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In this passage for the podcast WALKING WITH DANTE, we're still following Dante-the-pilgrim through Limbo. He's at a place where he sees four great shades coming toward him (and Virgil). They are Homer, Horace, Ovid, and Lucan. They welcome Virgil back and do something more shocking: admit Dante to their company.

Then it gets weirder still as they walk on to a beautiful castle, with green grass and fresh water--all in hell!

How can this be in hell? Is it the Elysian Fields? Maybe. But if so, the poet's put it in hell, sticking his thumb in Virgil's (poetic) eye.

Or is the poet carried away with his love of classical learning?

Stranger and stranger, this poem.

Here are the segments of this episode:

[02:11] My English translation of this passage from INFERNO: Canto IV, lines 85 - 114.

[05:07] Is this hell? Where are we? It seems kind of nice, especially after all those wasps and maggots among the neutrals.

[05:57] Homer, Ovid, Horace, and Lucan. Here's an exploration of their appearance and a bit about the thematics in the passage.

[10:06] Interpreting the four poets. Or a little bit about my neo-rationalist, Anglo-American interpretive stance v. a more traditional Italian reading of this passage.

[15:31] Virgil's smile and the pilgrim's welcome into the circle of the great poets. Although there is a problem. He's sixth. That's not a great number in medieval numerology.

BONUS QUESTION: Is the poet trying to show off his humility in some way?

[22:32] A castle, seven towers, a little brook. It seems allegorical. It seems like the Elysian Fields. It all seems so strange in hell. And then the corker: the corporeality problem, as our pilgrim passes over water as if walking on dry land. Sure, it's easy to explain how the shades do it. But the pilgrim? Dante's got himself a problem. How does a body walk through the afterlife?