Walking With Dante

We finish canto III of INFERNO, standing on the shores of Acheronte, the river that forms the border of the first rings of inner hell. Charon is busy with this job, Virgil is suddenly gentler, more parental toward the pilgrim than he's been. And Dante? When the earthquake hits, he's beyond help. Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we walk up to the shores of hell's first river and find ourselves adrift i...

We step out of the foyer and enter the second part of Canto III of INFERNO: the part about the storied Charon, the ferryman on Acheronte (or Acheron), as well as the souls waiting to be ferried into hell itself. But before that, a spat between Virgil and our pilgrim. Something is always amiss when you're walking across the universe with your mentor. When the universe is a hierarchy, those on top h...

Our pilgrim, Dante, and his guide, Virgil, walk beyond hell's entrance to encounter, well, the sort of hell we thought we were going to get all along. Maybe not the wasps. But the rest of it? The chaos and pain, the darkness and the suffering? Yep, that hell. We've come to the place of the angels and humans who refused to make a choice in this life. In other words, we've come to the place for thos...

We follow our pilgrim and his guide, Virgil, on their first steps into hell. Let's pause with these two at the gate of hell with its famous inscription ("Abandon hope!"). You enter hell through an act of reading. The words on the gate, yes. But also perhaps these words in the text. And if we read the words right, we can get a most unusual thing: a cheerful look from Virgil. Join me, Mark Scarbroug...

Beatrice has bested Virgil. Virgil has bested Dante, our pilgrim. Dante can do nothing else except set off across the universe. Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we finish Canto II of INFERNO and get ready to descend into the mouth of hell. Here are the segments to this episode: [02:14] My English translation of INFERNO, Canto II, Lines 115 - 141. If you want to read my translation, find a more in-dept...

Where's Dante, our pilgrim? Not in this passage! He's fallen out of his own poem as Virgil and Beatrice engage in their rhetorical battle. And where's hell, the promised blaze with its tortured sinners? Instead, we're headed to the heights of heaven with Beatrice . . . who talks about those flames! What ultimately wins the day? Beatrice's story of her quest to save Dante. To set him on the road to...

After Dante confesses his unworthiness in the opening of Canto II of INFERNO, Virgil clarifies the matter. "You're not modest. You're a coward." Then Virgil does what humans do. He tells a story. One that's almost too good to be true: about the first time Virgil met Beatrice. Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we ascend into heaven . . . at least in Virgil's telling of it. Here are the segments of this...

We thought we were underway, but important things must happen first. Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we start the Canto II of INFERNO to discover that the our pilgrim, Dante, is almost undone by his doubts. So he tries to play a rhetorical game with his poetic master, Virgil. To get famous, punch up! And Virgil is definitely up from this rather middling poet. If you'd like to help underwrite the many...

Let's pause to look back over INFERNO, Canto I. I'll read it through for its scope and arc. Then we'll set about exploring this piece of architecture, not just the first canto, but the whole of Dante's COMEDY. Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as I give Inferno's first canto a backward glance, then look ahead to the glorious poetry across COMEDY. If you'd like to donate to this podcast, to help underwrite...

In a previous episode, I talked about how Dante defines Virgil as a poet, not a philosopher, and why that was important in Dante's medieval context. But there's more to Virgil than poetry. There's prophecy. Because as we'll discover, perhaps the most important part of being a poet is being a prophet, too. Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we now find out why and how being a prophet is so crucial to a p...

We meet the pilgrim Dante's first and great guide, the Roman poet Virgil. He is the pilgrim's master, his "author." Except he's also Virgil, a guy who has a limited understanding of the universe. What happens when you meet your hero and he's not what you imagined? What happens when he's as fallible as you are? Easy. You set off across the universe together. How else do humans do it? Join me, Mark...

Dante begins his journey across the known universe--except not. The journey stops almost the moment it begins in COMEDY. What happens when you set off in a new direction but have no clue where you're going? Apparently, you get blocked by the beasts of your imagination. Or maybe by more than beasts. By symbols. Even allegories. Personal, political, and/or social. This tough passage has eaten gallon...

Our pilgrim, Dante, comes awake in a dark wood. Now what? He has to walk out. But to where? And how? This fourth episode of WALKING WITH DANTE is actually 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. The first steps of a journey are rarely in the right direction. Particularly when you don't have a...

Who was Dante? Actually, that's two questions in one. First, how did this hard-working if not formerly brilliant poet and would-be politician from a rather lackluster family end up writing COMEDY, arguably the greatest work of Western literature? Second, when was Dante? What was his historical moment like? Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as I tell you a bit about the the poet's upbringing, his troubles,...

We take the first steps with our pilgrim, Dante, as he finds himself in a dark wood and starts his walk . . . through hell? No, across the known universe. He's also in a mid-life crisis. Curiously, not his. Instead, ours. It's a bad spot--so bad that he quakes even as he tries to write about it years later. Join me, Mark Scarbrough, to discover the opening lines of Dante's masterwork. If you'd lik...

An introduction to the podcast WALKING WITH DANTE. I'm Mark Scarbrough, a former academic and working author. This podcast is my passion project: to take Dante's COMEDY passage by passage. I've taught it many times. But I've always felt rushed. I want to take this masterpiece at my own speed. So here I go. No, here WE go. I'll use my own English translation. You can find mine at markscarbrough.com...