A reading of INFERNO, Cantos 4 - 7, not a series of interpretive knots, classical allusions, or meta-poetical games. Rather, a reading for what it is: a story. Or the story of one person’s walk across hell—and eventually, his known universe. Join me, Mark Scarbrough, for my translation of INFERNO, Cantos 4 - 7, with nothing more than the text itself.

We’ve walked through INFERNO point by point. We’ve discussed so many angles. We’ve tried to untie so many knots. But we’ve missed something: the narrative through-line. As a conclusion to the first canticle of Dante’s masterpiece, COMEDY, let’s read through INFERNO. Here’s the first part: Cantos 1 - 3 in my English translation.

The end of INFERNO. In just a few lines, Dante and Virgil walk out of hell. But not without leaving us with some interpretive problems. What is this little stream they follow? And not without leaving us with the essence of Dante’s COMEDY, of “comedy” as a whole: the damned Virgil walks out from hell to see the stars.

At the end of INFERNO, Dante the poet lets Virgil remain Virgil. The old poet is the best guide. He offers some epic myth-making in the style of THE AENEID. And he alters the Christian account of the fall of Satan to accommodate Dante’s own vision of the ethical (not ontological) notion of evil.

More about up, down, and spin as Dante the pilgrim and Virgil pass the center of the earth and flip the globe upside-down. That turn makes all the left turns in hell right turns. And the universe spins to the right. So they’ve been headed in the direction of the universe all along. Which means that turn at Satan’s butt turns INFERNO into COMEDY.

Dante the pilgrim and Virgil pass the middle point of the universe—which is Satan’s anus. Or maybe his genitals. Does Satan need a digestive tract? Do angels need genitals? And while we’re at it, why is Satan the center of the universe? Because he’s the way out. Because he’s the axis on which the heavens turn. Because the way down has been the way up all along.

The last vision of hell: Satan’s mouths stuffed with the three worst sinners. Judas Iscariot, Brutus, and Cassius. Wait . . . what? Brutus and Cassius. Walk with me through the last moments in hell: a backward glance across Cocytus (the ninth circle) and a troubling passage that leaves us with lots of questions as well as a typical moment of Dantean bawdy humor, here at the bottom of everything.

Dante the pilgrim has the final vision of INFERNO: Satan, stuck in the ice of Cocytus. But perhaps it’s wise to step back and talk about this figure of Satan, both from Hebraic traditions and in medieval thought. It’s hard to see Satan without the Reformation and even modern horror movie depictions of him in our heads. But perhaps we should, to try to see Dante’s vision of this grandiose figure.

We’re getting closer to Satan with our pilgrim, Dante, and his guide, Virgil. Close enough that we can see Satan’s three faces. And their colors. And his size. All of which has become the cause of tons of scholarship. As well as a little heresy in the passage, one Dante will eventually eschew.

There are seven direct addresses to the reader in Dante’s INFERNO. What can these seven tell us about the sort of reader Dante imagines for his poem? What does Dante want from us? How does he see us through the scrim of his words? And what demands does Dante place on us?

We’ve walked with Dante and Virgil to the final revelation of INFERNO: Satan, stuck at the center of the earth, a mere edifice, pure structure, motion without movement, and the end of our journey down. We may have also come to the end of Dante’s infernal poetics. The poet must now find a new way to write as he dies to his old ways and comes alive to what’s ahead.

Brother Alberigo is the last sinner to speak in Dante’s INFERNO—and his speech is one of the last chances for Dante’s capacious imagination to open wide. We get zombies. We get theological problems. We get classical references. In other words, we get a final moment when Dante can sum up his work in INFERNO with one of the most unforgettable sequences in the canticle of pain.

Dante and Virgil continue on down to the third ring of Cocytus where 1) the text itself gets funky, 2) Virgil returns to the text to tell us he’s not necessary, and 3) the poet Dante may make a gaffe in his plot. Hey, it’s slippery out on the ice. Oh, and the last of the damned who speak in hell cries out, asking for a kindness from our travelers.

One final episode on Count Ugolino, one of the most troubling and appetizing (!) figures in Dante’s INFERNO. Ugolino as a master manipulator and a narcissist, found particularly in the ways he breaks his own narrative flow. And then questions of the ethics of the passage. Why is Archbishop Ruggieri in hell? How can Dante condemn all Pisans if sin is an individual’s choice? How can Dante control a passage so full of irony and ambivalence?

Count Ugolino may appear to give one of the more secular monologues in all of COMEDY. In fact, Dante has woven the monologue out of a tapestry of references to the New Testament. Ugolino is both a parody and an affirmation of the core of Jesus’ teaching—and a fitting figure to start our approach to Purgatory.

Count Ugolino is given the longest speech in Dante’s INFERNO. And he’s the last great sinner of hell, the last big monologue that has caused centuries of interpretive debate. In this episode of the podcast, I try to place Ugolino in the larger rubric of INFERNO. How does he echo other sinners we’ve met? How does he sum up much of the work of INFERNO? Why does Dante leave us with him as our last memory before the final revelation?

We come to the last great sinner of hell: Count Ugolino. Our first of several podcast episodes on him. What’s his backstory? Who was the “real” Count Ugolino? And what can we glean by a close-reading of his monologue, the last inset story of COMEDY?

Dante the pilgrim (with the silent Virgil) leads us across the ice sheet of Cocytus to the most disgusting scene in INFERNO: a moment of cannibalism and the final great sinner of hell. With a few textual problems in this passage, we really come to see one of the great roots of Dante’s art: polyphony.

Dante the pilgrim comes across one of the most infamous traitors of his day: Bocca degli Abati, frozen into the ice sheet of Antenora in the second sub-ring of the final circle of hell, the ice sheet Cocytus. But there’s more to this passage that meets the eye. Is the pilgrim a devil? And is the poet a success in INFERNO, Canto XXXII?

Dante and Virgil cross into Antenora, the second sub-ring of Cocytus, the ice sheet that makes up the ninth and last circle of hell. Here, they find those who have been treacherous to their own political parties or countries—perhaps in the same way that Dante the poet is being a traitor to his own literary party, good ol’ silent Virgil.