Note 342 — CANTO IX.
James Romanes Sibbald translation
Mysterious line: ‘Strange verses:’ That the verses are called strange, as Boccaccio and others of the older commentators say, because treating of such a subject in the vulgar tongue for the first time, and in rhyme, is difficult to believe. Rather they are strange because of the meaning they convey. What that is, Dante warns the reader of superior intellect to pause and consider. It has been noted (Inf. ii. 28) how he uses the characters of the old mythology as if believing in their real existence. But this is for his poetical ends. Here he bids us look below the surface and seek for the truth hidden under the strange disguise.—The opposition to their progress offered by the powers of Hell perplexes even Virgil, while Dante is reduced to a state of absolute terror, and is afflicted with still sharper misgivings than he had at the first as to the issue of his adventure. By an indirect question he seeks to learn how much Virgil really knows of the economy of the lower world; but he cannot so much as listen to all of his Master’s reassuring answer, terrified as he is by the sudden appearance of the Furies upon the tower, which rises out of the city of unbelief. These symbolise the trouble of his conscience, and, assailing him with threats, shake his already trembling faith in the Divine government. How, in the face of such foes, is he to find the peace and liberty of soul of which he is in search? That this is the city of unbelief he has not yet been told, and without knowing it he is standing under the very walls of Doubting Castle. And now, if he chance to let his eyes rest on the Gorgon’s head, his soul will be petrified by despair; like the denizens of Hell, he will lose the ‘good of the intellect,’ and will pass into a state from which Virgil—or reason—will be powerless to deliver him. But Virgil takes him in time, and makes him avert his eyes; which may signify that the only safe course for men is to turn their backs on the deep and insoluble problem of how the reality of the Divine government can be reconciled with the apparent triumph of evil.