We've come to the back of INFERNO, Canto XVIII, to the two flatterers who live down in the pouch filled with the muck from human privies.

Just as a warning: This passage is crude and crass. The language is vulgar, maybe even NSFW. Be careful.

Dante, our pilgrim, and his guide, Virgil, have come to the top of the second bridge over the second of the "malebolge" (the "evil pouches") that make up the eighth circle of fraud. We've already seen that the place is disgusting. Now we're about to see that the sinners are even more so.

Here are the segments of this podcast episode:

[01:24] My English translation of Inferno, Canto XVIII, lines 115 - 134. If you'd like to read along, you can find this passage on my website, markscarbrough.com, under the header about the blog for WALKING WITH DANTE.

[03:21] Dante and Alessio in the pouch of the flatterers: thoughts on the pilgrim's becoming a better observer just as we are becoming better readers, and on the question of whether Alessio Interminei's historical obscurity is intentional in the passage.

[10:51] Virgil and Thais: thoughts on the curious lack of women in INFERNO.

[18:00] Dante the poet garbles the poetic reference to Thais in this passage. Is doing so intentional? Or is this a matter that our "divine" poet is actually fallible like the rest of us?

[22:48] Canto XVIII is architectural, in the same way that all of the eighth circle of hell is architectural. I'll admit: this I find intentional. Here's a bit on why.

And here’s my English translation of Inferno, Canto XVIII, Lines 115 - 134:

And while I intently cast my gaze down there,

I saw a guy whose head was so slimed with shit that

I couldn’t tell if he were laity or clergy.

 

He screamed at me, “Why do you seem so hungry

To look at me, rather at than the rest of the bastards?’

And I to him: “Because, if I remember you correctly,

 

“I’ve seen you before, back when your hair was dry.

You are Alessio Interminei of Lucca—

That’s why I stared at you more than the rest.”

 

He beat his pumpkin head and came back with,

“All my flatteries sunk me down here

Because my tongue never tired of them.”

 

Then my leader said to me, “Stick out your head

A little farther in that direction

So that you can get a better look at the features

 

“Of that disgusting, disheveled slut,

Scratching herself with her shit-filled fingernails,

Now squatting down, now standing up on her feet.

 

“She’s Thais, the whore.

Her lover asked her, ‘Have I gained your favor?’

And she said, ‘Enough to be a marvel!’

And that’s all our eyes need to know about her.”