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Dante lives again in Umbria The arrival of Caronte

Ed ecco verso noi venir per nave / un vecchio, bianco per antico pelo, / gridando: "Guai a voi, anime prave! / Non isperate mai veder lo cielo: / I' vegno per menarvi all'altra riva / nelle tenebre etterne, in caldo e én gelo." (Inf. III 82-7)
In his commentary of this extremely famous locus in Dante, Sapegno ⁰⁰⁷ makes a clear distinction between the Caronte described in Virgil's Aeneid and this one in Dante's Commedia. The Homeric tradition did not employ such a figure in its afterworld. Virgil, instead, drew upon Etruscan ⁰⁰⁸ eschatology and with descriptive, pictorial poetry inserted this lesser divinity, Charun, as portitor or infernal coxswain in the sixth book of the Aeneid. ⁰⁰⁹ The Virgilian Caron is horrendus, that is, disgustingly hairy. A long, white unkempt beard hangs from his chin. A filthy cloak similarly hangs from his shoulders. Dante's Caronte is, instead, violent and threatening. He abruptly breaks onto the scene placing a temporary end to the fatherly explanations Virgil is giving Dante. Dante's Caronte is a white-haired old man with "lanose gote" (fleecy cheeks) and "occhi ... di fiamme rote" (eyes ... with rings of fire) which anticipate the "occhi di bragia" (ember eyes) at line 109. In short, not only does Dante translate the physical appearance of the Acherontean ferryman, but also encapsulates the violent intensity of his character.
Gillessen closely follows this re-elaborating tendency of Dante's poetics, that is, he does not limit himself to translating Dante's lines into painting exactly as they are presented. Gillessen descends well below the surface of the naked word. Gillessan's Caronte is not exactly like Dante's white-haired old man as Dante's was not exactly like Virgil's. Seeing that in other circumstances the expression "white-haired old man" could even perhaps demand respect, Gillessen does away with this traditional appearance. Even though in Dante's own mind the inconsistency between essence and appearance was probably where Caronte's terribleness resided, Gillessen has obviously wanted to depict the real Caronte as he is within. Thus we have the horrendus, archetypal demon, Charun of Etruscan origin - a half-beast, half-man figure armed with a heavy mace (now transformed into a pole). The eyes no longer give the Virgilian-Dantean idea of fire. They do, however, transmit the idea of darkness which corresponds to a lack of intelligence. The hands similar to hooves, the unkempt mane and beard, the almost sadistic smirk underneath the over-sized snout-like nose and the lion- or dog-like muzzle are the bestial features of the demon.
In Inferno III we read the scene of the arrival of Caronte from Dante's point of view, "Ed ecco verso noi ...". This is a constant facet of Dante's poetics inasmuch as the Comedy is the account of a vision told by the man who had it. In other words, the validity and veracity of the experience are guaranteed only from a purely individualistic point of view. We can imagine certain things now only to the extent to which Dante writes that he had seen them then. Consequently, the reader of the divine text is psychologically "there" on the banks of the Acheron with the two poets and sees the white-haired old man coming from a long way off. Though initially appearing as a small dot on the horizon, Caronte progressively gets larger and larger and more and more distinguishable. Gillessen, however, inverts this perspective. The first appearance of the infernal coxswain is described not from Dante's point of view but, rather, from the point of view of the brutish mind of Caronte himself. It is now Caronte who sees two small black figures from a long way off and cannot as yet clearly make them out. Consequently Caronte has not even come to realise that Dante is still alive. That is to say, Caronte has not as yet formulated the thought underlying lines 88-89 "E tu se' costì, anima viva, / pàrtiti da cotesti che son morti." Gillessen's painting allows us to participate in the mental mechanisms of the man-beast and thus penetrate the concrete three-dimensionality of the hereafter. If we momentarily discount the well-known speeches made by the famous people placed by Dante in the Comedy such as Francesca, rarely do the traditional commentaries of the Comedy, whether these be verbal or pictorial, allow us to ascertain with such ease and intimacy the formulation of the reaction that this afterworld has to Dante's presence in it. Even less do traditional commentaries allow us to live out these tiny loci of the Comedy from the points of view of the same diabolic minds populating it.
The arrival of Caronte

Introduction
Dante lost in the dark wood (Inferno, I)
Dante - follower of Christ made flesh (Inferno, I)
The arrival of Caronte (Inferno, III)
The Noble Castle of Limbo (Inferno, IV)
Tremendous Minos (Inferno, V)
The lustful Guido Guinizelli and Arnaut Daniel (Purgatorio, XXVI)
Souls in the circle of the envious (Purgatorio, XIII)
The sky of Mercury - the active spirits (Paradiso, V-VI)
Invective of St. Benedict (Paradiso, XXII)
index


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