The Malevolent Residue of Excessive Loyalty: Piero, Esoterica, and Suicide

Abstract

This chapter continues the argument by re-examining more closely and refining the third of the four prominent readings of the thirteenth canto. In so doing, the chapter analyzes the nature of esoteric composition, an authorial art of masking one’s literary intent within surreptitious poetic style, ironic dissimulation, and metaphorical misdirection. Did Dante conceal his deepest convictions within a special code for perspicacious readers capable of piercing through literary appearances? If so, what motivation fueled this literary masquerade? Does this literary strategy invite false interpretations from the mass of readers lacking the supposed special discernment powers of the cognoscenti? In any case, how are such inquiries related to interpreting canto thirteen reasonably?

I am not tagging along with those ragbags [the ill, weak, weary, and poor who are blessed as the good and the just] to go to paradise. I am staying with that other company [Plato, Plutarch, Livy, and Tacitus, among others], to talk about politics and the state and to go to hell.

—Niccolò Machiavelli on his deathbed (1469–1527)

Le penna della lingua dovrebbe essere immersa nell inchiostro del cuore. (The pen of the tongue should be dipped in the ink of the heart)

—Italian proverb