In this episode of the podcast WALKING WITH DANTE, we take the first steps into the first circle of hell, the "real deal" of INFERNO, the first canticle of THE DIVINE COMEDY.
And as you might imagine, we encounter some difficulties--mostly theological, although maybe also related to Virgil and even Dante-the-poet behind it all.
Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we come to a place that exists as an "out" in Christian theology--and that fully expresses Dante-the-poet's ambivalence toward his own accepted theology and maybe even the art he's creating.
Here are the sections of this episode:
[00:34] A confession on my part and a summary of the poem's plot so far.
[02:19] My English translation of the passage from INFERNO: Canto IV, lines 1 - 45. If you want to check out these lines, you can find them on my website, markscarbrough.com.
[05:16] Dante wakes up--and a bit about the poem, its problems, and the very real problem of revising what you write in a world of very limited writerly resources.
[08:11] "Staring hard" or "looking fixedly" as a thematic throughout COMEDY. Seeing is believing! But where does that put the reader of this poem?
[09:36] An interpretive knot about the thunder and the wailing in hell--and a bit about the architecture of hell itself (that's not in the passage but is needed perhaps to understand the intent here).
[11:20] Virgil turns pale. How? Don't know how a "shade" turns pale. But why? That's an even harder question to answer. Virgil explains it. Should we believe him?
[18:26] Limbo. It's definitely in hell. But only for Dante, not in church doctrine.
[21:00] Virgil's strange petulance and then his explanation for why he's in Limbo (that is, why he's damned, in terms of the poem). Also, there may be a change here: earlier, he claimed to have been a rebel against God; now he claims to have just missed out on the church's sacraments.
[27:39] Dante's response to Virgil and the strange notion of "suspended," which came up much earlier in the poem ("I was among those who are suspended," Virgil said in Canto II).