INFERNO, Episode 122. Metaphors, Tautologies, And Pitch: Inferno, Canto XXI, Lines 1 - 21

WALKING WITH DANTE has been on a holiday hiatus--but we're back at it, descending to Canto XXI of INFERNO, to the next malebolge, the fifth evil pouch among the sins of fraud.

The opening of Canto XXI is as self-conscious as most of those in the sub-sets of fraud. This time, the poet names his work (again), turns coy, and offers a lot of metaphoric blather that seems to bring the plot of a standstill.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we explore this wild and woolly opening bit of the fifth pouch of fraud, complete with a gangliest metaphors in INFERNO.

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

 [01:08] The passage itself in my English translation: Inferno, Canto XXI, lines 1 - 21. If you'd like to see this passage, just scroll down.

[03:04] From bridge to bridge: the circles of fraud are moving from metaphor to realism, from geology to architecture.

[06:15] Naming the poem again: COMEDY. That is, a contrast with Virgil's last statement about his poem, a "high tragedy." You know, the one corrected in Canto XX by Virgil himself.

[08:15] The early commentators were very uncomfortable with the title of Dante's poem. Why? And note that it's a discomfort we share!

[13:58] The opening lines of the canto imply a silence in the text. Why?

[16:32] The fifth evil pouch is dark, unlike the fourth (apparently).

[18:04] Part one on the simile about Venetian ship-building. Unhinged? Maybe. Tautological? Definitely. A = A. Is that even a simile?

[22:16] Part two on the simile about Venetian ship-builing. The sin punished here is barratry (graft) and this simile is a proletarian idyll about a properly organized city.

[26:15] The simile comes back to the place where the plot was--and apparently brings that plot to a dead halt. So much for the fireworks of poetics!

And here’s my English translation of Inferno, Canto XXI, Lines 1 – 21

In this way, from bridge to bridge, while talking

About things my Comedy isn’t bothered to sing,

We went along. We’d reached the apex when

We stopped to be able to see into the next cleft

Of these evil pouches and the next futile blubbering.

I saw that it was amazingly dark.

As the Venetians in their arsenal

Boil the gluey pitch all through the winter

To seal the boards of any unsound ships,

Because they cannot sail then—and so instead

Someone works on a new hull and someone caulks the slats

Of a ship that’s made a few too many voyages;

Someone hammers together the prow and someone else, the stern;

Others fashions the oars and still others twist the ropes;

Someone else sews up the jib and the mainsail—

In just this way, if not by fire but by divine craft,

The thick pitch boiled away down below,

Clinging to the banks on both sides.

I saw the pitch for sure, but I didn’t see anything in it

Except the bubbles levitated by the boiling:

All seething up and then settling down deflated.