Canto 1: How Dark Was the Wood
Dante Bill Giovinazzo Dante Bill Giovinazzo

Canto 1: How Dark Was the Wood

In my January 27th post, Lost and Afraid in Dante’s Wood, I proposed that rather than interpreting the woods as Dante’s sinful life, we should see the forest as the fallen world in which Dante lived. In that article, I discussed how the dangers of the forest are metaphors for the spiritual threats we all face in life’s journey. This article explores the darkness of that wood.

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Canto 1: Lost and Afraid in Dante’s Wood
Dante Bill Giovinazzo Dante Bill Giovinazzo

Canto 1: Lost and Afraid in Dante’s Wood

This past May, I was fortunate enough to walk the Camino de Santiago. One morning, I headed out a couple of hours before dawn, hoping to reach my destination before the sun became too strong. There was no moon, so it was very dark. If there were any stars, I could not see them through the canopy formed by the trees. Although I had a headlamp, walking through an inky black forest was unnerving. I worried about what might be hiding in a clump of bushes farther up the path. Worse yet, what was behind me? I started to sing, hoping to frighten anything that might be nearby. Then I wondered, would I be scaring off potential predators or simply telling them where to find their breakfast? Although sitting in my comfortable, well-lit library, I can now laugh, I was more flustered than I care to admit.

The experience made real to me the confusion and fear Dante must have felt in Canto 1 of the Inferno. I, like Dante, was a pilgrim alone in a dark wood. Even as I say this, I feel the comparison is unfair to Signore Alighieri. Dante was lost and in the dark. He did not have a GPS to guide his steps or a rechargeable LED headlamp to light his path. Yet, even with these advantages, I was still apprehensive. It was not my best morning on the Camino.

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Canto 1: The Journey
Dante Bill Giovinazzo Dante Bill Giovinazzo

Canto 1: The Journey

Many have long described The Divine Comedy as the greatest work of Western literature. This acclaim is due, in part, to Dante making his journey from bondage to freedom personal to his readers. His poem reaches out and pulls us into the experience of his spiritual enlightenment.

Dante begins by telling us, “Midway in our life’s journey / I awoke to find myself lost in a dark wood.” The tension created between “our life’s journey” and “I awoke” is a subject of a great deal of speculation. What was the authorial intent? Why didn’t Dante simply write in the middle of my life’s journey, I awoke? We might brush off this conflict as sloppy writing, that Dante had intended no deeper meaning here, but I believe this would be a mistake. While I cannot say with any absolute authority what Dante had intended, I think there is a purpose in his choice of words. And, that purpose is an example of how Dante draws us into the poem from the very start.

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