The Walls Of Dis, Virgil's Limits, and Our Poet's Folly: INFERNO, Canto VIII, Lines 64 - 96
Our pilgrim, Dante and his guide, Virgil, have made it across Styx, leaving behind Filippo Argenti and the wrathful/sullen. Our main characters have now come to the iron walls of Dis, the city of hell.These walls are more than that a geopolitical barrier. They're also a literary barrier. Aeneas got no farther than this in the afterlife. In other words, here's the farthest Virgil's imagination could go.Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we watch the poet come up to an important wall: the one Virgil couldn't (or didn't) pass. The poet must decide to go on. His folly is bearing in on him.To support…
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