First, leprosy. Then rabies. And now dropsy. The medieval hospital of horrors just gets worse in the tenth of the evil pouches (the "malebolge") of fraud.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we meet one of the great sinners of hell--who is actually something of an undiscovered character. Poor Master Adam. He doesn't get the love that Francesca, Farinata, and Ulysses get. But the counterfeiter Master Adam may be just as important, given the sheer amount of space Dante gives him in INFERNO.

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

[02:21] My English translation of the passage: INFERNO, Canto XXX, lines 46 - 90. If you'd like to read along or drop a comment about this episode, just scroll down this page.

[06:33] The theological problem of "bad-born" people.

[10:24] A man who looks like a lute, a very high-class instrument.

[12:18] Falsifiers with various diseases and medieval notions of dropsy.

[14:52] Master Adam, the sarcastic narcissist.

[17:41] Home, sweet home--that is, Master Adam's contrapasso.

[22:25] Only three lines on his sin--but more about water in this very watery canto.

[25:29] Master Adam: the biggest source of hatred so far in INFERNO and a direct threat to the new economic order.

[34:14] Master Adam versus Adam in the Garden of Eden (and the new Adam, Jesus).

[36:23] References to Adam at the bottom of hell.

[37:17] An obscure reference to Virgil's Eclogues (and by the way, where is Virgil in all this?)

[40:23] Speculations about Master Adam's large space in INFERNO. 1) Master Adam: the bottom of the universe.

[41:27] 2) Master Adam: the sum of the problems of the damned.

[42:44] 3) Master Adam: the new Adam, not like Jesus, but a guy from the coming, modern world.

And here’s my English translation of Inferno, Canto XXX, Lines 46 – 90

 

I had my eyes fixed on those two rabid guys

Until they passed on from where we were.

Then I turned around to look at the other born-bad people.

 

I saw one who’d been made into the shape of a lute,

If only he’d been sliced off at the crotch

Right where the trunk of a guy is forked.

 

The bloated dropsy had so distended

His parts with all these badly digested humors

That his face was not in proportion to his gut.

 

He had to hold his lips open

The way a feverish guy does, one who’s so thirsty

That he curls one lip down and the other inverted up.

 

“Oh, you guys, who don’t suffer any pains

In this horrid world—and I don’t know why—”

He said to us, “look over here and pay attention to

 

“The sufferings of Master Adam.

I had plenty of what I wished for when I was alive.

Now, alas, I crave the tiniest dribble of water.

 

“The rivulets that flow down the green hills

In the Casentino on their way to the Arno,

Make the channels cool and damp—

 

“These are set before my vision from now to eternity. And not without purpose,

Because their image dehydrates me all the more

Because of the malady that melts the flesh off my face.

 

“The firm justice that pokes at me

Takes its rationale from the place where I sinned

To put my sighing to flight more quickly.

 

“Romena is up there, where I falsified

The coins that were imprinted with the image of [John] the Baptist—

That’s why I left my body burned up there.

 

“But if I could see the sad-sack souls

Of Guido or Alessandro or of their brother,

I wouldn’t trade that sight for the Branda springs.

 

“One of them is down here already, if these enraged

Shades running about sometimes come to speak the truth.

But what good does that do me if my limbs are bound like this?

 

“If I were only free enough from taint and light-weight enough

That I could move an inch in a hundred years,

I would have already set out on that path

 

“To find him among these disgusting people,

Even though this circle is eleven miles around

And spreads out not less than a half a mile across.

 

“I joined this sad family because of them.

They convinced me to mint those florins

So that each contained three carats of worthless crap.”