Abstract
This chapter features the personification of thirteenth-century noteworthy pride and destructive arrogance, Farinata degli Uberti, a Ghibelline warrior who both conquered Florence and singlehandedly shielded the city from utter annihilation. Farinata embodies admirable virtue and formidable vice, partisan patriotism, and zealous hedonism, as well as familial loyalty and divisive individualism. We also meet Cavalcante de’ Cavalcanti, the father of Dante’s onetime best friend, Guido Cavalcanti. By closely examining and evaluating Dante’s character sketches of the two protagonists, this chapter explores the relationship between good and evil; the nuances of Epicurean hedonism; the structure of community and its tensions with individualism and narrow tribalism; and Dante’s understanding of salutary love, filtered through Platonic philosophy, Cicero’s pagan argument for the immortality of the human soul, and Christian theology.
The true hero never surrenders, he is distinguished from the others not by the great initial exploit or the pride with which he faces tortures and death but by the constancy with which he repeats himself, the patience with which he suffers and reacts, the pride with which he hides his sufferings and flings them back in the face of the one who has ordered them. Not resigning himself is his secret, not considering himself a victim, not showing others his sadness or despair.
—Oriana Fallaci (1929–2006)
He only half dies who leaves an image of himself in his sons.
—Carlo Goldoni (1707–1793)
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Notes
- 1.
Giovanni Boccaccio, Expositions on Dante’s Comedy, trans. Michael Papio (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), 442–443.
- 2.
Filippo Villani, Le vite d’uomini illustri fiorentini, ed. Giammaria Mazzuchellli (Florence: Sansone, 1847), V.50.
- 3.
Giovanni Villani, Chronicle: Selections, trans. Rose E. Selfe (Lexington, KY: CreateSpace, 2017), VI.33.
- 4.
Ibid., VI.81. Marcus Furius Camillus (447–365 BC) “served the Roman republic as a censor, military tribune (six times), and dictator (five times). The post of dictator was instituted in times of crisis and for a short time. … Machiavelli takes Camillus as a man of military and political virtù, who overcame the envy of others once conditions dangerous to Rome loomed and the masses understood that Camillus used the office of dictator only to serve the common good, not for personal gain, and that Rome required his unique abilities to stave off disaster.” Raymond Angelo Belliotti, Niccolò Machiavelli: The Laughing Lion & The Strutting Fox (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2008), 116, 117.
- 5.
Villani, ibid.
- 6.
The four major schools of Greco-Roman philosophy, the epitome of secular reasoning, held different conclusions about the immortality of the soul. The Platonic academy, following Protagoras and Plato, accepted the possibility of transmigration, considered souls the definitional equivalent of life, and thus championed the indestructibility of souls. However, within the academy at various periods, skepticism predominated. The Peripatetics, following Aristotle, concluded that the human soul, as individual personality, perished at death but that what was universal within the soul, a common intelligence that all souls shared, persisted. Stoics had a variety of views, some believing in transmigration; others in the persistence of individual souls for a certain period of time after death but only if they were virtuous; and still others accepting the Peripatetic position on souls. Epicureans, committed materialists, believed that souls were composed of atoms and, like bodies, decomposed and scattered at death.
- 7.
Charles S. Singleton writes, “[The pilgrim’s] hidden desire is to speak with Farinata, as is more clearly revealed in [I 10. 18] and what follows. Ciacco’s assurance [I 6. 85–87] that Farinata is indeed farther down in Hell, together with Farinata’s apparent reputation as a heretic, might well lead the wayfarer to look for him here in this circle.” Inferno: Text and Commentary (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970), 144 n. 6.
Robert M. Durling describes the pilgrim’s concealed longing less specifically: “[The wish the pilgrim has not expressed] is almost certainly a reference to Dante’s desire to see Florentines.” “Canto X. Farinata and Cavalcante,” in A. Mandelbaum, A. Oldcorn and C. Ross, eds. Lectura Dantis: Inferno, a Canto-by-Canto Commentary (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), 138.
