Inferno

Dante Alighieri

4:34 h Verse Lvl 12.01 152.1 mb

Inferno (Italian: [iɱˈfɛrno]; Italian for "Hell") is the first part of Italian writer Dante Alighieri's 14th-century epic poem Divine Comedy. The Inferno describes Dante's journey through Hell, guided by the ancient Roman poet Virgil. In the poem, Hell is depicted as nine concentric circles of torment located within the Earth. This version of ‘The Divine Comedy’ is based on the translation of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, an American, who introduced Dante’s literary genius to the New World in 1867. We have had to adapt his sometimes convoluted rendition of the poet’s tercets into simpler, accessible English by consulting several alternative and more contemporary versions of the poem and adding some footnotes. The result is therefore a unique audio/text aligned publication which places emphasis on dramatic reading while maintaining classic turns of phrase suitable to this classic.

Inferno

We read classical literature not only to discover the enduring power of language that has survived centuries, but also to inform ourselves of the mores of people in previous times and different places. Sometimes the vocabulary seems archaic but enables us to trace the DNA of words; sometimes the underlying ideas may run counter to contemporary tastes but may challenge us to think more about our current values. If it does all this, the work has earned its place as a classic. When it comes to ‘The Divine Comedy’ by the great Italian poet, Dante Alighieri, a reader today may be pulled short by the title itself. What kind of “comedy” is this that takes us all the way to Hell and back? Before stepping into the ‘Inferno’, the ‘Purgatorio’ or the ‘Paradiso’ - the three books which comprise this great epic begun by Dante in exile in 1308 and completed shortly before his death in 1321 - we have to understand this is a “commedia” in the Aristotelian rather than the modern sense; it is a moral adventure beginning with suffering and ending in bliss. A similar exercise in re-definitions will apply all through the work. The poem could be seen as autobiographical, because the main protagonist is in one sense a fictional depiction of Dante himself, who uses the device of this fantastical journey to deplore the conflicts in his native city, the venality of its politics and the corruption of its Church. On the other hand, it could be understood as a spiritual allegory, for this narrator could be anyone of us, at any time, a universal Everyman from any land, who strives for meaning and a purpose in life. It could also be interpreted in a specifically aesthetic sense as the literary drama of a medieval poet living on the threshold of the Renaissance, who combines the classics and theology to tell a story about the human imagination with such immediacy as to achieve literary immortality. The characters we meet on this epic journey can also be interpreted in different ways, and over the centuries ‘The Divine Comedy’ has provoked as many contradictory reactions from readers. This is particularly relevant when it comes to the encounter, in Canto 28, between the fictive protagonist “Dante” and the representation of “Mahomet” whom he meets in the Eighth Circle of the Inferno. While some commentators have tried to draw parallels between this epic descent and subsequent rise from the underworld with Muhammed’s Night Journey to Jerusalem, a recent Dutch translation has chosen to expunge these passages entirely for fear of offending the sensibilities of modern readers. But at the time Dante wrote the ’Inferno’, there was nothing offensive in this definition of Islam. The official attitude of the Church was that “Mahomet” was a “schismatic, a spreader of division, bloodshed and war, perhaps because the reality behind this fiction, the little known but actual figure of the Prophet who had emerged some six centuries earlier, with the power of uniting and civilizing the warring tribes of Arabia, was perceived as the ultimate threat to medieval Christendom. The city of Acre had just fallen to the Muslims less than two decades before; the disastrous Crusades over the 11th and 12th centuries had left scars on the psyche of Europe that continue to evoke phantom pains for us today. But while Dante was a man of his times, he was a poet first and foremost, not a theologian; he was also more of a humanist than may have been safe for his reputation. He had his own standards for what was right and wrong which did not always conform with the orthodoxies of the Church. He considered sexual predilections, for example, far less venal than betrayal. Nor could he ignore certain contradictions. Whatever the official line on Islam might be, Dante recognized that this so-called “schismatic” movement had spread its arts, sciences and civilization from the furthest steppes of the Mongolia to the walled gardens and glories of Granada and Cordoba. It had produced architecture and poetry of exquisite beauty; it had inspired statesmen and leaders, mathematicians and physicians of enduring distinction. And so he includes Saladin and Avicenna and Averroes among the “virtuous pagans” in the First Circle along with Plato and Socrates, leaving us, his readers, to ask ourselves where we stand. WholeReader publishes the great classics as they were written, so that users can be exposed to the language and ideas which they contain uncensored, and can come to their own conclusions regarding these enduring works of art. This does not mean that we necessarily endorse their language or promote their sometimes controversial ideas. If books have no intrinsic literary or cultural value we do not always include them in our collection, but when they do - which is the case with Dante’s spiritual drama, the first Italian epic written in the vernacular which has influenced Western literature for the past seven centuries - we subscribe to the principle that a comprehensive education may require one to be exposed to attitudes that run counter to our current, unstable sensibilities. In fact, whenever a classic of the past has been either censored or adapted to the sensibilities of a later age, it has invariably earned the opprobrium of the future. Since we are obliged to use copyright free versions of books on our site, WholeReader cannot take advantage of the most recent works of literature and this also applies to translations. This version of ‘The Divine Comedy’ is based on the translation of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, an American, who introduced Dante’s literary genius to the New World in 1867. We have had to adapt his sometimes convoluted rendition of the poet’s tercets into simpler, accessible English by consulting several alternative and more contemporary translations of the poem and adding some footnotes. The result is therefore a unique audio/text aligned publication which places emphasis on dramatic reading while maintaining classic turns of phrase suitable to this classic.

