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Translation of the Divina commedia of Dante Alighieri
Translation of the Divina commedia of Dante Alighieri Author:Dante Alighieri Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE DIVINA COMMEDIA ; . . ' OP DANTE ALIGHIERL HELL. CANTO I. ARGUMENT. .The poet misses his way in a thick, gloomy forest, and is prevented b... more »y certain wild beasts, from ascending a mountain. He fortunately meets with hb friend Virgil, who promises to conduct him to the different regions of hell, arid then to purgatory. He also consoles him with the promise, that he will be afterwards conveyed by Beatrice to paradise. the middle (l) of the course of this our life, I found myself in a gloomy forest, for I had missed the right direction. Alas! what a difficult thing it is to relate, how wild and rough and thick the forest was, .which still renews terrors in my thoughts ! It is so frightful that death is but little more ; but to relate the happiness I found there, I shall mention other things which I therein discovered. I cannot (1)—1. This means that the poet was in the thirty-fifth year of his age, which, according to Aristotle, is the middle of man's age, and as mentioned in Scripture: three score and ten is the life of man. In my opinion this may admit of another meaning, that is, in the midst of this life of ours, denoting the troublesome state of Italy, and the poet's affliction and tribulation, which well correspond with the allegorical spirit of the whole canto. sufficiently describe how I entered it, I was so overpowered from drowsiness at the time I lost the right path. But a little after I had come to the foot of a hill, where the valley terminated, which pierced my heart with consternation ; I looked up and saw its sides already covered with the rays of the planet,(2) which leads man to all directions. Then the terror was a little abated, that lasted in the recesses of my heart the night that I passed in such anguish ; and like one who in painf...« less