Although a vertical reading of the three cantos 30 is necessary to understanding the synoptic vision of imagery in the Commedia, Dante is also of course a narrative and an autobiographical poet; equally necessary, therefore, is a reading of each canto 30 in its narrative situation. The reading of the cantos, in fact, must be cumulative: the synoptic vision depends on our accumulation of detail about the error of imagery. 1 Only as we see more and more lucidly that our seeing is dark and darkening can we come to grasp the necessity for the vision of Paradise of simultaneous affirmation and negation of imagery. Narrative accumulation and vertical synopsis lead us to the one goal: the purgation of vision and the achievement of reflection.

Although he is not directly named in Inferno 30, Narcissus is a brooding presence in that canto; in fact, Dante disfigures the figure of Narcissus in the two shades of Master Adam and Sinon. That Master Adam is such a disfigured figure is quickly established. One of the "mal nati" ("ill-born"; line 48), he is also an "idropico" ("one who suffers from dropsy"; line 112) whose body is distended "con l'omor che mal converte" ("with ill-digested humor"; line 53); consequently, he forever thirsts even though he is filled with water (lines 56, 63, 121-22). 2 Moreover, as punishment for falsifying the florin, Master Adam was condemned to the stake, burned to death (lines 75, 109-10). Finally, the contrapasso which he suffers is to be parched by images of water (lines 64-69). Now these three distinctions--dropsy with perpetual thirst, flesh consumed by fire, and a throat parched by images-- confirm that Master Adam is a gross and literalized version of Ovid's Narcissus. 3 Yet even as Dante corporealizes or materializes him, he also plays with the loss of body which Narcissus suffers. If Narcissus wastes away until "nec corpus remanet quondam quod amaverat Echo" ("nothing remains of that body which Echo once had loved"; line 493; emphasis added; Innes 1955:94), Master Adam {39/40} also laments "`io nel volto mi discarno'" ("`I in the face unflesh or discarnate myself'"; line 69; emphasis added). Master Adam "discarnates" in the face even as Narcissus loses his flesh, and this disfigurement, as its location suggests, attacks that very beauty which, initially anyway, hides his despair and loss from Narcissus.

Dante's word "discarno" provides convenient access to his strategy in Inferno 30. He disfigures the figure of Narcissus, or discarnates it, in Master Adam because disfigurement or discarnation is the opposite of falsification. Falsification leaves the figure intact--that of the Baptist, for example (line 74)--so as to conceal the falsity: the intact figure suggests a true coin. 4 Disfigurement or discarnation, on the other hand, mars the surface or appearance and compels testing and questioning--who or what is this figure? and to what extent should I trust him or it? A disfigured or discarnate figure can never be a false figure of an original. Correspondingly, a dis-figuring or dis-carnating figure always proclaims that it is a copy and no more than a copy of an original. A figure that dis- figures or dis-carnates is an image struck from reality, in the crucially double sense of that phrase. Such are the figures in Paradise and especially, as we shall see, in Paradiso 30. They figure the Light or incarnate it only to dis-figure or dis-carnate it at the same time, in order to proclaim how much greater than they the Light "really" is. We will return to this point again and again, but for now we should emphasize how systematic the synoptic relationships among the cantos 30 are.

If Dante disfigures or discarnates Narcissus in Master Adam so as to oppose falsification, he opposes falsification because he, too, is a maker of images. He feels compelled to distinguish himself from Master Adam and Narcissus alike. If, finally, he as poet proves not to be a falsifier, it is because of Beatrice. She it is who makes his images true. And so much is reasonable: she is "loda di Dio vera" ("true praise of God"; Inf. 2.103); moreover, her eyes are "i vivi suggelli / D'ogne bellezza" ("the living seals of every beauty"; Par. 14.133). As long as Dante is "stamped" with these "seals," he and the images he makes will be true copies. Through Beatrice, Dante is "signed or sealed with the holy Spirit of promise" (Eph. 1.13); he and his images "rendono promession intera" (Purg. 30.132). With Beatrice's help Dante is neither Narcissus nor Master Adam.

