The Divina Commedia Author:Dante Alighieri General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1887 Original Publisher: K. Paul, Trench and co. Subjects: Foreign Language Study / Italian Literary Criticism / European / Italian Poetry / Continental European Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or... more » missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: NOTES TO CANTO I. l. 1. -- The poem opens on the eve of Good Friday, A. D. 1300 (see Introduction), when Dante, who was born in May, 1265, had nearly completed his thirty-fifth year, and was thus half-way through the threescore years and ten allotted by the Psalmist to human life. l. 2. -- The dark wood is the depraved world. There is, doubtless, also a reference to the troubled state of the times in Italy and elsewhere. Contrast this gloomy wood, and Dante's horror of it, with his glowing description of, and his eagerness to explore, that other wood of the terrestrial paradise, wherein human nature was perfect (Purg. xxviii.). l. 13. -- The hill is Christianity. l. 17. -- The planet is the Sun, which in Dante's time was supposed to be one, and in Par. xxxiii. 145 is spoken of as one of the stars. l. 20. -- The night preceding Good Friday. It is now dawn on Good Friday morning. I. 30. -- The meaning is that he climbed, resting most on the foot that was lowest. l. 32. -- No doubt the apparition of the three beasts to him was suggested to the poet by Jeremiah v. 6: " Wherefore a lion out of the forest shall slay them, and a wolf of the evenings shall spoil them, a leopard shall watch over their cities." This first beast, the panther, represents Pleasure. Its nimbleness and its spotted hide may be intended as a figure of fickle Florence and its Bianchi and Neri factions. l. 38. -- The stars of Aries. The Sun was supposed to have started in A...« less