INFERNO, Episode 42. The Walls Of Dis And The Limits Of Virgil's Imagination: Inferno, Canto VIII, Lines 64 - 96

Dante-the-pilgrim and Virgil come to the walls of Dis, the iron gates at the city of Dis, the geopolitical center of hell.

But they’ve come to another barrier, too. This is as far as Aeneas got in the afterlife in THE AENEID. He could not enter Dis. And maybe this is as far as Virgil-the-poet got, too. This is where his imagination stopped.

But not our poet. Dante goes where Virgil didn’t. Or couldn’t. Or wouldn’t.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we explore this important passage in INFERNO in which the poet falls under the full weight of his work, perhaps his “folly,” standing at the walls that Virgil (and Aeneas) couldn’t cross. We’ve leaving a distinctly Virgilean landscape. We’re entering a much more Christian hell. So we get demons for the first time!

Here’s my English translation of INFERNO, Canto VIII, lines 64 - 96:

There we left him. I can say no more about him,

For my ears were bashed with such a sound of pain

That I had to open my eyes wide to see what lay ahead.

My good master said, “Now, my son,

Coming upon us is the city called Dis,

With its weighed-down citizens and great army.”

And I, “Master, I already make out

The minerets there, set into the ramparts.

Those minerets are as vermillion as if they’d just been taken out of the fire.”

And he to me, “The eternal fire

From inside makes them glow red,

Just as you see in this lower part of hell.”

We finally came to the deep moats,

The outer defenses of inconsolable ground.

The walls looked to me as if they were made of iron.

It was not until we had first made a big circle

That we came to a place where the boatman yelled,

“Get out! This is the entrance.”

At the gate I saw more than a thousand

Of those who had fallen from heaven, who belligerently

Cried out, “Who is this one, who, without death,

Nonetheless traverses the kingdom of the dead people.”

And my wise master made a signal

As if to say that he wanted to talk to them privately.

Then they all checked their disdain a bit

And said, “You, come by yourself—but send that one away,

The one who came into this realm so boldly—

Let him go back along his foolish path.

See if he knows how! For you’ll remain here,

You who escorted him through this gloomy country.”

Think, reader, how I got weak in the knees

At the sound of those cursed words.

I believed I’d never make it back [from there].