In the preceding post, I talked about a woman known as Francesca da Rimini who Dante Alighieri placed in the circle of his Inferno reserved for the lustful. There, she and her lover are condemned to swirl around in the winds of Hell forever as a result of their supposedly transgressive behavior.
Why continue this topic? An important aspect of character development involves motivations, and questions of who or what is really responsible for any particular outcome. And how reliable is the narrator?
While you can read about Dante-the-poet's justifications for the outcome in question in the previous post, legitimate questions can be raised as to whether it was actually justifiable, whether it was prejudiced by certain, debatable assumptions about the human condition and whether the poem's sketchy account of what happened told the whole story.
Was Francesca's Punishment Justifiable?
First, one can ask whether what Francesca and her lover Paolo did really constitutes "lust." Their affair was hardly a one-night stand. Rather it lasted for ten years and presumably would have gone on even longer had not Francesca's husband caught them together and immediately killed them both. It sounds more like two people very much in love with each other, sex being a natural expression of such sentiments.
But it was nonetheless adultery some might say, and that's that. Maybe so, but that portion of hell -- not deep into the abyss to be sure -- is for the lustful. One could argue there is a difference and Dante was most definitely a man to make distinctions. His Commedia is endlessly about distinctions and gradations, even in Paradiso One might not immediately imagine there to be different degrees of beatitude, perhaps leaving Saints aside, but that's apparently the case up there.
Not much seems to be known about the state of Paolo's marriage -- how it came about why it seems to have been unsuccessful, in one respect at any rate. But it is known that Francesca's father, head of the Italian city of Ravenna, married her off at about age 20 to the very unattractive older son of the head of the neighboring city of Rimini to cement an alliance -- not an uncommon practice in the Middle Ages.
Since Francesca apparently had no choice in the matter (she was simply an asset to be deployed to the advantage of the family), it seems hard to characterize her love for her husband's younger brother as adultery. She didn't first choose her husband and only after he had accepted her, reject him for another man. Her political marriage was something of a legal technicality, serving society, but not her. It's hard to believe Francesca was married "in the eyes of God."
Dante's Catholicism didn't expect mere mortals to be perfect even if God had given them the means, through reason and love, to be so. Indeed, Dante-the-pilgrim as he wanders through the afterlife with various guides has much to atone for and only after he has satisfactorily done so, does he reach a level of Paradise where he can get a glimpse of God.
Indeed, there is a whole realm of the Commedia, known as Purgatorio, where people who have repented, often at the last minute of their lives, are given time to make amends and eventually reach heaven. And the only way out of Purgatorio is up: once there, you aren't going to Hell although it could take a long time for you to work things out, as it were.
And further, there is a special level or zone of Purgatorio for the lustful. So why isn't Francesca there? Because her vengeful husband didn't give her a chance to recant. Bad luck I suppose, but should one be consigned forever to the Inferno on the basis of luck? It doesn't seem right, and especially when it appears her husband is going to end up in one of the deepest and most dreadful regions of the Inferno, not for killing Francesca (of course), but for murdering his brother as Cain did to Abel in the Bible. (The region in question is named after Cain.)
Where is the justice in all of this?
Is Dante Right About The Human Condition?
Now let's turn to the poet Dante's underlying assumptions about the human condition and how they could be dead wrong.
Dante-the-poet (as opposed to Dante-the-pilgrim who comes across as clueless much of the time) operates on the basis of the following assumptions: God endowed mankind with love, reason and free will. Because of the last mentioned and because love engenders strong desires, if reason isn't properly applied, it is easy to go astray. For our purposes, the key notion here is that love is internal to a person and controllable. So by failing to use her reason properly -- to understand the moral of the story of Lancelot and Guinevere -- Francesca misdirects her love and is condemned on both accounts.
That's not the way Francesca experienced what happened to her, which could call into question Dante's assumptions. Why should we think he knows what he's talking about, or telling the truth, when we know he had an agenda in writing the Commedia?
Francesca sees love as an external force that can take control of a person. Maybe Dante-the-pilgrim's guide at this point, the Roman poet Virgil, a pagan, should explain the role of Cupid to him.
"Love, who [an external entity] which so fast brings flames to human hearts, seized him [Paolo who first kissed her] with feeling for the lovely form, now torn from me [she's just a "shade" now with no substance]. The harm of how [she was murdered] still rankles.
"Love, who no loved one pardons love's requite, seized me for him so strong in delight that, as you see, he does no leave me yet."
The message here is that Francesca had no control over what happened, and my guess is it's a feeling shared by any number of readers, and especially with respect to the first time they fell in love.
As we know from the previous post, Francesca and Paolo were alone, reading the story of Lancelot and Guinevere "for pure joy" and "we knew no suspicion." But when they read "the longed for smile of Guinevere -- at last her lover kissed," they were swept away in passion for each other.
While Dante-the-poet is scornful of this outcome, his chief protagonist, Dante-the-pilgrim, can't imagine how such love can result in Francesca's fate, and he faints. (And not for the last time. One can't help thinking the pilgrim is a bit of a beta-male, but that's another topic.)
So who is correct about the nature of the human condition when it comes to love: Dante-the-poet, or Francesca, and if Francesca is correct, she most certainly does not deserve to be in the Inferno.
Did We Get the Full Story?
As we know from scholarly commentary on the "Commedia" if not from our own reading, there are a host of characters in the poem, few of whom are fleshed out in much detail. Rather, the poet seems to think his readers will already know enough about them (despite the fact that many are fictional) that he can use an aspect or two of their lives to make a certain point.
Such is the case with Francesca. How exactly did that political marriage come about? Was Francesca complicit initially, or perhaps just a dutiful daughter going along with whatever her father (and mother?) thought best? It would seem to be important to know in view of what happened to her.
In 1370, about 50 years after the Commedia appeared, the Florentine writer Giovanni Boccaccio, author of the Decameron and an admirer of Dante Alighieri. decided to flesh out the story and in a fashion arguably very sympathetic to Francesca.
You can read a full account of Boccaccio's version as well as much, much more about Francesca on the website Dante Poliglotta, but in short, Boccaccio claims she was tricked into it. He says she was married by proxy, thinking she was wedding the attractive Paulo, and only on the morning after, discovered that her husband was instead his unattractive, lame older brother.
If that was the case, there is ample reason Francesca shouldn't be in the Inferno.
Well, one could go on and on because as you can see from Wikipedia's account of Francesca, her story inspired numerous plays, operas and other works of art. Which is another reason for knowing all about her.
I don't know about you, but I don't think she's really in the Inferno. Let's just mark it down to artistic license on the part of Dante.
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