Midway in our life’s journey, I went astray from the straight road and woke to find myself alone in a dark wood. How shall I say what wood that was! … - Dante Alighieri
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Midway in our life’s journey, I went astray from the straight road and woke to find myself alone in a dark wood. How shall I say what wood that was! I never saw so drear, so rank, so arduous a wilderness! Its very memory gives a shape to fear. Death could scarce be more bitter than that place! But since it came to good, I will recount all that I found revealed there by God’s grace. How I came to it I cannot rightly say, so drugged and loose with sleep had I become when I first wandered there from the True Way. But at the far end of that valley of evil whose maze had sapped my very heart with fear! I found myself before a little hill (15) and lifted up my eyes. Its shoulders glowed already with the sweet rays of that planet whose virtue leads men straight on every road, and the shining strengthened me against the fright whose agony had wracked the lake of my heart through all the terrors of that piteous night.
Dante Alighieri (c. 30 May 1265 – 13 September 1321), most likely baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri, was an Italian poet, writer and philosopher. His Divine Comedy, originally called Comedìa (modern Italian: Commedia) and later christened Divina by Giovanni Boccaccio, is widely considered one of the most important poems of the Middle Ages and the greatest literary work in the Italian language.
Biography information from
Wikiquote·
Portrait adapted from
Wikimedia Commons, Sandro Botticelli (Public domain / CC0)
Also Known As
Alternative Names:
Dante
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Durante degli Alighieri
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Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri
it seemed inconceivable to him that he and mankind in general should not have been intended to develop to the fullest their specifically human potential.
Because the charity of my native place Constrained me, gathered I the scattered leaves, And gave them back to him, who now was hoarse. Then came we to the confine, where disparted The second round is from the third, and where A horrible form of Justice is beheld. Clearly to manifest these novel things, I say that we arrived upon a plain, Which from its bed rejecteth every plant; The dolorous forest is a garland to it All round about, as the sad moat to that; There close upon the edge we stayed our feet.”
Excerpt From The Divine Comedy Dante Alighieri This material may be protected by copyright.
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The truth was that I stood on the brink of the chasm of grief, the abyss of pain [9] that holds the sound of infinite sorrow.
