Laudator Temporis Acti

Barbara Reynolds (1914-2015), Dante: The Poet, the Political Thinker, the Man (Emeryville: Shoemaker Hoard, 2006), p. 163:

The second ditch [of the Eighth Circle] contains the souls of flatterers, who suffer the most repugnant punishment in the whole of Inferno. The sinners are immersed in excrement, snuffling and scratching at themselves with filthy hands. The sides of the ditch are encrusted with faeces, an offensive sight and stench. By flattery (lusinghe) Dante understands all forms of toadying and insincere adulation made use of for self-advancement. Ordure was an image of foul or deceitful speech (as the word ‘crap’ is used in English) and he has chosen this worst possible degradation to express his scorn. He must have observed much flattery in political life and seen with contempt how well it served those who demeaned themselves to employ it. Peering into the depths, he perceives one whose head is so heaped with filth he cannot tell whether it is tonsured or not. The soul shrieks: ‘Why look at me, more than at the others?’ Dante replies: ‘I’ve seen you before, without shit on your head: you’re Alessio Interminelli of Lucca, that’s why I’m looking especially at you.’

Dante, Inferno XVIII.100-126 (tr. Dorothy Sayers, with her note):

Already we’d come to where the narrow ridge        100
Crosses the second bank, and makes of it
An abutment for the arch of the next bridge.

Here we heard people in the farther pit        103
Make a loud whimpering noise, and heard them cough.
And slap themselves with their hands, and snuffle and spit.

The banks were crusted with foul scum, thrown off        106
By the fume, and caking there, till nose and eye
Were vanquished with sight and reek of the noisome stuff.

So deep the trench, that one could not espy        109
Its bed save from the topmost cliff, which makes
The keystone of the arch. We climbed; and I,

Thence peering down, saw people in the lake’s        112
Foul bottom, plunged in dung, the which appeared
Like human ordure running from a jakes.

Searching its depths, I there made out a smeared        115
Head — whether clerk or lay was hard to tell.
It was so thickly plastered with the merd.

“Why stand there gloating?” he began to yell,        118
“Why stare at me more than the other scum?”
“Because,” said I, “if I remember well,

I’ve seen thy face, dry-headed, up at home;        121
Thou art Alessio Interminei, late
Of Lucca — so, more eagerly than on some,

I look on thee.” He beat his pumpkin pate,        124
And said: “The flatteries I spewed out apace
With tireless tongue have sunk me to this state.”

The Flatterers. These, too, exploit others by playing upon their desire and fears; their especial weapon is that abuse and corruption ot language which destroys communication between mind and mind. Here they are plunged in the slop and filth which they excreted upon the world. Dante did not live to see the full development of political propaganda, commercial advertisement, and sensational journalism, but he has prepared a place for them.

Labels: noctes scatologicae