I'm guessing that the final lines of canto
21 propelled your eyebrows to the ceiling "off the devil set along the left-hand bank but
first each pressed his tongue between his teeth to blow a signal to their leader and
he had made a trumpet of his asshole" Why does Dante give us a farting devil? In
this canto about sinners punished for graft for taking bribes and kickbacks we end with the
lowest of the low bathroom humor. Why? To answer that question and understand what's going on in
canto 21 we need to go back to its opening lines "thus from one bridge to the next we
came until we reached its highest point" Speaking of things my comedy does not care to sing but to understand Dante's reference to his poem
and its actual title The Comedy, La Commedia we have to go back a little further to the end
of the previous canto when Virgil speaks of my lofty tragedy. Cantos 20 and 21 work as a pair.
Virgil dominates canto 20 speaking more lines than it than in any other in the Inferno, as he
tells of the tragic fates of the soothsayers and refers to his poem the Aeneid my lofty
tragedy. The tragedian Virgil's canto is full of weeping and as tragedy was traditionally reputed
to be the noblest, highest form of poetry its tone is strangely dignified and restrained with silent
soothsayers who move at a slow pace. Dante asks if there are" any worthy year of my notice for my
thought keeps going back to them alone" He alludes to the pagan philosopher Aristotle's teaching that
the tragic hero must be someone of great eminence. Tragedy teaches Aristotle is the genre
about and written by nobler higher souls. There is nothing high and noble about canto 21 even from the dirty and sticky epic simile or long
simile by which Dante starts describing the damned. The grafters are burning in a hot pitch like that
which the Venetians use to repair their ships. The simile also stresses activity one rebuilds his
ship while still another plugs the seams of his one hammers at the stem, another at the stern, this
one makes the oars, that one twists the ropes for rigging another patch's jib and mainsail; there's
movement and energy as there is in the canto. Dante the pilgrim first fixedly stares at the pitch;
but no this is a Malebolge a section in Hell in which one has to be on one's toes. “Guarda, guarda!”
the usually calm Virgil cries "look out, look out!" There are devils all over the place running around,
being loud, sticking their claws into sinners and having fun. These are devils from a Halloween
party, black from head to toe, grinning, smirking, making blasphemous jokes; their leader waving his
bill hook obscenely. In fact these are devils from medieval comedy such as you would see an actor
dressed up as in a play or a popular festival. So in contrast to the pagan Virgil's lofty
tragedy the Christian Dante offers us a comedy despite that genre's lesser reputation.
Dante overloads this canto and the whole episode with the devils and grafters with the
conventions of comedy. The devils have ridiculous names translating to scratchy dog and swine
face, love knot and curly beard. The pilgrim responds to their threats with humorously
exaggerated fear as if you were Lou Costello of "who's on first what's on second" fame meeting
Frankenstein's monster in a black and white movie. But the stoic Virgil is too fearless too
confident in his own rectitude and authority. He asks Malacoda, evil tale, for
directions to the next ditch of Hell. He's the out-of-towner in a three-piece
suit in a rough neighborhood asking how to get back to the interstate. Of
course the devil gives him bad directions. In a comedy the guy who takes himself seriously
has to take a pie to the face; so Virgil is tricked by the devils but then they are tricked by one of
the sinners as if we're watching a comedy about con men the sting or dirty rotten scoundrels.
Their follows slapstick À la The Three Stooges as the devil smack each other
around and fall in the burning pitch. We then end with the pilgrim and Virgil running
away from the devils; a chase scene, not quite as involved as in The Blues Brothers or
another Hollywood comedy but always fun. So Dante identifies himself as a comedian even
to the point of having a farting devil. We're then left with a question that goes beyond
the scope of canto 21 and the episode with the devils and crafters: Why is the sacred poem to
which "Heaven and Earth have given a hand" as Dante will write in paradiso 25 called La Commedia? Well
we did a hundred cantos to answer that question but here are two quick thoughts with which to
conclude, one pretty obvious the other less so. First the poem begins in a dark wood and ends with
the face of God; we go from misery to happiness. We will end with a smiley face as is proper to comedy.
Christ promises a happy ending to His people. But more complexly the poem is a mix of
the damned, the redeemed who are suffering, and the redeemed to a joyous. A mix of Florentine
contemporaries, famous historical figures and characters from Greek mythology. A mix
of theology, ethics, metaphysics, literary theory, political theory, even astronomy
and biology. A mix of the high and the low. There's an old distinction between tragedy and
comedy, which identifies the former as pure and the latter as impure. Comedy: a mix of things. You can
add a song and dance number to a romantic comedy but not to Oedipus the King "my eyeballs
are bleeding and my daughter is my sister" No no no that song doesn't work, but comedy
works well with subplots and digressions and the placing together of incongruous things such
as philosophic discourses and bathroom jokes. Heaven and Earth, the word
and it's being made flesh. In identifying himself as a comedian maybe
Dante indicates that he seeks to bring together everything that is true to see it all; and thus
picture as he writes at the beginning of Paradiso how the glory of Him who moves all things pervades the universe and shines in
one part more and in another lesson.
