Our pilgrim, Dante, has a second question about Virgil’s map of hell: Why is usury punished so far down at the bottom of the sins of violence, even below the murderers?

The answer involves a wild conflation of Aristotle’s Physics and the Biblical book of Genesis—but mostly results in a theory of art.

No one could have predicted the map of hell ends with a theory of art. Yet it makes perfect sense: all of Canto XI explains the journey ahead, even the rationale for writing it.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as I explore this difficult passage at the end of INFERNO, Canto XI.

Here’s my English translation of this passage from INFERNO—that is, Canto XI, lines 91 - 114:

“O sun, who brings health to every troubled vision,

You make me very content when you solve these things,

So that my doubts are no less pleasurable than what I know.

 

“But back up a little,”

I said, “to where you talked about how usury offends

Divine beneficence and pick apart that knot.”

 

“Philosophy,” he said to me, “when properly understood,

Notes, and not just in one spot,

How nature takes her own course

 

“From the divine intellect and its art.

And if you really study your Physics,

You will find, after not too many pages,

 

“That your own art, as much as it can,

Follows along, as the pupil follows the master.

Your art then is sort of like God’s grandchild.

 

“From these two, if you call to mind

The opening verses of Genesis, we find the ways

To enhance life and advance humanity.

 

“And because the usurer goes another way,

He disrespects both nature and her disciple,

Setting his hope in something else.

 

“But now follow me, for I wish to be on our way.

Pisces glitters at the horizon

And the Big Dipper lies in the direction of the northwest wind,

And our descent is still farther on.”