Una nota sulla "seconda morte" di "Inferno" I, 117

The article takes into consideration the passage from the proemial canto of the Commedia, in which, within the triple super-mundane subdivision of Dante’s journey, the infernal
argument is summarized in the image of the “spirits disconsolate” who cry out for the “second death”. The unresolved ambiguity that characterizes this last expression has given rise,
since the early commentators, to different and apparently irreconcilable interpretations: annihilation of the soul; spiritual death or hell; eternal damnation deriving from the Last Judgment. Starting with the Apocalypse (20, 14 and 21, 8), which constitutes the cultural
archetype of the numerous late ancient and medieval treatises on the “second death”, this
article aims to a broader historical contextualization of the Dante passage, reconsidering
those texts that reveal in what different ways the same scriptural image could be perceived
by a medieval reader. From this interdiscursive lens a reading of Inf. I, 117 is developed,
which, put to the test of comparison with other passages in Inferno and unpublished sources,
refers to a humanistic meaning of the “second death” as the oblivion of the fame that follows
bodily death.