From the dark wood to Rome: Introduction to Inferno 1 and 2

The “Divine Comedy” (or “Comedìa” as the title is referred within the text itself), is the first epic poem written in an Italian vernacular between 1307 and 1321. The author was the exile Florentine poet Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), and his poem is at the foundation of the Italian literary tradition and of the Italian language. In 100 cantos and 14.223 terza rima hendecasyllable verses, Dante features himself as pilgrim on his way from the dark wood of sin to Heaven and salvation, in a providential and moral journey through the three realms of Christian eschatology, Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, set in the holy week of the year 1300 and presented as true. The three realms have a textual correspondence in the three canticles in which the poem is divided: Inferno (Hell) divided in 34 cantos, Purgatorio and Paradiso each divided in 33 cantos.

Midway in the journey of our life

I came to myself in a dark wood,

for the straight way was lost.

The first of 100 cantos, Inferno 1 functions as a proem to the whole poem and it begins in medias res (in the midst of things) with Dante- the pilgrim in a dark wood- having lost the straight path halfway through ‘our’ life. Besides and before being identified with his own historical persona, the main character of the Commedia is Everyman, his condition is that of any Christian who might find themselves lost in sin. The following verses immediately reveal another Dante: the poet who is writing the poem and for whom remembering the experience and putting it in words is hard and bitter. Dante-pilgrim sees a hill illuminated by the sun that with its light and as a powerful symbol for God in Medieval literary tradition, ‘leads men straight.’ The pilgrim starts ascending the hill but three beasts, a leopard, a lion and a she-wolf, who probably symbolize three of the most vicious sins, lust, pride, and avarice, push him back downhill. The spirit of the Latin poet Virgil suddenly appears to the pilgrim. He introduces himself as the author of the “Aeneid,” the poem that celebrates the Trojan hero Aeneas who visited the afterlife and from whose lineage the founder of Rome had descended. Virgil offers himself as a guide to Dante explaining how, in order to be saved from the dark wood, Dante will have to go with him through Hell and Purgatory. If Dante then wants to go further, Virgil will leave him in the care of a woman who will lead him through the last part of the journey.

The second canto opens at dusk with Dante- the pilgrim about to set out on his journey and Dante the poet invoking the Muses and his own imagination and memory while starting writing about it. Dante-pilgrim has doubts: He is not Aeneas destined to found Rome, the Holy Sea of Peter; he is not St Paul who ascended to the third Heaven and whose mission was the conversion of the gentiles. Who authorizes him to start on this journey that seen from the point of view of a frail man sounds like madness? Virgil thus recounts to Dante how a woman, Beatrice, who in life had been Dante’s ideal love and for whom he had become a poet, had descended from Heaven and summoned Virgil so that he would rescue Dante from the beasts and sin. Beatrice had been sent by Lucy and Lucy by the Virgin Mary Herself. Reassured upon learning that his journey is authorized by the three blessed ladies, Dante enthusiastically accepts Virgil’s guidance and they enter ‘on the deep and savage way.’

2 minutes