INFERNO, Episode 54. Where Is My Son? A Thematic And Structural Overview Of Inferno, Canto X

Let’s step back and look at the whole of INFERNO, Canto X (even though we haven’t quite finished it). It’s overall structure is a chiasmus, a crossing. And at the fulcrum of that crossing is Cavalcante, not Farinata.

It’s easy to become obsessed with Farinata. He’s a giant of history. He’s talkative (in his own courtly way). He’s Stoic. He’s Greco-Roman. He’s austere. But he may not be the true heart of this difficult canto.

It may well be Cavalcante. And mostly, his horrifying question: “Where is my son?”

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as I take a step back from the line-by-line analysis of canto X and look at it as a whole. I think we may discover something about Dante’s conception of the self. That is, the way we must choose between journeying and stasis.

There’s no specific passage for this episode. If you want, look back at my English translation of this passage in previous episodes/blog entries.