INFERNO, Episode 203. Cannibalism And Polyphony: Inferno, Canto XXXII, Lines 124 - 139

Dante the pilgrim (and silent Virgil) lead us to the most disgusting scene in all of INFERNO as one sinner munches on the skull and brains of another.

This scene is the setup at the end of INFERNO, Canto XXXII for the last great sinner of hell, a figure no one ever forgets.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we look at some of the kinks in this opening passage and then discuss the very nature of Dante's art: polyphony.

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

[01:10] My English translation of the passage: INFERNO, Canto XXXII, lines 124 - 139. If you'd like to read along or drop a comment, just scroll down this page.

[03:07] The double simile in the passage as a function of the doubling throughout the last circle of INFERNO.

[06:03] More about Thebes and a possible turn to Statius as a primary source.

[09:34] A passing reference to St. Paul's letter to the Galatian church (Galatians 5:15).

[11:03] The problems in Dante's pact with this sinner and the promise of payback.

[12:17] The last line of the passage: an interpretive crux for 700 years.

[15:25] The last line of Canto XXXII as an expression of the overall structure.

[17:45] Dante as a polyphonic poet.

And here’s my English translation of Inferno, Canto XXXII, Lines 124 – 139

We’d already taken our leave of that guy

When I saw two frozen together in one hole,

So close that the head of one was like a cap to the other.

As a starving man gnaws on a piece of bread,

The upper one’s teeth were in the lower one

Just where the brain stem meets the nape of the neck.

Not unlike Tydeus who gnawed on the severed head

Of Melanippus out of spite,

This one munched on the bone and the other stuff.

“Oh, you, who demonstrate in such a bestial way

Such hatred in the way you eat the other guy,

Tell me why,” I said. “And let this be our agreement:

“If what you say shows truly your grievance against him,

Know that the both of you and his sin

Will get reimbursed by me back in the world above,

If that with which I speak doesn’t go dry.”