And we’re off. The opening lines of, well, the greatest work of Western literature (to date, if you must).

Here’s how it starts: a dark wood, a man alone, and a mid-life crisis—except not his, but ours.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we take the first steps on the podcast WALKING WITH DANTE and discover that the journey starts in a place that seems unimaginable but that really has roots in literary traditions all the way back to Genesis in the Bible.

Here’s my rough English translation of the opening lines:

In the middle of the journey of our life

I found myself in a dark wood

For the straight way was lost.

Ah, how hard it is to say what

That wood was, so savage and gnarled and hard

That such a thought brings back my fear.

It is so bitter that death is hardly more so—

But to discuss the good I found there

I will tell the other things I saw.