Discussion Questions

1. What do you think is the significance of the drama beginning on Good Friday?

2. Why might the poet have chosen avarice to be the representative sin that ultimately blocks the pilgrim from attaining salvation? Is there a connection with his election to the priory?

3. Why might the poet picture himself as utterly lost when it seems he has finally “made it”? According to the poet, which is the “real life”? The prestige and fame of the world, or the savageness and devastation of the dark wood?

4. Read Jeremiah 5:1–13. Are there parallels between Israel and Dante? If so, what are they? Why might they be important to us?

5. This is a question that can only be fully answered at the end of the poem, but why might it be necessary for the pilgrim to journey through the three realms of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven? What can we anticipate about the lessons the pilgrim might learn?

Canto Ii

Dante And Virgil

⸭ Dante and Virgil

Characters

⸭ Mary, Lucy, Beatrice

Location

⸭ A Dark Wood, the Courts of Heaven

Summary

It is now the evening of Good Friday, the pilgrim’s attempts to climb the mountain having taken most of the day. After agreeing to follow Virgil, Dante gets cold feet. He is not an Aeneas; He is not a Paul. He is just a Dante. How could he be so audacious as to assume the right of enjoying such a passage? However, despite appearances, this is not an act of humility. Virgil identifies Dante’s real problem: he is overwhelmed with cowardice, plain and simple. Virgil encourages him by telling the story of how he, Virgil, came to be in that dark wood to help Dante in the first place. Beatrice had appeared to him in the first circle of Hell, the sphere of the virtuous pagans, and entreated him to help her friend. The Roman poet is astonished, to put it mildly, that Beatrice did not consider it beneath her to descend to this place. At his request, she explains why she is there. Mary had seen Dante’s plight and asked Lucy (Dante’s special saint) to alert Beatrice (Dante’s special love) to the situation, which prompts her to descend to ask for Virgil’s help. After Dante is sufficiently rebuked into repentance, he submits to Virgil as his lord and master and follows him on the dangerous journey.

Notes

⸭ Most commentators note that the first canto serves as an introduction to the whole Comedy, and that this canto is the “first” of Inferno, with the traditional epic invocation of the muses. This allows there to be 33 cantos in each canticle; together with the introductory canto, that makes an even 100 total. Another theory is that Dante purposefully gives 34 cantos to Inferno because of the significance of the number 33, being the number of years Christ lived. He is careful never to mention the name of Christ in Hell, as a sign of respect, and it would be consistent to make this numerological gesture as well.

⸭ Sylvius was the son of Aeneas and Lavinia, born after the events related in the Aeneid .

⸭ Empyrean Heaven is the 10th heaven in the Ptolemaic cosmos, not just a place where God dwells, but the very presence of God Himself.

⸭ The Chosen Vessel was Paul, who describes his journey to the third heaven (what Dante and the other medievals assumed was the heaven of Venus) in 2 Corinthians 12:1–10.

⸭ The heaven with the slowest circles is the sphere of the Moon; all the objects of human discontent are found under the orbit of the Moon, that is, here on Earth. As for Beatrice (“lady of virtue”) being the only one who can bring mankind past the sphere of the Moon, see below.

⸭ Lucy is St. Lucy, martyr of Syracuse, who stands for the grace of illumination, and is therefore also the patron saint of those who suffer from vision issues, like Dante did.

⸭ For more information on Dante and Beatrice, see his Vita Nuova . Beatrice was an object of Dante’s youthful love and inspired his early, sappy love poems; she later became a poetic figure for theology, beauty, goodness, truth, and grace. She must guide Dante to Heaven, as only grace can do. Virgil, a symbol of human reason at its apogee, is able to take the pilgrim through the vices of Hell and the virtues of Purgatory, but not the holy union with Christ only grace can achieve.

Analysis

Not surprisingly, as soon as the pilgrim commits to this arduous and crazy journey through the different realms, he gets cold feet. He sets his hand to the plow, as it were, but looks back. Cowardice has gripped his heart. But is that so shocking? Especially for one who was so defeated by avarice? By self-service and self-importance? This journey is not going to be an easy one, utterly bereft of comforts and soft pleasures. The pilgrim, so recently asleep to the reality of his deadly surroundings, recognizes that whatever else this will be, it will be painful, and he is not sure he is strong enough for such an ordeal, however necessary and good. Virgil encourages him with both stern and soft words, relating the story of how the three women of heaven desire to help Dante, to nurture him out of the spiritually emaciated state he is in. Strengthened by this history, Dante is now composed and ready for the “high and savage course.”

But why Virgil? Why did Beatrice send this ancient Roman poet? This is a question that has produced significant discussion, and cannot be adequately answered in this brief analysis. Nevertheless, I want to offer a few thoughts to get you going. Indications from the text would suggest that Dante highly prized the Aeneid . Furthermore, as the supreme poet of the Roman Empire, Virgil represents the highest authority in the limited, temporal realm. He also represents what man can achieve by common grace, apart from divine revelation. (For more context, see the block quote on page xviii of the Introduction, and the paragraph discussing Virgil on page xx.) This gives Virgil an authority the pilgrim, at this stage of his journey, can easily recognize and submit to. But more than that, Dante is suggesting that what the soul lost in a wood needs is not a lecture, not some moralistic exhortation, but the beauty of poetry. His soul is entranced with the things of this world; he needs to be captivated by a beauty bolder and more intense than anything the world can offer. Poetry stands for such beauty, and Virgil for such poetry. However, Virgil only represents the making of such beauty (see his Aeneid ). He is a signpost pointing the way to something, and someone, greater than himself. Beatrice, as symbol of divine grace, will come as the living embodiment of that beauty, a beauty that will be strong enough to raise the pilgrim’s eyes from things made and temporal, to that which is unmade and eternal.