The film without the cuts. And the book itself.
Lost in a dark wood at midlife, Dante is turned back by three beasts until the poet Virgil arrives to guide him through Hell.
Dante the Pilgrim
A living man wakes in a dark wood and must descend through Hell before he can see the stars again.
The Dark Wood
A man wakes lost in a black forest, with no memory of how he strayed.
Lost from the true path, he must face dread before hope can guide him.
Read →Lost In The Gloomy Wood
In the midway of this our mortal life, I found me in a gloomy wood, astray Gone from the path direct: and e’en to tell It were no easy task, how savage wild That forest, how robust and rough its growth, Which to remember only, my dismay Renews, in bitterness not far from death. Yet to discourse of what there good befell, All else will I relate discover’d there. How first I enter’d it I scarce can say, Such sleepy dullness in that instant weigh’d My senses down, when the true path I left, But when a mountain’s foot I reach’d, where clos’d The valley, that had pierc’d my heart with dread, I look’d aloft, and saw his shoulders broad Already vested with that planet’s beam, Who leads all wanderers safe through every way.
A man admits he cannot account for his own disaster. The narrator, Dante, opens in the middle of his life to find himself lost in a dark wood, and when he tries to explain how he got there, the honest answer is that he cannot: "How first I enter'd it I scarce can say," blaming a "sleepy dullness" that dulled his senses the moment he left the right road. The thought turns when the memory of that fear becomes almost unbearable, "in bitterness not far from death," yet he steadies himself to keep telling, because some good came of it. That good arrives as a physical image: reaching the foot of a mountain, he looks up and sees its shoulders already clothed in sunlight, the first sign that a way out exists.
The Dark Wood
Lost in a dark wood at midlife, Dante is turned back by three beasts until the poet Virgil arrives to guide him through Hell.
Gate Inscription
Before Dante meets a single sinner, Hell itself tells him to abandon all hope.
Virgil
The ancient poet steps from shadow as reason, authority, and rescue in human form.
The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: The Inferno
The cast, locations, objects of note, core concepts, and selected passages in the Author’s Pen - at your own pace.
The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: The Inferno World, as it plays on your phone
- Meet the people. 41 characters, each with a portrait, who they are and what they want.
- Walk the places. 29 places, each pictured, and what happens there.
- Follow the plot. The turns of the story, in order, so you always know where you are.
- Taste the original. 56 key passages in Dante Alighieri’s own words, each with a short reading of what it is doing.
- The complete book. Every word, in a reader made for your phone. From any passage, one tap opens the book at that very page.
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