INFERNO, Episode 124. Working Together To Make A Mess: Inferno, Canto XXI, Lines 46 - 63

The demon has thrown this sinner into the pitch, headed off to collect more in Lucca, and caused the whole horde of demons under the bridge to start their low-comedy, high-violence act.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we explore more of Canto XXI, more from the fifth evil pouch in the eighth circle of fraud, the longest and more complex part of INFERNO. We're among the sinners on the political take. We've got a proletarian idyll for a contrast and maybe even some Augustinian allegory in tow. It’s a lot for a crazy passage. But this is Dante, after all.

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

 [01:25] My English translation of the passage: INFERNO, Canto XXI, lines 46 - 63. If you'd like to read along, just scroll down this page.

[03:01] There's a lingering question left over from the last passage: Whatever happened to Minos and his tail?

[04:39] How do you make blasphemy funny? A look at the first nine lines of this passage.

[12:50] Chef's and their kitchen help: Dante's explanation for what the demons do to the damned in the pitch. It's 1) more food metaphor and 2) more proletarian idyll.

[14:52] A detour to Saint Augustine and a question of the allegory of boiling pitch.

[17:06] Virgil's confidence. Because he's passed by here before on his mission for Erichtho? Or because he and the pilgrim have faced this sort of thing already in front of the walls of Dis?

[21:36] A moment when we can step away from Virgil as symbol, Virgil as allegory, Virgil as literary device, and simply see Virgil as the human character Dante the poet is crafting.

And here’s my English translation of Inferno, Canto XXI, Lines 46 – 63

The guy went under, then turned over and resurfaced.

The devils who were hiding under the bridge

Hollered, “We ain’t got no place here for the Sacred Face!

You probably swim with different strokes in the Serchio!

That’s why, unless you’ve got a hankering for our grappling hooks,

You don’t want to let a bit of you protrude from that pitch!”

At that, they slashed him open with a hundred barbs,

Saying, “You’re going to need to do your dances all covered up,

And grab at stuff—if you can—in the dark.”

It’s the same way with chefs who make their sous-chefs

Use their skewers on a hunk of meat

To keep it down in the pot, rather than floating up on top.

My good master said to me, “So that it’ll seem as if

You’re not even here, squat down

Behind that outcropping to hide yourself from them.

“Hey, however offensive they get toward me,

Don’t get the jitters. I’ve got everything under control.

I’ve already been through a scuffle like this before.”