Walking With Dante

It's almost mind-boggling to see the difference between INFERNO, Canto XVIII, and INFERNO, Canto XIX. Canto XIX opens with a proem: a prefatory poem, to set up the action ahead. It's dense with Biblical, folkloric, and classical allusions. It also includes not one but two direct addresses: first to Simon Magus, a figure from both the New Testament and folklore; and second to "highest wisdom," a ne...

We've come to the back of INFERNO, Canto XVIII, to the two flatterers who live down in the pouch filled with the muck from human privies. Just as a warning: This passage is crude and crass. The language is vulgar, maybe even NSFW. Be careful. Dante, our pilgrim, and his guide, Virgil, have come to the top of the second bridge over the second of the "malebolge" (the "evil pouches") that make up the...

Inferno is getting grosser. Coarser. And maybe more human? We're getting ready to cross over the second of the evil pouches of fraud in the eighth circle of hell. Join me, Mark Scarbrough, for a short episode of WALKING WITH DANTE as we explore the brief opening description about this second pouch of fraud and ask a couple of speculative questions that lie around and even under this passage. Here...

We're about to climb up on a bridge and look down at the other sinners in the first of the evil pouches. These guys are going the other way--and they're not engaged in any metamorphosis. Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we let Virgil show us Jason of the Argonauts. Jason is the prime example of seduction. Poor Hypsipyle. Poor Medea. Yet Virgil is still quite taken with this figure from mythology. Why?...

The first evil pouch. And a long podcast episode on WALKING WITH DANTE. Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we walk along the rim of the first of the evil pouches in INFERNO's circle of fraud. Here, we'll see our first fraudster: a pimp. How's a pimp guilty of fraud and not lust or even avarice. Because of metamorphosis. Because he turns women into money. And a warning: the language is foul in this passa...

We're starting to walk along the first of the evil pouches with our pilgrim and his guide, Virgil. Down below, naked people are being whipped by horned demons. This is the hell we expected! Except maybe not. Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as I explain some of the historical and cultural references in a passage that may have a garbled bit at its very core. Is that garbling intentional? We'll have to wai...

We've passed the midway point in INFERNO. Halfway done! Yet we only have two circles left. We're about to enter the biggest circle of them all, the one that takes up thirty-eight percent of the INFERNO: the circle of fraud. Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we slow-walk through Dante's masterpiece, COMEDY. We've come to the most modern of all the sins: fraud. A nasty bit of inhuman humanity. And perhap...

We've spent over forty (!) episodes of this podcast slow-walking through the seventh circle of INFERNO, among the sins of violence. We've been here a long time, to say the least. So I thought it would be crucial to look back at the sweep of the seventh circle--that is, INFERNO, Cantos XII through XVII. There's no specific passage for this episode of the podcast WALKING WITH DANTE. Rather, I'd like...

We've come to the middle of INFERNO and the last bits of canto XVII. We've come to a tour de force of the imagination and a minor (foreshadowing?) comedic ending at the center of the hellish canticle. Dante's poetics have never been greater. At least, so far. Just wait until you see what's ahead. But let's stop and marvel at the medieval notion of flight on the back of the beast of fraud in a cant...

Our pilgrim walks back from the usurers, sitting out on the edge of the seventh circle of INFERNO, and finds that he must climb aboard the awful beast of fraud. Drama! But there's so much more. This passage reveals our poet as a creator of modern narrative. And it shows us that he's taking full control of his poem. Virgil, be gone! Brunetto, too! This is Dante's work. Here are the segments of this...

We've come to what Dantista Chivacci Leonardi calls "the most colorful" bits of Dante's INFERNO. We've come to the usurers, sitting on the brink of the seventh circle of violence, looking out over the eighth circle of fraud, the deeper parts of hell. This passage is stuffed with synecdoches. Let's talk about why that is and how the poetic bones of COMEDY itself are exposed. This passage is also of...

The beast of fraud has breached. And Virgil's got some negotiating to do. So he sends Dante the pilgrim alone along the edge of the cliff to see the sinners sitting "over there." Wait! Classical poetry has to convince fraud to do something? How? And why does classical poetry suddenly tell the "modern" pilgrim to walk on by himself? And how come we can't hear those negotiations between Virgil and f...

