INFERNO, Episode 32. All The Ways Virgil Gets The Apocalypse Wrong: Inferno, Canto VI, Lines 94 - 115

Ciacco has fallen back into the muck of the third circle of Inferno, never to be seen again--or at least not until the last judgment when the angelic trumpets resound across the universe.

As Dante the pilgrim and Virgil make their way around the circle a bit and then start to descend to the fourth circle, they talk about the future--maybe prompted by Ciacco's Florentine prophecy, maybe for other reasons.

They talk about the BODILY resurrection--because what else would you discuss among the gluttons?

Here’s my English translation of the passage, Inferno, Canto VI, Lines 94 – 115:

And my leader [Virgil] to me, “He’s not going to wake any more,

Until the sound of the angelic trombones

When the baleful power will come.

Each will again find his or her miserable tomb,

Will be reclothed in flesh and form,

And will hear that which resounds throughout eternity.”

So we made our way through the foul mash-up

Of shades and rain, with slow steps,

Touching a little on the life to come.

So I said, “Master, will these torments

Get bigger after the grand judgment,

Or get smaller, or stay as they are?”

And he to me, “Go back to your science,

Which claims that when something gets closer to perfection,

It feels more well-being and also more pain.

Although these wretched people

Will never come to true perfection,

They will get closer to it than in their present existence.”

We continued on in the road’s bend,

Speaking of more things that I won’t repeat.

Then we came to the place where the road descends—

There we came upon Plutus, the great enemy.