That the monster serves a utilitarian purpose…

“Secondo il potere dell’ “ambivalenza”, che introduce ad una verità più alta e “poliedrica” rispetto all’univocità del concetto logico-razionale, il mostruoso ha sempre una sua positività ed è in fondo (spesso, suo malgrado) un potenziale alleato dell’eroe che affronta la difficile avventura. Cfr. V. Jewiss, Monstruous Movements and Metaphors in Dante’s. Divine Comedy, in «Forum Italicum», vol. 32, n. 2, Fall 1998, p. 340: «[…] That the monsterserves a utilitarian purpose, is part of rather than opposed to God’s plan, and fits within the general framework of Dante’s poetics articulated in the first canto: “ma per trattar del ben ch’i’ vi trovai, / dirò de l’altre cose ch’i’ v’ho scorte.” (But, to treat of the good that I found in it, I will tell of the other things I saw there. Inf. 1: 8-9). Dante pushes beyond the horrors of hell and an aesthetics of the ugly to articulate an instrumentality of the monstrous which unfolds within the parameters of God’s grace. Interestingly, in his Etymologies, Isidore of Seville makes a subtle but crucial distinction in his study of monsters which bears relevance to my point. He insists that they are not contrary to nature because they are made by divine will and thus are intended to be part of creation. Rather, they are against what we call nature. In other words, monsters startle and terrify us, but they do not ruffle God, for they are part of his plan. Isidore’s definition, which posits that monsters are within God’s framework but outside of ours, is striving towards the type of instrumentality Dante creates in the Inferno»…”

tratto da: “Inferno V: gli spiriti amanti e l’egoismo dell’amore”, Marino Alberto Balducci, BIBLIOTHECA PHOENIX, Carla Rossi, nota 17, pg.16