1. In the middle of the journey of our life: Later passages (e.g., 21.112–14) place the action of the poem in April 1300; if, as is probable, Dante was born in May 1265, he would be thirty-five in 1300, midway in the normative biblical lifespan, “threescore years and ten” (Psalm 90.10), mentioned by Dante in Convivio 4.23 (cf. Is. 38.10: “In the midst of my days I shall go to the gates of Hell”). The line suggests, with the plural possessive “our,” that the pilgrim is a representative human being, an Everyman. Dante omits or postpones the traditional “topics of exordium,” such as announcement of subject, dedication, and invocation of the muse; the abruptness of this beginning is highly unconventional in medieval as well as classical narrative.
2. I came to myself: The traditional translation of mi ritrovai is “I found myself.” In our view, the prefix ri-, rather than denoting repetition here, serves to intensify the inward nature of the event: Dante is describing a moral awakening. We believe there is also, both here and in line 11, a (very understated) reference to the literary genre of dream-vision, in which the dream regularly begins with an awakening (early illustrations often show a “sleeping” poet-as-author at the beginning); this question is more fully discussed in the note on Par. 32.139 (see the note to 2.8).
2. a dark wood: The “wood” of error and sin (cf. Convivio 4.24.12); there may be a reference to the “ancient forest, deep dwelling of beasts” near the mouth of Hades in Aen. 6.179. There is probably a reference to the Platonic idea of matter (silva in the Latin translation of the Timaeus) and also to the forest of Arthurian romance. Dante is perhaps drawing on the beginning of his teacher Brunetto Latini’s allegorical poem the Tesoretto, in which the narrator loses his way in a wondrous forest, where the goddess Nature appears to instruct him.
3. the straight way: The course of the just man, leading to God (see Psalm 23.3, Prov. 2.13–14, 2 Peter 2.15). If che is taken as che, the so-called modal conjunction (the orthography of Dante’s time did not distinguish them), the line could mean “where the straight way was lost.”
4–7. Ah, how hard … death is little more [bitter]: Note the characteristic stress on an identity between the writing of the poem and the experience it relates: though in terms of the fiction the narrator has seen God, he is still subject to all the terrors of the journey as he narrates them.
8. to treat of the good that I found there: Trattar [to treat systematically] is a semi-technical term, like good; this is an oblique announcement of the subject of the poem, for the “good” he found there would seem to be the undertaking of the journey (cf. 2.126).
11. so full of sleep: The sleep of sin and moral oblivion (as in Romans 13.11–14), again, we believe, with implicit reference to dream-vision (see the note to line 2).
13. a hill: Like the sea and the dark wood, the hill, later called a mountain, is part of a traditional symbolic landscape we intuitively understand as representing the position of human beings between the depths and the heights (Dante may well have in mind the famous instance in the Old French Queste del saint Graal, pp. 91–92). For the “Lord’s holy mountain,” see Psalms 24.3, 43.3, 121.1 and Is. 2.2–5.
17–18. the planet that leads us straight: The expression emphasizes the role of the sun as revealer of knowledge and wisdom. In Convivio 3.12, Dante discusses the sun as the chief visible analogue of God. The sun is a “planet” (wanderer) like the six others, moving against the background of the fixed stars.
20. lake of my heart: Medieval physiology thought of the heart not as a pump, but as a reservoir of blood and pneuma (“spirit”): fear would rush them back to the “lake,” leaving the limbs pale and weak. Compare Vita nuova 2.4 and the canzone “Così nel mio parlar voglio esser aspro,” lines 45–47 (translated in Durling and Martinez 1990, pp. 286–90).
21. anguish: Dante’s word is pieta, a form of pietà, which includes the meanings “pity,” “pitiable suffering,” even “piety.”
22. like one with laboring breath: The first formal simile: the pilgrim has metaphorically escaped shipwreck (“slope” at line 29 can also mean “shore”), as Aeneas does literally at the beginning of the Aeneid. Hollander (1969) explores an elaborate system of parallels with the opening of the Aeneid in the first cantos of the Inferno.
27. the pass that has never yet left anyone alive: Probably damnation itself (see Prov. 12.28).
28. my weary body: The presence of the pilgrim’s body, of which this is the first mention, will be insisted on throughout Inferno and Purgatorio.
30. my halted foot was always the lower: Freccero (1959) has given the best explanation of this famous crux. In the act of walking, one foot must be fixed to support the body while the other moves; according to Aristotle and others, we naturally begin to walk by lifting the right foot, so that the left can be referred to as the naturally fixed or halted foot. Thus the pilgrim’s left foot is dragging behind his right one, is always “the lower.”
The soul was said to walk (i.e., to move toward its objects) on the two “feet” of its two chief faculties, intellect and will (desire); the left foot of the soul (will, for the heart is on the left side) drags behind the right foot (intellect) because of the laming wound in man’s nature inflicted by Adam’s Fall: intellect is able to see the goal clearly, but will moves toward it only haltingly.
