Poets, The Biggest Fraudsters Of All: Inferno, Canto XX, Lines 1 - 24

Canto XX of INFERNO is one that many skip. it's just too hard or too discursive or too long-winded. But others spend careers on. After Canto I, Canto XX stirs some of the most in-depth commentary of any in INFERNO.

What gives? We should probably take our cue from our poet: we're about to enter the meta space of a canto about poetry, all among the fraudsters, with Dante and even Virgil out in front, leading the way.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we begin our exploration of Inferno's Canto XX, this deep pit of metapoetics and savage irony.

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

[01:49] My English translation of INFERNO, Canto XX, lines 1 - 24. If you'd like to read along, you can find these on my website, markscarbrough.com.

[04:16] The damned arrive at line 7 of the canto. They're the fortune tellers, the soothsayers. We don't know that except we have to know it to understand the emotional landscape of the lines. Which means we, too, have to be prognosticators.

[08:16] A discussion of contrapasso--that is, the punishment fits the crime. And my thesis that the notion of contrapasso develops over the course of writing INFERNO.

[13:39] You know what soothsayers are: They're poets. Like Dante, whose poem is one big future-telling event.

[15:02] The poet may tip his hat to us in the final lines of the passage: don't believe what I say; just focus on how I felt.

[18:55] The opening lines of Canto XX. So self-conscious, so awkward that some have wanted to strike them from the text.

[22:42] My overall thesis for this canto: It's about the problems with and craft of poetry, and the savage irony that metapoetics entail.