INFERNO, Episode 75. It's Snowing Fire And You're Naked: Inferno, Canto XIV, Lines 19 - 42

We now get a fuller glimpse of the third ring of the seventh circle of hell, of inferno, in this passage that lays out the ranks of the damned before us and helps us see the landscape more clearly.

Sort of. Because this is Dante. And this is The Inferno. And nothing is quite what it seems.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we find three types of naked souls, lying, walking, and sitting under a snowfall of fire. Don't step out on the sand. It's an inferno. Naturally.

Or unnaturally, since we've apparently entered a non-Aristotelean landscape. A place of miracles. Like the one Alexander the Great encountered in India.

See? A lot. Here are the segments of this episode of Walking With Dante:

[01:05] My English translation of Inferno, Canto XIV, lines 19 - 42. If you'd like to read along with this translation, it lives out on my website, markscarbrough.com.

[03:58] The damned are naked. Or perhaps we assume so.

[05:37] Our first glimpse of the three groups in the third ring of the seventh circle: those prone, those walking about, and those hunched over. It's an opaque passage--until you remember Virgil has already explained all of this back in Canto XI.

[09:11] A lot about the snowfall of fire in the seventh circle of hell, here among those who have been (or tried to be) violent against God. I'll talk about Aristotelean physics--and why this passage violents those tenets. We'll do a little reading from the tiny New Testament epistle of Jude that may lie behind this passage. We'll talk some about Albert Magnus and Alexander the Great. And we'll round it off with the return of Guido Cavalcanti, whose father so missed him back in Canto X. Wow. A textured, layered passage, all about fire falling from heaven.

[19:50] And finally, a bit about the wild dance of the damned here as they try to swat the snow-fire away--and the depth of the commentary underneath us as we read these passages.

Here’s my English translation of INFERNO, Canto XIV, lines 19 - 42:

I saw naked spirits by the droves.

They cried with utter and outright misery,

And each was subject to its own set of laws.

Some people were lying spread eagle on the ground,

Others were sitting scrunched over,

And others walked about constantly.

There was a lot more of those who roamed around,

While there were fewer of those stretched out in torment,

Although their tongues were freer to wail.

All over that sand, with a slow fall,

It snowed fat flakes of fire,

Like snow falling in the mountains when there’s no wind.

Like the flakes that Alexander saw fall

In the humid parts of India,

The flames that came down whole and settled on the earth,

The ones he ordered his soldiers

To stomp out because it was easier to put

Out individual flames.

In the same way, this eternal burning drifted down,

But this time ignited the ground all around, like a match

To kindling, all to double the pain.

Without a single rest there was a wild dance

Of miserable hands, this way, that way,

As they tried to slap away each fresh cinder.