Walking With Dante10 Marras 2021

Flattery And Feces, Together At Last: Inferno, Canto XVIII, Lines 115 - 134

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 eighth circle of fraud. We've already seen that the place is disgusting. Now we're about to see that the sinners are even more so.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we slow-walk through Dante's masterpiece, COMEDY. (And not "The Divine Comedy," particularly in this passage, which isn't very divine). Here are the segments of this episode of Walking With Dante:

[01:24] My English translation of Inferno, Canto XVIII, lines 115 - 134. If you'd like to read along, you can find this passage on my website, markscarbrough.com, under the header about the blog for WALKING WITH DANTE.

[03:21] Dante and Alessio in the pouch of the flatterers: thoughts on the pilgrim's becoming a better observer just as we are becoming better readers, and on the question of whether Alessio Interminei's historical obscurity is intentional in the passage.

[10:51] Virgil and Thais: thoughts on the curious lack of women in INFERNO.

[18:00] Dante the poet garbles the poetic reference to Thais in this passage. Is doing so intentional? Or is this a matter that our "divine" poet is actually fallible like the rest of us?

[22:48] Canto XVIII is architectural, in the same way that all of the eighth circle of hell is architectural. I'll admit: this I find intentional. Here's a bit on why.

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Incarnated in the Moon: PARADISO, Canto II, Lines 19 - 45

After Dante's warning to his readers (or perhaps some of his readers), we return to the plot, ascending through the heavens to arrive at the moon . . . or really, in the moon.Dante and Beatrice find t...

19 Elo 28min

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Our poet steps out of the shadows with an important message: "Go home."Because PARADISO is hard. Because we might get lost. Because we're not prepared.The stark address to all readers--or perhaps to a...

16 Elo 25min

Of Natural Instincts and Their Natural Ends: PARADISO, Canto I, Lines 115 - 142

Beatrice continues in her discourse about our natural instincts, making the bold claim that they can lead us to our natural ends . . . which are the good, not the catastrophic bad.Her Scholastic theol...

12 Elo 23min

Sailing Across the Great Sea of "To Be": PARADISO, Canto I, Lines 94 - 114

Beatrice has answered Dante's first doubt, but he has another. He can't quite understand how he, maybe in his body, can make his way across the universe.She doesn't have a quick answer. Instead, she h...

9 Elo 25min

Returning Home Through the Music of the Spheres: PARADISO, Canto I, Lines 61 - 93

Our pilgrim finds everything doubled in brightness . . . because he's begun to fly up to the heavens, although he doesn't know it at first.He's too busy figuring out all that light . . . and listening...

5 Elo 37min

Staring at the Sun: PARADISO, Canto I, Lines 37 - 60

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2 Elo 36min

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29 Heinä 41min

Welcome to a Renegotiated Poem: PARADISO, Canto I, Lines 1 - 12

From its opening lines, it's clear that PARADISO is not like what has come before in COMEDY. Dante seems to be renegotiating the terms of his poem, establishing a new voice, a new model, and a new met...

26 Heinä 37min