INFERNO, Episode 177. You Can Solve Your Family's Vendetta Even In Hell: Inferno, Canto XXIX, Lines 1 - 36

You thought we were done with the ninth pit of fraud and the schismatics? No way! We're still there, no matter if Bertran de Born's appearance felt like an ending.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we look at this coda to the terrifying evil pouch (or malebolge) of fraud in Dante's INFERNO. In this passage, Dante sees a family member for the first time in the afterlife. And he may come to the first resolution of the vendetta theme that has run through INFERNO all along.

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

[02:00] My English translation of the passage: INFERNO, Canto XXIX, lines 1 - 36. If you'd like to read along or drop a comment, please go to my website, markscarbrough.com.

[05:06] Beware: Canto XXIX is a weirdly fractured poetic space.

[09:41] Firsts in this passage: new spatial and temporal markers.

[14:54] Echoes in this passage of other spots in INFERNO.

[20:53] Who was Geri del Bello?

[24:52] Echoes of Aeneas and (the dead) Dido in this passage.

[28:47] Vendetta is the materiality of justice: blood.

[31:34] The vendetta theme so far in INFERNO.

[35:39] The first resolution of the vendetta theme: compassion.

[36:23] Perhaps vendetta must be reserved for God.

[37:32] Canto XXIX is about preserving your humanity even in hell.

[39:02] A possible character development for the pilgrim in the ninth of the evil pouches (the "malebolge") of fraud.

[40:48] INFERNO is a linear journey without modern linear narrative techniques.

[43:29] Rereading the passage: INFERNO, Canto XXIX, lines 1 - 36.

And here is my English translation of Inferno, Canto XXIX, Lines 1 – 36

The hordes of people with so many weird wounds

Had so besotted my own lantern-like eyes

That I yearned to stick around and weep.

But Virgil said to me, “What are you still looking at?

Why is your gaze still stuck

Down here on the sad, hacked-up shades?

“You didn’t behave like this at any other pouch.

Consider this: If you believe you can count these souls,

This valley goes around for twenty-two miles.

“What’s more, the moon is already below our feet.

There’s little left of the time that was granted to us.

And there’s a lot more to see that you haven’t yet seen.”

“If you’d considered, “ I replied right away,

“The reason I wanted to gawk a bit,

Perhaps you might have let me stick around a little longer.”

My guide had already taken off, and I was bringing up the rear,

Still intent on my answer,

So I added, “Down in that slit

“Where I fixed my eyes just now,

I believe that a spirit of my own blood cried out

For the shame that costs him a lot down here.”

At that, my master said, “Don’t let your thoughts

Founder on that shore any longer because of him.

Pay attention to something else and leave him be—

“Because I, too, saw him at the foot of the bridge,

Pointing at you and threatening with his finger.

I heard them call him Geri del Bello.

“You were then so fully enthralled with

The guy who used to hold Hautefort

That you didn’t look over there before he took off.”

“Oh, my guide! It was because the vendetta

Against his violent death,” I said, “has not yet been satisfied

By any who partake in the shame of it,

“That he’s become so apoplectic. That’s why he went away

Without speaking to me—at least so I think—

And this makes me feel even more compassion for him.”