We’re recapping the Inferno. Read along! This week: the final canto.
My relationship with Dante can be traced back to a Saturday morning in 1994. My dad and I were standing in the rain on Sixty-Sixth and Broadway, and I suspected he was taking me to…
We’re recapping the Inferno. Read along! This week: a Sophie’s Choice in medieval Pisa. Here we meet the last great sinner of the Inferno: Count Ugolino. Like the others, he’s a historical figure remembered today chiefly for his appearance in Dant…
We’re recapping the Inferno. Read along! This week: breaking news from the thirty-second canto. INFERNO—After traveling nonstop for many hours through an array of chthonic geological obstacles, local political activist Dante Alighieri has found th…
We’re recapping the Inferno. Read along! This week: the thirty-first canto as explained by a breathless contemporary TV critic. By now it is clear that this season’s sleeper star is the breakout show-runner, Dante Alighieri. His show The Inferno, an…
We’re recapping the Inferno. Read along! This week: flesh-eating, incest, the lute-man, and more! Dante has shown that almost every canto in the Inferno obeys a certain logic. First, Dante and Virgil enter a new circle or ditch; Dante notices a smal…
We’re recapping the Inferno. Read along! This week: The price you pay for turning stuff into gold. Having read the incandescent poetry of cantos 26-28, it’s difficult not to feel as though Dante really phoned it in with canto 29. In fact, canto 2…
We’re recapping the Inferno. Read along! This week: Mohammed torn asunder. Canto 28 opens with a very self-conscious address by Dante. He tells the reader that even if his writing weren’t constrained by the dictates of meter and form, he still wo…
We’re recapping the Inferno. Read along! This week: the price of wheeling and dealing with the Pope. In Canto 27, just as Ulysses’s incandescent spirit departs, another burning sinner approaches Dante. This time, because the spirit is Italian, D…
We’re recapping the Inferno. Read along! This week: tales of brave Ulysses. Wrapped in a shroud of fire, sputtering words from the tip of the flickering flame—this is how Ulysses appears to us in canto 26. As Dante approaches the eighth pouch of…
We’re recapping the Inferno. Read along! This week: Virgil shuts up and men become reptiles.
Canto 25 is known for having the least dialogue of any canto in the Inferno. It seems like a minor feat, but when you remember how many questions Dante like…
We’re recapping the Inferno. Read along! This week: a swarm of snakes and a sinner with a sense of privacy. Let’s begin by addressing the fact that these similes are getting out of hand. In the early parts of his poem, Dante’s similes were ofte…
We’re recapping the Inferno. Read along! This week: the hypocrites and their leaden robes. Canto 23 opens like the thematic climax of a slasher flick. Virgil and Dante—picture a cinematic hero and his love interest—have taken the opportunity to …
This winter, we’re recapping the Inferno. Read along! This week: demons horse around in canto 22.The opening lines of canto 22 have a two-sided brilliance to them. First, there’s the way Dante—who is, along with Virgil, now in the company of demo…
This winter, we’re recapping the Inferno. Read along! This week: how to write a C- five-paragraph essay on canto 21.As Dante enters the next ditch, he addresses his reader, saying he and Virgil have encountered things about which his “Comedy does n…
This winter, we’re recapping the Inferno. Read along! This week: Virgil and Dante go True Detective.Dante: I’ve never seen anything like it. The moment we entered the domain of the diviners, I knew right away something was very wrong. Some sick bas…
This winter, we’re recapping the Inferno. Read along! This week: an internal memo from the Vatican to the Archdiocese of Florence after the release of Canto XIX. By now, you have seen excerpts from last night’s episode of Mr. Alighieri’s The In…
Canto 18 is perhaps the unsung workhorse of the Inferno—at only 136 lines, it is filled to the brim with political commentary, mythology, personal attacks, and feces. There’s a distinct energy in the way this canto is written; even the obligatory…
This winter, we’re recapping the Inferno. Read along!A transcript from the Dante’s Inferno writers’ room. Executive Producer: Did everyone get the canto 17 draft Dante sent around? Writer One: Oh, where do I even start? It’s pretentious, it…
This week, we pause our winter-long recap of the Inferno (read along!) to quiz you on all that we’ve learned thus far. This is an open-book exam; all grades are final. Good luck!
