Our pilgrim, Dante and his guide, Virgil, have made it across Styx, leaving behind Filippo Argenti and the wrathful/sullen. Our main characters have now come to the iron walls of Dis, the city of hell.

These walls are more than that a geopolitical barrier. They're also a literary barrier. Aeneas got no farther than this in the afterlife. In other words, here's the farthest Virgil's imagination could go.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we watch the poet come up to an important wall: the one Virgil couldn't (or didn't) pass. The poet must decide to go on. His folly is bearing in on him.

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Here are the segments of this episode:

[01:23] My English translation of INFERNO: Canto VIII, lines 64 - 96. If you'd like to read along or continue the conversation with me, or even to find a deeper study guide for this episode, please find its entry on my website, markscarbrough.com.

[04:00] One way to think about hell: a two-part structure of the moments outside of Dis and the moments inside this city. The minarets of Dis are the poet's one last brushstroke on a Virgilian landscape painting. From here on, we're leaving the AENEID behind.

[13:21] Our first Christian demons! It can't be a mistake that we encounter them here, on the walls of Dis, the farthest point Aeneas (and maybe the poet Virgil) reached.

[14:55] Here's Dante's folly: He's beyond his mentor (or poetic father), Virgil. This may be a writer's insecurity writ large.

[19:23] The first direct address to the reader. There will be seven in each of the three parts (or canticles) of the work. That the first occurs here can't be a mistake. This is the moment in which the poet's folly is beginning to bear in on him.