1–9. THROUGH ME … YOU WHO ENTER: Like Vergil, Dante gives Hell both an outer and an inner gate (see 8.68 and 9.104, with notes). The early commentators identify the “speaking gate” as a personification; Morpurgo (1926; cited in Simonelli 1993) studied the genre of “gate-inscriptions” in medieval Latin; he found they typically include a statement of intent, often anaphorically with per me [through me] (cf. lines 1–3); the name of the builder (cf. lines 4–6); and the date of building (cf. line 7). Compare John 10.9, where Christ says, “I am the door [osteum]. Through me, if any man enter in, he shall be saved”.
1. GRIEVING CITY: The grieving city derives from the biblical personification of Jerusalem mourning its destruction in 586 B.C. See Lamentations 1.1–2:
How doth the city sit solitary… . Weeping she hath wept in the night,
and her tears are on her cheeks: there is none to comfort her.
The destruction ofjerusalem was regarded by the exegetes as a figure of the Last Judgment and thus as applicable to Hell (this figure is discussed further in the note on 30.58–61). Dante quotes the first verse both in the Vita nuova (Chapter 29, on the death of Beatrice) and in a political epistle. That both Heaven and Hell are referred to as cities (cf. 1.126, 128) derives from Augustine’s theory of the Earthly and Heavenly Cities in the City of God.
5–6. DIVINE POWER … PRIMAL LOVE: Power is the attribute of the Father, wisdom of the Son, and love of the Spirit: all creation is the work of the Trinity. The central theme of the Inferno, of course, is the carrying out of God’s justice on sin.
7–8. NO THINGS … EXCEPT ETERNAL ONES: In Par. 29.22–36, Dante notes that the three eternal creatures are the angels (pure form or act), prime matter (pure potentiality), and the heavens (potentiality partially realized in act).
7. CREATED: That Hell was prepared for the rebel angels is biblical (Matt. 25.41: “the everlasting fire … was prepared for the devil and his angels”); the rebellion of the angels and their casting out from Heaven is mentioned in Apoc. 12.9:
And that great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, who is called the devil
and Satan, who seduceth the whole world: and he was cast unto the earth,
and his angels were thrown down with him.
See also 2 Peter 2.4.
10. dark color: The expression can refer both to the appearance of the writing and to the obscure and harsh meaning (“rhetorical” color).
11. above a gate: The gate stands open, like that of Vergil’s Hades (Aen. 6.127: “noctes atque dies patet atri ianua Ditis” [all night and all day the gate of black Dis stands open]), but for Dante it was not always so (see 4.52–63 and note).
12. sense is hard: See John 6.61: “durus est hoc sermo” [this saying is hard], said by the disciples hearing Christ offer his flesh as food. See also 9.61–63, Purg. 8.19–22, with notes.
13–15. Here one must abandon … must die here: Note the antithesis with line 9. The sense echoes the Sybil in Aen. 6.261: “Nunc animis opus, Aenea, nunc pectore firmo” [Now there is need, Aeneas, of bravery, of a strong heart]; the relation between the pilgrim and his guide Virgil is patterned in many respects on that between Aeneas and the Sybil. In this canto Dante alludes to or quotes Aeneas’s entrance into Hades (Aen. 6.261–414) more than a dozen times.
18. good of the intellect: The intellectual vision of God. The Aristotelian source of the phrase (Nichomachean Ethics 6.2.1139a) is quoted by Dante at Convivio 2.13.6: “as the Philosopher says … , the truth is the good of the intellect”.
21. the secret things: Knowledge of the other world. Compare Aen. 6.264–67:
Di, quibus imperium est animarum, umbraeque silentes
et Chaos et Phlegethon, loca nocte tacentia late,
sit mihi fas audita loqui, sit numine vestro
pandere res alta terra et caligine mersas.
[Gods, whose power controls the shades [of the dead], and you, silent shadows,
and Chaos and Phlegethon, broad places silent in the night,
let it not be impious for me to speak things heard, let it be with your power
that I set forth things drowned in the deep earth and darkness.]
22–27. loud wailing … sounds of blows: Compare Matt. 13.42: “There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth,” also echoed in line 101, where the meaning of “chattering” includes “gnashing”. See also Aen. 6.557–59 (of the gate to Tartarus):
Hinc exaudiri gemitus et saeva sonare
verbera, turn stridor ferri tractaeque catenae
[From there wailing and fierce blows were heard,
then the grating of irons and chains dragging]
23. starless air: Compare Aen. 6.534: “tristis sine sole domos” [gloomy sunless dwellings]; the last word of each cantica of the poem is stars.
24. I shed tears: The first of the pilgrim’s varying emotional responses to Hell.
25. Strange languages, horrible tongues: The first hint of Hell’s kinship with Babel, the place of confused speech.
29. darkened without time: Air darkened forever, beyond time.
