Dantes Lucifer: The Denial of the Word :: The Divine Comedy

The four words constituting the first course of study of inferno 34, however, are and are not Virgils own words. On the about explicit level, these words are his own in that the text attributes them to him. At the like time, they are not his, since they are a quotation of the first line of a hymn by Venantius Fortunatus.3 And yet, the last word, inferni, must be attributed to Virgil under(a) all respects, for he utters it without borrowing it from the hymn that Venantius Fortunatus wrote in honor of the mark and Christ. Through Virgil, Dante the auctor, therefore, rewrites and parodies this sacred hymn at the conclusion of the infernal cantica on the dot when the two wayfarers approach equal.4 Although neither name is mentioned, both are conjured up. stone 34 thus begins by invoking a contrastive binomial, Christ and Lucifer. The derision inherent in the Christian hymns adaptation for the purpose of announcing Lucifers appearance to the Pilgrim stems, most strikingly , from subverting a text indite for a sacred purpose and today employing it for a profane one.5 No longer the sacred poesy (Vexilla regis prodeunt) scripted by a Christian poet, the new and profane poem (Vexilla regis prodeunt inferni) is entitle by a pagan, is dedicated, as it were, to Lucifer, and is in scrawlerd within the book of the Commedia. Whereas the Christian Venantius writes a poem to his king, Christ, the pagan Virgil, unable to write a poem for the king whose law he opposed (Inf. 1125), intones a poem to his de facto king, Lucifer, and he does so by borrowing and perverting a sacred text. In fine, Dante the auctor records this new hymn to Lucifer in his text, as if he were the scribe of Virgil the poet. This opposition between Christ and Lucifer is further emphasized by another textual element, which focuses on nomen. The Inferno, in fact, is the text where the word Dite __ Lucifer __ is inscribed and where the word Christ is never recorded. Thus a written sig n characterizes Lucifer in the first cantica, whereas the texts silence typifies Christ. As we shall see, however, the center of this verbal movement and absence is ultimately turned around Lucifers presence becomes a failure, whereas Christs absence signifies a victory. As a sign of his textual presence throughout the first cantica, Lucifer, the character whom the Pilgrim contemplates in the nethermost check of the universe, is designated by means of various words and circumlocutions.