The poem's bold intermixture of realities, from the sublime to the vile, is part of what makes it so modern. It gathers together an extraordinary range of literary styles: lyric, satiric, biblical, as well as some memorable invective. 'Midway in the journey of our life I found myself in a dark forest, for the right path was lost'.īegun in the first decade of the 14th century, Dante's poem is, for many, the greatest single work of Western literature. At the request of a woman called Beatrice, the ghost of the Roman poet Virgil is about to show him Hell. Dante Alighieri, a figure in his own work, has lost his way in middle age and is alone and frightened in the darkness. As every Italian schoolchild knows, The Divine Comedy opens in a supernatural 'dark forest' just before sunrise on Good Friday, 1300.
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