Virgil has promised Dante the pilgrim clarity if they press on toward the ring of towers ahead. But then maybe they don't need to, since Virgil explains it all anyway. And even after he explains it, Dante the poet insists on the illusion of towers.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, for the further journey in Canto XXXI, the liminal spot between the eighth and ninth circles of INFERNO. This is a canto of reversals, one in which the poet Dante is determined to remind us continually of his poetic art.

 

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

[01:35] My English translation of the passage: Inferno, Canto XXXI, lines 28 - 45. If you'd like to read along or drop a comment, just scroll down this page.

[03:18] Virgil's affection: another reversal in Canto XXXI.

[06:39] A commonplace simile after two very learned similes or classical references.

[09:38] Promised clarity, delivered fear, and the insistence on illusion.

[13:26] Monteriggioni, its towers, and treachery against the Holy Roman Empire.

[16:28] INFERNO itself as a liminal space--that is, the threshold between the classical and Christian worlds.

[24:50] Rereading the passage: INFERNO, Canto XXXI, lines 28 - 45.

Here’s my English translation of Inferno, Canto XXXI, Lines 28 – 45

 

Then he took me affectionately by the hand

And said, “Before we advance any farther,

So that what you see might seem a bit less frightening,

 

“Know that those are not towers. They’re giants.

Every one of them is sunk into the encircling pit

Up to their belly buttons.”

 

As when the fog dissipates,

So that we can make out things

That have been hidden in miasma and mist,

 

So peering through the thick and obscuring air,

I got closer and closer to the edge.

Error left me. Fear came to take its place.

 

Just as around its encircling walls

Monteriggioni is crowned with towers,

So at the edge of the cliff that ringed the pit

 

Towered up half of the bodies

Of these terrible giants, the ones whom

Jove threatens when he thunders in the heavens.