Our pilgrim Dante is crying at the distorted forms coming along in the fourth evil pouch (one of the malebolge) of the eighth circle of INFERNO. Or maybe he's crying because he knows the future: Classical texts are about to get wrecked.
Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we explore this difficult passage in which Virgil is super hard on Dante, the pilgrim, and then Virgil himself misquotes his classical sources to turn everything on its head. It's poet against poet, poetry against poetry, in a shattering irony that leaps up to the question of who is the ultimate fraudster among so many poets.
Here are the segments of this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE:
[01:32] My English translation of this passage: Inferno, Canto XX, lines 25 - 51. If you'd like to read along, you can find this translation on my website, markscarbrough.com.
[03:48] Virgil is unbelievably hard on our pilgrim, Dante. Why? And why is Dante crying?
[08:09] We're at the start of the longest uninterrupted speech Virgil gives in COMEDY--all about Amphiaraus, Tiresias, and Aruns--or more likely, about Statius, Ovid, and Lucan, the poets who wrote about these figures.
[14:49] Virgil may have cited these figures, but he's warped his classical sources. Here's how.
[19:16] In my interpretation, it's important to remember that it is Virgil who is changing the classical references, as well as the poet Dante behind him. None of these three characters were fraudsters in the original sources. So who is the real fraudster here?