Pictorial :: Michael Mazur

I've been reading Dante's Commedia lately.  During my research, I stumbled upon a gorgeous collection of Inferno etchings, made by painter Michael Mazur.  Enjoy.

Midway on our life's journey, I found myself

In dark woods, the right road lost.  To tell

About those woods is hard - so tangled and rough

And savage that thinking of it now, I feel

The old fear stirring: death is hardly more bitter.

-Inferno, Canto I.1-5

He hurled the sinner down, then turned to rush

Back down the rocky crag; and no mastiff

Was ever more impatient to shake the leash

And run his fastest after a fleeing thief.

The sinner sank below, only to rise

Rump up - but demons under the bridge's shelf

Cried, "Here's no place to show your Sacred Face!

You're not out in the Serchio for a swim!

If you don't want to feel our hooks - like this! -

Then stay beneath the pitch."  They struck at him

With over a hundred hooks, and said, "You'll need

To dance in secret here - so grab what seam

You're able to, in darkness."  They then did

Just as cook have their scullions do to steep

The meat well into the cauldron - with a prod

From their forks keeping it from floating up.

-Inferno, Canto XXI.43-58

We had left him, moving on

When I saw two shades frozen in a single hole -

Packed so close, one head hooded the other one;

The way the starving devour their bread, the soul

Above had clenched the other with his teeth,

Where the brain meets the nape.  And at the skull

And other parts, as Tydeus berserk with wrath

Gnawed at the head of Menalippus, he chewed.

-Inferno, Canto XXXII.124-131

Dante, Inferno.  Translated by Robert Pinsky, The Inferno of Dante.  Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994.

The entire collection of Mazur's Inferno etchings can be viewed online here.