INFERNO, Episode 197. When Hell Gets So Bad You Despair Of Your Own Craft: Inferno, Canto XXXII, Lines 1 - 15

We've come to the ninth circle of hell. But not quite yet. Dante opens Inferno, Canto XXXII with a metapoetic moment, a passage in which he talks about the limits of the very form he's using to craft these verses.

He offers up his second invocation of the poem and finds himself at a place of despair as an artist--the very same emotional landscape that makes up the last circle of hell.

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

[01:17] My English translation of INFERNO, Canto XXXII, Lines 1 - 15. You can find this translation, read along, or even drop a comment by scrolling down this page.

[03:12] We enter Canto XXXII with Dante the poet, not the pilgrim--and come into the one canto in all of INFERNO in which Virgil doesn't say a word. Why? Here are some possible reasons for Virgil's silence.

[07:19] We begin, not with the limits of rhyme, but with the limits of poetry itself, perhaps the very form Dante has created. Those limits bring the poet to despair--which is precisely the emotional landscape of the last circle of hell.

[14:40] We have come to the very center of the Ptolemaic universe, which includes the depths of sin and baby talk.

[18:58] The center of the universe also looks a lot like Thebes, the ultimate city of ruin.

[20:51] At the start of the ninth circle of hell, Dante offers his second invocation of COMEDY to aid him in building this final fortress of hell.

[25:02] Dante invokes a passage from the Gospel of St. Matthew: At the last judgment, the Son of Man will divide the sheep from the goats. Get ready for the goats.

[29:41] The poet's frustrations will get worked out through the pilgrim's actions in Inferno, Canto XXXII.

[31:34] Brunetto Latini claimed that rhetoric makes civilization possible. Here we are among the destroyers of civilization. And of rhetoric, too?

And here’s my English translation of Inferno, Canto XXXII, Lines 1 – 15

If I could write brutal and clucking verses,

Such as would be appropriate for this sad hole

On which point all the other rocks bear down,

I would press out all the juice without stint

From my conceptual framework. But since I don’t have [those verses],

I bring myself to speak not without some hesitation.

It’s not something to be done in jest,

To describe the foundations of the entire universe,

At least not for a tongue that cries “mamma” and “pappa.”

But may those same ladies help my verse

Who helped Amphion encase Thebes,

So that what I say doesn’t diverge from the facts themselves.

Oh, you badly created things, the lowest of the low,

Who crowd together in this place where it’s almost too hard to speak,

Would that you had just been born as sheep or goats!