Dante the pilgrim is left alone at the walls of Dis. But more importantly, this passage from INFERNO may be the most human since the opening lines of Canto I. So much is changing! Virgil is getting a backstory. Virgil is developing interiority (or an inner emotional space). Virgil is becoming more fatherly. All at the moment when he abandons the pilgrim—and maybe the poet, too.
Read MoreDante-the-pilgrim and Virgil come to an important barrier in hell: the walls of Dis, the geopolitical center of INFERNO. But Dante-the-poet also comes to an important barrier. Aeneas doesn’t enter Dis in THE AENEID. We have reached the limits of Virgil-the-poet’s imagination. But not Dante’s. He will eventually go where his master can’t.
Read MoreOur pilgrim, Dante, and his guide, Virgil, are on a boat across the Styx in the fifth circle of hell when a damned soul rises out of the muck and threatens them. This passage is packed with interpretive nuggets: Bible verses, personal vendetta, call-outs to previous cantos, set-ups for subsequent cantos. But most importantly, this passage is about story. The poet is settling into his form. And the results are nothing short of revolutionary.
Read MoreRather than picking apart a single passage from Dante’s COMEDY, this episode presents the entirety of the fifth circle of INFERNO, the wrathful. We’ve already had three episodes on this circle—and we’ll have more to come. But right here, I’d like to stop and read you the entire story. Because storytelling is becoming the point!
Read MoreThe fifth circle. The wrathful. Except where are the damned? Not here. Instead, this passage is full of all sorts of problems: it opens with a scene of interpreting, it leads out to a rather obscure figure from classical literature, and it finishes up by putting the pilgrim firmly in his body. Dante-the-poet is never satisfied. His art is ever-changing. And it’s finally settled into the very thing that will make it last: storytelling.
Read MoreHere’s the problem: there are no manuscripts of COMEDY in Dante’s hand. So what do we have? And can we trust it? Here’s my brief history on the problems of manuscript transmission for Dante’s masterwork. Sure, it’s a bit in the weeds. But weeds can be fascinating!
Read MoreThe famous break! It’s at this point that many see a stop-restart in the poem. True, it does back up, just about the only time the poem does. And true, Boccaccio tried to explain the break with a story. But perhaps we don’t need his story. Perhaps we can understand the shifting dynamics of the poem the poet needs to write by looking at the poem itself and how it carries on from this point.
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