Inferno, Canto 31

The Text of Canto 31 (Open PDF)

Summary

Dante and Virgil now reach the Well at the bottom of the abyss, round which stand the Giants visible from the waist up above its rim. They see Nimrod and Ephialtes, and are lowered over the edge of the Well by Antaeus.

The Prepatory Lecture

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Questions for Reflection

• As Dante and Virgil prepare to descend into the deepest realm of hell, we have a scene in which the pilgrim misperceives giants as a range of city towers. How does this error of seeing and perception fit into the themes of fraud from the previous cantos? Has Dante’s understanding reverted back to the dark wood of Inferno 1?
• Why does Virgil think it is a good thing that nature has renounced the making of giants (31.49-57)?
• How do the giants display the full corruption of hell (31.55-57)?
• Why would Dante first describe the giant Nimrod, the architect of the tower of babel? Why does Nimrod speak only gibberish? Why might he be such an affront to a poet such as Dante? How does Nimrod represent to Dante a similar “fall” as Adam and Eve, though the former’s was a fall of language?
• What sets Antaeus apart from the other giants? Why would he care about the fame that Dante can offer once he has returned to real life?
• It is not often in Inferno that one of the monsters actively helps the pilgrim. Is Antaeus a traitor within the gates of Satan’s city of Dis? Why have a scene of treachery mark the transition from the malebolge to the final circle of hell?

Canto 31 © Jan Hearn

The Images

The Giants. From the point of view of the story, it is easy to see that Dante placed the Giants here, not merely to furnish a means of transport from Malbowges to the depth of the Well, but, artistically, to provide a little light relief between the sickening horrors of the last bowges of Fraud Simple and the still greater, but wholly different, horrors of the pit of Treachery. But allegorically what do they signify? In one sense they arc images of Pride; the Giants who rebelled against Jove typify the pride of Satan who rebelled against God. But they may also, I think, be taken as the images of the blind forces which remain in the soul, and in society, when the “general bond of love” is dissolved and the “good of the intellect" wholly withdrawn, and when nothing remains but blocks of primitive mass-emotion, fit to be the “executives of Mars” and the tools of treachery. Nimrod is a braggart stupidity; Ephialtes, a senseless rage; Antaeus, a brainless vanity: one may call them the doom of nonsense, violence, and triviality, overtaking a civilisation in which the whole natural order is abrogated.

Mark Vernon's Lecture