Scope and Contents XVII/3 On a recent visit to Italy in 1982, I went to Padua in order to visit the Scrovegni chapel which was originally erected by Enrico Scrovegni the son of that Rinaldo Scrovegni who sits among the usurers of this Canto. It was he also that commissioned Giotto to paint magnificent frescoes. Dante and Giotto were close friends and the writer visited Padua while the painter was at work on the chapel. They must have talked there often, and, if they were typical artists, the conversation must have turned to discussion of money and no doubt threw up the irony that this glory that Giotto was in the process of glorifying was built on the foundations of usury which in turn funded Giotto's own work there. Ezra Pound in his own Cantos devotes a complete section (in homage to this section of the Inferno) on usury asserting that Not by Usura came. . (and here he cites treasures of art and craft). In refuting this assertion of Pound I take the liberty of stylistic parody to suggest that we...

Scope and Contents XVII/4 Dante's powers of physical visualisation (in which he parallels his friend Giotto in his new bodying forth of the world's reality) are unprecedented in literature and one of his greatest achievements is the predictive description of flight which ends this Canto, complete with a conversation between Virgil and Dante that could be that between pilot and novice on a training plane. Flight and 'a flight of stairs' are joined as in a pun to recall Virgil's comment, `It's stairs like these we'll have to travel by. . .' This particular staircase is taken from a diagram in J. V. de Vries' La Perspective' of 1639 (via the TLS via the HRC, Austin, Texas), and also recalls the windingly vertiginous descent that Dante experiences on the back of Geryon. The flight of the little green plane (a rubber stamp from an educational set bought in Sao Paolo) follows the curve of the banister. The stem of the staircase has become the falling river of blood. Perhaps Dante's description here would...

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Canto XVIII/1 The wolf (cf. Canto 1/2) introduces the largest section of the Inferno; the sins of envy and deep malice. The drawing is loosely based on photographs of a stuffed wolf's head, purchased at the photographic archive on the rue de Seine in Paris whose window has fascinated me ever since I was a schoolboy there in 1955. The three-headedness of the animal (a late introduction into the image) recalls the three beasts of Canto I and provides a savage echo of the merely greedy Cerberus. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents XVIII/2 Dante's Hell is a pretty schematic place and no edition of the Comedy is without its map or diagram. Not wishing to be left out, and feeling this to be, as the most complex of the areas of Hell, most in need of some sort of visual aid, I produced here an aerial survey of Malebolge with its ten concentric and descending trenches, each filled with the type of character or action that it holds. The nature of the plan reminds one too of the airborne approach that the poets make on the back of Geryon (whose departing tail disappears into the left of the picture). The bridges that span the ravines are broken, as the map shows, at the sixth: this may be more clearly seen in the cross-section diagram at the bottom of the picture. Above this cavorts a crowd of the type of inhabitants that we are to meet. At the very base of the image is the word Malebolge with a suggested English translation, Malcavities, which I intended to use in the text but decided rather to instance only here....

Scope and Contents XVIII/3 We see here the crafty Jason, half-masked by the image of Hypsipyle fading in his mind after he had abandoned her (the model for this figure drawn from the life onto the original etching plate was Anthea Toorchen). Once again the head is taken from the dramatis personae of III/1. The arrows are overlaid by what is now a distant cousin (a photographic offset reproduction of an etching of a transparency of an offset reproduction of an original photograph after nature) of a magazine illustration of a freeway in Los Angeles.. The very deviousness of such a procedure seems appropriate to the image of Jason, whose seafaring and convoluted artfulness are also indicated by overlaying wave patterns on the road-system. The directional arrows (cf. Canto X/4) refer to what must be the first mention in literature of traffic-control; a simple prelude, in Dante's description of what is nowadays called a contraflow-system operating on the Sant Angelo bridge in the Jubilee year of 1300, of...

