SOURCE: "Dante's Canto XXV: Among the Thieves, A Note and a Translation," in Raritan: A Quarterly Review, Vol. 14, No. 1, Summer, 1994, pp. 18-25.

In the following essay, Pinsky discusses the theme of horror in Canto XXV of The Inferno. Pinsky also presents his translation of the Canto, demonstrating how he handles Dante's terza rima rhyme scheme.

The remarkable physical details of Inferno XXV suggest the idea that Dante invented horror.

The notion of horror as we know it from fiction or the movies involves detailed, uncanny transformation of the human body, with erotic and moral overtones: the overwhelmed stare of the zombie; the flickering eyes of the aroused mummy; the elegant neck-bite that changes the virginal heroine forever; Jekyll or the werewolf helplessly becoming stronger, hairier, more animal; the hunger of George Romero's living dead, relentless and contagious. The body may be snatched or bitten, invaded or inverted or...