![]() ![]() The most common interpretation of this passage views Alichino as the mouse, Calcabrina as the frog who should have come to his aid, and the pitch as the kite who triumphs over both. If we analyze the analogy between Aesop’s Fable and the events of Inferno 21 and 22, as I do in The Undivine Comedy, we see that it leads to a multiplicity of possible meanings: And, in fact, the two signs - ‘mo’ and ‘issa’ - whose likeness is declared the basis of the comparison between the larger sets of signs, are themselves irreducibly different” (p. As I write in The Undivine Comedy: “Applying one set of signs (the text of the fable) to another (the text of the poem) results not in clarity but in confusion. Comparing one set of signs to another set of signs is not a method for achieving semiotic clarity. He declares that the events that have occurred in the fifth bolgia are as similar to the events recounted in Aesop’s Fable about a mouse who asks a frog for help in crossing a river as mo is similar to issa: “ché più non si pareggia ‘mo’ e ‘issa’ / che l’un con l’altro fa” (for ‘mo’ and ‘issa’ are not more alike than the one with the other ). Dante complicates matters right off the bat by comparing the Fable not only to the events that have been unfolding in “real time” in the fifth bolgia but also to two little signifiers: the two little words “mo” and “issa”, which both mean “now”. As I show in my discussion of this passage in The Undivine Comedy, the comparison of the events occurring in Inferno 23 to Aesop’s Fable of the frog and mouse leads away from semiotic clarity. But in fact, Dante’s literary analogy obscures more than it clarifies, opening up a moment of great semiotic density and hermeneutic obscurity. Knowing the plot of the Fable brings some clarity: we know that the Fable augurs badly for our travelers. The mouse resists a kite flying by seizes the mouse and, because of the string, is rewarded with the malicious frog as well. To understand Dante’s analogy we must begin with the plot of the Fable to which Dante refers, which unfolds as follows: tying the mouse to his leg with a string, the frog sets out and, at midstream, begins to dive, intending to kill the mouse. The present fracas made me think of Aesop. Dante and Virgilio are silent and in single file, like Franciscan friars when they walk together: The travelers walk alone and “without company”: the phrase “ sanza compagnia” in the first verse of Inferno 23 recalls the “fiera compagnia” (fierce company) with which Dante and Virgilio were forced to travel in Inferno 22.14 and underscores the change that has occurred. ![]() ![]() And so Inferno 23 begins with a sense of uneasiness. The humiliated devils are more stoked with malice toward the travelers than they were before. When the devils regroup after having been tricked by that tricky grafter, Ciampolo, after the humiliation of being embroiled in the pitch alongside the very sinners whom they guard, they are angry. Moreover, Malacoda issued his instruction to his troops at the end of Inferno 21, when the devils were feeling cocky and exuberant - before the incident with Ciampolo that takes place in Inferno 22. Malacoda’s deceptive instructions in Inferno 21 are intended to lull Dante and Virgilio into a sense of false security before the devils turn on them. Because there is no intact bridge over the sixth bolgia (in fact, all the bridges over the sixth bolgia collapsed at the same time, during the earthquake that accompanied the Crucifixion), Malacoda was effectively telling his devils that they will soon be authorized to attack the travelers. We recall that in Inferno 21 Malacoda instructed Barbariccia and his band to grant Dante and Virgilio safe passage to the place where they will find an intact bridge that spans the sixth 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 ). The secondary plotline involving Ciampolo, the devils, and the nuovo ludo is now complete, and the author returns to the main plotline: the story of Dante and Virgilio deceived by recalcitrant and malevolent devils. After the grafter Ciampolo succeeds in tricking the devils and causes them to fight each other at the end of Inferno 22, Inferno 23 resumes by continuing the “play in 4 acts” begun in Inferno 21. “la malvagia ipocresia de’ religiosi” (the wicked hypocrisy of the religious) of Decameron 1.6 the bolgia of hypocrisy and religion: cf.an event that is “imagined” can also be true ⇒ the “nonfalse errors” of Purgatorio 15.how does an author script suspense in an overdetermined narrative?.semiotic uncertainty through proliferation of meaning: the Aesop’s Fable analogy and its component of “Geryonesque fraudulence”. ![]()
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