INFERNO, Episode 4. Climbing Away From The Turbulence In The Lake Of The Heart: Inferno, Canto I, Lines 10 - 27

Our pilgrim appears to have found a way out: up a steep slope, toward the rising sun. Hope abounds!

We’re moving on to the first steps in our journey across the universe with the pilgrim Dante (who has got the same name as the poet, of course). Problem is, he’s headed in the wrong direction. So we are, too!

What happens when you set out to walk out of the hell in your life? If you’re not careful, you go the way you know. In other words, you’re moving and stuck all at once.

But for the moment at least, we and the pilgrim are headed into what seems like the gorgeous, wide world all before us.

Here are the segments of this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE:

[01:13] My English translation of this passage: INFERNO, Canto 1, Lines 10 - 27. If you'd like to read along, print it off, make notes, or drop a comment, please scroll down this page.

[02:48] The balance between the two central characters of the COMEDY: the poet who is writing the work and the pilgrim who is walking the journey.

[06:40] Is this a dream poem?

[08:49] The hill ahead--both for the pilgrim, as he starts his journey; and for us, as we start the poem.

[11:19]   The lake of the heart: the start of the gorgeous language of Dante's poem.

[13:56] The poem's first simile: shipwreck.

[16:32] More about that hill ahead.

Here’s my English translation of these lines of INFERNO, Canto 1, lines 10 - 27:

I cannot rightly say how I got there,

I was so full of sleep at the moment

When I abandoned the true way.

But when I got to the foot of a hill

Where the valley ended

That had pierced my heart with fear,

I looked high up and saw its shoulders

Bathed in the rays of that planet

That leads all of us straight along every path.

Then the fear in the lake of my heart was calmed,

The fear that had lasted all the night

That I had spent in distress.

And as someone with belabored breath

Who has gotten out of the deep and to the shore

Then looks back at the perilous water

So my mind, still fleeing,

Turned back to look once more at the pass

No one has ever left alive.