Charon, The Ferryman Of The Damned: Inferno, Canto III, Lines 70 - 108

On this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE, we start the second major scene in Canto III of INFERNO: Charon, his boat, Acheronte (the river he crosses), and the souls waiting to be ferried into deep hell.

But first, a spat. Between Virgil and our pilgrim. Something's amiss. It's always amiss when you're walking across the universe with your mentor. When the universe is a hierarchy, those on top have to maintain their position. And those below have to try to climb up over them to get heard. As with the poet, so with the pilgrim.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we hear about this first spat. Where else are you going to have a spat, if not on the shores of hell?

Here are the segments of this episode:

[01:16] My English translation of the passage from INFERNO: Canto III, Lines 70 - 108.

[03:31] Where are we? We're at plot. And that's a little more surprising than first blush. We'd almost lost the story. But Canto III brings it roaring back.

[7:00] The opening of the passage: the spat between the pilgrim and his guide. Why is Virgil irritated at his pupil? I'll give you three possible interpretations.

[11:23] Why do I insist on calling the river by its name in the medieval Florentine, "Acheronte"?

[12:44] The arrival of Charon and his boat. Who is Charon? How'd he stop out of classical mythology into this most Christian poem? And what does he "mean" or represent?

[19:23] Comments on the cinematographic nature of this passage: its lurid, visualized details and fully engaged plotting. And then the theological question, too. Why don't the damned just run away when this scary demon presents himself?