Inferno is getting grosser. Coarser. And maybe more human?

We're getting ready to cross over the second of the evil pouches of fraud in the eighth circle of hell. Join me, Mark Scarbrough, for a short episode of WALKING WITH DANTE as we explore the brief opening description about this second pouch of fraud and ask a couple of speculative questions that lie around and even under this passage.

Here are the segments of this podcast episode on INFERNO, Canto XVIII, lines 100 - 114:

[01:08] My English translation of this passage. If you'd like to read along, see below.

[02:44] Dante and Virgil have become ridge runners. They're also in a more precarious place on these spiny ridges. Which may tell us something about the poetics as well. (You know how I love meta points!)

[05:37] The language in the poem is coarsening dramatically. Why? I have several possible answers.

[11:37]    The first of two speculative bits for this podcast episode. Sometimes, it's necessary to say "no" to Dante, even to a poet of his stature.

[14:23] Why are there two pouches in one canto (Canto XVIII)? I have several answers and I'll let you make your own decisions among the speculations.

And here is my English translation of Inferno, Canto XVIII, Lines 100 – 114

We had now come to the spot where the narrow alley

Intersected with the second embankment,

Which then forms the base of yet another bridge.

From that spot, we heard people who were moaning

In the next pouch, blubbering with their snouts

And thwacking themselves with their flat palms.

The walls of this pouch were crusted with moldy crap

Rising in vapors from down below, clinging to them,

And causing a full-on brawl against our eyes and noses.

The bottom proved impenetrable to our sight

Until we climbed up to the hump of the arch

Where the bridge reaches its apex.

When we got up there, I could well see down in the sewer

That people were sunk in the same kind of muck

That could get slopped out of human privies.