My Master leads me by another road
out of that serenity to the roar

and trembling air of Hell I pass from light
into the kingdom of eternal night.

Notes

13 ff. death-pale: Virgil is most likely affected here by the return to his own place in Hell. “The pain of these below” then (line 19) would be the pain of his own group in Limbo (the Virtuous Pagans) rather than the total of Hell’s suffering.

31 ff. You do not question: A master touch of characterization. Virgil’s amour propre is a bit piqued at Dante’s lack of curiosity about the position in Hell of Virgil’s own kind. And it may possibly be, by allegorical extension, that Human Reason must urge the soul to question the place of reason. The allegorical point is conjectural, but such conjecture is certainly one of the effects inherent in the use of allegory; when well used, the central symbols of the allegory continue indefinitely to suggest new interpretations and shades of meaning.

53. a Mighty One: Christ. His name is never directly uttered in Hell.

53. descended here: The legend of the Harrowing of Hell is Apocryphal. It is based on I Peter iii, 19: “He went and preached unto the spirits in prison.” The legend is that Christ in the glory of His resurrection descended into Limbo and took with Him to Heaven the first human souls to be saved. The event would, accordingly, have occurred in 33 or 34 A.D. Virgil died in 19 B.C.

102. making me sixth in that high company: Merit and self-awareness of merit may well be a higher thing than modesty. An additional point Dante may well have had in mind, however, is the fact that he saw himself as one pledged to continue in his own times the classic tradition represented by these poets.

103-105. These lines amount to a stylistic note. It is good style (l’ tacere è bello where bello equals “good style”) to omit this discussion, since it would digress from the subject and, moreover, his point is already made. Every great narrator tends to tell his story from climax to climax. There are times on the other hand when Dante delights in digression. (See General Note to Canto XX.)

106. A GREAT CITADEL The most likely allegory is that the Citadel represents philosophy (that is, human reason without the light of God) surrounded by seven walls which represent the seven liberal arts, or the seven sciences, or the seven virtues. Note that Human Reason makes a light of its own, but that it is a light in darkness and forever separated from the glory of God’s light. The sweet brook flowing round them all has been interpreted in many ways. Clearly fundamental, however, is the fact that it divides those in the Citadel (those who wish to know) from those in the outer darkness.

109. as if it were firm ground: Since Dante still has his body, and since all others in Hell are incorporeal shades, there is a recurring narrative problem in the Inferno (and through the rest of the Commedia ): how does flesh act in contact with spirit? In the Purgatorio Dante attempts to embrace the spirit of Casella and his arms pass through him as if he were empty air. In the Third Circle, below (Canto VI, 34-36), Dante steps on some of the spirits lying in the slush and his foot passes right through them. (The original lines offer several possible readings of which I have preferred this one.) And at other times Virgil, also a spirit, picks Dante up and carries him bodily.

It is clear, too, that Dante means the spirits of Hell to be weightless. When Virgil steps into Phlegyas’ bark (Canto VIII) it does not settle into the water, but it does when Dante’s living body steps aboard. There is no narrative reason why Dante should not sink into the waters of this stream and Dante follows no fixed rule in dealing with such phenomena, often suiting the physical action to the allegorical need. Here, the moat probably symbolizes some requirement (The Will to Know) which he and the other poets meet without difficulty.

THE INHABITANTS OF THE CITADEL They fall into three main groups:

1.