Halfway through the journey we are living
I found myself deep in a darkened forest,
For I had lost all trace of the straight path. [...]

Through Me Pass into the Painful City,
Through Me Pass into Eternal Grief,
Through Me Pass among the Lost People. [...]

To race for safer waters, the small ship
Of my poetic powers now hoists sail,
Leaving in her wake that cruel sea.
And I shall sing this second kingdom where
the human spirit purifies itself,
Becoming fit to mount up into heaven. [...]

The glory of Him who sets all things in motion
Cleaves through the universe, and it flames again
In different places with a different force. [...]


The Divine Comedy (Dante Alighieri) is composed of three canticas (or "cantiche"), Inferno (Hell), Purgatorio (Purgatory), and Paradiso (Paradise), composed respectively of 34, 33, and 33 cantos. The first canto of Inferno serves as an introduction to the entire Divine Comedy, making each of the canticas 33 cantos long. The number 3 is prominent in the work, represented here by the length of each cantica. Also, that they add up to 100 cantos is not accidental. The verse scheme used, terza rima, is the hendecasyllable (line of eleven syllables), with the lines composing tercets according to the rhyme scheme ABA BCB CDC ... YZY Z.

The poet tells in the first person his travel through the three realms of the dead, lasting during Holy Week in the spring of 1300. His guide through Hell and Purgatory is the Latin poet Virgil, author of The Aeneid, and the guide through Paradise is Beatrice, Dante's ideal of a perfect woman. Beatrice is named after a woman other than Dante's wife, with whom he was not believed to have been involved; he merely admired her from afar, never acting on these desires.

The last word in each of the three parts of The Divine Comedy is "stars".

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Online full version of The Divine Comedy (1)
(http://dante.ilt.columbia.edu/new/comedy/)


Online full version of The Divine Comedy (2)
(http://www.italianstudies.org/comedy/index.htm)