走进课堂 | Thomas Rendall: 魔鬼创造地狱？

博雅哥说

今天博雅哥为大家推送的是北大外语学院Thomas Rendall教授的一篇论文“撒旦的坠落形成了地狱？——对《地狱篇》第三十四篇的持久误读”。为了方便阅读，我们将文章分为了五部分。第一部分，作者回顾了《神曲》解释传统中的一个持久误读，即认为是撒旦的坠落创造了地狱。第二、三、四部分，作者分别从三方面对这一观点进行了反驳：首先，撒旦创造地狱这一说法在早期基督教和中世纪思想中没有任何根据，并且与《圣经》新旧约的文本相冲突；其次，这一说法与”永恒地狱“的观念相矛盾，因为在早期基督教和中世纪思想传统中，永恒之物只能来自于上帝的第一次直接创造，而不能理解为上帝借撒旦为工具来创造；最后，文本中维吉尔所描述的由撒旦创造的“loco vòto”并不是指整个地狱，而是指撒旦坠落时在身体周围造成的凹陷部分。第五部分，作者就前文的论述进行了总结。

Thomas Rendall本学期开设有通识核心课程“欧洲文学选读”，欢迎大家选修和关注！

Vol.818

含英咀华

Did Satan’s Fall Form Hell?  

A Persistent Misreading in Inferno XXXIV

Thomas Rendall

School of Foreign Languages, Peking University

Abstract:

Satan's fall to earth is described at the end of the Inferno in a way that has led many readers, including eminent scholars from the fourteenth century to the present, to believe Dante imagined Satan's impact as having brought about not only the mountain of purgatory but also the pit of hell itself. However this reading is indefensible because it is supported by neither the bible nor medieval theology, because it is contradicted by the inscription over the Gate of Hell, because the formation of an eternal realm by any agency other than God himself was held to be impossible, and, most importantly, because careful analysis of the relevant passage in the poem itself clearly excludes the interpretation.

Keywords: 

Dante, Divine Comedy, Satan, Satan’s Fall, Inferno, Hell  

Illustration of Inferno, Canto XXXIV, by Gustave Doré  (1832–1883)

As Dante and Virgil reach the center of the earth and finish climbing down Satan’s shaggy flank, they emerge on the “picciola spera” (Inf. 34.116) which forms the reverse side of Judecca, part of the pit at the bottom of hell. At this point in the Commedia, Virgil describes Lucifer's fall in one of the poem’s most magnificent passages of imaginative invention. In Dante’s conception, as Satan plummeted to earth, the lands of the southern hemisphere rushed to the north. In addition, material within the center of the earth, in a similar revulsion from the source of all evil, was ejected into the southern hemisphere to form the mountain of purgatory, the void being left by Satan’s impact forming the cavern of hell. Thus, by a very satisfying irony, Satan’s act of rebellion resulted not only in the formation of a pathway by which erring humanity could hope to re-ascend to God, but also resulted in the dungeon in which the devil and all his followers were to be forever punished.

Or, at least, this was what I told my classes for the first several years I taught the Inferno, until one day a student made the obvious objection that the inscription on the Gate of Hell says God, not Satan, made hell. After a hasty re-examination of the passage, I was able explain, by a narrowly literal interpretation, that what the inscription says is that God made the gate, but not necessarily all of hell. Having escaped this immediate difficulty, however, I decided to research the student’s question further. 

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The view that Dante imagined Satan forming hell is supported by a long tradition. Only seventeen years after Dante’s death, a note by the author of L'Ottimo Commento asserted that the earth fleeing from Satan “lasciasse lo inferno voto” (1827-29). The reading soon received Boccaccio's imprimatur in his lectures on the poem in 1373-75. Although ill health prevented him from reaching Canto XXXIV, Boccaccio's remark on the gate of hell makes the point: God hurled Satan down to the center of the earth, where he “la sua prigione fece.” That the whole of hell is implied by “prigione” is made clear by Boccaccio’s subsequent comment that this place would “finalmente esser prigione di tutti quegli li quali contro alla sua deità perassero” (Boccaccio, 1965: note on Inferno 3.4-6). 

