INFERNO, Episode 134. What You Read Determines What You See: Inferno, Canto XXIII, Lines 4 - 57

Dante the pilgrim and his guide Virgil appear to have escaped the nasty demons in the fifth pouch of fraud, down in the eighth circle of Inferno.

But they'd better get a move on! The demons are coming fast! How do they know? Because Dante's read a lot.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as the sequences about barratry all come down to meta-literary fantasia on texts, reading, writing, and knowing the world around you. You knew fraud was about the writing of COMEDY. Here's proof!

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

[01:45] My English translation of INFERNO, Canto XXIII, lines 4 - 57. If you'd like to see this translation, just scroll down this page.

[05:22] Aesop starts the passage--and turn this whole episode into a meta-literary fantasia based on the players in the fable.

[14:21] Experiential truth is found in what you've read. And you read predicts what will happen to you!

[16:42] The pilgrim's interiority has been crafted by what he's read--which exhibits itself right in front of him in the physical world.

[21:14] Virgil's reply indicates that your literary ancestors mold your thoughts into action.

[25:25] Virgil as a (naked!) mother.

[30:09] Apparently, literary texts don't create everything!

[32:20] Virgil and Dante the pilgrim escape without any need for deus ex machina.

[35:07] The fifth evil pouch of barratry ends up being a meta-literary structure about the writing of COMEDY.

And here’s my English translation of Inferno, Canto XXIII, Lines 4 – 57

There’s that fable by Aesop—

I couldn’t help but think of it because of this wrestling match,

The one where he talks about the frog and the mouse,

Which are not much different than “right now” and “right away”

When you compare one case with the other,

Especially if we bring together the beginning and the ending with close inspection.

And just as one notion bursts out of another,

So another one was born from that one—

At which my first fear got doubled.

I thought, Because of us those demons

Have been fooled with injuries and ridicule,

Which means they must feel the same toward us.

If their bad intentions get wound into a hank along with anger,

They’re going to come at us even more cruelly

Than a dog’s jaws bite down on a rabbit.

At that, I felt the hair with fear bristle all over my scalp.

I kept looking behind us

When I said, “Master, unless you can pretty quickly

“Hide the two of us, I’m freaking out

About those Evil Claws. They must be right behind us.

In fact, I imagine them so well that I can hear them on the way.”

And he: “If I were crafted from leaded glass,

I would not mirror your outward appearance

Any faster than I feel your state of mind.

“Just now your thoughts have joined up with mine,

The self-same attitude and look,

So that I’ve bound everything up into a single counsel.

“If it turns out that the slope on our right

Lets us get down into the next pouch,

We can get away from this imagined hunt.”

He hadn’t finished detailing a plan like that

When I saw them coming at us with their wings wide open,

Closing in fast, with the intent to grab us.

My master quickly picked me up,

Like a mother who wakes up at the brouhaha,

Sees the flames right at hand,

Picks up her son, and gets out without a moment’s hesitation,

Caring more for him than herself,

To the extent that she doesn’t even put on a shift.

So Virgil leapt from the rough edge of the cliff

And started to slide down the slope on his back,

The side that formed the closer wall of the next pouch.

Water hasn’t ever flowed any faster through a sluice

As it rushes from a stream to turn the paddles

Of a mill’s grinding wheel,

Than my master went flailing down that bank,

Still holding me to his chest,

Not as if I were a fellow-traveler, but his son.

The moment his feet touched the floor

Of the chasm, there were the demons on the ridge above us!

But there was no need to gasp out loud

Because high Providence, which had made them

The ministers of the fifth ditch,

Takes away the power of ever leaving it.