Commentary Inf XXXI 136-141

The fourth and last simile of the canto refers to one of two towers (the shorter one, in fact, but the one that 'leans' the most) built in Bologna in 1109 and 1110. Towers and giants have pride in common, and so the comparison is not without its moral reasons. Its visual reasons are indisputably stunning, a tower that seems to be falling because a cloud is passing over it. Picone (Pico.2000.2) has now interpreted the 'allegory' of Dante's sonnet about the Garisenda tower of Bologna, number 51 in Barbi's collection of Dante's Rime, as follows: just as Dante looks at the smaller (and not the greater) of the two towers in Bologna, just so he looked at another lesser woman and not at Beatrice.