And yet briefly Dante was a falsifier. There was a time when he had abandoned Beatrice. Not long after her death Dante, seeking consolation, abandoned Beatrice for a "pargoletta"--Lady Philosophy, we eventually learn. 5 And, as we know, only slowly and painfully did he return from the "selva oscura" of philosophical rationalization and abstraction to the "loda di Dio vera." Had he remained enamored of Lady Philosophy, he and the images {40/41} he made would have continued false because--and here Dragonetti's arguments are crucial (1965:193-40)- -the reason, which is Philosophy's instrument in man, would have interrupted and interfered with his vision--the reason and not Beatrice's eyes would have been the "suggelli" stamping his images. And the reason, without Beatrice, is the fallen and unreformed Image of God. Only the reason stamped by Beatrice can see by reflecting God.

We will have occasion in the reading of Purgatorio 30 to return to the issue of Beatrice versus Lady Philosophy. Here we need to pursue further Dante's disfigurement of Narcissus in Master Adam. The principal means of disfigurement are the "ruscelletti" and their "imagine." The falsifier of coins, maker of false images, is now parched by an image: "`Li ruscelletti . . . sempre mi stanno innanzi, e non indarno, / ché l'imagine lor vie più m'asciuga'" ("`The little brooks. . .are always before me, and not in vain, for the image of them parches me'"; lines 64, 67-68). 6 If images of water parch Master Adam, a severe disjunction has opened between image and referent. The figure of water, like Master Adam himself, is disfigured. Obviously water cannot parch. It is contrary to the nature or the reality of water to parch. And in fact it is the image and not the water that parches. Hence, here in Hell, so Dante implies, the image is real--or, say, palpable and effective--but its referent is denatured--impalpable and ineffective. Indeed, Dante adds "e non indarno" ("`and not in vain"; line 67) to emphasize that the image without a referent is effective, real, and palpable. Here in Hell the image is the only reality, the only matter, the only efficacy. It is precisely reference that has been repudiated: none of these souls would, for example, grow to maturity, that is, become one with his referent, or God. Each one is an "ombra"-- "shade" but also "image" --without a referent. This is his fraudulence; he is a false image of God because, having corrupted reference itself, he can no longer refer to any Other, least of all God. 7 Fraud, then, is the vice which corrupts reference. In Master Adam's particular case, by adding "mondiglia" to the florin, he corrupted the reference of the florin to the credit and the creditability of Florence. And so it is that, by the law of the contrapasso, he who corrupted reference himself suffers and suffers from a corrupt reference: images of water parch him; disfigured figures of water discarnate him--images of fraudulent water defraud him.

A similar contrapasso works on Sinon, in whom also Dante disfigures Narcissus. Sinon, to be precise, suffers and suffers from disfigured fame. Sinon's introduction points the way. Dante the pilgrim asks Master Adam: "`Chi son li due tapini / che fumman come man bagnate 'l verno, / giacendo stretti a' tuoi destri confini?'" ("`Who are the two wretches that are smoking like wet hands in winter, lying close to your confines on the right?'"; lines 91-93). The {41/42} latter replies: "`L'una è la falsa ch'accusò Giuseppo; / l'altr'è 'l falso Sinon greco di Troia: / per febbre aguta gittan tanto leppo'" ("`The one is the false woman who accused Joseph; the other is the false Sinon, Greek from Troy. Burning fever makes them reek so strongly'"; lines 97-99). And immediately, "l'un /Sinon/ di lor, che si recò a noia / forse d'esser nomato sì oscuro, / col pugno li percosse l'epa croia" ("one of them /Sinon/, who took offense perhaps at being named so darkly, with his fist struck him on his stiff paunch"; lines 100-102). Sinon is enraged at "being named so darkly or obscurely." Several commentaries on Ovid's story of Narcissus agree in reading it as an allegory of the pursuit of glory and consequent rejection of good fame; this reading was widespread (Vinge 1967:75, 86). And Dante may have relied on it for his description of Sinon's violent reaction to being "nomato si oscuro." Sinon, like Narcissus, sacrificed "good fame," or recognition and visibility, by the pursuit of "inania gloria," in his case, through perpetrating the downfall of Troy. And his present obscurity is his contrapasso. The phrase "greco di Troia," suggesting as it does an unclassifiable hybrid--a Greek? from Troy?--is a disfigured fame-- it is fame, but it is disfigured. As with Master Adam, so with Sinon, disfigurement is Dante's strategy.

