The Divine Comedy with Commentary by Cristoforo Landino

...will reach one hundred and twenty years: fate completes three cycles of Saturn In traditional astrology, Saturn takes roughly 30 years to complete one orbit; three cycles equal 90 years, considered a natural limit of life.. Because of this, death comes in the ninetieth year. But if the favor of some fortunate star breaks the malignancy of Saturn, a man can reach the fourth cycle mentioned above. Wherefore Josephus, in his Antiquities of the Jews, writes that God, after Noah’s flood, shortened the years of human life—which before the flood had in some cases passed nine hundred—and established that the final limit should be one hundred and twenty. For this reason, certain interpreters of the poet Statius believe that when he writes of King Adrastus, "There King Adrastus, verging on old age, held his people in a peaceful middle boundary of life," original Latin: "Rex ibi tranquille medio de limite iuitae. In senium uergens populos Adrastus habebat." he intends it to mean he was in his sixtieth year, which is the middle of one hundred and twenty. Nevertheless, because the common opinion of men follows Aristotle and David Referring to Psalm 90:10, "The days of our years are threescore years and ten.", they understand the middle of life to be thirty-five years. Although such an exposition is not entirely discordant with the truth, it seems that for so high a poem, another principle is required.

To better express this, we will briefly repeat some things from further back, which will open the author's mind to us in such a way that it will be easy to interpret this beginning. It is likely, then, that Dante proposed for himself the same goal that Homer among the Greeks and Virgil among the Latins had proposed. Just as those poets—one through Ulysses, the other through Aeneas—demonstrate how one arrives at the knowledge of vices and, having known them, purges oneself of them to finally reach the contemplation of divine things; so Dante, under this fiction of a pilgrimage he feigns to have made with Virgil, demonstrates that same journey in his own person.

Man is composed of soul and body. The soul is divine, simple, immortal, and incorruptible. Because it is produced by God in His image and likeness, it is divine and full of light, and is capable through contemplation of reaching the knowledge of divine things and enjoying God. In this consists our highest good, as we shall treat more fully in another place. The body, on the contrary, being composed of the matter of the four elements, is by its nature corruptible, dark, and full of shadows. The soul, therefore, submerged in this dark prison, loses almost all its celestial vigor; and through the shadows of the body, it remains almost deprived of every light of reason. One could say it is buried beneath the corporeal mass.

Wherefore the divine Plato wisely posits two types of death. One he calls "animal death," a thing known to all, which occurs when the soul separates from the body. The other is the "death of the soul," and this occurs when the soul—submerged, as we have said, by the weight and darkness of the body—loses so much vigor that it can use none of its excellent powers. Because of this, we see that man lives solely according to the senses, not only in the first infant and childhood years, but in a large part of adolescence and youth. And because he knows nothing else, he does not believe himself to be anything else, and considers nothing good except those things that delight the corporeal senses, nor anything evil except that which grieves them. Like a drunkard oppressed by deep sleep, he neither knows himself, nor understands for what end he was produced, nor knows his own ignorance or misery until he reaches a mature age. Then, partly through the experience of many things and partly through acquired learning and precepts from the wise who have gone before, reason begins to awaken. Finally, he recognizes that he is in a DARK FOREST—that is, that his soul is oppressed by ignorance and vice through the contagion of the body.

This, then, is the meaning of the text: I FOUND MYSELF WITHIN A DARK FOREST. This signifies: "I realized my soul was submerged in the body, through the contagion and shadows of which I had lost the direct and true way." MIDWAY UPON THE JOURNEY OF OUR LIFE: that is, in the middle of the course of human life, at which time discretion begins to awaken in man, which until that point had been almost extinguished. Once awake, he notices his error and takes the path of salvation—unless he allows himself to be so overcome by sensuality that he does not proceed forward, but rather returns backward into the darkness of the forest. From this misery, David prays to the Lord to guard him, saying: "O Lord, do not call me back in the middle of my days." It is not necessary to interpret "middle" as the exact point that is equidistant from its extremes—as one might say nine is the middle of seventeen because it has eight on each side. The "middle" should not be interpreted so strictly, because even among philosophers, the "middle" is often said to be that which is distant from the extremes, even if it is not equally distant.

