Climbing Away From The Turbulence In The Lake Of The Heart: INFERNO, Canto I, Lines 10 - 27

Our pilgrim, Dante, comes awake in a dark wood. Now what? He has to walk out. But to where? And how?

This fourth episode of WALKING WITH DANTE is actually the second passage we cover from INFERNO. Intriguingly, this is one of the few moments in the poem in which our pilgrim, Dante, is all by himself.

The first steps of a journey are rarely in the right direction. Particularly when you don't have a map.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we start the first steps of the journey and discover some of the lush poetry that has made COMEDY endure for over seven hundred years.

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

[01:13] My English translation of this passage: INFERNO, Canto 1, Lines 10 - 27. To find my translation, to see a larger study guide for this episode, or to drop a comment for you and me to go on talking, go to my website and look for the episodes of INFERNO, Cantos I - IV: markscarbrough.com.

[02:55] The balance between the two central characters of the COMEDY: the poet who is writing the work and the pilgrim who is walking the journey.

[06:46] Is this a dream poem?

[08:52] The hill just ahead--for the pilgrim and for us.

[11:12] The lake of the heart.

[13:36] The poem's first simile: shipwreck.

[16:13] More about what hill could mean.

[19:40] Rereading the opening of the poem: INFERNO, Canto I, lines 1 - 27.