INFERNO, Episode 69. The Third Great Sinner of Hell, Pier della Vigne: Inferno, Canto XIII, Lines 46 - 78

Dante, our pilgrim, has done as Virgil advised: he’s broken off a branch from a bramble that spits blood and air—and words, too!

And such words. Pier delle Vigne’s speech is a triumph of rhetoric. One of the most gorgeous passages in INFERNO. And one of the oiliest. It says everything. And nothing. All at the same moment.

And it may be more than that: it may represent a sort of literary suicide from our poet. Because he’s testing the bounds of credulity at every turn.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as I slow-walk through what is surely one of my favorite moments in INFERNO: the self-justification of a courtier who served a tyrant and who didn’t live to tell the tale. Hey, it’s not his fault. Or is it?

Here’s my English translation of INFERNO, Canto XIII, lines 46 - 78:

“If he could have believed it first,
O wounded soul,” my sage said,

“These type of things he’s only seen in my verses,

“He would never have lifted his hand against you.

But your unbelievable fate made me

Put him to this test that weighs me down.”

“But tell him who you were, so that

As a way to even the score, he might refresh your fame

In the world up above, where he has leave to return.”

And the branch: “You speak so sweetly that you goad me on

Until it’s not possible for me to stay silent. May it not be grievous to you

If I’m lured with the bait to speak a little more.

“I am the one who held both of the keys

To the heart of Frederick, and I used them

So discreetly that when I locked and unlocked it

“I held his secrets back from almost everybody.

I was so faithful to my glorious office

That I lost a lot of sleep over it, and then my life.

“The whore who never turned her slutty eyes

From Caesar’s house—the common cause of death

And the vice of courts everywhere—

“Set fire to all the souls against me,

And they, on fire, set fire to Augustus,

So that my bright honors turned into woeful sadness.

“My spirit, at the taste of such disdain,

And believing that by dying I could get away from the spitefulness,

Made me unjust against my own just self.

“By the roots of this newly-planted tree I swear to you both

That I never broke faith with my lord,

Who was so worthy of honor.

“And if one of you returns to the world,

Shore up my memory, which still languishes

Because of the gut punch that envy gave it.”