INFERNO, Episode 46. How Much Classical Imagery Can One Poem Take? Inferno, Canto IX, Lines 34 - 63

We’re nearing the end of this long sequence in front of the walls of Dis. And the classical imagery is getting thicker and thicker. The Furies. Medusa. Theseus. (Which brings up Hercules.) Persephone. Ovid. Lucan. Virgil. Statius. They’re all here!

What’s more, we’re being ask to take all of those classical references and interpret what we see based on our ability to allegorize those texts. In other words, we’re being asked to turn back to classical literature, see it as a complex Christian allegory, then bring that interpretation forward into Dante’s poem and lay it over the events in this passage.

This is without a doubt the most complicated passage we’ve yet encountered in INFERNO. If you want to know more, check out the show notes written right into the player for this episode.

Here’s my English translation for INFERNO, Canto IX, Lines 34 - 63

He said more, but I can’t recall any of it,

Because my eyes had pulled all my awareness

Up to the high tower with the fiery turret,

Where all at once appeared

Three hellish furies painted with blood.

They had the limbs and shape of women,

But iridescent green hydras wrapped around them.

They had little snakes and horned serpents for hair

That wound across their horrible brows.

And he, at once, knew them as the ladies in waiting

For the queen of eternal wailing.

“Watch out!” he said to me. “The ferocious Erinyes!

“That’s Megaera on the left side,

The one who cries on the right is Allecto.

And the one between them is Tisiphone.” And then he shut up.

They raked their breasts with their fingernails,

Beat them with their hands, and shrieked so loudly

That out of fear I pressed close to the poet.

“Let Medusa come! Then we’ll turn him to stone,”

They said as they peered down at us.

“We didn’t do right when it came to avenging Theseus’s attack.”

“Turn around and keep your eyes closed.

If the Gorgon shows herself and you see her,

You won’t get back to the world above.”

As my master said this, he took hold of me,

Spun me around, and not trusting my own hands,

Put his own over my eyes as well.

Oh you who are of healthy intellects,

Look well at the teaching that hides itself

Under the veil of these strange verses.