INFERNO, Episode 144. Get Me Closer To That Unintelligible Stuff: Inferno, Canto XXIV, Lines 61 - 78

Dante is still out of breath because of the arduous climb out of the sixth of the malebolge of fraud. But he doesn't want Virgil to know it!

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as the pilgrim Dante hears something he can't understand and wants to get a lot closer to this unintelligible voice. He and Virgil cross the bridge to climb down a bit on the wall and peer into the seventh pit of the eighth circle of hell.

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

[01:17] Virgil is the character in flux in COMEDY. Why and how?

[05:24] The passage for this episode: Inferno, Canto XXIV, lines 61 - 78. If you'd like to see this passage, you can find it on my website, markscarbrough.com.

[06:56] The landscape may be becoming more rugged although the bridges across the pits of fraud are becoming more architecturally sound.

[09:11] Dante's words-even when he's pretending--make more sense than the words of some others in the pit.

[11:13] Who is this voice that is not capable of making sense?

[13:26] Notes on a textual problem in the passage: "ad ire" v. "ad ira."

[17:05] The narrative engine has slowed down dramatically.

[19:38] Dante makes clear he has to be an eyewitness to whatever is happening in the seventh of the malebolge.

[20:45] Virgil speaks in aphorisms (if perhaps ironic ones). Doing so is part of the structure of COMEDY.

And here is my English translation of Inferno, Canto XXIV, lines 61 - 78:

We took the path up the ridge

Which was craggy, narrow, altogether poor going,

And way more precarious than the previous one.

I was talking as I went along, so I wouldn’t appear to be worn out,

When a voice came out of the next ditch,

Seemingly not capable of forming words.

I don’t know what it said, since I’d gotten to the apex

Of the bridge that crosses over at that spot;

But the one who spoke seemed to be on the move.

No matter how much I wanted to, my sharp eyes

Couldn’t make out the bottom down there because of the darkness.

So I said, “Master, when you get to

“The next embankment, let’s descend along the wall.

From this point I hear something but can’t understand it.

I look down but can construe nothing.”

“The only reply,” he said, “that I’d give you

Is just to make it so. For an honorable request

Should be met with an action, done in silence.”