Dante and Virgil have to get out of the sixth evil pouch, the pocket of the hypocrites. And the only way out is up!

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we set out on this epic climb from the sixth of the malebolge in the giant landscape of fraud, the eighth circle of INFERNO. Virgil is a sure guide. But it's all Dante's effort. And that might say more about COMEDY than we first imagine.

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

[01:48] My English translation of this passage: Inferno, Canto XXIV, lines 22 - 45. If you'd like to read along, just scroll down this page.

[03:39] A couple of translation issues: an aphorism and an image.

[07:33] The climb out of the sixth evil pouch is because of a "felix culpa," a fortunate fall: the ruins of hell are the way of the sixth of the malebolge.

[09:58] Virgil may exhibit the four cardinal virtues in this passage. What can we make of that?

[12:48] More corporeal problems with Virgil.

[17:28] Compare this climb out of the sixth of the malebolge with the climb out of the third evil pouch in Canto XIX.

[22:36] The passage is full of enjambment, a moment of poetic freedom.

And here’s my English translation of Inferno, Canto XXIV, Lines 22 – 45

 After weighing his choices for a bit

And looking those ruins up and down,

He [Virgil] opened his arms wide and put them tight around me.

 

Like someone who estimates every gesture as he labors on

And seems as if he assesses every move in advance,

He lifted me up toward the top

 

Of one rock and was already figuring out the next crag

To grab, saying, “Hoist yourself up to that one next,

But first test it to make sure it can hold the likes of you.”

 

It wasn’t a path for those guys in the cloaks;

For we together, he so light and I supported from below,

Had a hard time clambering up from one ledge to the next.

 

And only because on this side of the ditch

The slope wasn’t as high as on the other side—

Well, I can’t say about him, but I would have been beaten.

 

But because the evil pouches all slope downward

Toward the maw of the pit,

Each valley is positioned

 

So that one side is higher than the other.

Finally, we came to a spot

Where the last stone lies broken off the ledge above.

 

The air had been so milked from my lungs

When I got up there that I couldn’t go any farther

And sat right down the moment I could.