Dante and Virgil begin to walk across the final circle of hell, a terrifying ice sheet, where they encounter disembodied voices, the damned frozen in the ice, and a place of utter immobility—and where we encounter a couple of textual problems, including a couple of moments in which our great poet may have nodded off and forgotten some of the details of his own poem.

We begin Inferno, Canto XXXII, not with Dante the pilgrim of Virgil, but with the poet Dante who has realized the limits of his craft here at the bottom of hell. At the foundations of everything, the gorgeous structure he’s built begins to tilt, not only in its conception, but even in its very poetics.

Antaeus isn’t such a bad guy. He’s just the traitor who lets the invaders, Dante the pilgrim and Virgil, into his master Satan’s final kingdom. We end INFERNO, Canto XXXI, where we began: with a host of similes and metaphors and a wicked irony that brings Roland and Charlemagne into a murky yet intriguing light.

Virgil must flatter his way to the center of the earth, the floor of hell, the ninth circle of INFERNO. But Antaeus doesn’t seem to be taken in by repeated references to Lucan’s PHARSALIA. The only thing that does the trick is the promise of Dante’s success as a poet—which then pits poet against poet in this liminal space between the eighth and ninth circles of INFERNO.

Three more giants after Nimrod—crosscurrents of classical literature and Biblical traditions, all bound in a poem based on classical sources, one of which (The Aeneid) is under incessant revision by its own author, Virgil. We’re approaching the bottom of everything. We’re also in a liminal spot between the circles of INFERNO. No wonder all bets are off.

Dante the pilgrim finds his first giant in the liminal spot between the eighth and ninth circles of hell. It’s Nimrod, a shadowy figure in the Bible who gathers much Christian mythological moss over the years to become a complicated and difficult figure in Dante’s INFERNO.

Virgil promises Dante the pilgrim clarity if they hurry on. But Virgil can’t wait. He explains that the towers are actually giants—which Dante the poet then recasts back into towers, coining a word to preserve the illusion. The poet also keeps INFERNO in the liminal space between the classical and Christian worlds.

Dante the pilgrim and Virgil enter the liminal space of Canto XXXI, the terrain between the eighth and ninth circles of hell. Here, Dante experiences a series of reversals, misperceptions, and transgressive truth claims, as is common in any liminal space.

We take our farewell to the eighth circle of INFERNO with more questions about Dante’s craft than answers. Here are some of the interpretive issues associated with the malebolge, the evil pouches of fraud. And some ways we see Dante become a more assured poet at each step of the journey.

An overview and review of the plot of the eighth circle of Dante’s INFERNO: the ten malebolge or “evil pouches” that make up the vast circle of fraud. What happens in each pit? What does Dante do? What does Virgil do? And how can we find coherence in this grand piece of hell’s real estate?

An overview and review of the tenth of the evil pouches (the “malebolge”) of fraud in Dante’s INFERNO. I reread the entire section from INFERNO, Canto XXIX, Line 1, through Canto XXXI, Line 6, in my English translation. Then I offer six additional points for discussion about this last pit of fraud.

At the bottom of fraud, Virgil rebukes the pilgrim Dante, then the poet Dante steps out to offer one of the most striking and modern similes in all of INFERNO, before Virgil forgives the pilgrim, but not the poet, although Virgil’s forgiveness is predicated on the poet’s explanation. A complicated passage that verges onto a modern notion of the self.

Dante the pilgrim falls silent at the bottom of the last of the evil pouches (the “malebolge”) of fraud as he (and we!) are treated to a street-brawl insult contest which may be a comment on the poetry of his own youth. But what sort of comment, positive or negative? Or maybe not a comment at all.

Dante the pilgrim has come to the last of the evil pouches (the “malebolge”) of fraud to find two figures who lie (and tell lies) at the start of the stories of two chosen people as well as the very beginnings of Western civilization itself: Potiphar’s wife and Sinon, the Greek who convinces the Trojans to open the gates for the wooden horse.

Down near the bottom of INFERNO and the center of the universe, Dante the pilgrim finds the counterfeiter Master Adam—and we find ourselves confronted with a representative of modern people: polite, snarky, envious, hostile (even violent), and deeply insecure.

Dante asks the remaining alchemist to identify the two rabid pig-souls who have shown up to create chaos in the tenth of the evil pouches (the “malebolge”) of fraud. Our pilgrim finds himself confronted with a classical figure (Myrrha from Ovid’s METAMORPHOSES) and Gianni Schicchi, a guy connected to Dante’s in-laws.

Thebes and Troy: two fallen cities. Two warnings for Dante about Florence. And the place where madness became a contagion—and where fraud finally became the sickness. Madness as metamorphosis, allusions as similes, classical lit as modern warnings: this is the height of Dante’s art in INFERNO.

In the tenth of the evil pouches (the “malebolge”) of INFERNO’s vast landscape of fraud, Capocchio the leper sits up to offer some juicy gossip about the fools of this world—and perhaps show Dante the pilgrim one of the ways you can hold onto your humanity, even in hell.

The first falsifier steps up to tell his tale—a doozy of a joke about his grifting, his mark’s stupidity, and the whims of damnation in Dante’s INFERNO. It may have been about the grift, but he’s damned for alchemy—which is itself a lot like the poetry Dante writes.

Dante and Virgil question the first two of many of the damned in the final evil pouch (or “malebolge”) of fraud, here in the eighth circle of INFERNO. They’re in a medieval hospital ward of contagion and the primary question is “how do you hold onto your humanity even here?”