We've come to the most complex opening of any canto in INFERNO. Canto XXX opens with two, long allusions about the tragedy of Thebes and Troy, both of which morph into similes for the damned, a medieval literary tour de force.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we stick around the final of the evil pouches (the "malebolge") of fraud, the eighth circle of Dante's INFERNO. We're almost done with fraud, but Dante saves the best for last: a canto that's part funny, part horrific, part repulsive, and part elegant. In other words, the heights of the poet's art.

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

[01:39] My English translation of the passage: INFERNO, Canto XXX, lines 1 - 33. If you'd like to read along or drop a comment, just scroll down this page.

[04:53] The ornate, elaborate opening of Canto XXX: two classical allusions, one about Thebes and the other about Troy.

[06:00] The first allusion: to Thebes, from Ovid's METAMORPHOSES.

[11:55] The second allusion: to Troy, again from Ovid's METAMORPHOSES.

[15:49] A summary of these two opening allusions.

[17:00] Morphing the allusions into similes.

[19:46] The wealth of animal imagery in the passage--and madness as the final metamorphosis.

[22:22] The plot (finally!) at the end of this long passage: Capocchio dragged off.

[23:58] A bit about this rabid soul: Gianni Schicchi.

[25:38] The biggest disruption of human civilization: contagion.

[29:34] Canto XXX as the heart of falsification--and Dante's art.

[32:02] Rereading INFERNO, Canto XXX, lines 1 - 33.

And here’s my English translation of Inferno, Canto XXX, Lines 1 – 33

 

In that time of year when Juno’s cruel fury

At Semele was spent on the Theban bloodline—

As she did over and over—

 

Athamas became so totally insane

That when he saw his wife walking around

With their two children in her hands,

 

He yelled, “Let’s spread out the nets, so that I can ensnare

The lioness and her cubs at the crossroads!”

Then he stretched out his own unsparing claws,

 

Grabbed the one called Learchus,

Spun him around, and smashed him against a rock—

At which his wife drowned herself with her other cargo.

 

And as soon as fortune ran the damn-the-torpedoes

Heights of Troy into the ground,

So that the king and his kingdom were broken to bits,

 

After sorrowing Hecuba, in agony and a prisoner,

Watched Polyxena die

And found Polydorus near the banks

 

Of the sea, she roamed about in torment,

Went completely mad, and barked like a dog,

Because all that sorrow had rattled her mind.

 

Even so, neither the crazed Thebans nor the Trojans

Had ever managed to seem so barbaric

As to wound a beast, much less human parts,

 

As two shades I saw who were pale and naked.

They bit as the ran, in the manner

Of pigs when the gate of the sty is left open.

 

One of them got up to Capocchio and buried his tusks

Into the nape of his neck, then dragged him along

So that his belly scraped against the hard floor of the ditch.

 

And the guy from Arezzo who was left here, shivering in fear,

Said to me, “That ghoul is Gianni Schicchi.

He goes about all rabid to rough up others in this way.”