INFERNO, Episode 158. Fireflies, Elijah, And Messy Metaphors: Inferno, Canto XXVI, Lines 25 - 48

Our first glimpse into the eighth of the evil pouches (the malebolge) that make up the giant circle of fraud in Dante's INFERNO.

Except nothing's as clear as it should be. Two complex metaphors, a bumbling pilgrim, and a useless Virgil: it all adds up to the sort of interpretive fun we expect from Dante.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we slow-walk with Dante across hell and beyond. We're gearing up for one of the best sinners of hell. And it's proving challenging from the start.

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

[01:13] My English translation of the passage: Inferno, Canto XXVI, lines 25 - 48. If you'd like to read along or even comment on this episode, just scroll down this page.

[03:41] The first metaphor: the rustic fellow, watching the fireflies at the summer solstice.

[08:14] The second metaphor: Elijah's flaming chariot, leaving Elisha behind.

[10:45] These metaphors are very curious. How exactly are the comparisons being made?

[13:26] Two more Biblical references in this passage: from James 3 and its condemnation of the tongue, as well as Acts 2 and the tongues of fire at Pentecost.

[15:48] Why does Dante the pilgrim almost fall into the 8th evil pouch? And what is Virgil's role here?

[18:46] The peasant at the start of this passage is an echo of the one at the start of Inferno, Canto XXIV. Might this link be thematic?

[21:48] Reading all of Canto XXVI so far to show the fractures in the text.

And here’s my English translation of Inferno, Canto XXVI, Lines 25 – 48

Let’s say there’s a rustic fellow lounging about on a hillside

In the season when the thing that illuminates the world

Conceals his face the least from us.

At the moment when the fly gives way to the mosquito,

He sees the fireflies in the valley below,

Where he perhaps plows his field or tends his vineyard.

The eighth pouch was resplendent

With just that many little fires—when I got to fully see it

Up at the point where I could peer down into its depths.

As the one who got his vengeance with the bears

Saw the chariot of Elijah take its departure,

The horses lifting themselves erect on their way up into the heavens,

So that he could not follow them with his eyes

Except he could see way up there a solitary flame,

Like a little cloud, rising up and up,

Just in such a way each flame moved itself along the maw

Of the ditch. Not a single one gave away its theft,

Even though each flame had a sinner inside it.

I straightened up on the bridge to see better.

Had I not grabbed hold of a rocky crag,

I would have fallen in without being pushed.

My guide saw how the pit grabbed my attention

And said, “The spirits are inside those fires.

Each one is clothed with what’s incinerating him.”