31. my head girt with horror: In other words, the pilgrim’s scalp is bristling (Latin horreo, to bristle) all around his head. The line echoes Aen. 2.559: “At me turn primum saevus circumstetit horror” [Then a dreadful horror first encircled me]; Aeneas is describing the decapitation of Priam, king of Troy.
36. without infamy and without praise: Dante’s journey will bring infamy to those in Hell and renewed or better reputations to the blessed; but the neutrals are barred from any preservation of their reputations or “names”. This verse is usually taken as a reference to Apoc. 3:15–16, spoken by Christ the Judge in reproof of Laodicea: “because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will begin to vomit thee out of my mouth” (see the note to line 64).
37–39. They are mixed … for themselves: The legend of the neutral angels, mentioned in numerous medieval texts, including the Voyage of Saint Brendan, goes back at least as far as Clement of Alexandria (Gmelin). This mixing of human and angelic is not observed anywhere else in the poem.
39. but were for themselves: The rebel angels first averted themselves from God and then actively turned to evil with Satan, but the neutrals, once averted from God, did not act further (Freccero [1960] prefers the translation “stood by themselves”); theirs is a “double negation,” and lines 36–52 offer a number of examples where the double exclusion of the neutrals assumes a characteristic syntactic form (Freccero 1983).
52–53. flag running in circles: The first instance of Dante’s contrapasso [counter-suffering]—the fitting of the punishment to the sin (see 28.142). The flag acts as the lure, the wasps and flies as prods or stimuli, punishing the neutrals’ purpose-lessness and lack of affiliation.
56–57. death had undone so many: The infinite number of the dead is a classical topos, discussed in the note to lines 112–17, but Dante’s point is more barbed. Eliot translated this line in The Waste Land.
59–60. him who in his cowardice … great refusal: This unnamed soul has been identified as Pontius Pilate, Esau, and a host of others. But Pietro dal Morrone, the pious monastic reformer (he founded the order of Celestines) elevated to the papacy in 1294 as Celestine V and canonized shortly after his death, is the choice of the earliest commentators (the expression “saw and knew” suggests that Dante had seen him, and Pietro was in Florence in 1280, though the phrase is also used of Hector and Aeneas in Canto 4). Celestine is a plausible candidate because his abdication cleared the way for the accession of Benedetto Caetani as Boniface VIII, Dante’s corrupt enemy (see 19.52–57, 27.85–105). Celestine’s act would thus have been a “neutral” failure to oppose a patent evil, resulting from viltà [cowardice] (see Virgil’s words to the pilgrim in 2.45), but all identifications are inconclusive.
62–64. sect of cowards … wretches: The word for “coward” here, cattivo (used also in line 37), still retained for Dante the meaning of “captive” (cf. 30.16).
64. never were alive: See Apoc. 3.1 (of the Church at Sardis): “I know thy works, that thou hast the name of being alive: and thou art dead”.
65–69. large flies and wasps … worms: In Dante’s day, flies, wasps, and worms were thought to be born of putrefaction.
70–78. I saw people … Acheron: Dante clusters a number of references to Vergil’s poem in this part of the canto (a dozen in lines 70–105 alone), where the subject is the boundary river of Hades, the Acheron (Dante has rearranged the traditional riven of the underworld, which are not clearly distinguished in Vergil’s treatment). Compare Aer. 6.318–20:
Dic, ait, o virgo, quid vult concursus ad amnem?
quidve petunt animae? Vel quo discrimine ripas
hae linquunt, illae remis vada livida verrunt?
[He says: Say, virgin, what means this crowding at the river?
what do the souls seek? Or by what decision
do these remain on the shore, while those others beat the dark waters with
oars?]
77–81. when we stay our steps … until we reached the river: See Aen. 6.295: “Hinc via Tartarei quae fert Acherontis ad undas” [From here the way led down to the waters of infernal Acheron], and 6.384: “Ergo iter inceptum peragunt fluvioque propinquant” [They took up their journey again and approached the river].
82–111. And behold … whoever moves slowly: In these lines, Dante adapts Vergil’s portrait of Charon, the traditional ferryman of the Styx, Aen. 6.298–305:
Portitor has horrendus aquas et flumina servat
terribili squalore Charon, cui plurima mento
canities inculta iacet, stant lumina flamma,
sordidus et umeris nodo dependet amictus.
Ipse ratem conto subigit velisque ministrat
et ferruginea subvectat corpora cumba,
iam senior, sed cruda deo viridisque senectus.
[A fearsome ferryman guards these waters, this river:
Charon. His filth is frightening, thick gray straggly
whiskers cover his chin; his eyes are flames.
