The Forest Dark

WHAT! Dore Sunday has arrived! With the end of the year in the horizon, the hiatus shall be lifted, and Dore Sunday shall be a regular feature again. And with that, I lead you to the gates of a very lovely land, visited upon by everyone’s favorite Italian, Dante Alighieri!

Dante’s Divine Comedy: Inferno, Canto III - Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here (1861)

[“Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate.”]

These words in sombre colour I beheld
Written upon the summit of a gate.

-Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Canto III [Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Translation] (1308)

A barely timely Dore Sunday? Indeed!

It’s midway upon the journey of this year, so it seems appropriate that I finally post a piece from The Divine Comedy. It’s one of my favorite stories, even though sometimes it feels like a chore to read it. But it’s worth it, as the world that Dante builds out of Catholic philosophy, Greek myth, and his own fucked-up imagination is amongst the greatest in the realm of fantasy fiction.

Dante’s Divine Comedy: Inferno, Canto XXII - Take Good heed, thy soles do tread not on the heads (1861)

When we were down within the darksome well,
Beneath the giant’s feet, but lower far,
And I was scanning still the lofty wall,
I heard it said to me: “Look how thou steppest!
Take heed thou do not trample with thy feet
The heads of the tired, miserable brothers!”

-Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Canto XXII [Longfellow Translation] (1308)