The view remained popular through the twentieth century, until in 1986 Carla Forti made a concerted objection to it in her “Nascità dell’Inferno o nascità del Purgatorio: nota sulla caduta del Lucifero dantesco.” In this study, Forti enumerates the many modern Italian commentators who assert that Dante presents hell being formed by Satan’s fall, among them authors of articles in the authoritative Enciclopedia dantesca (1970-78) as well as in such widely distributed reference works as the Storia della letteratura italiana Garzanti (1990). She goes on to focus on the theological problems the misinterpretation entails, arguing that the idea that Satan made hell is contradicted by the inscription over its gate, and pointing out that the eternity of hell affirmed by the gate's inscription rules out anything but creation directly by God.

Because Forti’s article focused on complex theological arguments whose validity can be (with difficulty) contested, her refutation of the traditional interpretation was unheeded—especially by American Dantisti—and the idea that Dante imagined Satan excavating hell through his fall has persisted in the writings of some of the most eminent specialists of recent years, among them Remo Ceserani (1998), Lino Pertile (2007), Teodolinda Barolini (2010), Molly G. Morrison and Richard Lansing (2010), and Giuseppe Mazzotta (2014). The reading has also found its way into a recently published handbook of medieval literature. On the other hand, equally respected twentieth century scholars have explicitly rejected the idea, including G. A. Scartazzini / G. Vandelli, Charles Singleton, Daniele Mattalia, Mark Musa, and Allen Mandelbaum. In fact, editor-commentators in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, with their eyes fixed on the text, exclude the possibility of Satan’s fall forming the pit of hell by a proportion of ten to one. As early as the beginning of the twentieth century Hermann Oelsner expressed frustration at the popularity of the misreading: “This passage has generally been taken to establish a connection between the cone of the Mount of Purgatory and the funnel of Hell. It is obvious, however, that Hell was in existence ready to receive Satan, and that the “loco vòto” of v. 125 and the “tomba” of v. 128 refer not to Hell, but to the cavern into which the nether bulk of Satan is thrust” (Oelsner 1900). Manfredi Porena's comment on the passage shares Oelsner’s tone of exasperation: “Da scartare senz'altro l'opinione che la terra che si ritrasse e formò il Purgatorio sia quella che riempiva prima la cavità infernale” (Porena 1981). Among the most recent translator-editors, the Hollanders do not raise the question, presumably in the conviction that their translation, which accurately mirrors the meaning of the original passage, is by itself clear enough, while the note in the Durling / Martinez edition (1996:548) states that the matter which formed the mountain of Purgatory came only from “the cavity” where the poets are standing at the time Virgil describes Satan's fall. The position taken in Robin Kirkpatrick’s version of the Commedia (2006) is unclear: he provides no note on the passage, and his translation—“left an empty space” (Kirkpatrick 2006)—omits an adverb of the original text of Virgil's description (qui), which, as will be discussed below, is an essential clarification of its meaning.

Illustration of Dante's Satan, by William Blake (1757-1827)

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Scholars who assert that Dante imagined Satan’s fall as forming hell do not defend their interpretations, but then neither do those who reject this interpretation of the event described by Virgil in Infeno XXXIV. As Forti points out, even Bruno Nardi’s detailed discussions of the canto (1959, 1990) do not address the question directly, “la sua attenzione è focalizzata su altri problemi” (Forti 1986:241, ftnt. 2). 

Although the hypothesis that Dante presents Satan bringing about the formation of hell by his impact on the earth has been attractive to scholars both medieval and contemporary, the view has at least three serious problems. 

