And we’re off . . . or we’re at a dead halt! Dante-the-pilgrim sets off only to stop himself. He’s full of self-doubt. He doesn’t know why he should walk across the universe. (And maybe behind it all, Dante-the-poet isn’t quite sure why he should write this poem.) He needs reassurance—from Virgil, a classical poet and a fellow writer, someone who’s been around the block of long-form poetry already!

Dante-the-pilgrim offers two examples of people who’ve walked into the afterlife: Aeneas and Saint Paul. Both of these appear far more “worthy.” And listen, with one finished work and a couple of uncompleted treatises under his belt, as well as a sheaf of lyric poems and longer canzoni (ballad-like poems), our poet truly isn’t at a place in his career for this journey.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as I explore this moment of self-doubt, expressed in the pilgrim, maybe felt by the poet. There’s more afoot here than you might realize. The pilgrim (and maybe the poet) is also engaged in rhetorical warfare with Virgil, maybe to best the old poet, or maybe to see if Dante’s up to snuff for the journey ahead.

Here’s my English translation of the opening passage from Inferno, Canto II. If you’d like to see a more scholarly translation, check out the one by Stanley Lombardo or by Robert and Jean Hollander.

INFERNO, Canto II, Lines 1 – 42:

The day was waning, and the darkening air

Was freeing the creatures who live on earth

From their labors. I alone was left

 

To get myself ready for the coming war—

That is, of the journey and the sorrow—

Which unerring memory will retrace.

 

O Muses, O high genius, help me now.

O Memory, that already wrote what I saw,

Your nobility will here become apparent.

 

I began like this: “Poet, my guide,

Consider if my strength is powerful enough

Before you trust me to the deep passage.

 

You say that Silvius’s father,

While still corrupted, went

To the immortal regions with his senses intact.

 

Listen: that the adversary of all evil

Showed him such favor—given who and what he was,

And even the high effect that came from him—

 

Seems perfectly right to a man of intellect.

For he had been chosen in the Empyrean

To be the father of mother Rome and her empire.

 

Both of these, to tell you the truth,

Were established to serve as the sacred location

Where Saint Peter’s successors have their throne.

 

On this journey, which you affirm he made,

He came to know things that moved him to win

And set up things for the papal mantle.

 

Next, the chosen vessel went there

To bring back the confirmation of our faith,

The first thing on the way to salvation.

 

But I? Why should I go there? Who permits it?

I am not Aeneas. I am not Paul.

Neither I nor anyone else deigns me worthy.

 

And so, if I do let go of myself and come with you,

I fear the venture may turn out to be madness.

You are wise. You understand what I’m trying to say.”

 

And as such a one who unwills what he’s willed,

Changing his mind because of new thoughts,

So that he pulls back from what he’s begun,

 

Just so was I on that dark slope—

With too much thinking, I’d stopped

What I’d begun.