Sons and Lovers: Guido in Paradise

Abstract

Each tenth canto of the three parts of the Divine Comedy marks the passage over a threshold into a new realm, or into the more essential part of each realm. In Inferno it is the first canto inside the retrenched ramparts of the City of Dis; in Purgatono it is where, also just inside a gate, penitential punishments actually begin; in Paradiso it is where we pass out of the shadow of the earth and its imperfections (inconstancy, ambition, and sensual love) displayed by categories of saints appearing lower down. The three cantos X are also linked by the themes of pride in art and pride in family, twin offenses punished on the first purgatorial terrace that are cognate, in InfernoX, with Farinata's fierce preoccupation with ancestors and progeny and Cavalcante 's fearful boasting of his son's high genius. So too Paradiso X celebrates simultaneously the Creator's love for his Son and for his own art. Guido Cavalcanti, Dante's first friend, is named explicitly in Inferno X by his frantic father and possibly on the terrace of pride, in Purgatono XI, when Oderisi da Gubbio remarks that one Guido has wrested from