In a way, the reader would ideally make the journey of the poem and then return, like the narrator, to reread, reinterpret, and even retell the story. The relationship between the narrator and the pilgrim works to establish a method of comparative understanding of the nature of the poem for the reader.

Canto 1

Canto 1

In the middle of the journey of our life°

I found myself in a dark wood,

where the straight path was lost.

3

Oh, it is a hard thing to tell what it was, that wood was so savage and harsh and strong that my fear renews even at the thought of it!

6

It is so bitter, that death is scarcely worse; but to tell of the good that I discovered, I will speak of the other things that I found there.

9

I cannot tell clearly how I entered there, I was so full of sleep at that point

where I abandoned the true way.

12

But when I had come to the foot of a hill,º

there toward the end of that valley

which had pained my heart with fear,

15

I looked up and saw the shoulders of the heights dressed already with the rays of that planet°

that leads each one straight on every path.

18

Then my fear, which had endured in the lake of my heart, was quieted a little

during the night that I had passed with such fear.

21

I was like one with labored breath,

who struggles out of the surf onto the shore, who turns to the deadly water and gapes;

24

so my fleeing soul turned back to look again at the treacherous pass that never yet

let any person escape alive.

27

1

Dante, the character, is 35 years old at the time of the events of the poem. This is halfway through the biblical lifespan of 70 years (Psalms 90.10). The poem begins on Thursday evening, April 8, 1300, before Good Friday. The pilgrim represents his life, “I found myself ” and the life of all humans, “the journey of our life.”

13

The valley, hill and sun prefigure Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise.

17

The sun is seen as the brightest planet circling around the earth. See Glossary for Ptolemaic world view.

Inferno

When I had rested my exhausted body a little, I began to make my way along the deserted slope, keeping my firm foot always lower.º

30

And look, just at the beginning of the rise, there was a leopard,º light and so quick,

all covered with a mottled skin.

33

And it did not swerve from in front of my gaze, but so completely blocked my upward journey that I was turned back and spun around many times.

36

It was the time of the beginning of the morning, and the sun rose up with those stars

that were with him when divine love

39

first moved all those beautiful things;º

so that from the hour of the day and the sweet season there was reason for me to have hope 42

about that beast with the gaudy skin;

but not so much that fear did not show me

the sight of a lion that appeared before me.º

45

The lion stalked toward me with head high

and with such ravenous hunger

that it seemed as if the air was trembling.

48

And a she-wolf,º that seemed to be weighed down with hunger in its leanness and longing,

and she had made many people live in grief.

51

This beast put such a burden of fear

on me from the very sight of it

that I lost the hope of the heights.

54

And like one who is so eager to win,

when the time of his losses comes on him,

and his sudden despair drives him to tears; 57

30

The interpretative tradition has taken “firm foot” as indicating the left foot, associated with earthly desires. In this interpretation the left foot representing will proceeds more slowly than the right foot, which represents intellect.

32

The leopard is representative of either fraud or malice, depending on interpreter.

38-40 The medieval belief that the world was created at the beginning of spring, parallel in the calendar to the incarnation and crucifixion of Jesus. It is now Easter time in 1300, so that the pilgrim’s despair is countered by the hopefulness of spring and renewal.

45

The lion represents for most commentators either violence or pride.

49

The wolf is representative for most commentators of either incontinence or wrath.

GLOSSARY

Allegory

An allegory is a narrative that has a literal meaning but also carries hidden or symbolic levels of significance. In the first canto of the Comedy the three beasts that oppose the pilgrim’s journey are literal impediments, but each one symbolizes another meaning.

Medieval thinking is full of such symbolic representations, and Dante’s epic involves many allegorical moments and methods.

Aquinas

Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) was the great scholastic philosopher and theologian of the Middle Ages.