Canto XI

The roar of earthly fame is just a breath of wind

Canto 11 opens with the Lord’s Prayer. Or rather, Dante’s version of it.

For the first 24 verses of the canto, we see the penitents of the first terrace collectively recite the Lord’s Prayer, starting off as we all know it the quickly going into a more philosophical version of “who art in heaven”, which anticipates the structure of heaven and its spheres, which Dante will present to us in Paradiso. 

Dante adapts the whole prayer in this way, to reflect his philosophical interests and the requirements of his work. The most explicit example of adapting to fit the logic of Purgatorio is perhaps in lines 22-4 where instead of saying “deliver us from evil”, the penitents, who are now on the way to God and therefore outside evil’s reach, pray instead for those who are still within its grasp. 

As the prayer ends we get a zooming out of perspective, moving from the words said to those who say them. The penitents of the first terrace, as we already saw last week, are moving along the mountain carrying heavy loads that make them bend over into barely human postures. 

After quickly describing them, worn-out and tormented, Dante makes a point of noting to the reader that these penitents are praying for the good of the rest of us who are still on earth and who still need to be delivered of evil. We should, he says, do the same thing for them, especially now that we’ve found out how powerful the prayers of the living are for the dead. 

At this point, Virgil breaks the silence by asking the closest penitent for directions. Once again, we see Virgil a bit out of his depth - because he’s no longer in the depths of hell, haha (at least I make myself laugh). The man he speaks to introduces himself s Omberto Aldobrandeschi, son of Guglielmo Aldobrandesco who was the heir of a powerful Tuscan family, allies of the Pope who fought against the Empire (so technically Dante’s political opponents). 

Omberto confesses that he finds himself here because of the “hauteur of his once-proud neck”. Due to his ancient lineage, he explains, he thought himself to be better than other people, “heedless of the mother we all share”. 

It becomes apparent here that the pride of Purgatorio is different from the kind of pride we saw in the previous cantica.

Dante hinted at pride at several points throughout Inferno, from the three beasts, one of which was a lion, a symbol of pride, to Capaneus whose pride made him curse at the gods, to the Tower of Babel and the arrogance of men who thought they could be like God.

In Purgatory pride is a sense of superiority to fellow man or a desire for excellence for personal fame, rather than for the collective betterment. 

Omberto adds that his death came about because of his “disdain of all other men”, as well as the deaths and misery of other people, which suggests once again that in Purgatory collectivity plays a role in the sin as well as its atonement. 

Omberto ends his speech by saying that he has to bear a great weight now (which as we saw bends his neck in a gesture of humility) because he didn’t while he was still among those who live. This is our first clue that Purgatory functions according to a kind of contrapasso where the punishment is modelled after the sin, as it was in Hell. 

The next person we see is Oderisi da Gubbio, an illuminator of manuscripts which Dante seems to recognise. Oderisi explains that he ended up here because of the excessive pride he took in his work. Judging by Dante’s reaction to meeting him - he calls him “glory of that art” and “design-in-light” - Oderisi’s pride in his work was not entirely misplaced. The man was indisputably good at what he did and deserved the praise. However, as he himself says, his “heart’s desire was excellence”, this alone he yearned for. 

The topic is particularly interesting to Dante because he is himself an artist - one that, as we just saw, thought it was appropriate for him to rewrite prayers…. 

For this reason, perhaps, Oderisi gets quite a bit of space here, despite being somewhat of a minor artistic figure of the time and engaging in a minor art like illuminated manuscripts, which by its very nature is “marginal” to the actual work of art. 

He goes on some 20 lines about the fickleness of fame among the living. He says that fashions change and with them people’s ideas of who the best man at any specific art is. For example, he says, look at how Giotto has replaced Cimabue as people’s favourite painter, or how Guido Cavalcanti has replaced Guido Guinizzelli in poetry. 

He says, 

“The roar of earthly fame is just a breath

of wind, blowing from here and then from there,

that changes name in changing origin.”

Dante’s idea of what the artist should pursue based on these past couple of cantos can be confusing. On the one hand, we saw the marble carvings that seem to be moving and speaking as if alive - this is because they were created by God’s will. We’re given to understand that true art is only within God’s grasp and that everything humans will ever produce will be nothing but poor imitation, so claiming to have done anything more than that is sinful. 

On the other hand, Dante himself is something of a clout-chaser, not to mention the aforementioned presumption in taking something godly (a prayer) and rewrite it to serve his purposes. 

Some scholars typically read this kind of tension as a form of self-critique from Dante. He is aware of his flaws and is making them apparent here. I read it as the arrogance of a man who thinks he is worthy of a journey through the realms of the afterlife granted by divine grace. And I don’t say this in a disparaging way - Dante’s work is this good because he was so self-centred.

The canto ends with a story Oderisi tells about a man who despite his immeasurable pride was saved thanks to an act of equally great humility. 

The man in question is Provenzan Salvani, an aristocrat and politician who at the height of his power ruled Siena with tyrannical force and campaigned for the destruction of Florence. The act of humility in question happened a year before his death at the hands of the Florentines (beheading). One of his close friends had been captured at the battle of Tagliacozzo in 1268. The friend’s ransom exceeded the money he had available, so to raise the funds, Salvani dressed in sackcloth and went begging through the streets of Siena, where everyone despised him. 

On this note of evolution from extreme arrogance to extreme humility, Dante closes the canto with more focus on himself!

Oderisi ends his story apologising for the darkness of this story but says that Dante will soon understand how people can be this mean, alluding to Dante’s exile, when he will find himself begging for his keep, too.