And of most importance, Master Adam and Sinon form together Dante's disfigured figure of Narcissus. By halving Narcissus into these two figures, Dante can, in the "tenzone" between them, 8 demonstrate more profoundly than he otherwise could how narcissism corrupts reference. As frauds, Master Adam and Sinon are identical; as "ombre" they have shadowy differences. In their debate they think to insist on their differences; in fact, they only prove their identity. So much is clear from the form of their debate where each refers to the other with the referent also proper to himself. For example, "`s' io dissi falso, e tu falsasti il conio'" ("`If I spoke falsely, you falsified the coin'"; line 115; emphasis added); or, "`e sieti reo che tutto il mondo sallo!' / 'E te sia rea la sete onde ti criepa . . . la lingua'" ("`and may it torture you that all the world knows of it!'" "`And to you be torture the thirst that cracks your tongue'"; lines 120-21; emphasis added); or "`s' i' ho sete e omor mi rinfarcia, / tu hai l'arsura e 'l capo che ti duole'" ("`If I have thirst and if humor stuffs me, you have the burning and an aching head'"; lines 126-27; emphasis added). So far from establishing difference, this exchange insists on identity. The pronouns "I" and "you" are mere shifters positioning identical formulas on two (non) sides of a (non) divide. Master Adam and Sinon are mirrors each to the other; each reflects the other. Each is a Narcissus; together they are Narcissus talking to himself. And it is hardly fanciful to hear in their exchange Echo, especially in the pair "sieti reo" and "sia rea." The Other is the Same, and in this illusory difference there is reference, but it {42/43} is the corrupt reference of the sign signifying only itself signifying, referring only to its own referring--Echo.

When such a sign forms an image, it completes the corruption of reference by falsifying the image to refer without a referent. The image, its reference now completely corrupt, only repeats its referral (Echo). Dante exemplifies this final corruption at the end of the "tenzone" between Master Adam and Sinon in the strategic and crucial image of "lo specchio di Narcisso." Master Adam is speaking (Inf. 30.127-29):

"tu hai l'arsura e 'l capo che ti duole
e per leccar lo specchio di Narcisso,
non vorresti a 'nvitar molte parole."

("you have the burning and an aching head, and to lick the mirror of Narcissus you would not want many words of invitation.")

The poet who speaks of a mirror apropos of water, then, does not speak only of water, but of a reflecting, even hardened, surface which sends back the image of a Narcissus in love with his reflection. Thus the cool, clear water of verse 128 is in fact this water, but transmuted into a mirror, a water changed into an image of water (Dragonetti 1965:87-88).

Instead of water and instead of simple reference, Master Adam names "lo specchio di Narcisso": on the one hand, as a mirror, this is an image and an inexhaustible source of images--"a water changed into an image of water"; on the other hand, this is not a mirror at all but water "transmuted into a mirror." Not only does Master Adam not refer to water; he does not refer to a mirror either. "Lo specchio di Narcisso" as an image with putative reference fails completely; in context it refers to nothing. It is not a mirror but water, and yet it is not water but an image of water. The image and the signs of which it is made never attach--in the necessarily nontactile sense of that tactile metaphor--to a thing. The image refers, well enough; indeed, it is an energetic succession of referrals. But it refers without a referent. When Narcissus or the falsifier makes an image, he contaminates it with his own mode {43/44} of signifying--he never refers except to himself, he only signifies his own signifying (cf. Deleuze 1968:104); hence whatever image he makes, insofar as it is an image, it will refer--it will obey the process--but it will never refer to a real referent; it will only repeat its referrals.

Another example of such falsification, less dramatic, perhaps, but no less compelling, is Master Adam the "raindrop": "`piovvi in questo greppo'" ("`I rained down into this trough'"; Inf. 30.95). Rain figures in all three cantos 30; here in Inferno 30, Master Adam "rains" only to insist that he is false rain. The poisonous water backed up inside him will never break forth-- unlike that frozen around Dante's heart when we see him as "Adam" in Purgatory (canto 30, lines 85-99)--and he will never moisten anything, least of all the ground of Hell. The irony in "piovvi in questo greppo" is too great-- distended to the very boundary of meaninglessness. The rain is only the image of rain--the reality impalpable and ineffective because excluded and repudiated. Again Master Adam makes an image which refers without a referent. He cannot rain, and when he makes an image that says he did, he falsifies the word piovvi" --it is only a word and therefore fraudulent.

If Master Adam makes images which refer without a referent, he is himself just such an image. He is Adam, the Image of God. But he has repudiated God--that is why he is in Hell--by corrupting reference, falsifying images. He refers endlessly. But he refers (in Hell) to no Other.