The first is that this conception of the origin of hell is found nowhere in early Christian or medieval thought and is in fact contradicted by passages of both the Old and New Testaments. In Isaiah 14:9 we are told concerning Lucifer’s fall that “Infernus subter conturbatus est in occursum adventus tui,” implying that hell was in existence when it was disturbed by his arrival, and in the Parable of the Sheep and Goats, Jesus says that the cursed shall depart into everlasting fire, “qui paratus est diabolo, et angelis eius” (Matt. 25:41). Augustine was probably thinking of this verse when he wrote concerning Satan and the fallen angels that “Scripture, which deceives no man, says that God spared them not, and that they were condemned beforehand by Him, and cast into prisons of darkness in hell” (Augustine, 1886:21.23). As the “widely diffused” Glossa Ordinaria also explains, in an interlinear note over the Gospel phrase “paratus est,” hell was “preordained from the establishment of the world” (“preordinatus a constitutione mundi”). An additional biblical text asserts “Deus angelis peccantibus non pepercit, sed rudentibus inferni detractos in tartarum tradidit cruciandos, in judícium reservari” (2 Peter 2:4), clearly implying that the fallen angels were passively “drawn down” (“detractos”) into a hell which was already in existence. Perhaps because of the explicitness of this scriptural testimony, none of the many Patristic and later medieval discussions of hell find it necessary to explicitly treat how hell came into being: it was assumed to have been created by God at the time he created the earth in his foreknowledge that some of the angels would rebel; it was prepared beforehand in order to receive them. Hell may have been disturbed by Satan's fall (Isaiah, “conturbatus est”), but it was not thought to have been formed by that event. 

Chart of Hell, by Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510), 

illustration of a manuscript of the Divine Comedy

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Of course, Dante's poetic imagination does not always conform to the teachings of the church—his unorthodox assignment of the virtuous pagans to limbo and his proactive condemnation to Ptolomea of sinners who are still alive on earth are only two examples. But there is a second major problem with the view that Satan's fall formed hell: what seems to be Dante's own explicit statement to the contrary in the inscription over its gate.  

Giustizia mosse il mio alto fattore:

fecemi la divina podestate,

la somma sapienza e 'l primo amore.

Dinanzi a me non fuor cose create

se non etterne, e io etterno duro.

(Inf. 3.4-8).

Although in the first terzina and final line of the inscription the gate refers to itself only (“Per me si va. . . . Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate”), commentators almost universally agree that the central lines of the gate's speech quoted above refer to hell as a whole. And these lines assert that hell was a result of the “triforme effetto” (Par. 29.28) by which the Christian God created everything in the world which is everlasting. Pertile recognises the apparent obstacle presented by the gate's words to his conviction that Dante imagined Satan’s fall forming hell and therefore suggests that the gate is speaking only of its own creation by God. He then goes on to assert that “we must imagine that it was erected and that the inscription was dictated at the moment in which Lucifer, the first and greatest sinner, fell from Heaven and crashed down into the center of the earth, creating the crater of Hell” (70-71 ). Although Pertile's suggestion is ingenious, it might be objected that it is odd that such a majestic description of divine creation should be expended on a mere gate rather than characterizing the more important realm to which it leads. It is also odd that God’s justice would only be involved in the creation of a gate rather than in creation of the place in which that justice is to be exacted.

Whatever the gate may be thought to say becomes moot, however, given Virgil’s unequivocal assertion at the beginning of the poem that hell is a “loco etterno” created for the ancient spirits in their pain (Inf.1.114). As will now be discussed, a seemingly insuperable problem for the idea that Satan formed hell arises from this (and perhaps the gate’s) assertion that hell is eternal. 