OF THE JOURNEY. This is excellently put, for our life is not set in eternity where everything is stable and in eternal rest, but in time, which is nothing other than a continuous flux and course. Furthermore, as the Apostle says, we are not here in our fatherland, nor do we have a permanent city. Rather, this life is a pilgrimage which, if we proceed by a certain path, leads us to the celestial Jerusalem, the fatherland where we are holy citizens and members of God’s household. Nor should we overlook in the explanation of this passage that he said "I found myself" and not "I entered." For the soul enters the body as soon as it is created, but it does not notice its own ignorance except in the "middle of the journey," as we have said.

Nor is it without cause that he placed the forest in the body, and consequently in vice; for both Plato and many other philosophers call corporeal matter hyle in Greek, which in Latin is translated as selva meaning "forest" or "wood". Just as the soul has every excellence and happiness through its indivisible, incorporeal, and incorruptible nature, so on the contrary it has every calamity and every vice through the "forest"—that is, through the body which is corruptible. Wherefore Plato rightly calls God the cause and fountain of all goods, and conversely calls the forest—that is, our earthly prison—the cause of all evils. Thus Boethius wisely writes: "Happy is he who could break the heavy bonds of earth." original Latin: "Felix qui potuit grauis terre rumpere uicula." And certainly, blessed is he who can break the ties of the heavy earth, loosen the soul from the contagion of the body and sensuality, and lift himself to celestial things.

For this reason, the Greeks call the body demas because dein means "to bind," and the body, as stated, is the bond of the soul. Certainly, just as a fly attracted by the sweetness of honey plunges in so far that it drowns, so the soul, ensnared and entangled by earthly sweetnesses, from the beginning submerges and plunges so deep into their pleasantness that, having become entirely drunk, it wakes with difficulty; nor can it taste the nourishment of true joy, which is the contemplation of celestial things. Thence it arises that although our soul is produced for this contemplation, nevertheless the forest makes it lose the way, because the contagion of the body takes away its knowledge. If the soul possessed this knowledge, it would understand how much our nature exceeds that of other animals. For those animals feel nothing except the pleasures of the body, and toward those they direct themselves with every impulse. But the human mind is nourished by learning and is always investigating through thought, or is truly engaged in some action.

He posits the "forest," therefore, for the contagion of the body and for shadows and ignorance, imitating his master Virgil, who said: "Forests hold all the middle parts." original Latin: "tenent media omnia sylvae." STRAYED: and not "lost," because someone who has already wandered into vices, whenever they return to virtue, had not "lost" but "strayed" from the path. AND AH, HOW HARD A THING IT IS TO TELL. Here is a rhetorical ornament called an exclamation. It is used when we want to demonstrate the greatness of a thing, or when we want to express a just indignation against something that seems highly blameworthy, as when one says: "Ah, Constantine, of how much evil were you the mother!" And therefore he used this word, "ah," which the Latins call an interjection. Thus, "ah how hard a thing"—that is, how difficult it was to tell—that is, to narrate—what quality this WILD FOREST had. That is, this forest was derelict, abandoned, and remote from all cultivation and human habitation. For vice is entirely remote from human nature, since with effective demonstrations, both Platonic and Aristotelian philosophers prove that to live according to nature is to live according to virtue. Therefore it is "wild," as if to say it is bestial and not human; for he who is infected by vices, although he retains the human likeness, has nevertheless in his habits become a most cruel beast against God, against himself, and against his neighbor. HARSH: certainly the forest of vices is harsh, for just as nothing is sweeter than having a pure conscience—which keeps the soul tranquil, joyful, and without any fear—so the...