With one near exception, namely, Dante the pilgrim. Dante the pilgrim, in Hell, almost adds a referent, himself, to the fraudulent process of signifying which Master Adam and Sinon conduct in their "tenzone." Their empty signs, only signing and otherwise without a referent, Dante the pilgrim almost fills with himself. We know the gravity of Dante's situation and imminent error from the description of his posture when Virgil interrupts him: he is "tutto fisso ad ascoltarli" ("all intent to listen to them"; line 130). The phrase "tutto fisso" is as ominous here as it is in Purgatorio 2 (line 118), where the souls are "tutti fissi" in Casella's song when, as Cato quickly reminds them, they should be proceeding to their purgation. 9 Here in Inferno 30 it is a signal that Dante, and in particular the Adam in him, is bound to and by the evil before him.

To be precise, at the moment when Virgil vents his anger at Dante, the latter is providing reality for, or, say, lending substance to, the empty signa of Master Adam and Sinon. Dante is becoming that which is behind or beyond or referred to in the signs which Master Adam and Sinon hurl back and forth. The condition of images and/or shades in Hell is lack, insubstantiality, and yet Dante, by taking Master Adam and Sinon as seriously as he does, lends them his being, materializes their lack, and thus becomes the substance {44/45} behind them. In effect, Dante the narcissist sees himself in the two halves of the disfigured Narcissus--hence Virgil's "`Or pur mira'" ("`Now just you keep on looking'"; Inf. 30.131; emphasis added): Virgil obviously understands precisely the error Dante is committing. To recur to Dragonetti's argument (1965:94-106), Dante sees the reason perverted--he is seeing an image of fraud--and he materializes the perversion by the fixity of his gaze as he tries to reason through, to understand (cf. line 145), an exchange radically unreasonable, reasonless, damned. He, Dante, almost becomes the significance or the referent--perverted human reason--of the otherwise empty signs of Narcissus in Hell. Dante almost gives the damned what they lack and what they have lost all right to, namely, reality or substance. Even perverted human reason would be more substantial than the reasonless echoes of Master Adam and Sinon.

If Dante had continued to lend his substance to the empty signs, eventually they would have consumed him, and he would have become identical with Master Adam and Sinon, his reason as perverted as theirs. Happily, the process is not allowed to complete itself. Virgil calls Dante back from marmoreal fascination with the signs of Narcissus. Dante's response to this recall is crucial. He does, in fact, repent, though his repentance, too, is troubled by narcissism (lines 133-41):

Quand'io 'l senti' a me parlar con ira,
volsimi verso lui con tal vergogna,
ch'ancor per la memoria mi si gira.
Qual è colui che suo dannaggio sogna,
che sognando desidera sognare,
sì che quel ch'è, come non fosse, agogna,
tal me fec'io, non possendo parlare,
che disïava scusarmi, e scusava
me tuttavia, e nol mi credea fare.

(When I heard him speak to me in anger, I turned to him with such shame that it circles through my memory even yet. And as is he who dreams of something hurtful to him and, dreaming, wishes that it were a dream, so that he longs for that which is, as if it were not, such I became that, unable to speak, I wanted to excuse myself, and did excuse myself all the while, not thinking I was doing it.)

Those signs are natural which, without any desire or intention of signify- {45/46} ing, make us aware of something beyond themselves, like smoke which signifies fire.... and the face of one who is wrathful or sad signifies his emotion even when he does not wish to show that he is wrathful or sad, just as other emotions are signified by the expression even when we do not deliberately set out to show them. 10

Distinctive of the "natural sign" is the absence of intention in the presence of signification: Where there's smoke, there's fire, with no intention; where there's a twisted face, there's wrath, with no intention; where there's a blush, there's shame, with no intention--Dante himself insists on as much later in the poem (Purg. 21.105-108). A blush and shame, then, form an instance of pure reference where no will or intention interrupts or interferes with the process of reference; a blush and shame form an instance of pure readability. But Dante, through a tortuous and almost serpentine simile, does interrupt the process of reference; and he does so by introducing desire ("desidera"), or lack, and belief ("credea"), or faith. He perverts the natural sign by his intention, an intention thoroughly narcissistic and falsifying because it subtracts the "gold" of reference from the sign only to replace it with the "mondiglia" of personal desire.