“Creation” in Dante’s understanding included “first creation”—creation ex nihilo—which could only be accomplished by God, as well as creation through the forces of nature by action of the angelic intelligences. Could Satan’s forming of hell through his fall be seen as a kind of mediated creation, that God foreordained hell only in the sense that he foresaw it, and that he used Satan’s fall as the instrument, the material agent for its formation? Pertile (2001) seems to be hinting at this. But established doctrine, followed by Dante, held that things that are eternal could only be brought about by God's first creation (“Ciò che da lei sanza mezzo distilla / non ha poi fine, perché non si move / la sua imprenta quand'ella sigilla,” Par. 7.70-72), and by the later middle ages almost all theologians agreed that hell was to last forever. Of course, Dante did imagine Satan’s fall as the instrumental agent in forming an important part of the world: the mountain of purgatory. But, as a result of a form of creation that was not directly the work of God, purgatory would not last forever. Patrick Boyde, one of the most reliable guides to Dante's philosophical and theological thought, explains that Dante intended the creation of hell to be understood as having occurred “sanze mezzo.” However, he still seems to want to salvage the misreading of Canto XXXIV by somewhat cryptically remarking in another context that Dante “tells us that Hell was made by God, and that it assumed its definitive shape at the time when Lucifer and the rebel angels fell from Heaven” (Boyde, 1981:288, 69).  

Cross Section of Hell, by Michelangelo Caetani (1804-1882)

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Whatever one may think of the two objections discussed in the preceding paragraphs to the interpretation that Dante imagined Satan’s fall forming hell—which are argued at length in Forti’s article—the view faces a final and, in my opinion, insuperable problem that Forti mentions but does not treat in detail. This problem is simply the passage itself in which Virgil describes the results of the impact of Satan on the earth:    

Da questa parte cadde giù dal cielo;

e la terra, che pria di qua si sporse,

per paura di lui fé del mar velo, 

e venne a l'emisperio nostro; e forse

per fuggir lui lasciò qui loco vòto

quella ch'appar di qua, e sù ricorse.

(Inf. 34.121-26)

Virgil's first words deal with the escape of the land, previously equally distributed over the globe, to the north, explaining the paucity of dry land in the southern hemisphere. There is no disagreement about the meaning of this part of Dante's grand myth. But the remainder the passage, “e forse / per fuggir lui lasciò qui loco vòto” raises the key question of the location of the place that Virgil refers to as “qui” (125).  

It seems to me that Dante could hardly be more explicit in defining the situation of the poets at the time of Virgil’s description. First, the pilgrim emphasizes his mistake in assuming that he and Virgil are still in hell by reporting his confusion as they pass the center of gravity at Satan’s hip and Virgil turns head to foot: “sì che 'n inferno i' credea tornar anche” (81). “Inferno”—the place to which Dante-pilgrim mistakenly thinks he is returning—and the place to which Dante is actually now going are clearly identified as two different locations. Then Dante-pilgrim goes on to describe the new setting in which he finds himself: 

Non era camminata di palagio 

là 'v' eravam, ma natural burella    

ch'avea mal suolo e di lume disagio.

(Inf. 34.97-99)

Finally, Virgil further clarifies this new location, correcting any doubts that Dante may still have by explaining that although he believes he is still “di là dal centro” where Virgil gripped the fur of Satan, they have now arrived underneath the hemisphere that is opposite the one covered by land (that is, having revolved head to foot, they are now underneath the southern hemisphere), and that they are standing on a “picciola spera” which forms the other face of Judecca (the lowest division of hell, 34.106-17).  

Map of Whole Hell, by Stradanus  (1523–1605)

Thus Dante provides the reader with no less than three indications that the location of the poets is outside of hell before he utters the phrase “loco vòto” that the common misreading of the passage identifies with the cone of hell itself. Is it plausible that Dante would report his mistake in thinking that he was “going back to hell” if a few lines later the “here” of the “loco vòto” were again to refer to hell? Are the locations which Dante-pilgrim describes as “là 'v' eravam” and the “qui” of Virgil’s “loco vòto” two different places? Is it probable that the poet would confusingly change the meaning of his pilgrim's “where we were” and Virgil’s “here” within a few dozen lines at a time in which the poets are not described as moving? After Virgil’s clarification for Dante that they are now in the southern hemisphere, on a little sphere or circular space opposite the pit of hell, could a reference to “qui” only eight lines later, plausibly refer to hell as a whole? Finally, the commentators agree that the word burella (used nowhere else in the poem) means something like “cellar” or “subterranean vault” (Singleton). Would this word be appropriately applied to the vastness of the whole of hell, one circle of which is imagined to be twenty-two miles in circumference (Inf. 29.9)? 

