INFERNO, Episode 52. How To Be Human And How To Quit Being Human: Inferno, Canto X, Lines 73 - 93

As Cavalcante sinks back into the fiery tomb, lost in his fatherly grief, we realize the great, the “magnanimo” Farinata has been standing there all along. Farinata is ready to pick up right where he left off, with another jab at our pilgrim, Dante.

Then something strange happens. Farinata begins to soften, to appear more human, to do something no Greco-Roman Stoic would ever do: He sighs.

Not so our pilgrim, Dante. He seems more than ready to fight every single point in the battle of who’s right. But can our pilgrim hold out, especially when he’s holding onto so much guilt?

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we explore this second dialogue between the great Ghibelline leader and our pilgrim in Canto X of Inferno.

Here is my English translation of this passage: INFERNO, Canto X, lines 73 - 93.

But that other austere one, whose request

Had stopped me in the first place, didn’t change his facial expression,

And didn’t move his neck, nor even hitch his chest.

He just continued on from where he’d been in the first place,

Saying, “And if they have learned that art poorly,

That torments me more than this bed I’m in.

“But the face of that lady who reigns here

Will not fire up fifty times

Before you will know the moment when this art gets really heavy.

“And may it be that you return to that sweet world—

So tell me, why do those people and their edicts

Offer no leniency when it comes to my kin?”

And I to him, “Both the destruction and the great carnage

That made the Arbia turn red

Motivate these sorts of prayers in our temple.”

When he’d sighed, he shook his head

And said to me, “I wasn’t the only one, nor certainly

Without a reason would I have moved along with the others.

“But it was I alone, when all the others

Agreed to make an end of Florence,

Who stood up openly to make her defense.”