Commentary Par XVII 133-142

Cacciaguida's concluding ten lines (and he will speak only nine more as he leaves the poem in the next canto, [Par XVIII 28-36]) establish, if not the ars poetica of this poem, then its mode of employing exempla for our moral instruction.  This passage has caused no little confusion, especially three elements contained in it: (1) Some commentators seem to assume that it is only concerned with those in Hell; (2) others think that the poem ennobles its subjects (rather than the obverse); and (3) still others object that not all the populace of the afterworld seen by Dante may be considered famous.  The first two \ problems are easily dealt with, for it is obvious that the poet means to indicate the famous dead in all three canticles and also that the honor accrues to the poem (one that eschews the commonplace for the extraordinary) rather than to its subjects.  As for the third, one example of this complaint will suffice.  Singleton (DDP Singleton.Par.XVII.138) argues that this claim cannot be taken as literally true, since there are many 'unknown characters' found in the cast of the Comedy.  'One has only to think,' he says, 'of the riff-raff, generally, of the eighth circle of Inferno.'  However, those crowds of 'extras' do not count in Dante's scheme of things; those who are named are famous (or were, in Dante's time at least, better known than they are in ours).

There is one other problem of literal understanding that is as present today as it has always been, perhaps because it has never been treated, since readers do not see that it is problematic and simply assume that they understand what is meant.  The word cima can mean various things (see C.Purg.XI.91-93), but here it refers either to mountaintops (as we believe it does) or treetops (as it apparently does for most readers).  The general sense is clear enough: Exemplary figures and clear arguments are both required to convince a reader.