When Virgil describes the “loco vòto” caused by Satan, the place he refers to as “qui” cannot be the whole of hell, but only the smaller cavity immediately surrounding Satan’s lower body and legs in which the poets are standing (see Figure 1). As the journey continues, Dante-pilgrim describes the most remote location of this “burella” (now called a “tomba,” the tomb of Satan), where there is a passageway that leads upwards to the shore of purgatory: 

Luogo è lã giù da Belzebù remoto

tanto quanto la tomba si distende,

che non per vista, ma per suono è noto 

d'un ruscelletto che quivi discende

per la buca d'un sasso, ch'elli ha roso,

col corso ch'elli avvolge, e poco pende.

(Inf. 34.127-32)

Figure 1: Depiction of the situation of Dante and Virgil in the “loco vòto”, by former PKU student Ms Lin Boya

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To summarise: a reader who wishes to believe Dante imagined Satan forming hell by his impact on the earth must make the following assumptions: 1. Dante departed from biblical authority and established church doctrine. 2. The part of the inscription on the gate of hell that speaks of God's creation pertains only to the gate itself, not to all of hell. 3. Although Virgil speaks of hell as a “loco etterno” and although Dante believed only God can create things which are eternal, hell was the result of some kind of mediated creation. 4. The “qui” which Virgil utters as the poets stand in the “burella” beneath Satan's legs refers not to the “burella” but to hell in general. 5. The “qui” of “lasciò qui loco vòto” does not refer to the same place as Dante's “l 'v' eravam” of two dozen lines earlier, despite the fact that the poets have not moved.

As pointed out at the beginning of this essay, the perennial appeal of the view that Dante imagined Satan’s fall forming hell is the satisfying relationship it establishes between the devil’s rebellion and his punishment, the same irony famously expressed by Adam’s exclamation in Paradise Lost, “That all this good of evil shall produce; / And evil turn to good; more wonderful” (12:470-71). Of course, the irony of Satan’s fall creating “good” remains powerfully expressed in Dante’s audacious conception of the origin of purgatory. But, as I hope the evidence presented here has demonstrated, a reading of Inferno XXXIV which ascribes the formation of hell to Satan’s fall is one which teachers and scholars of Dante will in future need to forego.    

Notes:

[1] All quotations from the Commedia are from the Petrocchi edition (1966-67). 

[2] Unless otherwise indicated, all quotations from the commentators follow the notes on the relevant passage (Inf. 34.121-26) as presented in the Dartmouth Dante Project, conceived and co-directed by Robert Hollander, in collaboration with Stephen Campbell, Dartmouth College Computing Services, and Simone Marchesi. 

[3] Other early commentators who shared this view were the authors of L'Ottimo Commento (1338) and the Anonimo Fiorentino (1400?). On the other hand, Pietro Alighieri (1359) explains: “forsan ut fugeret ipsum luciferum illa tantulla terra dicti montis et eius insule Purgatorii cucurrit illuc et dimissit etiam illum locum vacuum ubi tunc auctor se fingit fuisse remotum” (Alighieri 1845). Benvenuto da Imola (1375-80), summarises Virgil's words as “terra montis purgatorii, quem ascendere volumus, lasciò qui luogo voto, scilicet, istam viam foratam per quam exire volumus” (Benevento 1887); and Francesco da Buti (1385-95) asserts that the material where the devil now is, “lasciò lo luogo intorno al Lucifero vacuo” (Francesco 2001).

[4] M. Aurigemma's article on “Inferno,” 343 and A. Ciotti's article on “Lucifero,” 721. 

[5] N. Sapegno's article on “Dante Alighieri” (1990, II, 92).

[6] 1986: 241-60. Forti draws attention to the biblical evidence for the creation of hell by God in Matthew, points out the fact that, according to the gate inscription hell is eternal and only things created by God last eternally, and devotes two-thirds of her article to a discussion of the time of the angels’ creation and the theology of primary and mediated creation. Concerning the theological and commentary tradition she concludes, “Si limita a dire dunque che l'Inferno è opera della giustizia divina; che durerà in eterno; che nessuna creatura temperaneo e corruttibile lo ha preceduto” (246 ).

