XIII/3 The blinded and battered head of Pier del Vigne is yet another from the 'cast list' which forms the initial illustration to Canto III. The bars indicate the prison against whose walls he dashed out his brains and that other prison in which he is now fixed as a shade. The same head (ghosted in negative) is formed by the lettering of the Wood of Suicides. In these words he is now enmeshed as he once was in the verbal intrigues and intricacies of court life. This element of wordplay continues in the ironic quotation in negative of the bar of the No Entry sign from Canto VIII which here stands for the courtier's (double) blindness and includes a distant reference to the EXIT euthanasia movement. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.