The first part of Dante's Divine Comedy, the "Inferno" (or "Hell") begins on the night before Good Friday in the year 1300, "halfway along our life's path." Dante is thirty-five years old, half of the biblical life expectancy of 70, lost in a dark wood, assailed by beasts he cannot evade, and unable to find the straight way to salvation. Conscious that he is ruining himself and that he is falling into a deep place where the sun is silent, Dante is at last rescued by Virgil, and the two of them begin their journey to the underworld. Each sin's punishment in Inferno is a contrapasso, a symbolic...
The first part of Dante's Divine Comedy, the "Inferno" (or "Hell") begins on the night before Good Friday in the year 1300, "halfway along our life's ...
"The Vision of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise: Hell"
Dante Alighieri
Translated by The Rev. H. F. Cary, M.A.
Illustrated by Gustave DorE
The Divine Comedy (Italian: Divina Commedia is an epic poem by Dante Alighieri, begun c. 1308 and completed 1320, a year before his death in 1321. It is widely considered the preeminent work of Italian literature and is seen as one of the greatest works of world literature. The poem's imaginative vision of the afterlife is representative of the medieval world-view as it had developed in the Western Church by the 14th century. It...
The Divine Comedy
"The Vision of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise: Hell"