[7] Ceserani (1998:432): Dante “conceived the idea that Hell formed following the fall of Lucifer, when the infernal chasm opened right below the point where Christ was crucified”; Pertile (2007:71): Satan “crashed down into the center of the earth, creating the crater of Hell that would contain all future sinners”; Barolini (2010:475): “Dante’s Hell is a hollow cone excavated by Lucifer’s fall; the displaced matter became Mount Purgatory”; Morrison and Lansing (2010:190): “Dante envisions Hell as an immense conical cavity—spanning from a point directly below Jerusalem to the center of Earth—which was formed when Lucifer and his angels were thrown from Heaven”; and Mazzotta (2014:116): “Purgatory came into existence as Lucifer fell, causing the earth to tremble and retreat, thus causing the void that became Hades, the abyss, and the island of Purgatory, which emerges on the other side, in the southern hemisphere.” 

[8] Dante “depicts Hell as a great funnel-shaped cavern formed when Lucifer fell from heaven. The land displaced as a result of the formation of Hell became Mount Purgatory” (Ruud, 2005:186). 

[9] Of the twenty-four commentators in the period 1905-2003 whose notes on Inf. 34.124-26 are presented on the Dartmouth Dante site, eighteen define the “loco vòto” as the area immediately surrounding Satan's legs, four offer no comment, and only two seem to imply that Dante presents Satan’s fall as forming hell. Ernesto Trucchi (1936) writes at first that “la terra centrale” was carved out by Lucifer, forming purgatory, but then goes on to assert more unambiguously “a tutto ciò appare determinata l'origine e la ragion d'essere dell'Inferno, come dice il Carducci, con 'invenzione terribilmente meravigliosa per dinamica e morale sublimità.” Likewise, Attilio Momigliano (1979) asserts that “la caduta di Lucifero, dunque, ha determinato la formazione dell'inferno e del purgatorio e scompaginato la consistenza stessa del globo.”

[10] This was the medieval understanding of the passage: “Vocat Nabuchodonosor vel diabolum. . . sub terra enim est inferus. . . unde Dominus vinctos suos eruit, vinctum diabolum dimisit.” Biblia sacra (1603: 4.162). 

[11] Chrysostom also notes in passing that God created human beings for heaven, and not that they should be cast into hell, “for this was made not for us, but for the devil” (1903: 1,9).

[12] 5.417. “Widely diffused” is Christian Moevs’ phrase (2009:18). 

[13] Dante seems to be echoing this verse of Isaiah in Beatrice's explanation of the rapidity of the angels' fall which “turbiò il suggetto d'i vostri alementi” (Par. 29.53). The interpretation of the majority of commentators holds that “suggetto” refers to the earth (Hollander [2007], comment on Par. 29.51); the disturbance Beatrice mentions most likely refers either to the lands of the southern hemisphere fleeing Satan's approach, to his excavating the “loco vòto” immediately surrounding his body, or to both. See Forti’s discussion, 246-57, in which she also deals with the related question of whether there was an interval between the angels’ creation and the fall of Lucifer.   Dante’s implication that there was a count of twenty between the two events (Par. 29.49-51), departs from Aquinas’ exposition in Summa Theolgiae I.63.6, but, as Alison Cornish has argued, this seeming contradiction is resolvable (2000:119-41).

[14] Giorgio Padoan (1967): “GIUSTIZIA. . .FATTORE. . . . Ora, più che la porta, parla l'Inferno stesso,” Charles Singleton (1970-75): “Giustizia. . . . From this point on, the inscription speaks not simply for the gate but for Hell in its entirety.” 