The force of the simile is to suggest that the shame:sign which is real and in real relation to a real referent is disfigured "come non fosse" --figured "as if it were not" to be thus disfigured. Dante is ashamed and the shame:sign does communicate; Virgil makes this abundantly clear (lines 142-44). But desire--the intention to excuse himself--forces Dante to believe or to have faith otherwise, so that the shame:sign, in his belief or faith, is emptied and becomes a signum Narcissi--such a sign as Master Adam and Sinon make, a false sign. Through his desire and in his belief, what is, is "as if it were not": the excuse or shame which is on his face is not in his belief or faith. Sign and referent are radically sundered, their exchange interrupted, even though this sign and its referent are in an ontically pure relationship. Dante disfigures the sign by his denial of its referent, and it is his desire which motivates the disfigurement. Dante's desire to excuse himself, to feel shame, precludes his feeling shame, and thus he believes that he is not excusing himself. He desires to feel shame, but he believes that the shame is not accommodated to any external sign; he believes that he cannot communicate--"non possendo parlare" --and yet he is communicating and communicating shame to Virgil. Desire separates the red blush and the shame, and belief keeps them separated. Still desiring to feel shame, Dante does not believe in his shame. The sign thus without a referent precisely is, only as if it were not, "come non fosse." It refers, but it refers without a referent. It is thus a sign of Narcissus and of narcissistic, or selfish and unreflective, desire--"bassa voglia" (line 148). {46/47} Dante's frame of mind, his faith ("credea"), when Virgil reprimands him, indicates the extent to which, "tutto fisso" in the "tenzone," he has become Narcissus.

To restore Dante's faith, and especially his faith in signs, Virgil must, having stopped the process by which Dante was becoming Narcissus, now go on to reverse it by affirming and confirming Dante's penance: "`Maggior difetto men vergogna lava,' / disse'l maestro, `che 'l tuo non è stato; / però d'ogne trestizia ti disgrava'" ("`Less shame washes away a greater fault than yours has been,' said the master, `therefore disburden yourself of all sadness,'"; lines 142-44). Note that if shame washes ("lava") shame is somehow liquid--has something to do with water. Now obviously, even ostentatiously, Virgil is speaking in metaphor. And through this metaphor, water enters this bolgia of Hell. Thus the only "real"-- that is, palpable and effective--water in Hell is this metaphoric "water" which washes Dante's "difetto." The implication seems to be that reality obtains--in this case, the reality of water--when the exchange between sign and referent is true and complete; Dante's shame, even so excessive and self-conscious a shame as his is, is the only case of such exchange here in the bolgia of the falsifiers. Thus the poet seems to say that when the sign--in this case, shame--is referential it can be the foundation of a metaphor--or, washing--because both partners in the meaning are real. The sign truly referential attaches to the Other, and the Other validates the sign. And a valid sign, not fraudulent, is the ground of every metaphor.

The narcissist, however, having lost faith in signs, does not believe this, and thus, in the present example, does not feel the laving effects of his penance, his shame. So it is that Virgil must go on to say, "`pero d'ogne trestizia ti disgrava'." Master Adam is laden with "membra che son gravi" (line 107), and as long as Dante "si grava" with "trestizia" or any other infernal emotion or desire, he must remain the narcissist, unredeemed by reference, the Adam in him masterful still. So it is that Virgil tells Dante to "dis-Adam" himself ("ti disgrava" ); which is also as much as to tell him to "dis-Narcissus" himself.

Having reasoned thus with Dante, Virgil--himself the figure of human Reason--concludes by insisting on the Reason and its involvement in the scene which has just transpired (lines 145-48; emphasis added):

"e fa ragion ch' io ti sia sempre allato,
se più avvien che fortuna t'accoglia
dove sien genti in simigliante piato;
ché voler ciò udire è bassa voglia."

("and do not forget /lit.: "do you reason that"/ that I am always at your side, should it again fall out that fortune find you where people are in a similar {47/48} dispute, for the wish to hear that is a base wish.")

With this analysis of its concluding lines, the rigor of the structure of Inferno 30 is evident. It begins with allusions to madness, or the loss of reason, and ends with Virgil just managing to prevent Dante from going mad, losing his reason. Because the Reason is the Image of God, throughout the canto Dante articulates a theology and a poetics of imagery. Falsification is the act which grounds Dante's discourse. And Narcissus is the figure (disfigured) that represents--which is to say, successfully refers to--the failure of reference which falsification of imagery perpetrates. And it is the success of this reference of Narcissus that suggests that Narcissus need not be damned, that, on the contrary, he can be purged, and, indeed, even redeemed.