Walking With Dante24 Mar 2021

How To Be Human And How To Quit Being Human: INFERNO, Canto X, Lines 73 - 93

After out time with Cavalcante, that passage about human loss and suffering, we now return to Farinata, our Greco-Roman statue--who becomes less so over the course of the strange, twisty passage.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we explore the roots of Dante's art: What does it mean to be human?

Who loses their humanity in this passage? Not Farinata. Certainly not Cavalcante in the last passage. Instead, our pilgrim may be the one who still cannot overcome the cycles of shame and vendetta, who then loses his humanity at a moment when human loss seems most pressing.

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

[02:00] My English translation of INFERNO: Canto X, lines 73 - 93. If you'd like to see this passage, find a deeper study guide, or start a discussion about it with a comment on this episode, find it on the website, markscarbrough.com.

[04:24] A descent into the linguistic weeds, all about the term "magnanimo," used to describe Farinata and possibly a more difficult adjective that we might imagine.

[11:16] Can politics and art even talk to each other? Or do they always talk past each other?

[15:40] We're in a landscape of exiles: Virgil, Farinata, Cavalcante, his son, and even our pilgrim, Dante (as well as the poet in the shadows).

[23:43] The scope of Farinata's humanity. No, he will never become a humanist! But he does soften. There may be historical reasons for that. And structural reasons from the poem.

[27:44] How do you lose your humanity? And who is losing it in this passage?

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