[15] Bosco and Reggio’s view (1979) accords with Pertile’s concerning the gate: “Nelle linee centrali dell'iscrizione si afferma che la porta è opera diretta di Dio. . . . prima della porta Dio non aveva creato se non cose etterne (i cieli, gli angeli, gli elementi), ed essa stessa dura etterna” (note on Inf. 3.1-15). However, these commentators do not agree that Satan’s fall formed hell. Concerning the displaced earth they say: “Il vuoto. . .lasciato nelle viscere della terra è appunto la grotta in cui i poeti si trovarono, una volta abbandonato il corpo di Lucifero” (note on Inf. 100-126). 

[16] To borrow an example that Barolini uses in a slightly different context, when the computer screen of the automatic teller says, “Sorry, I am temporarily out of service,” what is out of service is the whole machine, not just the screen (Undivine Comedy 279, n. 43).

[17] Ecclesiastes (3.14) “omnia quae fecit Dem perseverant in aeternum.” See also Convivio, “le cose incorruttibili, le quali ebbero da Dio cominciamento di creazione [. . .] non averanno fine” (II.xiv.11, text from the Princeton Dante Project). For detailed discussion, see Joseph Anthony Mazzeo (1957: especially 708 and ftnt. 12). 

[18] Origen as well as, in Dante’s own time, Duns Scotus believed that ultimately the punishments of hell would cease and even the fallen angels would be saved, but this view was rejected by orthodox medieval theology.

[19] See, among many others, Augustine, City of God 21.13 and 16.

[20] Forti limits herself to the flat assertion that the misreading has been advanceded “a dispetto del testo stesso” (1986:241).  

[21] The exact nature of this “sfera” has caused disagreement among commentators. Some say the word refers to a flat disc, corresponding to the icy plain of Judecca  on the other side of Satan's body (Leonardi: “spazio circolare piano”(1991-97); Singleton: “small disc”). Dante calls the “sfera” picciola because, like Judecca, it is smaller than the other divisions of hell. Others, Bosco and Reggio, for example, take the word literally. In this latter interpretation, the “sphere” would be identical with the “burella” and “loco vòto” referred to before and after this passage. In either case, the location specified by Virgil is not part of hell itself.

[22] The author would like to thank Massimo Verdicchio for advice and encouragement in the preparation of this study, along with former PKU student Ms Lin Boya for her  depiction of the situation of Dante and Virgil in the “loco vòto.”

References:

Editions of the Commedia (listed by editor[s]):

[1] Bosco, Umerbeto and Giovanni Reggio La Divina Commedia. Florence: Le Monnier

[2] Durling, Robert M. and Ronald L. Martinez (1996) The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: Inferno. Ed. and trans. Robert M. Durling and Ronald L. Martinez. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press

[3] Hollander, Robert and Jane Hollander (2000) The Inferno. New York: Random House

[4] Hollander, Robert and Jane Hollander (2007). Paradiso. New York: Random House

[5] Kirkpatrick, Robin (2006) The Divine Comedy: I: Inferno. New York: Penguin

[6] Leonardi, Anna Maria Chiavacci (1991-97) Dante Alighieri, Commedia, 3 vols.  Milan: Mondadori. Scanned and edited by Stephen Campbell, Robert Hollander, and Massimiliano Chiamenti  

[7] Padoan, Giorgio (1967) La Divina Commedia, Inferno (canti I-VIII). Vol. IX of Opere di Dante, ed. V. Branca, F. Maggini and B. Nardi. Florence: Felice Le Monnier, 1967

[8] Petrocchi, Giorgio (1966-67) La Commedia secondo l'antica vulgata. Edizione Nazionale a cura della Società Dantesca Italiana. Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori

[9] Singleton, Charles S. (1970-75) The Divine Comedy. Princeton: Princeton University Press

Other sources:

[1] Alighieri, Pietro (1845) Petri Allegherii super Dantis ipsius genitoris Comoediam Commentarium, nunc primum in lucem editum. Ed. Vincenzo Nannucci. Florence, G. Piatti  

[2] Augustine (1886) City of God. Ed. Philip Schaff and H.L. Mencken. Edinburgh: Eerdmans, 1886. University of Virginia Library Electronic Text Center

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