Repenting To A Heretic: Inferno, Canto X, Lines 94 - 121a

We finish up our time with Farinata with a discussion that gets stranger by the minute. There's definitely a camaraderie between our pilgrim and this Ghibelline warrior. The grander question? Is there a camaraderie between our poet and Farinata?

There are many strange things in this passage toward the back of Canto X in INFERNO. 1) Farinata's discussion of how the damned see time. 2) Dante's desire to be absolved of something--but what? 3) Our pilgrim's attempts to mitigate the sufferings of the damned. And 4) our pilgim as a peacemaker, someone who finally gets a Ghibelline to talk to a Guelph.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as I explore one of the strangest conversations in INFERNO, a passage so rife with problems and unresolved issues that our poet will find the need to bring it up twice more, in each of the subsequent canticles, once in PURGATORIO and once in PARADISO.

Here are the segments of this episode:

[01:06] My English translation of this passage from INFERNO: Canto X, lines 94 - 121a.

[02:51] We're not done with Farinata because this very conversation will be referenced twice more, once in each of the subsequent canticles of the poem.

[03:35] Camaraderie and even benevolence. Our pilgrim and this warrior have come along way together. In fact, our pilgrim wants to grant Farinata something that Farinata could never have had in this life: peace.

[09:45] Dante-the-pilgrim asks a fundamental question: How do the damned know the future? At the same time, it seems he's misdirecting his real problem. Sure, he's asking to solve a metaphysical knot. But isn't there a personal knot that also needs to be untied?

[13:06] Farinata offers a shocking answer about how the damned see time. What's more, the farthest point ever referenced in time is put in Farinata's mouth. Why not in St. Paul's? Or someone far more worthy? Why does Farinata extend our view of time farther (and further) than anyone else?

[21:05] The pilgrim finally repents--for the first time in COMEDY. But what exactly is he sorry for? And do his words cover his guilt?

[27:24] Who else is in that tomb with Farinara? Two storied figures: one from history and one with a family tree in COMEDY.

[31:55] And then Farinata withdraws, going as he arrived: in Stoic glory.