Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita....

Okay so I started Inferno and it is actually great. I've gotten through Cantos I-V and it is full of imagery so profound and literarily fantastic that you can't even imagine it unless you read it yourself. From the first line of the first canto, "Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita..." (Halfway through the walk of life) we know that Dante is bringing us into a vivid world of the afterlife.

In Canto I Dante is so full of sleep that he has lost his way through the "walk of life". He comes to a hill where he is happened upon by a leopard who blocks his path. Then a lionness and a wolf also meet him and he is forced in retreat, where the figure of the dead poet Virgil comes out of the mist to guide him in the opposite direction, through the afterlife of the Inferno, where the souls of all evil and unjust and impure people lie. Virgil, one of Dante's literary mentors, feels it best to show Dante all three aspects of the afterlife: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. In Purgatory, Dante's true love Beatrice will lead him through Limbo and into the spheres of Paradise, to meet the Almighty Father.

In Canto II Virgil leads Dante into the ante-inferno, or limbo to view the souls of those who were either born before Christianity or without baptism. He is lead down the treacherous mountain of the Inferno, where each circle holds a different host and realm of sinners. There is actually a really good description in the beginning of Canto V where there is an endless line of sinful souls who march up to meet the fearful Minos. Each soul states their name and the sins they have died for, and according to the number of times Minos wraps his tail around his body is the level of the Inferno the soul is to remain. It's sort of like the St Peter at the gates, but the Hell version. Through Cantos III and IV we see the souls of Paris, Helen of Troy, Achilles, Francesca da Rimini, Pietro Malatesta, etc. The endless tempesta, or storm that ravages the souls as they wait in line to find their place in the Inferno would be an awesome scene in a movie, should any director EVER be brave enough to even TRY to make the Divine Comedy a blockbuster!

Well onto more reading! I hope anyone reading is enjoying this so far, hopefully I'll get a little more in depth, but then again I'm not supplying Cliffs notes here...