We come to the end of the fourth evil pouch, the fourth of the malebolge, in the eighth circle of Inferno, the circle of fraud. And we go out with a bang!

 Dante disses Virgil (who has already dissed Dante). Virgil rewrites yet one more classical story. We get a load of contemporary, sad-sack fortunetellers. And then Dante quotes himself to let us know that every text can be broken, even his own.

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

[01:21] My English translation of the passage. If you'd like to read along, scroll down this page.

[03:26] The pilgrim's final bit of snark toward Virgil (in this canto).

[06:07] More sinners in the pouch: Eurypylus (along with one more rewriting of a classical figure) and Michael Scot (who only helped cause the Renaissance).

[07:42] Virgil defines his own work (the one that could be considered fraudulent in the logic of Canto XX) as "high tragedy."

[10:39] Other more sad-sack sinners in the pouch: the run-of-the-mill charlatans.

[15:32] Virgil's last bit of astrological knowledge--because how else would you end a canto about soothsaying?

[18:45] And the last word, which is the very one Dante has already proscribed.

Here’s my translation of Inferno, Canto XX, Lines 100 – 130

 And I: “Master, the story you’ve told

Is rock-solid and prods me to take it on faith,

That any other would seem no more than dead coals.

 

“But tell me, of the people who make this procession before us,

Do you see any others who are worth pointing out?

My mind keeps coming back to them alone.”

 

Then he said to me, “That one there whose beard

Reaches down from his cheeks to his brown shoulder blades

Was—when Greece had been so emptied of males

 

“That you could hardly find one in a cradle—a sorcerer

And along with Calchas he foretold

The best time to set sail from Aulis.

 

“Eurypylus was his name. You well know

The spot where my high tragedy sings about him,

Because you know the poem from front to back.

 

“That other, who is so skinny around his hips,

Was Michael Scot, who truly knew how to

Play the fraudulent game of magic.

 

“See Guido Bonatti and Asdente,

Who now wishes he’d kept his mind

On this leather and threads but repents too late.

 

“See the sad-sack women who became diviners

Abandoning their needles, their spools, and their spindles

To cast dark spells with herbs and graven images.

 

“But come along now, for Cain with his thorns

Is setting on the cusp of the hemisphere’s horns

And setting on the waves below Seville.

 

“And the night before last was already the full moon.

You certainly remember it did you no harm

When you were in the deep wood.”

We kept talking and going along thusly.