Walking With Dante16 Jan 2022

Working Together To Make A Mess: Inferno, Canto XXI, Lines 46 - 63

The demon has thrown this sinner into the pitch, headed off to collect more in Lucca, and caused the whole horde of demons under the bridge to start their low-comedy, high-violence act.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we explore more of Canto XXI, more from the fifth evil pouch in the eighth circle of fraud, the longest and more complex part of INFERNO. We're among the the sinners on the political take. We've got a proletarian idyll for a contrast and maybe even some Augustinian allegory in tow. It's a lot for a crazy passage. But this is Dante, after all.

Here are the segments of this episode of the podcast WALKING WITH DANTE:

[01:25] My English translation of the passage: INFERNO, Canto XXI, lines 46 - 63. If you'd like to read along, you can find this translation on my website, markscarbrough.com.

[03:01] There's a lingering question left over from the last passage: Whatever happened to Minos and his tail?

[04:39] How do you make blasphemy funny? A look at the first nine lines of this passage.

[12:50] Chef's and their kitchen help: Dante's explanation for what the demons do to the damned in the pitch. It's 1) more food metaphor and 2) more proletarian idyll.

[14:52] A detour to Saint Augustine and a question of the allegory of boiling pitch.

[17:06] Virgil's confidence. Because he's passed by here before on his mission for Erichtho? Or because he and the pilgrim have faced this sort of thing already in front of the walls of Dis?

[21:36] A moment when we can step away from Virgil as symbol, Virgil as allegory, Virgil as literary device, and simply see Virgil as the human character Dante the poet is crafting.

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(499)

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 Aug 28min

Go Home: PARADISO, Canto II, Lines 1 - 18

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 Aug 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 Aug 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 Aug 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 Aug 37min

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

The plot gets underway in PARADISO.Our pilgrim Dante turns to Beatrice . . . who is paying him no attention. She's staring at the sun.So he does the same! He hasn't even left earth, yet the miraculous...

2 Aug 36min

A Polyvocal Passage With All Its Dissonances: PARADISO, Canto I, Lines 13 - 36

Our poet moves from his scholastic and even (medieval) scientific opening of PARADISO into his invocation . . . to Apollo?This passage has often embarrassed Dante scholars who feel the need to excuse ...

29 Jul 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 Jul 37min