INFERNO, Episode 150. The Beast With Two Backs--Or, Two Things And Nothing: Inferno, Canto XXV, Lines 34 - 78 (Part One)

First, a guy burns up, turns to ashes, comes back to life, and prophesies the future. Then a centaur run by with snakes and dragons on his back. And if that wasn't enough, now one of the most daring metamorphoses of all.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we watch the second metamorphosis in the seventh evil pouch in the sub-circles of the thieves. This passage is so complex that this episode is the first of two on it. Poor Angello. He never knew what hit him.

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

[01:59] My English translation of the passage: Inferno, Canto XXV, lines 34 - 78. If you'd like to read along, scroll down this page

[05:50] Questions about dialogue and discourse in Canto XXV (as opposed to the longer, fuller conversations and speeches of Canto XXIV).

[10:53] The pilgrim Dante silences Virgil--and maybe the poet Dante, too. This is one of the many silencings in the seventh of the evil pouches (the "malebolge").

[14:17] Dante the poet steps out to address the reader--thereby silencing me (!) to make a reality claim for these events.

[19:20] Ovid's story from METAMORPHOSES that forms the basis for this metamorphosis in COMEDY. It's an erotic tale about the danger of the beast with two backs.

[27:06] The metaphors Dante uses to explain the metamorphosis he lifts from Ovid.

[30:09] Who are these guys in the seventh of the evil pouches? The early commentators know for sure--but maybe they miss the point.

[34:46] A final hint of nihilism at the end of this most incredible metamorphosis.

And here is my English translation of Inferno, Canto XXV, Lines 34 – 78

That centaur galloped by as [Virgil] was speaking.

Then down below us, three spirits came up,

Whom neither my guide nor I noticed at first,

Until they hollered, “Who are you guys?”

At this we stopped telling tales

And turned our attention to them and them alone.

I didn’t know who they were; but it came to pass,

As it does through sheer coincidence a lot of the time,

That one of them mentioned the name of another

By saying, “Where in the world did Cianfa get off to?”

That’s why I, to make my guide pay attention,

Set a finger from my chin to my nose.

If, reader, you’re hesitant to believe

What I’m about to say, it’s no cause for surprise,

Because I who saw it can still hardly permit myself to believe it.

While I held my eyebrows up to get a good look at them,

A serpent with six feet suddenly launched itself

Onto one of them and hugged him tight.

Its middle feet got wrapped around his gut.

Its front feet took hold of both his arms.

Then it stuck its fangs first into one cheek, then into the other.

Its back feet stretched down his thighs

And it jammed its tail between them,

Curving it upward along his butt.

Ivy never gripped a tree trunk

So tightly as this nasty beast

Puts its tendrils all around the guy’s body.

Then, as if they were made of hot wax,

They started to fuse together, mixing their colors

Until neither seemed what he or it had been at the start.

It’s the same way that when paper burns,

A dark brown color moves in front of a flame,

Where it’s not yet charred black but all the white is long dead.

The other two spirits were looking on and each one

Cried out, “Wow, Agnello, how you morph!

See, you’re already neither two things nor one.”

By that point, the two heads had become one,

As the two expressions fused

Into one face until both were lost.

Two arms got made out of four limbs.

The thighs along with the calves, the belly, and the chest

Became body parts that were never seen before.

Each former feature was obliterated.

This perverse image was now both two things and nothing.

Such as it was, it went away with slow steps.