Dante, our pilgrim, and his guide, Virgil, have been stopped in their tracks by a pack of demons above the fifth evil pouch of the eighth circle of hell. We're in the malebolge, in the rings of fraud, the largest bit of landscape in Inferno. And we're standing over the political grifters who are sunk in boiling pitch. The damned have it bad. Maybe Virgil and Dante, too.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as one of the demons, Evil Tail, steps out and musters his troops to lead our duo along a cliff until they can find a bridge to cross over the sixth of the malebolge. Would you follow a pack of demons? Especially with names like these?

Here are the segments of this episode of the podcast WALKING WITH DANTE:

[02:35] My English translation of INFERNO, Canto XXI, lines 103 - 126. You can find this translation on down this page.

[04:40] Some notes about translations problems in this passage and throughout COMEDY. And my confession that translation is (always?) an act of interpretation.

[07:08] The opening nine lines of the passage from INFERNO. And notes about why warning bells should be sounding in your mind!

[10:44] The problems of translating "Tussle-Head" (or "Scarmiglione").

[12:25] The very accurate dating of this moment in the passage. It lends veracity to Evil Tail's lie. (It also lends veracity to Dante's . . . you know, to the poem as a whole).

[21:09] The squadron of ten demons--and much about how their names do (or don't) translate from the medieval Florentine. Maybe those translation problems are intentional.

And here's my English translation of Inferno, Canto XXI, Lines 103 – 126:

But that demon, who’d been holding forth

With my master, jerked around fast

And said, “Heel, heel, Tussle-Head!”

 

Then he said to us, “It’s not possible for you to go

Any farther along this spoke, because the sixth arch

Is busted up all over the bottom of the ditch.

 

“But if it pleases you to keep going,

Stroll along the cliff right here.

Soon enough there’ll be another arch you can get across.

 

“Yesterday, at a moment five hours later than this one,

One thousand two hundred and sixty-six years ago—

That marks the anniversary of the tremor that broke the road.

 

“I’m mustering my men to go along that way

And see if any sinner has come up for air.

You can go with them; they won’t harm you.”

 

“Harlequin, step up! And Frost-Trampler, too,”

He started to say. “You, too, Bad-Ass Dog.

Curly-Beard will lead the squadron!

 

“Love-Crack come along, and Little-Big Dragon,

As well as tusked Big Pig and Mange-Dog

And Butterfly-Imp and crazy Red Face.

 

“You go have a look at the simmering birdlime

And get these two safe to the next ledge

That runs intact over the pit.”