INFERNO, Episode 212. The Three Faces Of Interpretation . . . Or Satan: INFERNO, Canto XXXIV, Lines 28 - 45

We're about to get a good look at Satan, closer and closer, until we can see the color of his faces. Yes, faces. Three of them. Some Trinitarian perversion lies at the center of the universe.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we walk up to Satan with Dante, our pilgrim, and Virgil, his guide. We're nearing the end of the infernal landscape. And we're finding out what will replace it: awe.

Here are the segments of this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE:

[01:25] My English translation of the passage: INFERNO, Canto XXXIV, lines 28 - 45. If you'd like to read along, print it off, or drop a comment, please scroll down this page.

[03:15] The relationship between this vision of Satan and the one in the Baptistry mosaics in Florence.

[05:21] Satan as a most ineffective emperor.

[06:57] Satan's size: the bedevilment of Dantistas for centuries.

[09:16] The sheer hollowness of the earth--or the center of the universe.

[10:18] Satan's beauty and apparently his very minor rebellion.

[11:53] Fear gone, marvel or wonder ahead.

[14:33] The heresy in the passage: Satan as the source of anything.

[16:35] The many interpretations of the colors of Satan's three faces.

And here’s my English translation of Inferno, Canto XXXIV, Lines 28 – 45

The emperor of the kingdom of sorrow

Was stuck in the ice to the middle of his chest.

I would appear bigger next to a giant,

Than a giant would stand beside one of his arms.

See how enormous this whole place must be

For one part like that to fit into it.

If he was once as beautiful as he now is beastly,

Who dared to raise his eyebrow to his maker,

He may well be the source of all woe.

Oh how grand the sheer marvel I felt

When I saw the three faces on his head.

One was in front, a vermilion red;

And the other two were set so that

One was over each of his shoulders

With all of them fused together at the top of his head.

The one on the right was a whitish yellow

And the one on the left was much darker, sort of

Like the people who live beyond the cataracts of the Nile.