Summary of the cantos
Inferno is the first of the three canticles of Dante Alighieri's Comedy: 34 cantos in chained rhyme terza rima (ABA BCB CDC), of which the first serves as prologue to the whole poem. The narrator is Dante himself, who tells in the first person of a journey made in life through the afterworld, during Holy Week of 1300, the Jubilee year, which tradition places on Good Friday. Lost in a forest, he is rescued by the shade of Virgil, the poet of the Aeneid, who offers himself as guide through Hell, a funnel that descends in nine circles beneath Jerusalem to the center of the Earth. The four cantos of this part come before any sin properly so called: the fright in the forest and the three beasts (I), Dante's doubt and the intervention of Beatrice (II), the gate and the vestibule of those who did not choose (III), and Limbo (IV). The question that runs through them is what keeps a man from following the one who calls him, and the poem answers, canto by canto, with the same word: fear.
Canto I: The Forest and the Three Beasts
Summary of the canto
Dante finds himself, in the middle of the journey of life, in a dark forest, because he left the straight way without noticing when: he was so full of sleep that he cannot say how he entered. At the foot of a hill lit by the sun the fear of the night is calmed and he climbs, but a leopard, a lion and a she-wolf bar his ascent, and the she-wolf, by the fear it causes, takes from him the hope of reaching the height and pushes him back. In that retreat Virgil appears, whom Dante recognizes as master and author and asks for help. Virgil answers that the she-wolf kills whoever tries to pass and will die only when the veltro comes, a future deliverer; so he proposes another way, which he will guide through Hell and through the place of those who wait, and he will hand Dante over, to ascend, to a worthier soul, because Virgil was rebellious to God's law and cannot enter the city on high. Dante, in the name of the God whom Virgil did not know, asks to be led to the gate of Saint Peter and to those he calls so sad, and follows him.
Analysis
The whole poem is born of a fall, not of a departure:
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita / mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, / ché la diritta via era smarrita.In English: "In the middle of the journey of our life / I found myself in a dark forest, / for the straight way had been lost." The pilgrim does not choose to enter: he loses the way before he realizes he has lost it, and only afterward comes the allegory.
Dante confesses that he cannot say how he entered the forest, only that he was full of sleep when he left the way, and what moves him afterward is not a decision but fright, which the sun on the hill calms. The text supports two readings: distraction without blame, because no one deceived him, or sleep as failure, because the poem does not say there was another cause.
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Canto II: Beatrice Sends Virgil
Summary of the canto
Night falls, and Dante, alone, hesitates before the path Virgil has opened for him: he asks that the guide measure his worth, because Aeneas and Paul went alive to the afterlife, each with a reason that made him worthy, and he sees none in himself. Virgil answers that the doubt is cowardice and, to free him from it, tells why he came: he was among the suspended, in Limbo, when Beatrice, sent by a gentle lady of heaven and by Lucia, called him and entrusted to him her friend, hindered on the deserted slope and overcome by fear, and came down there out of love. With the news that three ladies of heaven look after him, Dante rises like a flower opened by the sun, gives thanks, and takes him as duca, segnore e maestro, and they enter the high and wild path.
Analysis
Canto III: The Gate and the Ignavi
Summary of the canto
Dante reads, at the top of a gate, an inscription that speaks in the first person and ends by ordering all hope to be abandoned; its meaning is hard for him, and Virgil answers that there all suspicion must be left behind and all cowardice must be dead, takes his hand and leads him in. In the vestibule, amid cries, are those who lived without infamy and without praise, mixed with the angels who were neither rebellious nor faithful, rejected by heaven and by deep Hell, and Dante recognizes the shade of one who by cowardice made the great refusal. At the edge of the Acheron, Charon refuses to carry Dante, who is alive, and Virgil silences him with the formula of a will that no one disputes. The condemned souls, who blaspheme, pass one by one, driven by a fear that divine justice turns into desire, and Dante, overcome by a red light, falls like one taken by sleep.
Analysis
Canto IV: Limbo and the Great Spirits
Summary of the canto
A thunder wakes Dante at the edge of the abyss, and Virgil, pale, leads him to the first circle, Limbo, where there is no weeping, only sighs: there are those who did not sin but, without baptism or born before Christianity, did not worship God as was due, and Virgil is among them. Dante asks whether anyone ever left from there, and Virgil tells that a mighty one crowned with victory led away the patriarchs, which tradition reads as the descent of Christ, whom the poem does not name. They go on to a fire that conquers the darkness, where Homer, Horace, Ovid and Lucan receive Virgil and make Dante the sixth among them. In a green meadow, from a high and luminous place, Dante sees the great spirits, heroes and philosophers, until the sixth company is reduced to two, and Virgil leads him by another way, to the trembling air, where nothing shines.
Analysis
Reading of the Canto Block
Analysis