Finally, we are done with the fifth circle of hell, with the wrathful (and the sullen) and all that happens standing before the gates of Dis.

 We're also done with the seven deadly sins as a structuring device for INFERNO, because we follow our pilgrim, Dante, and his guide, Virgil, into the sixth circle, not of envy, pride, or sloth, but of heresy.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we continue our slow walk with our pilgrim through the infernal worlds. We have finally passed into the sixth circle of hell, a circle that's a bit hard to figure out. Why heresy? And why here? (And these are only the beginnings of the problems in this most curious circle!)

I’ll try to answer those questions and more in this episode of the podcast WALKING WITH DANTE. For more information, open the “notes” tab in the player below.

Here’s my English translation of INFERNO, Canto IX, Lines 107 - 133:

And I, who had a tremendous desire to know

The condition of such a fortress,

 

The moment I was inside, I cast my gaze about

And saw quite a wide plain all around,

Full of grief and awful torments.

 

Just as at Arles where the Rhone slows down,

And at Pola right up against the Gulf of Quarnerno,

Which encloses Italy and bathes her borders,

 

Where the tombs made the terrain uneven,

So it was in this place on all sides,

But with one very bitter difference:

 

Here the tombs were checkered with fire

That heated them up so much,

No art needs the iron to be hotter.

 

The lids of the tombs were lifted up

And the dreadful laments that came from inside were so hideous

That they could only have come from wretchedness and pain.

 

And I: “Master, who are these people

Who, encased in these chests,

Make themselves felt with their suffering sighs?”

 

And he to me: “Here are the chief heretics

With their followers from every sect;

The tombs are so packed, you won’t believe it.

 

Like is entombed with like,

But the monuments are hot by degrees, some more, some less.”

He took a turn by the right hand

And we passed between the torments and the high battlements.