Cataloguing The Greats You Know And The Ones You Wish You Knew: INFERNO, Canto IV, Lines 115 - 151

Our pilgrim, Dante, gets to a vantage point where he can look across the "enameled" green to see the crowd gathered in and around Limbo's castle. He then lists off the greats: Trojans, Romans, Caesar, Aristotle, even pre-Socratic thinkers.

Problem is, our poet didn't know many of these thinkers and writers except by name. He only knew of Plato by an incomplete translation of one minor work.

What's more, he includes a few names in his list of the greats that are almost mind-blowing, figures I didn't see even after reading COMEDY for almost thirty years.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as I continue on the slow journey across COMEDY.

Please consider supporting the work of this podcast with a one-time donation or a small monthly stipend, using this PayPal link right here.

Here are the segments of this episode:

[01:37] My English translation of INFERNO, Canto IV, Lines 115 - 151. If you want to see it, find a deeper study guide, or drop a comment, please find its entry on my website, markscarbrough.com.

[04:20] A bit about my history with COMEDY--and my apparent blindness to some of its details, despite reading it for so many years.

[05:26] The first pieces of this passage: questions about who the "we" is, questions about the description of the green grass in the castle ("enameled"?), and questions about the poet who never seems far behind the veil of these passages.

[07:40] The first list of who the pilgrim sees: Trojans, Romans, and (here it comes) an Islamic ruler. Also, a bit about the notion of "fiction v. history" in medieval writing.

[14:25] A second list of the ones the pilgrim sees as he lifts his eyes higher: philosophers, thinkers, writers, mathematicians, astronomers, physicians--and two Islamic scholars, more names in the list I missed.

[18:03] A further listing, including poets among mathematicians and astronomers, along with two great Islamic philosophers.

[22:43] A bit about the rationalizations for this list. Maybe there's an emotional component to listing off those you honor when you're on the run.

[26:58] The last lines of the passage--and the intrusion of the poet, Dante, for one final time in a confession of his failure. The poet's never been far away in Canto IV, in Limbo.