Sign up to save your podcasts
Or
Share Gli ignavi, by Dante Alighieri
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Or
Gli ignavi, by Dante Alighieri
Today we read Gli ignavi, by Dante Alighieri.
The third book of Dante’s Comedy is filled with quotable expressions that are still frequently used in Italian. Such is the ammonition that closes the inscription on the Door of Hell: lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate (leave all hope behind, you who enter).
Dante knew that this hominous promise doesn’t apply to him: he’s just a visitor, passing through, taking notes so that he can later sing of what he’s seen for the greater glory of God.
Right after passing this terrible threshold, Dante sees and hears hosts of naked souls forced to follow a banner while being eaten alive (well, dead…) by horseflies. These are the ignavi: people so weak-willed, so undaring, so conformist, so devoid of autonomous thought and action, that, Dante says, mai non fur vivi: they really never lived. They are sanza ’nfamia e sanza lodo, without infamy and without praise. Another stock phrase, often used by teachers talking to parents about their children’s school accomplishments.
The souls are technically still outside Hell proper: they didn’t sin enough, nor did they do good – things that both require to take a side. Here Dante places also the angels that didn’t betray God, but didn’t help him either against the betrayers. So nobody wants them: they would soil Heaven, and are too bland and generic for Hell. So they are herded aimlessly for eternity, and they’d prefer anything, even the depeest pits of Hell, to this eternal irrelevance.
After explaining all this to Dante in tones dripping scorn, Virgil liquidates them with one of those one-liners for the ages: non ragioniam di lor, ma guarda e passa, let’s not think about them, just look and move on.
The original:
E io ch’avea d’error la testa cinta,
dissi: “Maestro, che è quel ch’i’ odo?
e che gent’è che par nel duol sì vinta?”.
Ed elli a me: “Questo misero modo
tegnon l’anime triste di coloro
che visser sanza ’nfamia e sanza lodo.
Mischiate sono a quel cattivo coro
de li angeli che non furon ribelli
né fur fedeli a Dio, ma per sé fuoro.
Caccianli i ciel per non esser men belli,
né lo profondo inferno li riceve,
ch’alcuna gloria i rei avrebber d’elli”.
E io: “Maestro, che è tanto greve
a lor che lamentar li fa sì forte?”.
Rispuose: “Dicerolti molto breve.
Questi non hanno speranza di morte,
e la lor cieca vita è tanto bassa,
che ’nvidïosi son d’ogne altra sorte.
Fama di loro il mondo esser non lassa;
misericordia e giustizia li sdegna:
non ragioniam di lor, ma guarda e passa”.
III, 31-51\
The music in this episode is De Torrente, from Vivaldi’s Dixit Dominus (RV 807), played by Cor i Orquestra de música antiga de l’Esmuc, Inés Alonso (soprano solista), Albert Baena (alto solista), Lluís Vila (director) (in the creative commons thanks to the Catalonia College of Music).
View all episodes
By Italian PoetryToday we read Gli ignavi, by Dante Alighieri.
The third book of Dante’s Comedy is filled with quotable expressions that are still frequently used in Italian. Such is the ammonition that closes the inscription on the Door of Hell: lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate (leave all hope behind, you who enter).
Dante knew that this hominous promise doesn’t apply to him: he’s just a visitor, passing through, taking notes so that he can later sing of what he’s seen for the greater glory of God.
Right after passing this terrible threshold, Dante sees and hears hosts of naked souls forced to follow a banner while being eaten alive (well, dead…) by horseflies. These are the ignavi: people so weak-willed, so undaring, so conformist, so devoid of autonomous thought and action, that, Dante says, mai non fur vivi: they really never lived. They are sanza ’nfamia e sanza lodo, without infamy and without praise. Another stock phrase, often used by teachers talking to parents about their children’s school accomplishments.
The souls are technically still outside Hell proper: they didn’t sin enough, nor did they do good – things that both require to take a side. Here Dante places also the angels that didn’t betray God, but didn’t help him either against the betrayers. So nobody wants them: they would soil Heaven, and are too bland and generic for Hell. So they are herded aimlessly for eternity, and they’d prefer anything, even the depeest pits of Hell, to this eternal irrelevance.
After explaining all this to Dante in tones dripping scorn, Virgil liquidates them with one of those one-liners for the ages: non ragioniam di lor, ma guarda e passa, let’s not think about them, just look and move on.
The original:
E io ch’avea d’error la testa cinta,
dissi: “Maestro, che è quel ch’i’ odo?
e che gent’è che par nel duol sì vinta?”.
Ed elli a me: “Questo misero modo
tegnon l’anime triste di coloro
che visser sanza ’nfamia e sanza lodo.
Mischiate sono a quel cattivo coro
de li angeli che non furon ribelli
né fur fedeli a Dio, ma per sé fuoro.
Caccianli i ciel per non esser men belli,
né lo profondo inferno li riceve,
ch’alcuna gloria i rei avrebber d’elli”.
E io: “Maestro, che è tanto greve
a lor che lamentar li fa sì forte?”.
Rispuose: “Dicerolti molto breve.
Questi non hanno speranza di morte,
e la lor cieca vita è tanto bassa,
che ’nvidïosi son d’ogne altra sorte.
Fama di loro il mondo esser non lassa;
misericordia e giustizia li sdegna:
non ragioniam di lor, ma guarda e passa”.
III, 31-51\
The music in this episode is De Torrente, from Vivaldi’s Dixit Dominus (RV 807), played by Cor i Orquestra de música antiga de l’Esmuc, Inés Alonso (soprano solista), Albert Baena (alto solista), Lluís Vila (director) (in the creative commons thanks to the Catalonia College of Music).