Divine Comedy: Hell
by Dante
The first chapter of Dante's "Divine Comedy" (translated by Henry Francis Carey), "Hell" (or "Hell"), begins the night before Good Friday in 1300, "along the path of our lives." Dante is thirty-five years old, half of the Bible's 70-year lifespan, lost in a dark forest, attacked by animals he can't escape, and unable to find a direct path to salvation. Realizing that he has ruined himself and fallen deep into the sun where it is quiet, Dante is eventually rescued by Virgil, and the two begin their journey into the underworld. The punishment for every sin in Inferno is a contrapaso, a symbolic example of poetic justice. (source: Wikipedia)
