Inferno: Canto 21 -- Circle 8, Bolgia 5

Cantos XXI and XXII are known as the Gargoyle cantos for the reason that the demons who guard the grafters are winged and armed with grappling hooks with which they rip sinners apart who dare rise above the tarry pitch into which they've been shoved. Dante and Virgil have to deal with them because as they cross the bridge over the fifth bolgia, they notice that the one over the sixth bolgia is out. It lies, Malacoda says, "all in pieces in the pit" (109), but he informs the poets that another bridge exists beyond the pit and that they might cross over to it under safe passage of his crew. Before this interview transpires, however, Virgil very pointedly tells Dante, "You had best not be seen/ by these Fiends till I am ready" (61-2). In his analysis of this, Ciardi writes that "it is only in the passage through this Bolgia, out of the total journey, that Dante presents himself as being in physical danger" (171). The reason, Ciardi gives, is that Dante would soon be accused of graft by the Black Guelphs in order to dismiss him from office and exile him from Florence, and even though that event is three years in the future, the gargoyles might not care about the distinction. They, too, can see future events through the same infernal power that promoted the acts of the diviners of the previous canto -- as though the diviners saw this in Dante's future as he walks from them onto this black pitch.



Ciardi forgets, though, that Virgil covered Dante's eyes at the gates of Dis so that he wouldn't look upon Medusa, for there is an evil upon which man must not look if he is to survive. That certainly constitutes an instance of physical danger, but perhaps the distinction being made is one of degree and not of kind -- at the gates, the poets were being met by a Divine Messenger; here, there is no help coming.

The only other time the poets met a troop of infernal guards was at the entrance to the seventh circle, where Chiron, noted for his reason, was the chief of the place. Here, Malacoda, meaning "Evil Tail," is in charge of the gestapo of characters who from the outset cannot be trusted. The same breath it takes Malacoda to offer advice on the path is precipitated by his commanding one of his soldiers to calm down upon seeing Dante among them. As before, Virgil considers himself immune -- and it's likely he does so for two reasons: 1) he'd been this way before and made it through unscathed, so it's likely he expected Malacoda et alii to remember him (they remembered, after all, how many years to the day it had been since the bridge over the sixth bolgia had fallen, and that would have been only a few years (under 19) since Virgil's last trip past them; and 2) graft is a particularly Christian sin, an act that phased the Roman politicians (of whom Virgil was not) not in the least, though Virgil would have been remiss not to have noticed the scattering of pre-Christian pagans throughout his journey. All the same, the centaurs led by Chiron were basically led by reason (in their characters, Virgil had a hidden ally), but the gargoyles led by Malacoda are inherently governed by the charism (if you will) of fraud. We'll find out, but not in this canto, that Malacoda has lied to Virgil about there being another bridge.

Once Malacoda assembles a group of malicious guides, Dante quite rightly protests, "In the name of heaven, Master, . . . what sort/ of guides are these? Let us go on alone/ if you know the way" (127-9). Virgil chastises Dante for his fear as he believes they are immune from the barbs on the end of these guards' hooks. If ever there were an image to inspire most of 20th century horror, we find it in this 8th circle, and were we, like Stephen King, to divine that we saw the future of horror in Clive Barker, we'd likely find his father in Dante. For permission to pass, the guards await Malacoda's trumpet of an ass, and with that, the league is set, a band of orcs escorting hobbits.

S.