Metaphors, Tautologies, And Pitch: Inferno, Canto XXI, Lines 1 - 21

WALKING WITH DANTE has been on a holiday hiatus. Now we're back at it, descending to Canto XXI of INFERNO, to the next malebolge, the fifth evil pouch among the sins of fraud.

The opening of Canto XXI is as self-conscious as most of these in the sub-circles of fraud. This time, however, the poet names his work (for the second and last time), turns super coy, and offers a lot of metaphoric blather that seems to bring the (comedic?) plot of a standstill.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we explore this wild and woolly opening bit about the first glimpses of the fifth pouch of fraud, complete with one of the ganglier similes in INFERNO.

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

[01:08] The passage itself in my English translation: Inferno, Canto XXI, lines 1 - 21. If you'd like to see this passage, you can find it on my website, markscarbrough.com.

[03:04] From bridge to bridge, not ridge to ridge. The circles of fraud are moving from metaphor to realism, from geology to architecture.

[06:15] Naming the poem again: COMEDY. That is, in contrast to Virgil's last statement about his own poem, a "high tragedy." You know, the one he corrected when he called himself untrustworthy in Canto XX.

[08:15] The early commentators were very uncomfortable with the title of Dante's poem. Here’s why? And hey, it's a discomfort we share!

[13:58] The opening lines of the canto imply a silence or a gap, something we readers can’t know. What’s going on?

[16:32] The fifth evil pouch is dark, unlike the fourth (apparently).

[18:04] Part one on the simile about Venetian ship-building. Is it unhinged? Maybe. Tautological? Definitely. A = A. Is that even a simile?

[22:16] Part two on the simile about Venetian ship-builing. The sin punished in this pouch is barratry (aka graft), but this simile is a proletarian idyll about a properly organized city.

[26:15] The simile finishes up at the place where the plot was when it started twelve lines ago. What’s more, it brings the plot to a dead halt. So much for the fireworks of poetics!