We've come to the back of INFERNO, Canto XVIII, to the two flatterers who live down in the pouch filled with the muck from human privies.

Just as a warning: This passage is crude and crass. The language is vulgar, maybe even NSFW. Be careful.

Dante, our pilgrim, and his guide, Virgil, have come to the top of the second bridge over the second of the "malebolge" (the "evil pouches") that make up the eighth circle of fraud. We've already seen that the place is disgusting. Now we're about to see that the sinners are even more so.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we slow-walk through Dante's masterpiece, COMEDY. (And not "The Divine Comedy," particularly in this passage, which isn't very divine). Here are the segments of this episode of Walking With Dante:

[01:24] My English translation of Inferno, Canto XVIII, lines 115 - 134. If you'd like to read along, you can find this passage on my website, markscarbrough.com, under the header about the blog for WALKING WITH DANTE.

[03:21] Dante and Alessio in the pouch of the flatterers: thoughts on the pilgrim's becoming a better observer just as we are becoming better readers, and on the question of whether Alessio Interminei's historical obscurity is intentional in the passage.

[10:51] Virgil and Thais: thoughts on the curious lack of women in INFERNO.

[18:00] Dante the poet garbles the poetic reference to Thais in this passage. Is doing so intentional? Or is this a matter that our "divine" poet is actually fallible like the rest of us?

[22:48] Canto XVIII is architectural, in the same way that all of the eighth circle of hell is architectural. I'll admit: this I find intentional. Here's a bit on why.