Dante's Inferno

The Inferno begins with a sort of prologue—a canto unlike any canto that follows it—in which Dante is lost in a dark wood and attacked by three beasts. Where much of the Comedy is innovatively immediate, this first canto takes a more traditional allegorical form. The dark wood can be read as spiritual desolation, perhaps in the form of a midlife crisis: Dante is, after all, “In the middle of the journey of our life” (1.1), having a broadly human experience. That this dark wood bears some resemblance to the forest of the suicides suggests Dante is in dangerously deep despair when Virgil comes to rescue him. You need only consider the traditional symbolism of fairytale woods—frightening places of transformation—to understand why Dante might start the story of a spiritual epiphany in a menacing forest.

The three beasts Dante encounters are likewise allegorical. While there is some debate over exactly which beast represents what, scholars broadly agree that the beasts represent the three major divisions of Hell. In one common interpretation, the leopard—with its spotted coat reminiscent of Geryon’s lively patterns—represents fraud; the lion represents violence; and the she-wolf—that beast Dante just cannot seem to get past—represents incontinence. This would make a certain sense: The upper circles of incontinence are the most populous precisely because it is easy to be seduced by earthly goods. Dante’s fainting fit in the circle of Lust also suggests the “she-wolf” might be a stumbling block for him. That these beasts are animals also points to sin’s dehumanizing power, made most abundantly clear in Cocytus, where the sinners snarl and grimace like animals.

This strange canto serves a numerological role as well. The Divine Comedy in its entirety is composed of 100 cantos, a number symbolizing perfection. In order to make that perfect number, one of the three books must be the odd one out. The Inferno, with 34 cantos to the 33 of Purgatorio and Paradiso, is the natural transgressor.