INFERNO, Episode 157. Poetic Theory In The Crack Between Two Evil Pouches: Inferno, Canto XXVI, Lines 13 - 24

Dante and his guide, Virgil, leave the seventh of the evil pouches (the malebolge) of fraud by means of a rocky scramble. Then the poet stops and drops into a short discussion of poetic theory. He's coming to understand how he has to write his own masterwork, COMEDY.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, for this short passage from INFERNO, sandwiched between two tour-de-force performances in the poem.

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

[01:52] My English translation of the passage: Inferno, Canto XXVI, lines 13 - 24. If you'd like to read along or drop a comment about this episode or passage, just scroll down this page.

[03:11] The pilgrim has to climb the stairs up from the seventh pouch, which anticipates the greater climb ahead on Mount Purgatory.

[06:20] The pilgrim and his guide are strolling along and scrambling, too. Is that disconnect an allegory for the passage ahead?

[08:39] Dante the poet always comes back to geography as the "ground" of his story.

[11:38] Dante's first notion of his poetics: pulling the reins on talent so it doesn't run in front of virtue.

[15:17] Dante's second notion of his poetics: human suffering disciplines talent.

[18:15] Is Dante's discussion of his poetics anticipating Ulysses just ahead of us? Or Mount Purgatory, far ahead of us?

And here’s my English translation of Inferno, Canto XXVI, Lines 13 – 24

We left there. Along those stairs

That had made the rocky outcrop for our first climb,

My guide hoisted himself up and pulled me after him.

So we strolled along on our solitary way

Among the slag and the rocks along the ridge.

Our feet couldn’t make their way without our hands.

I was sad back then, and I’m sad again now,

When I turn my mind to what I saw there.

For that reason, I’ll pull the reins on my talent more so than usually

So that it won’t run where virtue doesn’t lead it,

So that if some good star or something even better

Has given me so much good, I won’t dispossess myself of it.