Splitters
Posted on Monday 6 February 2006
INFERNO CANTO XXVIII
...No barrel, even though it's lost a hoop
or end- piece, ever gapes as one whom I
saw ripped right from his chin to where we fart:
his bowels hung between his legs, one saw
his vitals and the miserable sack
that makes of what we swallow excrement.
While I was all intent on watching him,
he looked at me, and with his hands he spread
his chest and said: "See how I split myself!
See now how maimed Mohammed is! And he
who walks and weeps before me is Ali,
whose face is opened wide from chin to forelock.
And all the others here whom you can see
were, when alive, the sowers of dissension
and scandal, and for this they now are split.
— Dante's Divine Comedy
Mohammed and his son-in-law Ali in the Ninth Abyss of Hell
Illustration by Gustave Doré, 1861.
...No barrel, even though it's lost a hoop
or end- piece, ever gapes as one whom I
saw ripped right from his chin to where we fart:
his bowels hung between his legs, one saw
his vitals and the miserable sack
that makes of what we swallow excrement.
While I was all intent on watching him,
he looked at me, and with his hands he spread
his chest and said: "See how I split myself!
See now how maimed Mohammed is! And he
who walks and weeps before me is Ali,
whose face is opened wide from chin to forelock.
And all the others here whom you can see
were, when alive, the sowers of dissension
and scandal, and for this they now are split.
— Dante's Divine Comedy
Mohammed and his son-in-law Ali in the Ninth Abyss of Hell
Illustration by Gustave Doré, 1861.
