INFERNO, Episode 91. The Answer To Dashed Hopes Is Far Harder Than Anger: Inferno, Canto XVI, Lines 46 - 63

Dante the pilgrim has met and spoken with the very heroes he's always admired. These are the Guelph leaders he himself admits he has remembered with so much honor.

But their rhetoric is empty. Self-justifying. Flattering. And finally, ineffective.

So Dante the pilgrim dares it all and translates his anger into something far more human: sadness and connection.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, for this important episode of WALKING WITH DANTE. Here, we begin to see a fundamental change in our pilgrim, Dante. He's not just a tourist in hell. He's a human with dashed hopes. And he may be starting to see a way out without resorting to the easy answer of anger.

Here are the segments of this episode:

[01:31] My English translation of this passage: INFERNO, Canto XVI, lines 46 - 63. If you'd like to follow along, look below.

[02:58] Dante begins to put to death his political hopes for Florence.

[06:48] Dante refines the terms of their rhetorical game. It's not about disdain, about who's up and who's down. It's about sadness, the hardest human emotion to feel.

[10:02] "I leave the bitterness." And thereby, the pilgrim Dante also leaves Brunetto. There's another way to follow Dante's star to his glorious port. And it doesn't involve Brunetto's bitter history lesson of crab apples and sweet figs.

[14:37] There are two ways to write a journey narrative: the things I saw v. the people I met. Dante chooses the latter--and it turns his story into something more difficult, more glorious, and more lasting.

Here is my English translation of Inferno, Canto XVI, Lines 46 – 63:

If I’d been able to find a cover from the fire,

I would have thrown myself in with their lot,

And I believe my teacher would have let me do it.

But because I would have been scorched and cooked,

Fear vanquished my good intentions

That made me famished to give them a hug.

So I started, “It was not disdain but sadness

That fixed your condition inside me—

In fact, it’s not going to go away anytime soon—

“Right from the moment my master said words to me

That made me think that worthy guys

Like you might step over here by me.

“I am from your country. I’ve always heard

Of your works and your honored names,

Even passing them on with great affection.

“I leave the bitterness behind me and head for the sweet fruits

That have been promised to me by my truthful leader.

But first I must plunge all the way down to the center of things.”