Canto XVII of INFERNO is often seen as a transitional canto, the way we get from the seventh circle of the violent to the eighth circle of the fraudulent. But I don't think so. I think this is the canto in which our poet strikes out on his own to craft the work he needs to meet the terms of his own salvation. Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we enter a canto full of poetic fireworks with perhaps the s...

And by "read," as in the way it's used in literary studies, I mean "interpret." We've come through some tough passages, so I thought it would be useful to lay my cards on the table. Or at least most of the trumps. I'll keep a few back for later. Through Instagram DMs and emails, I've had some amazing conversations about Inferno, Cantos XV and XVI. And I thought, well, I should just lay out these d...

Well, we've come to it. The moment of truth. Or fraud. And what if they're the same thing? Or similar things? Join me, Mark Scarbrough, for a corker of a passage, the last bits of Canto XVI of INFERNO, in which our poet Dante steps out from behind the plot and swears on the fragments of his own text that he really did see a beast that no one has ever imagined in the depths of hell. Get ready for m...

Dante's COMEDY is about to shift gears. It's going to change its relationship to the poetry of the past. It's going to become more complicated in its symbolism (and yes, symbolism, not "just" allegory). And the pilgrim is going to begin to interact with the poet who is standing behind him. Join me, Mark Scarbrough, for this exploration of some of the next to the last passage in Inferno, Canto XVI....

We're going to slow up even more and take one long look at a very complicated fifteen lines that include a twelve-line simile about the waterfall ahead of us. Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we walk passage by passage through Dante's masterwork, COMEDY. We're in the seventh circle of Inferno, in the second rung (or almost the third rung) of that circle and we have come to a passage that downshifts th...

We've come to the last passage on our three Guelph heroes, circling each other on the burning sands of the seventh circle of hell, the violent--and specifically, those violent against God. That is, the homosexuals. This short passage ends on a strange note. Dante the pilgrim/prophet is able to unify the three Guelph heroes. But he's not able to change them. And maybe that's the best that prophetic...

Dante the pilgrim is still looking down on the three Florentine, Guelph heroes, circling each other on the burning sands. They've got no forward momentum. But he does! The pilgrim is about to undergo a major change. He's about to begin his transformation into a prophet. Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we slow-walk through Dante's masterpiece, COMEDY. We're in Canto XVI of Inferno, out on the burning...

Dante the pilgrim has met and spoken with the very heroes he's always admired. These are the Guelph leaders he himself admits he has remembered with so much honor. But their rhetoric is empty. Self-justifying. Flattering. And finally, ineffective. So Dante the pilgrim dares it all and translates his anger into something far more human: sadness and connection. Join me, Mark Scarbrough, for this imp...

The three, naked, oiled, burned, hairless Florentines revolve in front of the pilgrim, Dante, and Virgil. One of them starts to speak. And what a speech! Such gorgeous rhetoric! The sort he used when he was a Guelph leader in Florence. The sort all three used. The sort all politicians love. The sort that adds up to nothing. Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we listen to Jacopo Rusticucci tell the tale...

Brunetto may have run off like the winner of a foot race but he's far from gone from the text. In fact, the next canto of INFERNO, XVI, is in many ways a mirror of Brunetto's canto, XV. Dante and Virgil are still on the embankment, protected from the snowfall of fire, still looking out across the burning sands when three runners peel off and come over to them, attracted to the pilgrim by (of all t...

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, for this special episode of the podcast WALKING WITH DANTE. This episode is my interview with Kristen Hook, a Dantista who is writing her dissertation at UC-Berkeley on Inferno, Canto X. She's most interested in Guido Cavalcanti, the son of the man who raises his chin up over the edge of the heretics' tomb where Farinata is having his pissing match with our pilgrim, Dante...

From the get-go of Canto XV, I've told you my assumption: These are the homosexuals punished in Inferno. But am I right? I'm certainly standing with the bulk of the commentary tradition, reaching back almost 700 years. But lately, there have been challenges to this assumption. Let's look at the book that started the whole modern debate: André Pézard's bombshell work from 1950 that reassesses who t...

We come to the end of Inferno, Canto XV. We go out in the strangest ways. First, the pilgrim, Dante, wants a little bedroom gossip. Who are the other homosexuals down here with you, Brunetto? Brunetto Latini is cagey and forthcoming, all at once, about the way he's been throughout this canto. He offers three names. He turns excessively vulgar. And he reveals his hidden agenda: don't forget the boo...