- 8.
Boccaccio, Expositions, 314. Boccaccio anticipates Machiavelli’s conclusions that the masses are easily taken in by appearances and imprudently evaluate actions only by their outcomes. See, Belliotti, Niccolò Machiavelli, 137–142.
- 9.
Robert M. Durling, “Farinata and the Body of Christ,” Stanford Italian Review 2 (1) (1981): 29–30.
- 10.
Frank Rosengarten, “Gramsci’s ‘little discovery: Gramsci’s Interpretation of Canto X of Dante’s Inferno,” Boundary 2: 3 (1986): 76.
- 11.
As flagged in Introduction n. 3, some scholars dispute this. For example, Anthony K. Cassell: “Critics have long debated whether Farinata’s explanation applies to all souls in Hell or merely to the heretics. … Ciacco’s words earlier in Inferno VI. 69 … imply knowledge of the present … the Poet has drawn a dividing line at the Gates of Dis. … Below the wall [circles six through nine of hell] souls have no knowledge of the present.” Dante’s Fearful Art of Justice (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984), 29.
- 12.
Rosengarten, “Gramsci’s ‘little discovery,’” 84.
- 13.
Salimbene da Parma, thirteenth-century historian, records the prevailing judgment of Frederick II (1194–1250) as a heretic: “He was an Epicurean and therefore he and his scholars tried to find anything they could in Divine Scripture which might serve to show that there is no life after death.” Cronica, vol. 1, ed. Ferdinando Bernini (Bari: G. Laterza, 1942), 510. Might Piero della Vigna have been one such “scholar” serving Frederick’s design?
- 14.
Durling points out a nuance in the pilgrim’s address: “Farinata had used the familiar tu form when scornfully inquiring of Dante’s antecedents, but we find Dante answering him with the respectful voi form. (Only to three individual inhabitants of hell does Dante use the polite form: to Farinata and Cavalcante here and to his teacher Brunetto Latini in Canto XV; all are Florentines of the older generation.)” “Canto X. Farinata and Cavalcante,” 140. In canto ten, the pilgrim uses the polite form while gloating about the Guelfs ability to return from exile and the Ghibellines inability to do so.
- 15.
Irma Brandeis, The Ladder of Vision (Garden City: Doubleday & Co., 1962), 49.
- 16.
William Morris, ed., The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1979), 784.
- 17.
Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Martin Ostwald (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, Co., 1962), Bk. IV, chapter 3, 1123b–1125a.
- 18.
Ibid., 1123b–1124b.
- 19.
Ibid., 1125a.
- 20.
After conceding that Dante defines “magnanimity” in the Convivio as “one who thinks of himself as superior to others,” Merle Brown understands magnanimity in Inferno as “the attribute of a man who is fully and actively engaged in his own personal problems and suffering and can, nonetheless, rise above them in such a way as to be open and responsive to the pain and difficulty and needs of others.” “A Reading of The Inferno X.” Italica 48 (3) (1971): 329. The two descriptions are not incompatible—a person who thinks himself superior to another could still emphasize with the inferior’s adversity and need. In my view, however, neither rendering is complete. Someone could think himself superior to others and simply be an idiot or a fool. Another person could empathize profoundly with others and merely be a co-dependent sufferer. Robert M. Durling remarks, “All generations of readers have been struck by the indomitable pride and courage conveyed by Farinata’s monumental figure, perhaps the most impressive in the entire Inferno. Especially the expression ‘up he rose’ (s’ergea) conveys a sense of power and size. Later on Farinata is called ‘great-hearted (magnanimo [I 10.73.]), and although, in the last analysis Farinata is judged negatively … the initial impression is of a powerful personality, and we are forced to entertain, if only for a moment, the possibility of such a soul’s actually being superior to the sufferings of hell.” “Canto X. Farinata and Cavalcante,” 139.
