We have spent a long time with the thieves in the seventh of the malebolge or the evil pouches of fraud's eighth circle of hell. It's time for a retrospective!

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as I bring more questions than answers to this most curious pit of hell. What's going on with all these metamorphoses? Where's our pilgrim in all this? And our poet? And what's truth, what's made up, and what's the difference?

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

[02:41] The entire passage in my English translation of the seventh of the fraud's malebolge in INFERNO: Canto XXIV, line 61 through Canto XXVI, line 12.

[16:46] A confession: maybe no interpretation of this pouch can be satisfying.

[18:00] The style here is prolix, almost wordy, not concise as the early cantos of INFERNO.

[19:49] The pilgrim functions as not much more than an observer in this evil pouch.

[21:26] The passage moves from inflicted sorrow to internalized sorrow.

[22:07] The metaphor of burning paper involves white and black.

[23:01] Cacus is the dividing mechanism in the passage. Is that important?

[24:43] The passage moves from an inchoate cry to a secure prophetic cry.

[25:19] The poet is always present in this pouch.

[26:12] The poet's confession deflates his earlier bravado.

[27:25] Throughout this evil pouch, there's a loss of self--even of the poet's.

[28:30] The final metamorphosis is putting real people into your imagined landscape.