’s Inferno.” Romance
garenti/ (…) Puis la laissa, li maus trichierres, li faus, li desloiaus, li lierrres. (13233-13261;
‘What did Jason do with Medea? He deceived her shamefully, the false one, when he belied his faith to her after she had saved him from death. Then he left her, the evil trickster, the false, disloyal thief…’).
Although the French text offers a long list of the sacrifices Medea made for the false and deceitful Jason, and evokes in terrible words her slaying of the two sons she had with Jason, what is salient in this description is Jason’s moral profile as a liar and a trickster. The semantic field of fraud is textually realized by words like li faus (two occurrences), mentir, maus
trichierres (an emphatical expression) and li desloyaux, which also might have influenced
Dante’s decision to place Jason in the infernal area of fraud. The story is echoed in the Fiore, where Jason is mentioned three times, twice in the context of his relationship with Medea (when he is called quel disleale, Fiore 161), and once in a neutral context that evokes Argus’ ship (Se
mastro Arguso, che fece la nave/In che Giason andò per lo tosone (...) vivesse…; Fiore, 8). It is
interesting that in the Fiore Medea plays to some extent the same role as Hypsipile in the
Commedia; she is the one who, despite her sapienza (190) and incantamenti (161), was unable to
keep beside her the one who had sworn her love and fidelity. Jason is, in this light, one who outwits somebody knowledgeable in matters of guile: Medea (like Hypsipile), a circumstance, however, which neither in the Fiore nor in the Comedy, excuses Jason, but which may give one more reason for Medea’s alignment with Hypsipile in Inferno XVIII (e anche di Medea si fa
vendetta, v. 96). The fact that Jason is smarter than two clever women only enhances his
deceitful ways.
Outside of the first circle of Malebolge, but within the same canto, we encounter other smooth talkers: Alessio Interminei da Lucca and Thaïs, who stand for the lusingatori (flatterers)
punished in the second bolgia. All the sinners have their heads smeared by the excrement in which they are immersed to the point that one cannot tell if they are laypeople or clerics. This indication can be read in light of Alain of Lille’s critique of the prelates’ propensity to adulatio. In the passage from The Plaint of Nature I have quoted in this section, the prelates are depicted as prone to flattery as the laymen. Dante’s emphasis on the undifferentiated physical appearance of these two important social categories in the ditch of flatterers reinforces the idea that the ecclesiastics are affected as well by this depraved way of speech.171
Alessio Interminei confesses directly to Dante: Qua giù m’anno sommerso le
lusinghe/ond’io non ebbi mai la lingua stucca. ‘I am submerged down here by the flatteries with
which my tongue was never cloyed.’ (XVIII. 125-6).172 By self-definition a sweet-talker, Alessio turned flattery into a mode of life; he was a con artist, an artisan of speech, as Alain of Lille would have put it. The adjective stucca Dante uses pejoratively here conveys, through its semantic value, that Alessio’s insincere praises were a constant of his life; they were not accidents happening once in a while, but a consciously cultivated practice, a way of being.173 Both the labeling of Jason’s words as ornate and the description of Alessio’s lusinghe reveals that Dante constantly and perceptively evaluates people’s--and his own--ways of speech. In
Inferno XXXII, the pilgrim willingly puts himself in a favorable light with respect to flattery by
having Bocca degli Abati say that he, Dante the pilgrim, is a bad flatterer (mal sai lusingar per
171 For the flattering clerics the law established the deposition, a penalty introduced by Gratian in his Decretals (1.46.3): “A cleric who is found out in the practice of flattery and scheming is to be degraded,” quoted by Aquinas in S.T. II.II, Q. 115, Art. 2).
172 These two dense lines remind Wayne Storey of the medieval way of bringing dishonor to a person’s reputation by drawing disparaging grafitti on public buildings. Officially sanctioned, these grafitti were accompanied by a couplet of verses describing the man and the felony he committed: “The summary brevity of Alessio’s confession and his punishment vaguely recalls the explicit tituli of the paintings always in the vernacular and usually reduced to simple but effective rhymes.” [“Inferno XVIII,” in Lectura Dantis: Supplement. Vol. 6. Dante’s Divine Comedy.
Introductory Readings, I: Inferno. (Tibor Wlassics, ed., Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1990), 244].
173 The intent is, in Aquinas’s interpretation, the factor that determines when flattery becomes a mortal sin (ST. II-II, Q. 115, Art. 2).
questa lama, ‘you flatter badly here in this swamp!’, 96). In the same way, flattery is banished
from the outset on the mountain of Purgatory where the repentant are given the chance to redeem their errors. Cato averts Virgil’s intent to jolly him along by telling him that here flattery, or smooth talk, is not necessary: non c’è mestier lusinghe (Purg. I. 92).
But why does Dante punish the habit of flattery in hell in the area of fraud? First of all, let us recall what one of the finest analysts of this verbal practice said: “Just as the aim of the orator is persuasive speech, and the end of a physician is a medical cure, so the aim of flatterers is sweetly spoken deception.” (John of Salisbury, Policraticus, III.10). Flatterers are speakers who enlist the help of rhetorical procedures to persuade people to act in a certain way that serves their selfish purposes. In their relationships with others, flatterers, like physicians, have a well- established goal, but unlike physicians, they do not intend to cure but to harm by deceit. Flattery is defined as perverse rhetoric; it is a form of persuasive speech that is directed at the manipulation of others. Deceit is the essence of this mode of speech; it is its very core.
Dante’s moral agenda opposes these ways, being overtly predicated on an intelligent and virtuous mode of speech. To recall here the assessment from the Convivio, words are to be used with extreme caution, because they contain the seeds of all the actions and their consequences:
Da vedere è come ragionevolemente quel tempo in tutte le nostre operazioni si dee attendere, e massimamente nel parlare. (…). Per che le parole, che sono quasi seme di operazione, si deono molto discretamente sostenere e lasciare, perché bene siano ricevute e fruttifere vegnano, sì perché da la loro parte non sia difetto di sterilitade. (IV.II.8: 223; ‘It is to consider how
reasonable it is that we should await the proper moment in all our undertakings, and most of all in speaking. (…) This is why great discretion must be shown in using or in avoiding the use of
words—which are, as it were, the seed of our activity—so that they may well be received and