Dante and Guido

Virgil: (addressing Dante): …and here’s some dogwood and alder I have been working on, not much yet, but I plan to put some paving stones in, perhaps a rustic bench…You know, it doesn’t have to be so dismal here in the underworld, really, if you plant vegetation that is compatible for the…

Cavalcante: Guido! My son!

Footnote: Dante is mistaken for Guido Cavalcante by his father, whom Dante has identified as a resident of hell. (Allen Mandelbaum, Anthony Oldcorn, and Charles Ross. Berkeley: University of California Press).

Cavalcante: This is hell?

Virgil: This is a version of hell and eternal torment.

Cavalcante: Well, I knew I was dead but…never mind. Guido, my son, are you also doomed to suffer in this place of…not exactly fire and brimstone, but certainly windy and in need of landscaping?

Dante: (moved, emo posturing like a 15 year old girl on Instagram). No, signore, Guido lives!

Footnote: Cavalcante, whose entire name is Cavalcante de Cavalcanti,( super original), is mysteriously whirled away, apparently before hearing that his son is still living, at least, still living in 1300, the fictive chronological period of the epic poem. Dante wrote in The Inferno in 1314. (The Inferno Tomb, the Tower, and the Pit: Dante’s Satan.Author: Anthony K. Cassell).

Dante: Where did he go?

Virgil: Part of the of minor torments of hell us that people are suddenly yanked away from important conversations, sort of like at a cocktail party or a Zoom meeting.

Dante: Why did he mistake me for Guido? He saw me many times in life.

Virgil: Maybe you just look like a lot of people.

Guido de Montefeltro: (appearing in the wind) Did someone ask for me?

Virgil: No, we were talking about another Guido.

Guido be Montefeltro: I am condemned here because of Pope Boniface. I became a friar to escape court politics, but the Pope made me an offer I couldn’t-

Virgil: We know.

Guido de Montefeltro: I thought I was out, but he-

Dante: We get it.

Footnote: At this point in the narrative, Cavalcante returns, suddenly, and renews his entreaties about his son, a close friend of Dante’s in Florence.

Cavalcante: You say Guido still lives?

Dante: Yes, that is just what I was saying before you-

Footnote: It is important to interrupt here and interject that, while during the time period of the poem, indeed Guido Cavalcante was alive, at the time of writing, Dante had exiled his friend Guido from Florence.

Cavalcante: What did he just say?

Footnote: I said at the time of writing, Dante was a member of a counsel of judges and participated in Guido Cavalcante’s exile from Florence, although in the poem, for some reason, Dante constructs a scene in which he reassures Guido’s father, whom Dante places in hell, that his son is still living.

Cavalcante: That’s messed up. Why was Guido sent into exile?

Footnote: Well-

Dante: Guido Cavalcante was instrumental in factionalist fighting, and was sent into exile for this reason.

Cavalcante: But he was a White Guelph, like you.

Dante: Yes, that’s true.

Cavalcante: That’s messed up. Aren’t you a writer? Why were you making these kinds of decisions?

Dante: I was confused.

Cavalcante: In 1300 or 1314?

Dante: In 1300, during the time of period of the poem. I was lost in a dark metaphorical wood. Yet, the important thing to remember, is that, in the time period of the poem which is the time period in which we are speaking, it is roughly right before I sent my former friend into exile. So he is still alive, rejoice!

Cavalcante: My Guido is no camper.

Footnote: Indeed, Guido Cavalcante was exiled on a Friday, and was died of malaria by the following Tuesday.( L’Etica Nicomachea e l’ordinamente morale dell’Inferno di Dante (Bologna 1907) 45–49 et passim).

Cavalcante: I just hope that you get yours. I don’t mean in your fictional world of the poem, in which you can pretend to wander around in the happy times before you condemned your friends to death and damnation with your spirit of Italian poetry at your side.

Footnote: In this part of the poem, Dante seems to prefigure his own death from malaria in 1321, the same fate he condemned Guido to years earlier. At that time, not the time period of the poem, but later, Dante was also wandering in exile, having lost the political protection of former allies.

Dante: What?

Footnote: What?