FIRST CANTO OF THE FIRST canticle or comedy of the divine Florentine Poet Dante Alighieri. Chapter I.

In the middle of the
journey of our
life
I found myself within
a dark wood
for the straight
way had been
lost.

Ah, how hard it is to tell what it was like,
this wild wood, rugged and harsh,
which even in thought renews the fear!
So bitter was it that death is little more;
but to treat of the good that I found there,
I will tell of the other things I saw there.
I cannot well say how I entered it,
so full of sleep was I at that moment
that I abandoned the true way.
But after I had reached the foot of a hill,
there where that valley ended
which had pierced my heart with fear,
I looked on high and saw its shoulders
already clothed with the rays of the planet
that leads others straight on every path.
Then the fear was somewhat quieted,
which had endured in the lake of my heart
through the night I passed with such distress.

A woodcut illustration depicts the opening scene of Dante’s Inferno. On the left, Dante, dressed in long robes and a cap, stands at the edge of a dark, dense forest. To the right, the scene continues with Dante appearing again, looking up toward a hill illuminated by the sun, often called the "delightful mountain" (dilectoso monte). His path is obstructed by three symbolic beasts: a leopard (lonza) on the lower path representing lust, a lion (leone) representing pride further up, and a she-wolf (lupa) representing greed emerging from the rocks.

We have narrated not only the life of the poet, the title of the book, and what a poet is, but also how ancient and venerable, how noble and varied, and how useful and joyful such learning is. How effective it is in moving human minds, and how it delights every noble spirit. Nor did we judge it right to remain silent on how great the excellence of our poet’s genius has been in such a divine discipline. In which, if I have been briefer than perhaps was appropriate, let the reader consider that the numerous and almost infinite abundance of things which must be treated forces me—wishing that the volume does not grow excessively—to compress and wrap together rather than explain and expand upon many things, especially those which, even if I were silent, would not leave the exposition of the text obscure. We shall come then to that [the exposition]. But because I believe there is no reader of such low wit nor so little judgment that, having understood both the depth and variety of the learning and the excellence

and divinity of our Tuscan and Florentine poet's genius, would not be persuaded that this beginning of the first canto must, in its sublimity and greatness, be equal to the stupendous learning of the things that follow; therefore with all diligence we will investigate what allegorical sense this "midpoint of the journey" carries with it, and what the "wood" is. Regarding which I see no small difference among the interpreters and expositors of this canticle. For some say that the midpoint of human life is sleep—moved, I believe, by the opinion of Aristotle, where he says in his Ethics original: "ethica," referring to the Nicomachean Ethics that there is no difference between the happy and the miserable in the half of life, because the nights, which are half of the time, bring us sleep; and from that it follows that we can feel neither good nor evil. Therefore, these [interpreters] want the poet to put the "middle of life" for "night," and "night" for "sleep," to note that this poem is nothing other than a vision that appeared to him while sleeping, through which he had knowledge of the things described by him in these three comedies. They say, then, that he imitates John the Evangelist, who, sleeping upon the breast of Christ the Redeemer, had a vision of celestial things; or alternatively, he sets the night to show that he began his poem at night, in which the soul, collecting itself and absolving and freeing itself from every care, understands better. But although such an opinion fits the poet, nevertheless the words do not show it except with such obscure ambiguity that it does not seem worthy of the elegance of such a poet. First, because it does not follow that, although in the revolutions of time the nights occupy as much space as the day, for this reason by saying "I wrote at night" I should mean "I wrote in the middle of my age"; because at the beginning and at the end of human age there are nights just as in the middle, and similarly there is day. Therefore, for the same reason, one could make such an interpretation for the day as for the night. Others say that he means by the "middle of the journey" that he gave a beginning to his poem in the middle of his age. A But there is not one single opinion regarding the term of our age, for different writers feel differently.