The Wood of the Suicides and Pier della Vigna

The Wood of the Suicides and Pier della Vigna is one of the most harrowing and philosophically dense episodes in Dante's Inferno, unfolding in the second round of the seventh circle, where the violent against themselves are punished. Here, the pilgrim Dante and his guide Virgil enter a dark, pathless forest of gnarled, thorny trees of a dusky colour, whose leaves are not green but poisonous. The wood is so tangled and dense that it surpasses the wildest thickets between Cecina and Corneto. In this grim landscape, the hideous Harpies—broad-winged creatures with human faces and clawed feet—make their nests and utter laments from the trees. The episode is a profound meditation on the sin of suicide, the nature of the soul after death, and the justice of divine punishment, and it introduces one of the most memorable figures in the Inferno: Pier della Vigna, the loyal chancellor of Frederick II who was unjustly accused and took his own life.

The Forest of the Suicides and the Harpies

As Nessus the Centaur departs, Dante and Virgil find themselves in a wood that is not marked by any path. The trees are not smooth but gnarled and intertangled, and instead of apples there are thorns with poison. The Harpies, who chased the Trojans from the Strophades with sad announcements of doom, nest here, making laments upon the wondrous trees. Virgil warns Dante that he is within the second round and will be until he comes out upon the horrible sand. He tells Dante to look well, for he will see things that will give credence to his speech. Dante hears lamentations on all sides but sees no one who might make them, and he stands still, utterly bewildered. Virgil, perceiving that Dante might think the voices issue from people hidden among the trunks, tells him to break off a little spray from any of the trees, and his thoughts will be made vain.

Pier della Vigna's Testimony

Dante stretches forth his hand and plucks a branchlet from a great thorn. The trunk cries out, "Why dost thou mangle me?" and after it becomes embrowned with blood, it recommences its cry, asking why Dante rends it and whether he has no spirit of pity. The trunk reveals that men once were they, and now are changed to trees. As out of a green brand that is on fire at one end and drips and hisses from the other, so from that splinter issue forth both words and blood. Dante lets the tip fall and stands like a man who is afraid. Virgil explains that had Dante been able sooner to believe what only he had seen in Virgil's verses, he would not have stretched forth his hand. He asks the wounded soul to tell Dante who he was, so that his fame may be refreshed up in the world. The trunk then speaks: he is the one who had both keys in keeping of Frederick's heart, turning them to and fro so softly in unlocking and locking that he withheld most men from Frederick's secrets. He bore fidelity to the glorious office so great that he lost thereby his sleep and pulses. The courtesan who never turned aside her strumpet eyes from the dwelling of Caesar—Envy, the universal death and vice of courts—inflamed against him all the other minds, and they, inflamed, did so inflame Augustus that his glad honours turned to dismal mournings. His spirit, in disdainful exultation, thinking by dying to escape disdain, made him unjust against himself, the just. He swears by the roots of this wood that he never broke faith unto his lord, who was so worthy of honour. He asks that if one of them returns to the world, he comfort his memory, which lies prostrate from the blow that envy dealt it.

The Doctrine of the Suicide's Punishment

After Pier della Vigna falls silent, Virgil urges Dante to question him further, but Dante, overcome with pity, cannot. Virgil then asks the spirit to tell them in what way the soul is bound within these knots, and if any from such members is ever freed. The trunk blows amain, and the wind is converted into a voice. It explains that when the exasperated soul abandons the body whence it rent itself away, Minos consigns it to the seventh abyss. It falls into the forest, and no part is chosen for it; but where Fortune hurls it, there like a grain of spelt it germinates. It springs a sapling, and a forest tree. The Harpies, feeding then upon its leaves, do pain create, and for the pain an outlet. Like others, for their spoils shall they return; but not that any one may them revest, for it is not just to have what one casts off. Here they shall drag them, and along the dismal forest their bodies shall be suspended, each to the thorn of his molested shade. This doctrine of the suicide's eternal punishment—denied a human form at the Resurrection, their bodies hung on the trees that were once their souls—is a stark illustration of the contrapasso: those who violently rejected their own bodies are forever denied them.

The Chase of the Profligates and the Florentine Suicide

While Dante and Virgil are still attentive to the trunk, thinking it might wish to tell them more, they are overtaken by a tumult. Two naked, scratched souls come fleeing furiously through the forest, breaking every fan of the branches. The one in advance cries, "Now help, Death, help!" and the other, who seems to lag, shouts, "Lano, were not so alert those legs of thine at joustings of the Toppo!" Then, perchance because his breath is failing, he groups himself together with a bush. Behind them, the forest is full of black she-mastiffs, ravenous and swift of foot as greyhounds issuing from the chain. They set their teeth on him who had crouched down, and lacerate him piece by piece, thereafter bearing away those aching members. Virgil takes Dante by the hand and leads him to the bush, which is weeping from its bloody lacerations. The bush cries out, "O Jacopo, of Sant' Andrea, what helped it thee of me to make a screen? What blame have I in thy nefarious life?" Virgil asks who he was, and the bush replies that he was of that city which changed its first patron to the Baptist, wherefore he for this forever with his art will make it sad. He speaks of the pass of Arno, where some glimpses of the old patron remain, and of those citizens who rebuilt the city upon the ashes left by Attila. He concludes, "Of my own house I made myself a gibbet." This Florentine suicide, who made his own house a gibbet, is a figure of the city's corruption and the self-destructive violence that plagues it. Dante, moved by the charity of his native place, gathers the scattered leaves and gives them back to the bush, which is now hoarse.