Pietrapana

Description

In the thirty-second canto of the Inferno, Dante introduces Pietrapana as a term of comparison for measuring the thickness of the ice of the ninth circle. The poet imagines that, if the Tambernicchi and Pietrapana itself were to fall upon it, not even at the edge, where the ice is thinnest, would the slightest creak be heard. The image, declaredly unreal and almost abstract, is constructed to convey the total inhumanness of the infernal landscape, to which no earthly mountain can truly be compared. The name Pietrapana preserves the ancient form with which the Tuscan tradition designated the Apuan peak today known as Pania, according to the identification already accepted in the studies mentioned in the note to the canto.