Within a Dark Wood

The Internal Inferno...

“In the middle of the journey of our life I came to myself within a dark wood where the straight way was lost. Ah, how hard a thing it is to tell what a wild, and rough, and stubborn wood this was, which in my thought renews the fear!”

―Dante Alighieri The Divine Comedy

"Nel bel mezzo del viaggio della nostra vita sono tornato in me stesso in una selva oscura dove la retta via si era persa. Ah, com'è difficile dire che legno selvatico, ruvido e ostinato fosse questo, che nel mio pensiero rinnova la paura!”

I don’t know why I want to write about Dante’s Inferno, except that I was just given Gustave Doré’s illustrations of the Divine Comedy by a dear friend. I have friends in Krakow who have a son called Dante. When he was three, or two, he was in Dublin with his parents. We were walking along a street near Dublin Castle, Dame Street, and he saw a clay puppet in a shop window, that looked like it was hurtling down from a building, all splayed out. His mother said, do you like it Dante? He said yes, because it is a thing that looks like it is hurtling into boiling oil, in hell. I thought it was a pretty strange thing for a three year old to say, but that was Dante. His parents were defiant against the Catholic Church. Dante was to not to be baptised. And somehow, his grandmother, his mother told me, had filled his little head with the idea that there were vats of boiling oil in hell, just waiting for people who have not been baptised, to trip up and fall into them.

Photo by Robert Zunikoff on Unsplash

I suppose it’s the first verse about the forest in the the Inferno that always captures me. I have felt lost in the forest many times in my life, but over this summer, tangled up in thickets and quite in the dark, and yet despite my moaning about the weather, it’s strange fluctutations, my constant plea to Lugh and other givers of light, the weather has not been bad, for an Irish summer. So it isn’t the weather although I obsess over the state of the skies. It’s something else. A malaise, an uncertainty, and un-knowing of how things are, of how things will be. Where am I going, where are we all going? Can we be certain the sun will rise? Does everything and all not pivot around that one certainty?

Photo by Roman Melnychuk on Unsplash

I’ve been in the seas every day, and that shocks me out of numb confusion. What day is it, why am I here, where do I belong? But it is actually when I find my tree in the forest and speak to that certainty of knowing, of belonging, of being- that I can begin to navigate again. Imagine, I’d forgotten about the trees. Where I had refuge as a child- in the forest. Dangling from a tree. Running through trees. With other monkey friends, falling out of them into the river. Not caring. And now, I find myself in a dark forest again.

Photo by Steven Kamenar on Unsplash

I suppose as well I was in Florence, and that reminded me of Dante. The sheer beauty of that extremely overcrowded city of painters, architects and sculptors now full of busy trattorias, souvenir shops and galleries as crowded as airports, if not more. But poets, as well. Back then. Not that I actually thought about Dante while I was trapsing through the streets fleeing tourists yet being one myself, swerving away from the Duomo queues, deciding not to even negotiate them. So, well, I suppose things might slip into us while we are somewhere and they only appear later. Much later. When I was given this book of illustrations, I really just honed in on the first plate. About being lost in the forest. Which I am. But maybe that is not such a bad thing after all.

The things you meet in the Inferno. Your own fears. Lions, panthers, wolves. Things lurking that we don’t like. Things that make us want to run. Things in the forest that creep along beside us, unknown to us. The shadows.

INFERNO

CANTO I

Midway upon the journey of our life
  I found myself within a forest dark,
  For the straightforward pathway had been lost.

Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say
  What was this forest savage, rough, and stern,
  Which in the very thought renews the fear.

So bitter is it, death is little more;
  But of the good to treat, which there I found,
  Speak will I of the other things I saw there.

I cannot well repeat how there I entered,
  So full was I of slumber at the moment
  In which I had abandoned the true way.

Photo by Sebastian Unrau on Unsplash

But after I had reached a mountain’s foot,
  At that point where the valley terminated,
  Which had with consternation pierced my heart,

Upward I looked, and I beheld its shoulders,
  Vested already with that planet’s rays
  Which leadeth others right by every road.

Then was the fear a little quieted
  That in my heart’s lake had endured throughout
  The night, which I had passed so piteously.

And even as he, who, with distressful breath,
  Forth issued from the sea upon the shore,
  Turns to the water perilous and gazes;

So did my soul, that still was fleeing onward,
  Turn itself back to re-behold the pass
  Which never yet a living person left.

Photo by Shifaaz shamoon on Unsplash

After my weary body I had rested,
  The way resumed I on the desert slope,
  So that the firm foot ever was the lower.

