The poet stands with his poem in a painting in the Florence Duomo by Domenico di Michelino from c. 1465.

With the wrathful, COMEDY seems to back up and start over. Although Boccaccio had a story to explain this break, its rationale may be more in terms of the the poet's coming to terms with the expanding nature of his work.

He needs to give himself time to slow down. And he needs to figure out his relationship with Virgil, his poetic master. Mostly, he needs to break with Virgil ("I got the beautiful style from you") to find a more powerful and deliberate poetry in the vernacular.

The segments for this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE:

[00:31] My English translation of INFERNO: Canto VIII, lines 1 - 6 and a quick overview of where we've been. If you'd like to read along or drop a comment about this episode, scroll down this page.

[02:40] Boccaccio's (suspect?) answer to why the poem seems to shift gears: Dante left his manuscript behind.

[03:33] Some proposed answers for what I see as a shift in narrative strategy in the poem. For one thing, our poet must come to terms with his own poetic father, Virgil. THE AENEID has been taking over the poem. This emphasis needs to shift for COMEDY to find its voice.

[13:33] The poet must also become more committed to the vernacular for the poem to find its voice.

[15:41] From here on out, the notion of "sin" will change.

My English translation of INFERNO: Canto VIII, lines 1 - 6:

Continuing on, I say that well before

We got to the foot of that high tower,

Our eyes had already been directed toward its top,

Drawn by two flames that flickered up there,

And another that answered from so far away,

Our eyes could barely make it out.

FOR MORE STUDY

One translation issue:

The break may be even more pronounced than I made it in my translation. Here are the first two lines of Canto VIII: “Io dico, seguitando, ch’assai prima/ che noi fossimo al piè de l’alta torre . . . “ (Literally, “I say, following on, that even first/ before we were at the foot of the high tower”). It’s that “Io dico.” It’s so assertive, especially after we just came off of Virgil’s long sermon about the Goddess Fortune. Dante does seem to be taking over this poem: “I say.” Note, too, that it’s not “I write” or “I note,” but a speech act—which connects directly to voice. This is also the first canto that has begun with “I” (although, yes, the whole poem is in the first-person singular).

Two interpretive issues:

I made a lot out of writing in the vernacular or the common speech. But what does that look like, other than using the grammar of medieval Florentine? Maybe that’s Dante’s challenge: to keep up his smarty-pants technique while also writing in a more natural way.
One issue that gets raised in the last canto and again here—and that’s not answered yet—has to do with the hydraulics of hell. If Dante is going to put rivers and marshes into INFERNO, even Acheronte back with Charon, then we have to know something about what happens to that water, since the conical nature of hell will lead the water ultimately downhill. Believe it or not, Dante will become very concerned with this problem in passages ahead. Maybe the hydraulics of hell are another reason he has to back up and start again with more detail.

One journaling prompt:

What does a more natural voice look like for a writer? Have you ever found yourself in that state of flow where the words are simply moving from your fingers to the page or from your mouth to your audience?

INFERNO, Episode 37. Hell's Biggest Crack Is In The Poetry, Not The Landscape: INFERNO, Canto VIII, Lines 1 - 6