32. a leopard: Commentators do not agree on the significance of this and the other beasts—lion and she-wolf—that drive back the pilgrim, which Dante’s Italian ties together with alliteration (lonza, leone, lupa). Various possibilities have been suggested; the most likely correlates them with the triple division of Hell into sins of disordered appetite (she-wolf), violence (lion), and fraud (leopard); other identifications, such as the leopard with lust and the she-wolf with fraud, though traditional, seem arbitrary. The poem does seem to call out for labels here, but it is important to see that at this point it is withholding definitive clues: the pilgrim may be as mystified as the reader, and only later experience will explain the beasts.
37–43. The time was … the sweet season: This second astronomical reference identifies the beginning of the action as related to the spring equinox (March 21 by convention, March 14 in fact, in Dante’s time); medieval tradition held that at the moment of creation the sun was at the first point of Aries. Other evidence in the poem suggests the date of April 8, 1300.
44–48. but not so . .. tremble at him: Note the repeated emphasis on Dante’s fear. The dreamlike character of the scene raises the question to what extent the beasts are projections of internal dangers.
49–54. And a she-wolf… of reaching the heights: Why the pilgrim should be most afraid of the she-wolf is not explained (cf. line 97, with note).
55. gladly acquires: The economic simile (first of many) targets a society, the Florence of Dante’s youth and young adulthood, only recently become wealthy and acquisitive.
60. the sun is silent: That is, where knowledge is darkened and hope is gone. The sun is traditionally associated with speech (e.g., Psalm 18.2–3).
62–63. before my eyes … seemed hoarse: Virgil is now introduced, to become Dante’s guide. The elaborately contorted phrasing, which the translation renders literally, is striking in two respects. First, the pluperfect “had been offered” suggests that in some sense Virgil has been there for some time; second, the passive suggests that Dante must see Virgil before Virgil can speak to him. These features are particularly appropriate if the figure of Virgil is taken to refer to the codex of the historical Vergil’s works (for our spellings, see below), where his voice does exist for the eye; they are most probably to be connected with an allegorical meaning: a reading of Vergil’s works, especially o{ the Aeneid, would seem to have played a prominent role in the spiritual crisis of 1300 (cf. Leo 1951). Thus the conventional allegoresis of Dante’s Virgil as representing “human reason,” while at times undeniably valid, is much too narrow. The figure of Virgil in the poem should be taken to refer to the soul of the historical Vergil, expressed in his voice—his poetry—but in possession of added knowledge because he is dead, though still subject to some of his old limitations. Virgil’s hoarseness has been variously explained (the Italian allows “dim” or “weak” as well as “hoarse”): his Latin is no longer understood; his works have been disregarded (whether by Dante or others); or he is a shade like those of the Vergilian underworld.
Modern scholarship has established that Vergilius is the correct spelling of Vergil’s name; Dante follows the traditional medieval spelling in writing Virgilio. We shall maintain the distinction, using Vergil to refer to the historical Vergil, and Virgil to refer to the character in Dante’s poem.
65. Miserere [have mercy]: The Latin here derives most immediately from the Psalms (especially Psalm 51 [Vulgate 50], liturgically the most important penitential psalm).
67. Not a man: Because dead, a disembodied soul. In Dante’s Christian Aristotelian view, a human being is the union of body and soul (see the note to 6.109–111).
70. born sub Iulio: Publius Vergilius Maro was born in 70 B.C. at Andes, near Mantua, then in Cisalpine Gaul; he died at Brundusium in 19 B.C., leaving the Aeneid, on which he had spent eleven years, incomplete. At the order of Augustus, Vergil’s literary executors disregarded the poet’s wish that it be burned. Vergil’s other principal works are his pastoral Eclogues or Bucolics, which strongly influenced Dante, and his versified treatise on agriculture and husbandry, the Georgia, which has left fewer apparent traces in Dante’s work. Vergil was born “under Julius,” when Julius Caesar, born about 100B.C, had barely qualified for the Senate; he was only twenty-six when Caesar was assassinated in 44 B.C. Although Caesar was not in power at Vergil’s birth, Dante wishes to associate the poet of the Roman empire with the figure that he considered its founder (see the note to 2.20–24).
72. false and lying gods: Christian opinion, based on Psalm 96.5 [Vulgate 95], and established since Augustine, was that the gods of the pagan world (Jove, Juno, Mars, etc.) were demons that had led humanity astray through the oracles, which were silenced at Christ’s birth (see City of God 2.2, 2.10); certain individuals, such as Plato and Aristotle, and often Vergil, were thought to have been essentially monotheists though they used polytheistic terminology. Dante frequently uses the names Jove and Apollo to refer to the Christian God (e.g., 31.92, Par. 1.13).
73–74. just son: Justice, the noblest of the moral virtues, is attributed to Aeneas, son of the goddess Venus and Trojan Anchises, founder of Rome after the destruction of Troy (“proud Ilion”) by the Greeks (see Aen. 1.544–45). Vergil sang of Aeneas in his Aeneid, vessel of one of the Middle Ages’ most significant myths: the descent of Europeans from Aeneas and other Trojans.
78. origin and cause of all joy: The mountain is designated as the origin of happiness following Aristotle’s analysis of causation, in which the final cause (the telos, the goal or end) is also the first cause (the archē origin).