by
Dante Alighieri

Based on the translation of
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Inferno

Canto I.
The Dark Forest. The Hill of Hardship. The Panther, The Lion, and the Wolf. Virgil.

Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.

Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say
    What was this forest savage, rough, and stern,
    Which in the very thought renews the fear.
So bitter is it, death is little more;
    But of the good to treat, which there I found,
    Speak will I of the other things I saw there.

I cannot well repeat how there I entered,
    So full was I of slumber at the moment
    In which I had abandoned the true way.
But after I had reached a mountain’s foot,
    At that point where the valley terminated,
    Which had with consternation pierced my heart,
Upward I looked, and I beheld its shoulders,
    Vested already with that planet’s rays
    Which leadeth others right by every road.

Then was the fear a little quieted
    That in my heart’s lake had endured throughout
    The night, which I had passed so piteously.
And even as he, who, with distressful breath,
    Forth issued from the sea upon the shore,
    Turns to the water perilous and gazes;
So did my soul, that still was fleeing onward,
    Turn itself back to behold again the pass
    Which never yet a living person left.

After my weary body I had rested,
    The way resumed I on the desert slope,
    So that the firm foot ever was the lower.
And lo! almost where the ascent began,
    A panther light and swift exceedingly,
    Which with a spotted skin was covered o’er!
And never moved she from before my face,
    Nay, rather did impede so much my way,
    That many times I to return had turned.

Time was the beginning of the morning,
    And up the sun was mounting with those stars
    That with him were, when Love Divine
At first in motion set those beauteous things;
    So were to me occasion of good hope,
    The variegated skin of that wild beast,
The hour of time, and the delicious season;
    But not so much, that did not give me fear
    When a lion’s aspect to me appeared.
It seemed as if he were against me coming
    With head uplifted, and with ravenous hunger,
    So that the very air appeared afraid of him;

And then a she-wolf, that with all hungerings
    Seemed to be laden in her meagreness,
    Which many folk hath caused to live forlorn!
She brought upon me so much heaviness,
    That, with affright roused by her aspect,
    I all hope relinquished of the height.

And as he is who at first willingly acquires,
    And time comes then that causes him to lose,
    Weeps in all his thoughts and is despondent,
E’en such made me that beast withouten peace,
    Which, coming on against me by degrees
    Thrust me back thither where the sun is silent.

While I was rushing downward to the lowland,
    Before mine eyes did one present himself,
    Who seemed from long-continued silence hoarse.
When I beheld him in the desert vast,
    “Have pity on me,” unto him I cried,
    “Whiche’er thou art, or shade or real man!”

He answered me: “Not man; man once I was,
    And both my parents were of Lombardy,
    And Mantuans by country both of them.
‘Sub Julio’ was I born, though it was late,
    And lived at Rome under the good Augustus,
    During the time of false and lying gods.
A poet was I, and I sang of that just son     Of Anchises, who came forth from Troy,
    After that Ilion the superb was burned.

But thou, why goest thou back to such annoyance?
Why climb’st thou not the Mount Delectable,
Which is the source and cause of every joy?”

“Now, art thou that Virgilius and that fountain
    Which spreads abroad so wide a river of speech?”
    I made response to him with bashful forehead.
“O, of the other poets honour and light,
    Avail me the long study and great love
    That have impelled me to explore thy volume!

Thou art my master, and my author thou,
    Thou art alone the one from whom I took
    The beautiful style that has done honour to me.
Behold the beast, for which I have turned back;
    Do thou protect me from her, famous Sage,
    For she doth make my veins and pulse to tremble.”

“Thee it behoves to take another road,”
    Responded he, when he beheld me weeping,
    “If from this savage place thou wouldst escape;
Because this beast, at which thou criest out,
    Suffers not any one to pass her way,
    But so doth harass him, that she destroys him;
And has a nature so malign and ruthless,
    That never doth she glut her greedy will,
    And after food is hungrier than before.

Inferno

byDante Alighieri

Based on the translation ofHenry Wadsworth Longfellow

Canto I.The Dark Forest. The Hill of Hardship. The Panther, The Lion, and the Wolf. Virgil.

by
Dante Alighieri

Based on the translation of
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Canto I.
The Dark Forest. The Hill of Hardship. The Panther, The Lion, and the Wolf. Virgil.