Our nameless grifter has proposed a game for the demons: Let's see how many more of my damned ilk I can call out of the boiling pitch for you to torment. The demons back off, he gets ready, and he leaps away to his safety. The demons then go nuts, while Dante, our pilgrim, and Virgil, his guide, sneak away.
Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we explore this dramatic passage at the end of Inferno Canto XXII and as we move on into Canto XXIII.
We are still among the barrators, the political grifters, those on the take with their hands out for bribes. But nothing's as it seems in Dante's COMEDY. This passage of INFERNO is full of inversions, including perhaps the greatest inversion of them all: a meta-literary inversion as Canto XXII flips all of COMEDY on its head.
Here are the segments for this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE:
[01:40] My English translation of the passage: Inferno, Canto XXII, Line 118 through Canto XXIII, Line 3. If you'd like to read along, you can find this translation on my website, markscarbrough.com.
[04:46] The many inversions inside this passage.
[15:54] The dominant imagery in this passage--and the way imagery degrades and then is regenerated over the course of COMEDY.
[22:29] The passage starts out with an address to the reader: You're going to hear a new game. But what game?
[27:41] Dante and Virgil escape--under a full tonal shift in the passage.