An Observation, a Translation, and an Opinion

The chapter headings are excerpts from publicity material for the spook shows of the 1930’s through the 1950’s. I’ve shaded Fernando’s show more towards the gore horror of the 1940’s and 1950’s shows, rather than towards the gentler affairs of the early thirties. Most spook shows took place in movie palaces, but there were always influences passing back and forth between them and the more socially respectable magic acts of the day.

What Wolfe is reciting in Italian, to guide Archie to him at the Inferno, are the words spoken by Dante to Brunetto Latini in hell. Latini was Dante’s old teacher and mentor, who Dante finds showered with fire among the sodomites, those held to be violent to nature. In case you’re interested, the Pinsky translation of the lines is:

“Could I have everything for which I long,

You would not still endure this banishment
Away from human nature,” I replied.
“Your image - dear, fatherly, benevolent -

Being fixed inside my memory, has imbued
My heart: when in the fair world, hour by hour
You taught me, patiently, it was you who showed

The way man makes himself eternal; therefore,
The gratitude I feel toward you makes fit
That while I live, I should declare it here.

And what you tell me of my future, I write—”

(Robert Pinsky: 1994)

The way to eternity referred to in this passage is to perform one’s true vocation with such excellence as to garner fame that will last past death.

The Italian is included in the Pinsky edition, and is copyright Arnoldo Mondadori Editore S.p.A. Milano (1991)

I don’t know which of Shakespeare’s sonnets Wolfe chose, but I would be willing to bet it was the twenty-seventh.
 

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