And lo! almost where the ascent began,
  A panther light and swift exceedingly,
  Which with a spotted skin was covered o’er!

Gustave Doré The Panther, Inf. 31-33

And never moved she from before my face,
  Nay, rather did impede so much my way,
  That many times I to return had turned.

The time was the beginning of the morning,
  And up the sun was mounting with those stars
  That with him were, what time the Love Divine

At first in motion set those beauteous things;
  So were to me occasion of good hope,
  The variegated skin of that wild beast,

The hour of time, and the delicious season;
  But not so much, that did not give me fear
  A lion’s aspect which appeared to me.

He seemed as if against me he were coming
  With head uplifted, and with ravenous hunger,
  So that it seemed the air was afraid of him;

And a she-wolf, that with all hungerings
  Seemed to be laden in her meagreness,
  And many folk has caused to live forlorn!

She brought upon me so much heaviness,
  With the affright that from her aspect came,
  That I the hope relinquished of the height.

And as he is who willingly acquires,
  And the time comes that causes him to lose,
  Who weeps in all his thoughts and is despondent,

E'en such made me that beast withouten peace,
  Which, coming on against me by degrees
  Thrust me back thither where the sun is silent.

Photo by Jeroen Bosch on Unsplash

While I was rushing downward to the lowland,
  Before mine eyes did one present himself,
  Who seemed from long-continued silence hoarse.

When I beheld him in the desert vast,
  “Have pity on me,” unto him I cried,
  “Whiche’er thou art, or shade or real man!”

He answered me: “Not man; man once I was,
  And both my parents were of Lombardy,
  And Mantuans by country both of them.

‘Sub Julio’ was I born, though it was late,
  And lived at Rome under the good Augustus,
  During the time of false and lying gods.

A poet was I, and I sang that just
  Son of Anchises, who came forth from Troy,
  After that Ilion the superb was burned.

Photo by Dario Veronesi on Unsplash

But thou, why goest thou back to such annoyance?
  Why climb’st thou not the Mount Delectable,
  Which is the source and cause of every joy?”

“Now, art thou that Virgilius and that fountain
  Which spreads abroad so wide a river of speech?”
  I made response to him with bashful forehead.

“O, of the other poets honour and light,
  Avail me the long study and great love
  That have impelled me to explore thy volume!

Thou art my master, and my author thou,
  Thou art alone the one from whom I took
  The beautiful style that has done honour to me.

Behold the beast, for which I have turned back;
  Do thou protect me from her, famous Sage,
  For she doth make my veins and pulses tremble.”

“Thee it behoves to take another road,”
  Responded he, when he beheld me weeping,
  “If from this savage place thou wouldst escape;

Because this beast, at which thou criest out,
  Suffers not any one to pass her way,
  But so doth harass him, that she destroys him;

And has a nature so malign and ruthless,
  That never doth she glut her greedy will,
  And after food is hungrier than before.

Many the animals with whom she weds,
  And more they shall be still, until the Greyhound
  Comes, who shall make her perish in her pain.

He shall not feed on either earth or pelf,
  But upon wisdom, and on love and virtue;
  'Twixt Feltro and Feltro shall his nation be;

Of that low Italy shall he be the saviour,
  On whose account the maid Camilla died,
  Euryalus, Turnus, Nisus, of their wounds;

Through every city shall he hunt her down,
  Until he shall have driven her back to Hell,
  There from whence envy first did let her loose.

Therefore I think and judge it for thy best
  Thou follow me, and I will be thy guide,
  And lead thee hence through the eternal place,

Where thou shalt hear the desperate lamentations,
  Shalt see the ancient spirits disconsolate,
  Who cry out each one for the second death;

And thou shalt see those who contented are
  Within the fire, because they hope to come,
  Whene’er it may be, to the blessed people;

To whom, then, if thou wishest to ascend,
  A soul shall be for that than I more worthy;
  With her at my departure I will leave thee;

Because that Emperor, who reigns above,
  In that I was rebellious to his law,
  Wills that through me none come into his city.

He governs everywhere, and there he reigns;
  There is his city and his lofty throne;
  O happy he whom thereto he elects!”

And I to him: “Poet, I thee entreat,
  By that same God whom thou didst never know,
  So that I may escape this woe and worse,

Thou wouldst conduct me there where thou hast said,
  That I may see the portal of Saint Peter,
  And those thou makest so disconsolate.”

Then he moved on, and I behind him followed.

If you got this far, I hope you enjoyed the verses. Still wondering though, who to follow.