79–80. are you that Virgil … river of speech: That Vergil’s poetry was like a great river was a traditional topic in ancient and medieval literary criticism. In the Middle Ages, the Aeneid, Georgics, and Eclogues were thought to define the levels of poetic style: “tragic” or “high,” “middle” or “rustic,” and “low” or “bucolic,” respectively.
79. are you that Virgil: Compare Aen. 1.617: “Tune ille Aeneas quern …” [Are you that Aeneas whom …], in Dido’s first speech to Aeneas.
85. You are my master and my author: The translation will uniformly translate maestro as “master,” though the word also means “teacher”; the modern “author” no longer conveys the meaning the term autore had for the Middle Ages. An auctor is one whose formative influence on others has been so great and so widespread that he has acquired authority in the strongest possible (positive) sense: he is “worthy of faith and obedience” (Convivio 4.6).
87. the pleasing style that has won me honor: There are traces of Vergil’s stylistic influence on Dante as early as the Vita nuova (ca. 1294) and the rime petrose (1296). Dante was already well known as a poet in 1300.
91. You must hold to another path: The pilgrim cannot proceed directly up the mountain; he must first descend. See Romans 6.3–4:
Know ye not, that all we, who are baptized in Christ Jesus are baptized in his death? For we are buried together with him by baptism into death: that as Christ is risen from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also may walk in newness of life.
The penitential descent into Hell imitates Christ’s death on the Cross and is parallel to baptism, the sacramental death to sin, followed by “newness of life.” The pattern by which the believer’s experience is a figural imitation of Christ is fundamental to the poem.
97. she has a nature … : Virgil’s account of the she-wolf, obscure as it is, makes clear that, as the pilgrim sensed in line 51, she is a terrible external power and a major force in history.
100. the animals with whom she mates: The language is that of the Old Testament prophets, for whom unfaithfulness to Jehovah is “fornication” (cf. Is. 1.21, Jer. 3.1, and Apoc. 18.3).
101–5. the greyhound … felt: Innumerable explanations have been offered of this prophecy. There are two main families of interpretation: (1) the greyhound refers to the Second Coming of Christ or to an ecclesiastical figure prefiguring it; (2) the greyhound refers to a secular ruler, who would also prefigure the Second Coming. Prime candidates for the latter figure are Can Grande della Scala, the Ghibelline leader of the Veronese noble house that offered Dante hospitality during his exile (his title, derived from khan, also means “dog,” hence greyhound), and Emperor Henry VII, whose descent into Italy in 1311 to 1313 seemed to Dante to promise, before his untimely death, the reform of religious and political institutions for which he yearned. “Between felt and felt” has been taken to mean a geographical location (between the towns of Feltre and Montefeltro), an astrological sign (the Gemini, Dante’s own natal sign, were sometimes shown with felt caps), the two mendicant orders (Franciscans and Dominicans), and a technique of election (counters dropped into felt-lined boxes), perhaps with reference to an emperor. Along with the prophecy in the last canto of the Purgatorio (to which it is closely related), this passage remains one of the most obscure in the poem. The best discussion is Davis 1976.
106. that humble Italy: Dante adapts Aen. 3.522–23, where the term humilis [low-lying] refers to the physical appearance of the Italian shore as seen by Aeneas’s crew. Note the contrast with line 75, “proud Ilion,” itself an echo of Aen. 3.2–3 (superbum/Ilium).
107–8. virgin Camilla … Nisus: Dante lists some of the fallen in the Trojan-Italian war described in the last six books of Vergil’s epic, including Turnus, the chief antagonist of Aeneas as rival for the hand of Lavinia. But Trojans (Nisus and Euryalus) and native Italians (the Rutulian Turnus, the Volscian Camilla) are carefully interwoven in Dante’s list, their former antagonisms elided. The lines suggest patriotism as the motive of these deaths.
111. whence envy first sent her forth: See Wisdom 2.24: “by the envy of the devil, death came into the world.” The devil’s envy of man’s favored status is the traditional reason for his enmity.
117. the second death: The death of the soul in eternal damnation, following the first, physical death; for the expression, see Apoc. 20.15, 21.8.
118–19. content in the fire: Souls undergoing the fire of purgation. A metonymy for all of Purgatory, which includes a diversity of punishments; the identification of Purgatory with fire is traditional, resting on 1 Cor. 3.13–15 (“the fire shall try every man’s work … but he himself shall be saved, yet so as by fire”).
120–26. the blessed people … into his city: The blessed are thought of as inhabiting, along with the angels, the “Empyrean,” a sphere of fire beyond the confines of the cosmos; this is “his city,” to which the pilgrim ascends in the Paradiso.
122. a soul more worthy: Unmistakably, Beatrice, the poet’s lady celebrated in the Vita nuova (see 2.53).
124–25. that Emperor … a rebel to his law: For the question of how Virgil was a “rebel” against God’s law, see 4.33–39, with notes.
134. the gate of Saint Peter: The gate to Purgatory (see Purg. 9.73–145).