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XVIII/4 Since we have here another immersion, this time in excrement, I have taken another bather from the original group (cf. Canto XII/1) to represent the whore Thais. Her head derives from one of the miniature masks of Canto 111/1, though here much more 'degraded' even than usual. Vague suggestions of frilly lace linger about the image, and these in the original were applied onto the plate's surface together with the smear of lipstick. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents The Tarot cards are shown, one real and one fake. I have followed the style of the Tarot de Marseille rather than that of the standard Italian Tarocchi since the Marseille set always looks to me the most historically convincing (though the ancient sources once attributed to the Tarot seem now much to be doubted). The eternal Death of Hell rises to the top of the pack for those who dabble in the mantic arts. The card itself is changed from the original in only one major respect; the head of the skeleton is now turned to look backwards as are the heads of those who in life tried to see into the future. The second card tries to look forward to the end of the Inferno and we guess its title to be Le Stelle (the stars) which are the last words of the book. The stars however are obscured by leaves (as if from the Dark Wood of Canto I/1). The stars therefore represent here the false science of Astrology and the leaves echo the leaves of Sybilline prophecy. LA MORTE is number XIII which...

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XX/2 Tiresias is here depicted at the point of flux between male and female, as his staff touches the intertwining snakes that effect his transformation. The sky is full of portents, the earth alive with catastrophe (for the foretelling of fun to come is hardly the stock-in-trade of Classical seers). The presence of astronomical paraphernalia hints at the growth of scientific endeavour that will develop from those very sources of Astrology and Alchemy. The original collage that formed the black and white basis of this image was made from the usual source materials and the sky contains the complete quota of celestial bodies from an annual volume of the Boy's Own Paper. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

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XX/3 Virgil remembers the Mantuan landscape of his early years and this provides a pastoral interlude, albeit darkened by the story of the daughter of Tiresias, Manto, the sorceress and founder of Mantua. The landscape is a fragment of a painting by that city's other great son, Andrea Mantegna. It is framed by quasi-alchemical and Cabbalistic signs. The text and central image also appear as page 151 of the revised edition of A Humument. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

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XX/4 The study motif makes its third appearance and here serves via the absence of Virgil to underline Dante's resolute denial of Virgil's association with the dark arts, an important part of his characterisation in the Middle Ages. The ease with which that poet passes through this particular Bolgia is another clue to Dante's message (cf. Canto II/1). Only a book remains, now rendered innocent and rural in character. As Dante uses Virgil so I have used W. H. Mallock (we each get the master we deserve), and this debt is suggested by the decoration of the pages shown with a version of the endpapers of Mallock's now much mined and travestied novel. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

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Canto XXI/1 This selection of Devils, each freely improvised, stands (in the same way as do the masks in III/1 for the whole work) as a dramatis personae for this section (Cantos XXI"”XXIII) of the Inferno. They range from the sinister to the humorously grotesque, thus reflecting the variety of reactions that these episodes and characters have evinced from readers through the ages: some (like myself) have seen the activities of the Devils as a buffo episode, a little tongue-in-cheek like the modern Gothic horror film; others (like Ruskin) have seen in them an unambiguous representation of evil. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

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XXI/2 Once again Dante's attitude is equivocal. He is portrayed here by a rubber stamp (a surprise gift from a French artist Philippe Lagautriere, who hand-cut it after a reproduction of the original frontispiece to this book). The pilgrim seems both frightened and amused as he watches the devils and learns (or, as the poet, invents) their names. Some English translators have attempted to find equivalents for Malacoda, Graffiacane etc. (Evil-tail, Scratch-dog. . .) though the results have been generally quite feeble. Except for the appearance in this image of several variants I have stuck to the Italian, especially since it is probable that Dante is using distortions of the names of well-known Florentines (e. g. two of the twelve Priors in 1300 who were called Menno Branca and Raffacani). -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

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XXI/3 Cinematic as ever in his direction of the action Dante's presentation here of diabolical buffoonery reminded me of broad-bottomed two-reeler farce. At the top of the (singed) film strip Dante and Virgil occupy the first frame in a debased guise; Dante as he appears on the current label of a bottle of olive-oil (Olio Dante, supplied by Alison Meryick-Hughes) and Virgil as he appears on the wrapper of the excellent Virgilio butter (purchased by me in Milan, though made of course in Mantua). The lower two frames show Laurel and Hardy in the same relationship as the poets, making a Stan of Dante and an 011y of Virgil. Teased with great difficulty from the inexhaustible Mallock is a version of Dante's original greeting to Virgil (Or se to quel Virgilio) and the Italian for 'I am Stan'. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

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XXI/4 This self-explanatory confection of collaged fragments of Dore's illustrations (with the addition of a gramophone horn taken from an American anthology called 'Have Fun with Collage) is one of the few pictures in the book that is an illustration in the standard sense. The goose-stepping is an obvious allusion to the military character of Dante's Devils. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

