In Canto I of INFERNO, Dante comes awake in a dark wood. Now what? He knows he has to walk. But where? How? And for how long?
This fourth episode of the podcast WALKING WITH DANTE is actually is the second passage we cover from Inferno. Intriguingly, this is one of the few moments in the poem in which our pilgrim, Dante, is all by himself.
Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as I start the first steps of the journey with the pilgrim. In this passage, we'll discover some of the lush poetry that has made COMEDY endure for over 700 years.
Bonus: The first steps in a lot of journeys are rarely in the right direction. Particularly when you don't have a map, don't know the way. That bit is not in this passage of COMEDY. But it's sitting behind it--and soon to be the truth.
Here's the episode breakdown:
[01:13] The passage for this episode: INFERNO, Canto 1, Lines 10 - 27
[02:48] The (at times) uneasy balance between the two central characters of the COMEDY: the poet who is writing the work and the pilgrim who is making the journey.
[06:40] Is this a dream poem?
[08:49] The hill just ahead--both for the pilgrim, as he starts his journey; and for us, as we start the poem.
[11:19] The lake of the heart--and the beginning of the gorgeous poetic language of Dante's masterwork
[13:56] The poem's first simile: shipwreck.
[16:32] More about that hill just ahead--this time, the hill that's solely for the pilgrim.