We have come to the ninth pit of the sins of fraud, way down in the eighth circle of Dante's INFERNO. We're about to meet a set of souls--well, bodies, more like--who endure unbelievable agony, exactly as bodies have always endured agony under the sword of empire.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we look at this complicated opening passage to Canto XXVII. It’s chock full of historical references. But more importantly, our poet seems to be changing his mind. And changing the rules of the crusading ethic. Because the body in pain makes and unmakes the world itself.

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

[01:41] My English translation of INFERNO, Canto XXVIII, lines 1 - 21. If you'd like to read along or even drop a comment about this episode, just scroll down this page.

[03:59] The opening buried reference to THE AENEID, Book VI, lines 625 - 627.

[07:06] References to Puglia and Livy explored.

[10:59] References to Robert Guiscard, Manfred, and Érard de Valéry explored.

[14:20] The four historical dates (or battles) in this complicated passage.

[19:58] Two implications from this passage. 1) We cannot determine who will end up where in the afterlife based on wins and losses in this world.

[23:27] 2) The cost of empire is the body in pain.

[24:54] Some of those bodies in pain are Muslims.

[25:51] The body in pain makes and unmakes language.

[29:39] Back to the opening of the canto: The body in pain confounds yet needs unbound words in a hollow space.

[34:15] A second reading through the passage: Inferno, Canto XXVIII, lines 1 - 21.

And here is my English translation of Inferno, Canto XXVIII, Lines 1 – 21

 

Even with unbound words, who could

Tell about the blood and the wounds

That I now saw, even if he told the tale a bunch of times?

 

For certain, no tongue could pull it off,

Because neither our discourse nor our memory

Has the open space to contain so much.

 

If only all these people could be brought together again:

The ones who, in that fortune-blasted land

Of Puglia, wailed over the blood

 

That the Trojans shed because of their long war

That ended with heaps of rings from the corpses

(As Livy writes, and he doesn’t make mistakes);

 

As well as all those who’ve been hacked up by blows

In their resistance to Robert Guiscard;

And all those whose scattered bones are still piled up

 

At Ceperano, where every Apulian

Played it false; and at Tagliacozzo,

Where old Érard de Valéry made his victory by schemes rather than by armaments;

 

If some of these could display their run-throw limbs and others their

Severed stumps, it still would not begin

To come to terms with the horrid ways of the ninth pouch.