We must, though, distinguish Farinata’s disdain of the physical torments of hell from his intensified vulnerability to emotional pain as evidenced from his expressed sorrow upon learning that the Ghibellines remain exiled from Florence and his descendants have been treated especially harshly (I 10.78, 83–84).
- 21.
Alasdair MacIntyre, A Short History of Ethics (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1966), 78–79, 80.
- 22.
Cicero, On Obligations, trans. by and with an introduction by P.G. Walsh (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), I. 61–67.
- 23.
Ibid., I. 64–65.
- 24.
Boccaccio, Expositions, 449.
- 25.
Merle Brown is convinced that Farinata will perform the requested service: “[The pilgrim] knows, that is, that unlike Cavalcanti, Farinata is not weakly self-absorbed, that he can be trusted to undo a harm and also to go out of his way to justify him who caused it.” “A Reading of the Inferno X,” 328. Perhaps. But the issue is not whether Farinata is “self-absorbed.” Certainly, he strikes a more positive chord than the hysterical Cavalcanti in canto ten. The genuine question is whether Farinata would comply with the pilgrim’s request out of a sense of honor—after all, the pilgrim leaves circle seven assuming that Farinata will remedy Cavalcanti’s confusion and Farinata did not disabuse him of that assumption—not because Farinata fancies himself a righteous apostle whose mission is softening wrongs and easing pains. In my judgment, Brown’s understanding of Farinata is overly sanguine. Dante’s evaluation of Farinata is more nuanced.
- 26.
Niccolò Machiaveli, Florentine Histories, trans. Laura F. Banfield and Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), Bk. II, sec. 7.
- 27.
Benedetto Croce, The Poetry of Dante (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1922), 118–119.
- 28.
Boccaccio, Expositions, 443.
- 29.
Graham Harman, Dante’s Broken Hammer (London: Repeater Books, 2016), 115.
- 30.
Durling, “Farinata and the Body of Christ,” 14.
- 31.
See, for example, Boccaccio, Expositions, 447 and 685 n. 31.
- 32.
Robert M. Durling, “Canto X. Farinata and Cavalcante,” 140.
- 33.
Boccaccio, Expositions, 447. Benvenuto da Imola adds: “In all matters, [Cavalcante] agreed with the Epicureans. He always believed and tried to persuade others that the soul dies simultaneously with the body. … Cavalcante himself was a Guelph, as was his family. … [Dante] places together two Epicureans of opposite parties, one a Ghibelline, the other a Guelph.” Commentum super Dantis Aldigherij Comoediam, vol. 1. Ed. William Warren Vernon and Giacomo Filippo Lacaita (Florence: Barbèra, 1887), 89. Thus, Cavalcante, if he followed the prescriptions “in all matters” was far more an Epicurean than was Farinata.
- 34.
Boccaccio, Expositions, 447.
- 35.
Marco Santagata, Dante: The Story of His Life (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016), 80–81.
- 36.
Ibid., 81.
- 37.
Durling, “Canto X. Farinata and Cavalcante,” 142.
- 38.
Giuseppe Mazzotta, Reading Dante (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), 60–63.
- 39.
Plato, “The Symposium,” trans. By Michael Joyce in Plato: Collected Dialogues, ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973), 526–574.
- 40.
Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, trans. J.E. King (London: Heinemann, 1927), book 3, section 14, paragraphs 1–12.
- 41.
Raymond Angelo Belliotti, Posthumous Harm: Why the Dead are Still Vulnerable (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2011), 17–37.
- 42.
Croce, The Poetry of Dante, 119.
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Belliotti, R.A. (2020). The Glories and Iniquities of Heroism, Patriotism, and Paternal Love: Farinata degli Uberti (1212–1264) and Cavalcante de’ Cavalcanti (c. 1220–c. 1280). In: Dante’s Inferno. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40771-1_5
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