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Canto XXII/1 The bathers of Canto XII/ I here appear reversed with only their many silhouettes now visible, for the immersion here is an even darker mockery of Baptism, which now takes place in sticky pitch. These are the shady racketeers (or barrators) even less distinguishable than those whose violence was of a more open kind -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents XXII/2 Dante and Virgil are distinctly 'Behind Enemy Lines' as the title graphic of this image states, and the poet in this canto has in fact become a kind of war-reporter. The various elements of this picture were culled from a single issue of 'Combat' magazine. All the excerpts are reprinted undoctored on a background colour that recalls that of pulp magazines and wartime printing. The only slight adaptation is in the character addressed as 'D. . .' in the bottom right hand frame where I have reinforced the slight resemblance to Dante originally possessed by the drawing. The central panel is one of the Devil drawings destined for the first image of Canto XXI (magnified X6). The individual excerpts were selected to reflect the eternal factionalism and race-hatred of war: Germans, English, Japanese all fare badly in these crude unequivocal commercial drawings and even Dante's own `Eyeties' look to be in trouble despite their having that national unity that was one of the Poet's...

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XXII/3 Barratry, the civil version of Simony (cf. Canto XIX), was the crime for which Dante himself was condemned by his native city (he was to have been decapitated if ever he returned to Florence). No biographer has suggested that this was anything but a trumped-up charge to precipitate his exile. Thus crime, charge, verdict and punishment were all themselves acts of political racketeering. Dante is significantly silent throughout this Canto, for the only time in the journey. Here protected by the light of his innocence he is shown surrounded by the Devils who repeat the accusation made by their Florentine counterparts; he meets it whichever way he turns. Here and there we see traces of a rubber-stamp lily (the rubber-stamp being what Reich would have called the character armour of corrupt political officials). -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents XXII/4 Though much plundering has been done from Dore's illustrations to the Comedy this is the only use made of Blake's fine and eccentric visions (Dore, since he never transcends the literal descriptions of the text and is always innocent of allegorical implications seemed fairer game). Alone of Blake's pictures after Dante this, with its energetic but rather clumsily realised figures, seemed to have a naive, comic-book aspect. The specialised type of drawing that characterises the American comic (Superman, Batman etc. all of which I devoured eagerly when they arrived in parcels from American aunts towards the end of the war) lies outside my range and it seemed appropriate to pass on the initial work of transcription to a professional illustrator (Paul Tupling) who presented me with a very well realised basis for this version. In the upper half of this picture the same figures are merely differently oriented to indicate their swooping towards a collision, using the typical inset...

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Canto XXIII/1 The curtain finally falls on Dante's episodes of Grand Guignol. The last glimpse we have, appropriate enough to the ethos of Laurel and Hardy and the Keystone Cops, is of a classic chase sequence. The presence of a curtain also recalls the existence of a barrier beyond which the Devils cannot go (as each sinner is in life locked in his sin, so is he locked in the confined area of his punishment in Hell; unlike Purgatory there is no promotion in Hell). The visual reference here is the kind of stage featured in Pollock's Toy Theatres and the colours are those I associate with the early chromo-lithographic theatre cut-outs. The curtain in fact comes from a pelmet-design in La Mode Illustree and the rest of the collage from fragments of the Boy's Own Paper. The stones move at Dante's fleeing feet to show that he is a corporeal presence in a world of shades. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents XXIII/2 A cluster of parental images in the text is here echoed by an image-cluster of my own. Virgil, Dante's acknowledged father-figure, snatches him up to save him from the pursuing devils; the poet compares this action to a mother rescuing a child from a burning house. The two poets have here their moment of greatest mental and physical intimacy; Virgil has become both father and mother. I here quote, via a watercolour copy after a reproduction, the mother and child from Guernica which Picasso was working on the day I was born (one of the drawings for this figure is dated 25. 5. 37). The relevance is also underlined by the fact that Guernica is the work of an artist in political exile commenting on the fate of his divided homeland. The other quotation that completes the ensemble is from my own work Ein Deutsches Requiem (after Brahms) and is from the part of the work that illustrates the text (a section of the composition which Brahms dedicated to the memory of his mother) 'Ich...