At the bottom of the pit is Lucifer, half above the ice and
half below it, the centre of his body being the centre of gravity.
THE STORY OF THE DIVINE COMEDY.
THE HELL.
The poet Dante, in the thirty-fifth year of his life, this being the year
1300 A. D., on New Year's day of the old reckoning, lost his way in a
rough and thorny forest, and when he attempted to regain it by mounting a
hill that rose before him resplendent in sunshine, encountered a leopard,
a lion, and a wolf. Driven back by these, and utterly despairing of
rescue, he met one who declared himself to be that Vergil who had sung the
fall of Troy and the flight of Aeneas, and who promised to take him through
the lower world and Purgatory, even unto Paradise. Dante questioned why it
was permitted to him to take the journey denied to so many others, and was
told that Vergil had been sent to his rescue by the beauteous Beatrice,
long since in Paradise. When the poet, trembling with fear, heard that the
shining eyes of Beatrice had wept over his danger in the forest, and that
she had sought the gates of hell to effect his rescue, his strength was
renewed, even as the flowers, chilled by the frosts of night, uplift
themselves in the bright light of the morning sun; and he entered without
fear on the deep and savage way.
This allegory, being interpreted, probably means that the poet, entangled
in the dark forest of political anarchy, was driven from the hill of civil
order by the Leopard of Pleasure (Florence), the Lion of Ambition
(France), and the Wolf of Avarice (Rome), and was by divine grace granted
a vision of the three worlds that he might realize what comes after death,
and be the more firmly established in the right political
faith,--Ghibellinism.
Pages:
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363
364