If Dante wants to know who’s ever gotten out of hell, Virgil's ready with the answer. Too bad it's an answer that raises even more questions. And it’s told in a Virgil’s own misunderstanding of what actually happened?

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, on this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE as I explore the passage in Limbo that talks about the “harrowing of hell”—and finally puts to rest the notion that Virgil might ever get out of his home in the Inferno.

Maybe we finally can hear the elegy in Virgil's voice. Is he the allegory of human reason? Maybe he's just human.

Here’s my English translation of the passage, Inferno, Canto IV: 46 – 84.

 

“Tell me, my master, tell me, sir,”

I began because I wanted to be certain

Of the faith that conquers all error,

 

“Did anyone, either by their own merit

Or someone else’s, ever get out of here to be made blessed?”

He fully understood the true meaning of what I said.

 

So he replied, “I was new to this state of being

When I saw a powerful entity come down here

Crowned with the symbols of victory.

 

“He pulled out the shade of our first parent,

Also the shade of Abel and that of Noah,

As well as that of Moses, the law-giver and obedient one,

 

“And the patriarch Abraham and King David,

Israel with his father and sons,

And Rachel, for whom he did everything,

 

And lots of others—he made all these blessed.

Before these, I want you to know,

No human soul was ever saved.”

 

We didn’t stop walking while he spoke

But went through all of the forest—

A forest, I mean, of gathered souls.

 

We had not gone on our way very long

From where I’d slept, when I saw a fire

Rising triumphant over the hemisphere of darkness.

 

We were still a little ways off

But close enough that I could partly discern

The worthy people who possessed this place.

 

“O you who honor knowledge and art,

Who are these whose honor is so great

That is sets them apart from the rest?”

 

And he to me, “Their honored fame,

That sounds around you in your life up above,

Wins them grace in heaven, which then puts them forward here.”

 

As he finished I heard a voice saying,

“Honor the highest poet,

His shade left and has come back.”

 

After the voice had finished and fallen silent,

I saw four great shades coming toward us

With an appearance neither sad nor happy.