INFERNO, Episode 71. The Limits Of Credulity In A Poem About The Afterlife: Inferno, Canto XIII, Lines 109 - 126

If Pier’s speech tested the limits of our understanding, if we thought it was the height of rhetorical games, that’s only because we didn’t know what Dante the poet had in store for us in the rest of Canto XIII.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as I explore an oft-overlooked passage in INFERNO, one that deserves a great deal more scrutiny than it’s gotten.

Our pilgrim, Dante, and his guide, Virgil, are still standing over the bush that is Pier delle Vigne when through the underbrush come two naked souls, all scratched up, being chased by black hounds who eventually rip them limb from limb.

We moved from Pier’s calm, almost serene rhetoric to a scene of unbelievable violence in a matter of three lines. But as if that weren’t disconcerting enough, the passage itself moves to place where our poet may well be testing the limits of our credulity.

This is a deceptively simple passage. Watch out. Keep your wits about you. The poet may well be playing games on you.

Here’s my English translation of this passage: Inferno, Canto XIII, lines 109 - 126.

We kept our focus on the branch,

Believing it might wish to tell us more

When we were alarmed by an uproar,

Similar to the sort that comes

When someone at his post hears a boar and the hunter,

The sound of the beasts, crashing through the underbrush.

Lo and behold, two came from our left,

Bare naked and scratched up, fleeing with all their might,

So that they broke every branch through the thicket.

The one in front: “Come, come right now, death!”

And the other, who seemed slower,

Cried, “Lano, you didn’t move your legs this fast,

“At the jousting tournament near Toppo!”

And perhaps because he was gasping for breath,

He turned himself and a bush into one clump.

The wood behind him was thick with

Black bitches, ravenous and running at full speed,

Like greyhounds just let off their leashes.

Into the one who had squatted down they sank their teeth

And tore him limb from limb;

Then they carried away all those hideous body parts.