When Hell Gets So Bad You Despair Of Your Own Craft: Inferno, Canto XXXII, Lines 1 - 15

We've come to the ninth circle of hell. But not quite yet. Dante opens Inferno, Canto XXXII with a metapoetic moment, a passage in which he talks about the limits of the very form he's using to craft these verses.He offers up his second invocation of the poem and finds himself at a place of despair as an artist--the very same emotional landscape that makes up the last circle of hell.Here are the segments for this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE:[01:17] My English translation of INFERNO, Canto XXXII, Lines 1 - 15. You can find this translation on my website, read along, or even drop a comment about this episode at markscarbrough.com.[03:12] We enter Canto XXXII with Dante the poet, not the pilgrim--and come into the one canto in all of INFERNO in which Virgil doesn't say a word. Why? Here are some possible reasons for Virgil's silence.[07:19] We begin, not with the limits of rhyme, but with the limits of poetry itself, perhaps the very form Dante has created. Those limits bring the poet to despair--which is precisely the emotional landscape of the last circle of hell.[14:40] We have come to the very center of the Ptolemaic universe, which includes the depths of sin and baby talk.[18:58] The center of the universe also looks a lot like Thebes, the ultimate city of ruin.[20:51] At the start of the ninth circle of hell, Dante offers his second invocation of COMEDY to aid him in building this final fortress of hell.[25:02] Dante invokes a passage from the Gospel of St. Matthew: At the last judgment, the Son of Man will divide the sheep from the goats. Get ready for the goats.[29:41] The poet's frustrations will get worked out through the pilgrim's actions in Inferno, Canto XXXII.[31:34] Brunetto Latini claimed that rhetoric makes civilization possible. Here we are among the destroyers of civilization. And of rhetoric, too?