Quote 25
[Guido da Montefeltro]: He [Boniface VIII] asked me to give counsel. I was silent –
his words had seemed to me delirious.
And then he said: ‘Your heart must not mistrust:
I now absolve you in advance – teach me
to batter Penestrino to the ground.
You surely know that I possess the power
to lock and unlock Heaven; for the keys
my predecessor did not prize are two.’
Then his grave arguments compelled me so,
my silence seemed a worse offense than speech,
and I said: ‘Since you cleanse me of the sin
that I must now fall into, Father, know:
long promises and very brief fulfillments
will bring a victory to your high throne." (Inf. XXVII, 97-111)
Dante sees lying as a disease. To illustrate the point, he shows Guido da Montefeltro considering Pope Boniface’s words "delirious" or, as the Italian reads, "feverish." Pope Boniface VIII exchanges a promise he cannot fulfill – absolution – for advice to raze a rival family’s estate to the ground. In a telling statement, Guido reflects the pope’s moral corruption because he advises "long promises and very brief fulfillments." Here, Dante seems to comment that language – for all its eloquence – can just be a sham. Silence here would have been a better response for Guido than saying anything at all.
Quote 26
I’d only turned my head there briefly when
I seemed to make out many high towers; then
I asked him: "Master, tell me, what’s this city?"
And he to me: "It is because you try
to penetrate from far into these shadows
that you have formed such faulty images.
When you have reached that place, you shall see clearly
how much the distance has deceived your sense;
and, therefore, let this spur you on your way." (Inf. XXXI, 19-27)
On the verge of entering the last and most treacherous circle of Hell, Dante becomes a victim of fraud. He mistakes the unmoving torsos of giants for a city of towers. It is not, as Virgil claims, only the distance that "deceive[s Dante’s] sense," but the sheer amount of deceit surrounding them that darkens their path and warps Dante’s vision so he can see only "faulty images."
Quote 27
O reader, do not ask of me how I
grew faint and frozen then – I cannot write it:
all words would fall far short of what it was.
I did not die, and I was not alive;
think for yourself, if you have any wit,
what I became, deprived of life and death.
The emperor of the despondent kingdom
so towered from the ice, up from midchest,
that I match better with a giant’s breadth
than giants match the measure of his arms…(Inf. XXXIV, 22-31)
In Dante’s ostentatious attempt to show humility, he misrepresents his talent and deceives readers. First he claims that he "cannot write it," that he cannot possibly render Hell’s description with justice, but he then proceeds to do exactly what he professes he cannot: he describes Lucifer in great detail.