A dirty cloak hangs from his shoulders by a knot.
With a pole he steers and tends the sail
of the iron-hued skiff that conveys the bodies across.
He is old now, but a god’s eld is green and raw.]
Note, in Dante’s text, 82 “old man” (cf. senior), 83 “white with hairs of age” and 97 “woolly cheeks” (cf. canities mento inculta), 99 “wheels of flame,” “eyes like glowing coals” (cf. stant luminaflammae). For this last, compare Apoc. 1.14: “his eyes were as a flame of fire”.
Dante makes Charon a devil (line 109), as he does other figures from the Vergilian/classical underworld, in keeping with biblical/Augustinian tradition (see the note to 1.72).
88–89. living soul, separate yourself from these here: Compare Aen. 6.391–94:
Fare age quid venias iam istinc, et comprime gressum.
Umbrarum hie locus est, somni noctisque soporae:
corpora viva nefas Stygia vectare carina.
[Say at once from there, why do you come, and halt your steps.
This is the place of shades, dreams, and the sleep of night:
it is sacrilege to carry living bodies in the Stygian hull.]
91–93. By another way … must carry you: Aeneas crosses in Charon’s boat, but how the pilgrim crosses Acheron is left unspecified. Charon’s words imply that the pilgrim is destined for salvation. The “lighter vessel” appears in Purg. 2.40–42.
95–96. this is willed … ask no more: The first of several passages where Virgil quells protest by invoking the theological commonplace of God’s omnipotence (see 5.22–24, which are identical to these lines, and 7.10–12). These lines have the distinction of being the first attested quotation from the Inferno, found on the inside front cover of a register of criminal acts written in Bologna by the notary Gano degli Useppi of San Gimignano in 1317 (this is important evidence of the circulation of the Inferno during Dante’s lifetime [Livi 1918]) (see the note to 5.23).
103–5. They cursed God … and of their birth: See jer. 20.14: “Cursed be the day wherein I was born: let not the day in which my mother bore me, be blessed”. See also Job 3.1 and Hosea [Vulgate Osee] 9.11.
111. beats with his oar: This vivid detail, not in Vergil, is vividly rendered by Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel’s Lastfudgment.
112–17. As in autumn … to its lure: See Aen. 6.309–12:
Quam multa in silvis autumni frigore primo
lapsa cadunt folia, aut ad terram gurgite ab alto
quam multae glomerantur aves, ubi frigidus annus
trans pontum fugat et terris immitit apricis.
[As numerous as in the forest at the first chill of autumn,
the leaves fall, let loose, or on the land from the deep waves
the many birds gather, when the cold season
drives them overseas to warmer climes.]
This famous simile, in Vergil an imitation of Homer, was taken up by Milton for the multitudes of rebel angels and by Shelley for dead leaves driven by the West Wind. Where Vergil’s simile gives two views of large numbers-the multitude of souls as dead leaves, as birds-for Dante the shift from one metaphor to the next (closely linked by the leaf and the bird being single) follows the transformation in the souls, as their reluctance is changed into a desire to cross.
115. the evil seed of Adam: Those of Adam’s descendants who are damned (even those who did not sin voluntarily are damned by the sin inherited from Adam unless redeemed by faith in Christ). The image draws on the medieval commonplace of the tree of Adam’s progeny.
117. each like a falcon to its lure: Dante’s term is the generic uccello [bird], but the reference is clear and is the first of a large number of images drawn from falconry. Falconers used the lure, often consisting of shiny pieces of metal that could be whirled by an attached cord, to recall their birds after the hunt.
118. dark waves: Compare Aen. 5.2, “fluctusque atros”.
123. together here from every land: Dante gives itineraries for the soul after death at 13.27 and Purg. 2.101–5; the idea of a gathering of birds, introduced in the simile of lines 112–17, is still at work here, as in line 119.
125–26. God’s justice … turns to desire: See the note to lines 112–17. Compare Aen. 6.313–14:
stabant orantes primi transmittere cursum
tendebantque manus ripae ulterioris amore.
[the first stood praying to be taken across,
they stretched out their hands in desire for the farther shore.]
130–133. the dark landscape … a wind: Medieval geology, based on Seneca’s Natural Questions and Aristotle’s Meteorology, understood earthquakes as the result of violent winds pent up in the earth (cf. Purg. 21.56–57); like winds in the atmosphere, subterranean winds could produce lightning and thunder. The cause of this subterranean wind would not seem to be natural.
131–32. my memory … with sweat: Another instance of the narrating poet’s being caught again in the experience narrated, discussed in the note to 1.4–7.
136. one whom sleep is taking: For other “sleeps” and “swoons” of the pilgrim, see 1.2, 1.6, 5.142, and Purgatorio 9, 19, 27, and 31.