Virgil has introduced Dante the pilgrim to the twinned souls in the tongue of fire: Ulysses and Diomedes. But there's a problem. Who will talk to them? Who is worthy to carry on with such illustrious Greeks? Not Dante—that's for sure.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we explore this little back-and-forth between a very impatient pilgrim and his guide, who wins the battle and is apparently willing to both abase and aggrandize himself to finally hear from the great Ulysses.

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

[01:34] My English translation of the passage: Inferno, Canto XXVI, lines 64 - 84. If you'd like to read along or drop a comment about this podcast, just scroll down this page.

[03:35] More about the pilgrim Dante's eagerness--and perhaps a way to humanize his motivation: he wants to know a classical figure that he cannot know.

[07:36] The curious use of the word "desire" in this passage--a loaded word in COMEDY, going all the way back to Francesca and Paolo, if not before (and certainly long after this episode).

[10:42] Virgil cues us that language and its uses are central to this passage--and perhaps central to the sin of fraud.

[13:29] Does Virgil speak Greek? It's a question that has bedeviled commentators for centuries. Probably not--although there may be an added reference to Pentecostal fire here. And Virgil does speak Ulysses' language: epic poetry.

[16:14] Despite the pilgrim's eagerness, patience apparently was called for to talk to Ulysses and Diomedes.

[17:53] Virgil's flattery and self-aggrandizement.

[21:22] Virgil's last line in the canto: contorted syntax in a request for what can't be known.

[25:52] György Lukács's claim that Dante wrote the last epic and the first novel, as played out in this passage.

Here’s my English translation of Inferno, Canto XXVI, Lines 64 – 84

 

“If they were able to speak

In those flames, master,” I said, “I plead with you a lot to make it so—

And even plead again by pleading it a thousandfold.

 

“Don’t make me wait here a bit

Until the flame gets closer to us.

You see how I lean out with desire toward them.”

 

And he to me, “Your prayer is loaded

With value. Thus, I accede to it.

But see that your tongue is bridled.

 

“Let me do the talking. I understand exactly

What you want. Still, because they’re Greeks,

They might be scornful of what you might say.”

 

When the flame got close enough

Where it seemed to my guide the right time and place,

I heard him speak in this manner:

 

“O you who are actually two inside one fire,

If I merited anything from you both while I lived,

If I merited anything from you whether great or small,

 

“When in the world above I wrote my high verses,

Then hang back here for a moment. And one of you tell

Where, lost by his own hand, he met his death.”