At the end of INFERNO, Canto VIII, we left our pilgrim and his guide standing outside the walls of Dis, the city of hell. Virgil appeared to be a bit afraid but putting a good face on it for Dante-the-pilgrim.
Now Virgil's doubts are more pronounced. (And maybe the poet's, too.) To compensate, Virgil launches into one of the strangest moments of INFERNO, the story of his descent to the bottom of hell, conjured by the witch Erichtho, a character in Lucan's PHARSALIA.
Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as I get to this long-awaited passage, one of my favorites in INFERNO. Virgil becomes more fictional, gets a backstory made up out of whole cloth, from a bit of Lucan, all to land in a strange human place of faithful doubt or doubting faith.
COMEDY is becoming more complex with every step.
Here are the segments of this episode:
[01:00] My English translation of INFERNO, Canto IX, lines 1 - 33. If you'd like to see this passage, it's on my website, markscarbrough.com.
[02:58] Two further notes on the fifth circle of hell, the ring of wrath. One, Virgil doesn't appear to be blocked by classical figures, only Christian ones. And two, it's in the circle of wrath that parental references become most pronounced.
[05:58] Working through the passage without mentioning the witch Erichtho. Here are some of the complexities of this passage, bearing in on it as a moment in which the "fictive" quality of COMEDY deepens.
[17:14] Finally, Erichtho! I talk through some of her story from Lucan's PHARSALIA, and the ways in which Lucan is rewriting Virgil's AENEID--and the ways in which Dante may be rewriting Virgil. I then offer seven interpretive knots Erichtho causes for the poem as a whole. It's a wild ride. No wonder I wanted to get here!