Dante the pilgrim and his guide, Virgil, are taking their first steps into hell in INFERNO, Canto III. Let's pause with these two at the gate of hell with its famous inscription ("Abandon hope!").

And let's note something strange: You enter hell through an act of reading. The words on the gate, yes. But also perhaps these words in the poet's text.

And if we read the words right, we can get a most unusual thing: a cheerful look from Virgil.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as I walk with Dante the pilgrim passage by passage across the known universe--or at least across INFERNO and into the larger DIVINE COMEDY.

Here are the segments of this episode:

[01:11] The passage for this episode in my English translation: INFERNO, Canto III, lines 1 - 21. If you want to see my translation, head out to my website, markscarbrough.com and look for the subhead "walking with Dante."

[02:23] The words over the gate, perhaps one of the most famous passage all of COMEDY. But two things: 1) the gate speaks autobiographically (which seems to be the crux of Dante-the-poet's art, truth as "through me") and 2) we're about to enter a civil vision of the afterlife.

[08:27] A bit about justice and the definitely non-Thomistic (and non-Aristotelian) words written over the gate. Justice moved God? How is that possible?

BONUS: Or is the gate engaged in a bit of self-aggrandizement? Should we take the words of the gate of hell ("through me") as straightforward? Is this a hellish take on judgment? Or perhaps a misunderstanding of God's nature by hell itself?

[12:52] Dante-the-pilgrim is a reader! He has to enter hell through an act of reading--reading the words over the gate, yes; but also reading Virgil's AENEID (which so colors this canto and so much of the early parts of INFERNO). Dante-the-pilgrim is the representative reader, maybe the reader that Dante-the-poet really wants for his own work. And Virgil is the perfect teacher, who recasts the read words into his pupil's personal space, thereby perhaps giving us a clue about how Dante-the-poet wants his poem read.