Damning Lust, Then Confusing It With Love: INFERNO, Canto V, Lines 52 - 87

The pilgrim, Dante, has just asked his guide who is tossed in lust's whirlwind.

Virgil answers with a list of the "greats" out on the wind: figures from antiquity, the Trojan War, and even medieval romance.

In so doing, Virgil redefines lust into something socially disruptive.

Then both he and the pilgrim (plus maybe our poet in the background) make a crucial mistake: They confuse love and lust.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we stop to gawk at the great figures of lust in hell.

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

[01:43] My English translation of INFERNO, Canto V, lines 52 - 87. If you'd like to see my translation, find a deeper study guide, or continue the conversation with me by dropping a comment about this episode, go to my website, markscarbrough.com.

[06:24] The structure of Virgil's catalogue of historical figures on the wind.

[07:10] Picking out those on the wind and the "novelle" about them: four women, three men; three involved with incest, four with civic unrest. Plus, the shocking movement from an orthodox definition of lust to the invocation of love, the greatest Christian virtue.

[27:41] The pilgrim's request: Can I talk to the two who are so light on the wind?

[29:48] Irony invades the passage. It tints its rhetorical structure and invades the simile: doves, a traditional symbol for the third person of the Trinity.