Dante and Virgil have a bit of a contest to see who will speak to Ulysses and Diomedes. Virgil wins, and then uses a combination of flattery and self-aggrandizement to get Ulysses to finally speak and tell what no one could possible know: how did Ulysses die?

Our first introduction to one of the great sinners of Dante’s INFERNO: Ulysses. Dante is relying on a host of classical and even Christian sources to bring forward the character of one of the most revered figures from classical literature—and to put him in hell among the fraudsters.

We get our first vision of the eighth of the evil pouches (the malebolge) in the circle of fraud in Dante’s INFERNO with a couple of messy metaphors, a bumbling pilgrim, and an almost useless Virgil. What seems like a simple passage is anything but! No wonder Dante’s COMEDY is worth a slow walk.

Between the thieves and the next sinners in the next pouch of Inferno’s giant landscape of fraud, Dante the pilgrim has to scramble up rocks while Dante the poet pauses to explain his growing notion of what his poetics are. How can he continue to write the poem ahead of him?

We’ve come through some tough passages in INFERNO, particularly in the pit of the thieves. Why should we keep wrestling with Dante’s poem? What’s he up to? And how can we understand that his issues mirror our own?

The seventh of the malebolge in the vast circle of fraud is one of the most difficult passages in Dante’s INFERNO. I have way more questions than answers, but here’s an overview of the evil pouch, the thieves, and their metamorphoses.

The conclusion of the long episode among the thieves in the seventh of the evil pouches, the “malebolge” that make up fraud’s eighth circle of hell. We come down to slippery identities, uncertain poetics, and for-sure prophetic judgments on Florence: a complicated ending to a complicated set of passages.

The third metamorphosis of the thieves: the most complicated, the most overtly literary, and the most challenging in terms of its implications for Dante’s poetics. In the seventh of the evil pouches, the malebolge of fraud, Dante may finally confront his own fears so he can move on and write the poem he wants to write.

The third metamorphosis in the seventh of the malebolge, the evil pit of the thieves in the eighth circle of hell, the vast landscape of fraud. This one’s an overt challenge to Lucan and Ovid. And maybe to the nature of creation itself.

In the last episode of this podcast, we explicated the second metamorphosis in the pit of the thieves, down in INFERNO’s eighth circle. Now let’s talk about the implications of this complicated passage, a fusion of Dante and Ovid—implications on the surface and down under the text as well.

Dante silences Virgil, silences his reader (me!), and sets out to describe the most daring metamorphosis yet in COMEDY. It’s a weirdly erotic tale of the beast with two backs which becomes two things . . . and not something, but nothing. Lots of Ovid, lots of poetic license, and a wild story that demands so much from its (silenced) reader.

Vanni Fucci runs off, pursued by Cacus, a centaur toting lots of snakes and even a dragon. Virgil explains who Cacus is. Too bad Virgil’s explanation doesn’t match his own in THE AENEID. Or Livy’s. Or Ovid’s. Too bad no one else seems to know Cacus is a centaur. This passage from INFERNO gets to the heart of Dante’s poetics.

Vanni Fucci, the thief, has offered a clear statement of his crime/sin and an opaque prophecy about the future of Florence and its strife. But Fucci’s got one last act: a blasphemous hand gesture to God. Even so, Dante the poet gets the last laugh. Fucci is tortured by the snakes. Is Comedy really revenge fantasy?

A host of revelations, a plethora of metamorphoses, an elliptical prophecy, and a foul sinner: Vanni Fucci makes himself known in the seventh pit of the evil pouches, the malebolge that make up the giant eighth circle of fraud in INFERNO. And this complicated passage is only setting us up for much to come!

Dante and Virgil finally see some action in the seventh of the malebolge, the evil pouches that make up the great landscape of fraud. Although we still don’t know what sin is being punished, we find out the punishment first: snake bites that can shove a soul through a metamorphosis. Ovid galore!

Dante the pilgrim wants a closer look into the darkness, so he and Virgil descend to a vantage point on the wall. He sees a nightmare of snakes, a swarm of them, all over the naked sinners—while the poet creates his own swarm of poetic texts, allusions, misquotations, and outright literary theft.

Dante is still out of breath but he’s hiding it from Virgil. Instead, he hears an unintelligible voice and wants to get closer to it. So they make their way across the rugged bridge and start to descend a wall toward the seventh of the evil pouches of hell, the seventh of the “malebolge” that make up the great landscape of fraud.

Dante the pilgrim is out of breath from the climb out of the sixth of the malebolge, the evil pouch of the hypocrites, in INFERNO. But Virgil has no sympathy for the pilgrim! He goads him to fame as the poet plays some very heady metatextual games with his readers.

The struggle to get out of the sixth of the malebolge, the evil pouches of fraud, is very real. Virgil has to be an expert mountaineer. Dante the pilgrim ends up out of breath. Why all this emphasis on effort? Could it be that the Dante the poet is realizing the task ahead of him, a task without Virgil as his pure model?

Virgil has suffered four cantos of humiliation, right down to the moment he must confront his failure and ignorance in the sixth of the malebolge, the pit of the hypocrites. But we have to go! The journey can’t stop. How? With some gorgeous lyric poetry, derived partially from Virgil’s writings, of course.