Our pilgrim Dante is crying at the distorted forms coming along in the fourth evil pouch (one of the malebolge) of the eighth circle of INFERNO. Or maybe he's crying because he knows the future: Classical texts are about to get wrecked.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we explore this difficult passage in which Virgil is super hard on Dante, the pilgrim, and then Virgil himself misquotes his classical sources to turn everything on its head. It's poet against poet, poetry against poetry, in a shattering irony that leaps up to the question of who is the ultimate fraudster among so many poets.

Here are the segments of this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE:

[01:32] My English translation of this passage: Inferno, Canto XX, lines 25 - 51. If you'd like to read along, just scroll down this page.

[03:48] Virgil is unbelievably hard on our pilgrim, Dante. Why? And why is Dante crying?

[08:09] We're at the  start of the longest uninterrupted speech Virgil gives in COMEDY--all about Amphiaraus, Tiresias, and Aruns--or more likely, about Statius, Ovid, and Lucan, the poets who wrote about these figures.

[14:49] Virgil may have cited these figures, but he's warped his classical sources. Here's how.

[19:16] In my interpretation, it's important to remember that it is Virgil who is changing the classical references, as well as the poet Dante behind him. None of these three characters were fraudsters in the original sources. So who is the real fraudster here?

And here’s my English translation of Inferno, Canto XX, Lines 25 – 51

 Why I did indeed cry, leaning against one of the stones

Of the hard ridge—which is why my escort

Said to me, “Are you still just another fool among so many?

 

“In this place, pity is still alive and well when it is dead as a door nail.

Can any guy be less pious

Than the one who brings such passion to divine judgment?

 

“Lift up your head—lift it up!—and gaze at the one

Who disappeared into the opened earth right in front of the eyes of the Thebans,

At which they all cried out, ‘What’s the hurry,

 

“’Amphiaraus? Why take off from the war now?’

But he didn’t stop and fell all the way down,

Right down to Minos, who seizes each one.

 

“Check out how he’s made pecs out of his shoulder blades.

Because he wanted to see too far out in front

He now faces behind and even has to walk a backward path.

 

“See Tiresias, who changed his form

From a man to become a woman,

Right down to the last detail of her body.

 

“Then he had to once more smite

The two entwined snakes with his staff

Before he could take back his masculine plumage.

 

“Aruns is the one who puts his back against the other’s stomach,

He lived among the hills of Luni,

Where the citizens of Carrara hoe the dirt in the valley’s shelter,

 

“Lived in a cave among all that white marble,

From where he had an unimpeded view

Of the stars and across the sea.”