Naming Names Among The Grifters: Inferno, Canto XXII, Lines 76 - 93

Our nameless barrator has been ripped open--but he's still able to do what grifters do best: sell out his fellow grifters.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we look at a passage from the fifth of the malebolge, the evil pouches, that make up the eighth circle of fraud in INFERNO. We're among the political grifters--and this one, forked up by the demons, is a particularly oily fellow.

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

[01:33] My English translation of the passage: INFERNO, Canto XXII, lines 76 - 93. If you'd like to see this passage, you can find it on my website, markscarbrough.com.

[03:14] More about how to be a good grifter (stay anonymous!) and possibly the most horrifying line of INFERNO so far.

[06:00] Friar Gomita and the possible history of this figure our barrator names.

[09:21] Two things of interest in our grifter's speech: 1) he names a member of the clergy among what we might consider a secular sin and 2) behind this story lies Nino Visconti, a figure we'll meet in Purgatorio.

[14:41] This passage is full of inversions--and in fact, the whole of the fifth evil pouch is full of inversions.

[19:03] The second named barrator: Don Michael Zanke, a shadowy figure without a lot of real history behind him.

[21:51] This entire passage looks ahead to Canto XXXIII of INFERNO--which might offer us a clue about Dante's writerly technique.

[25:27] The wily fear of our nameless barrator.