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.