Dante's Inferno

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The cord is the type of religions asceticism, of which the poet no longer has need.†

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When they had come up, somewhile, with eye askance,[1] they gazed at me without a word; then they turned to each other, and said one to the other, "This one seems alive by the action of his throat; and if they are dead, by what privilege do they go uncovered by the heavy stole?"†

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I was among those who are suspended,[1] and a Lady called me, so blessed and beautiful that I besought her to command.†

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—The Centaurs.†

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Then, as compunctious for my fault I said, "Now wilt thou therefore tell that fallen one that his son is still conjoined with the living, and if just now I was dumb to answer, make him know that I was so because I was still thinking in that error which you have solved for me."†

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Encircling all was the Empyrean, increate, incorporeal, motionless, unbounded in time or space, the proper seat of God, the home of the Angels, the abode of the Elect.†

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These have no hope of death; and their blind life is so debased, that they are envious of every other lot.†

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The scene of the poem is the spiritual world, of which we are members even while still denizens mu the world of time.†

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And the sinner who heard dissembled not, but directed toward me his mind and his face, and was painted with dismal shame.†

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[1] Empedocles taught, as Dante may have learned from Aristotle, that Love and Hate were the forces by which the elements of which the world is composed were united and dissociated.†

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Of naked souls I saw many flocks, that were all weeping very miserably, and diverse law seemed imposed upon them.†

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In respect to the theology and general doctrine of the Poem, the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas is the main source from which Dante himself drew.†

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A devil is here behind, that adjusts us so cruelly, putting again to the edge of the sword each of this crew, when we have turned the doleful road, because the wounds are closed up ere one passes again before him.†

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I reflected in this wise: These through us have been flouted, and with such harm and mock as I believe must vex them greatly; if anger to ill-will be added, they will come after us more merciless than the dog upon the leveret which he snaps.†

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—The Jovial Friars.†

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I was standing like the friar who confesses the perfidious assassin,[1] who, after he is fixed, recalls him, in order to delay his death.†

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As at Arles, where the Rhone stagnates, as at Pola, near the Quarnaro that shuts in Italy and bathes its borders, sepulchres make all the place uneven; so did they here on every side, saving that the manner was more bitter here; for among the tombs flames were scattered, by which they were so intensely kindled that no art requires iron more so.†

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The Danube in Austria makes not for its current so thick a veil in winter, nor the Don yonder under the cold sky, as there was here; for if Tambernich [1] had fallen thereupon, or Pietrapana,[2] it would not even at the edge have given a creak.†

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Dante regards this as a sin specially contrary to right reason, typified by Virgil.†