Dante the pilgrim and Virgil, his guide, have been walking along the ridge line of the eighth circle of Inferno. But Dante wants a closer look at the figures kicking their thighs and feet out of the holes in the ground in the third evil pouch. So down they go! Except Virgil the shade carries our corporeal pilgrim. And perhaps even more is afoot in the poetics.
Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as I explore some problems in this rather "simple" narrative passage from COMEDY. But you know Dante. Nothing's as simple as it seems. Even this passage brings up larger questions about Dante's poetics and the problems of biting the hand that (at least indirectly) feeds you: the church.
Here are the segments of this episode of the podcast WALKING WITH DANTE:
[01:31] My English translation of this passage: Inferno, Canto XIX, lines 31 - 45. If you'd like to read along, you can find this passage on my website, markscarbrough.com.
[03:00] A packed segment: the colors of hell, the metaphoric space's fusion with the narrative space in the best of Dante's poetics, and questions about the geography of the eighth circle of hell, the circle of fraud.
[10:46] The pilgrim and his guide are so simpatico! What's up?
[12:08] The first descent into one of the evil pouches.
[14:01] Virgil carries Dante the pilgrim down. Yes, the corporeal v. incorporeal problem we've been over before. But maybe there's more to this passage. Maybe Virgil carries Dante the poet down.
[19:18] A speculative question for Canto XIX: Why does Dante need to descend into this pouch, since he doesn't go down into the first two pouches we've encountered? What calls Dante to this pouch?