Dante's Inferno

“In the middle of the journey of our life, I came to myself in a dark wood, for the straight way was lost.” 

With these famous lines, Dante begins his journey—or rather, as he says, “our” journey. Referring to “nostra vita,” “our life,” Dante makes general what is personal: Every human must grapple with the adventure that Dante is about to take. The reference to the “dark wood”—and the three symbolic beasts Dante will shortly meet there—places the reader in an allegorical land, preparing them to look through these images as much as look at them.

“‘Now are you Virgil, that fountain which spreads forth so broad a river of speech?’ I replied with shamefast brow. ‘O honor and light of the other poets, let my long study and great love avail me, that has caused me to search through your volume. You are my master and my author, you alone are he from whom I have taken that pleasing style that has won me honor.’” 

Dante’s worshipful address to Virgil heralds one of literature’s great friendships. Virgil was the poet of Rome, the foundational author of an empire and an Italian hero; he was also a writer Dante loved. Virgil’s Aeneid, the story of the founding of Rome, underpins the Comedy. Dante, like Virgil, is writing the story of a man seeking his home and descending to the underworld on his way to finding it. Virgil embodies many of the Comedy’s most important themes: mentorship, fatherhood, teaching, speech, language, and love.

“There is a noble lady in Heaven, who grieves for this impediment to which I send you, so that she vanquishes high judgment there on high. She called Lucia in her request and said:—Now your faithful one has need of you, and I put him in your hands.—Lucia, enemy of all cruelty, moved and came to the place where I was sitting with the ancient Rachel. She said:—Beatrice, true praise of God, why do you not help him who loved you so, who because of you came forth from the common herd?”

In this passage, Beatrice recounts how Saint Lucia sent her to Virgil, who was sent to Beatrice by the Virgin Mary—a chain of events sometimes called the “relay of grace.