The Wood
In the midway of this our mortal life,
I found me in a gloomy wood, astray
Gone from the path direct: and e'en to tell
It were no easy task, how savage wild
That forest, how robust and rough its growth,
Which to remember only, my dismay
Renews, in bitterness not far from death.
Yet to discourse of what there good befell,
All else will I relate discovered there.
How first I entered it I scarce can say,
Such sleepy dullness in that instant weighed
My senses down, when the true path I left,
But when a mountain's foot I reached, where closed
The valley, that had pierced my heart with dread,
I looked aloft, and saw his shoulders broad
Already vested with that planet's beam,
Who leads all wanderers safe through every way.
(Liza Voronin)
We feel horribly alone, but many have trod the same ground before. Crisis is the starting point, for instance, of perhaps the greatest epic poem ever written, Dante’s Divine Comedy—here translated from the Italian by the Anglican clergyman Henry Francis Cary in a style reminiscent of Milton. This was the first widely distributed version in English and praised by Romantic writers such as Blake and Coleridge.
From line one, without any invocation to the muse, preamble or scene-setting, we are plunged into the midst of the action. Dante confesses that “midway” through his “mortal life” —normally estimated as 35—he found himself “astray” from the “path direct”. This refers to Dante’s political banishment from his birthplace of Florence—yet he also presents himself as Everyman, whose crisis is universal.
Every line drives home his confusion and despair. The forest is “savage” —so frightening that even to “remember” it is to induce profound “dismay,” indeed a “bitterness not far from death”. Today we might understand such a state as clinical depression, where the individual, lost in a world of imaginary fears, lies physically paralysed.
Yet to our surprise, he reveals that he will “relate” of “what there good befell” —before resuming his tale, teasing us with his future glory, goading us to read on.
He describes the “sleepy dullness” that led him “astray” and “weighed” his “senses down.” On the one hand, this suggests the laziness and inattention that can get us into trouble, but on the other it suggests a kind of mystical transport. His body at rest, his imagination travels to a visionary realm—a waking dream more real than reality itself.
The “valley” that fills his “heart with dread” is no doubt the valley of the shadow of death mentioned in Psalm 23. Somehow he battles through, however, stumbling upon the foot of a mountain. In a moment of dramatic expectation he looks up to see the sun, at the time believed to be a “planet” circling the Earth.
The wood and the mountain form a stark symbolic contrast: the former representing a life of sin, the latter a life of righteousness and virtue. The sun that shines down evokes the presence of God and the possibility of grace.
It is this combination of direct emotional truth, simple fairy-tale imagery and profound religious significance that makes The Divine Comedy so powerful. Elsewhere, Dante identifies the four layers to the poem: the literal, the allegorical, the moral and the spiritual.
As I read the opening, I’m reminded of an experience I had while visiting Chartres cathedral in France, walking the mysterious labyrinth with a host of tourists from all over the world. What struck me most forcibly was that at the very moment we think we’ve reached the center, the labyrinth takes us all the way back to the outermost rim. It seems we’ve failed—yet if we have the faith to keep going, making our way around the twists and turns of the spiralling design, we eventually stand at the heart.
In the course of his journey, Dante will plunge down into the terrifying rings of the inferno and emerge into purgatory. Finally, led by his beloved Beatrice, he will be granted a vision of heaven’s concentric fires. After passing through a phantasmagoria of devils, angels, classical heroes, gods, prophets and agonised sinners he will see, at the poem’s stupendous climax, the central “Love” that “moves the sun in heav'n and all the stars.”
Right back at the start, as Dante emerges from the wood, he is about to meet his guide through the looming labyrinth of hell, the Roman poet Virgil, whose ghost represents the truth and wisdom of literature. Certainly, if we want a guide through life’s most treacherous times, we can always turn to the great works from the canon, to Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare. Without their wisdom, we are lost. But with their enduring words whispering in our ear, we may yet glimpse the gates of paradise.
Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) was an Italian poet whose work represents the supreme literary achievement of the Middle Ages. Henry Francis Cary (1772–844) was an English author and translator. Christopher Nield is a poet living in London.