Part I: Multiple Choice
1. Dante is
(a) The poet’s first name
(b) The p…
This winter, we’re recapping the Inferno. Read along! At this point in The Inferno, as Dante continues to test, stretch, and deplete Virgil’s patience, let us imagine for a moment what Virgil might say given the opportunity to write a performance …
This winter, we’re recapping the Inferno. Read along! As Dante continues to descend through hell, guided by Virgil, I too read with a guide of my own—Robert Hollander, whose annotated edition of the Inferno I’ve been using to write about Dante e…
This winter, we’re recapping the Inferno. Read along! Dear Dante, I’ve received your manuscript for Canto 14 of the Inferno, and I have quite a few notes. The language and poetry of this passage is absolutely magical; a few passages in particular…
This winter, we’re recapping the Inferno. Read along! Once again we find ourselves lost in a dark wood. Dante notes that in this forest there is no actual greenery. (This is hell, after all. Where does he think he is, the New York Botanical Garden?)…
This winter, we’re recapping the Inferno. Read along! To whom it may concern: For the last several months my child has been watching the program The Inferno. I’ve had concerns about the moral integrity of this show since the beginning, but a rece…
As Dante and Virgil make their way through the City of Dis (and see the tomb of yet another pope), Dante has a moment very much like the one where you open the bathroom door at work and are assaulted by the fumes of a previous occupant’s abominatio…
This fall, we’re recapping the Inferno. Read along! There is a circle in hell reserved for the people who stop reading Dante and never make it to canto 10. If there’s ever been any question as to whether the Inferno is really a great work of art, t…
This fall, we’re recapping the Inferno. Read along! A coarse, heavy rain pattered against the side of my cap, echoing like the sound of a rhythmic hailstorm pelting the skulls of sinners. The fumes from a black bog forming around the storm drain, …
This fall, we’re recapping the Inferno. Read along! Canto 8 is perhaps the most exciting we have encountered so far. The story alone is a harrowing prelude to a great adventure: it’s like the first few minutes of a Bond movie, right before the th…
This fall, we’re recapping the Inferno. Read along! Canto 7 opens with Plutus, the god of wealth, babbling unintelligibly at Dante and Virgil. Pape Satàn, pape Satàn, aleppe!, he shouts, a phrase that has left readers and scholars baffled ever sin…
This fall, we’re recapping the Inferno. Read along As we find ourselves in the midst of Nielsen sweeps month, it seems a good time to consider the facto that can ensure the longevity of certain shows. Yes, critical acclaim is great, but in the end, …
With multiple translations come disagreements—different scholarly notes, interpretations, and even titles. But often what allows a translation itself to become a great work of literature can be determined by something as subtle as the phrasing of a…
Full disclosure: canto 4, despite the ominous nature of canto 3’s ending and the fact that 4 is meant to open in hell, is not that scary. There is a distinct shortage of zombie/ghost-chase/door-gag montage scenes in this segment, and almost no haun…
I am writing this from the lobby of the Ace Hotel in New York; as I ascend from the basement with Dante under my arm, I see the following text printed on the stairs: EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE ALRIGHT. This inscription offers an appropriate contrast t…
This fall, we’re recapping the Inferno. Read along! It’s called a remix. That’s how this segment begins. It’s a living pastiche, a breathing exercise in allusion and homage. Every scholar seems to agree that the opening lines of this canto are…
This fall, we’re recapping the Inferno. Read along! Really, this is how you want to begin? With a trope? And do you really think that we’ll let you get away with it because you decided to double down, fold it over on itself, and begin not only i…
Something is gnawing at the nape of your skull: on the one hand, your favorite fall shows are coming back. But you just read an article about synaptic pruning, the process by which your brain eliminates neurons that don’t get any exercise. And wh…
The first volume of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time: Swann’s Way was published almost exactly a hundred years ago. Its opening lines make one thing inescapably apparent: Proust’s style is inimitable; there is much more to it than long …
Following Romney’s strong performance at the first presidential debate, we found ourselves wondering why the candidate did not deliver a more stirring speech to the Republican National Convention. The logical next step was to ask: what would hap…