Inferno, the first book of Dante’s Devine Comedy, is a Poem about the lost, the trapped, and the sleeping. Dante crafts his comedy in such a way that before we can see the benefits of “waking up,” the reader joins Dante in discovering what becomes of those who never do. We start in Hell, where Dante repeatedly finds who he might have been, had he not found himself in the first forest of Canto one. In Canto thirteen, Dante yet again finds himself in a woods. Yet something separates the human Dante walking through this forest beside Virgil from the shades who find themselves trapped and bound to dark woods forever.
The key difference rests on the line “I came to myself.” Dante’s journey through the entire comedy could only begin once he finally wakes and recognizes he is lost, trapped in a forest, with no path out. Therefore, Dante’s cyclical motion downwards through hell and examining the various regions implies a coming to himself over and over through a interior hellscape[1] as well. This is why Canto thirteen holds such particular weight: it is Dante reencountering the first forest, but this time he enters awake, by choice, and with a guide.
The Reader of Inferno joins Dante through two forests that are literarily identical.
I came to myself in a Dark wood,
For the straight way was lost.
Ah, how hard it is to tell
the nature of that wood, savage, dense and harsh-
the very thought of it renews my fear!
It is so bitter death is hardly more so.[2]
Thirteen Cantos later, Dante’s circling has brought him back to the same state of his beginning. This time, the forest represents the second tier of the Violent, where one finds the souls of those who stole from themselves their lives:
...we made our way into a forest
Not marked by any path.
No green leaves, but those of dusky hue-
not a straight branch, but knotted and contorted-
no fruit of any kind, but poisonous thorns.[3]
Upon reading the descriptions of these forests side by side, certain similarities stand out. First, both forests are meant to be feared: one is dark, savage, dense, and elicits a fear even as he recalls the memory. The second too is rough and dense, containing twisted, poisonous trees. Second, these forests are “found” only when one is lost. In the first, Dante awakens surrounded- trapped- within a pathless wood: he is lost.[4] In the forest of suicide, the lost souls of the unrepentant awaken within a forest, literally trapped within it, becoming the very material that makes the forest pathless and to be lost within. Finally, both forests are associated with death. Jason M. Robert Hollander believes the similarities of Cantos one and thirteen hint towards Dante’s recognition that he was perhaps near suicide himself,[5] describing the forest as so “bitter,” that he imagined death hardly worse. Whereas the trees surrounding Dante are the very shades of those who took that step farther than Dante and ended their lives.
Yet Dante is distinctly separate from the souls entrapped in the trees around him, and how close he was to following in their footsteps. What has changed in thirteen Cantos is not the forest, but rather Dante himself. Unlike the shades around him, Dante has already conquered his forest because he woke up. Dante woke and recognized himself, recognized his lost state, triggering the rest of the events of the Comedy. The shades of the forest are those who chose to, rather than awaken to their lost/trapped state of sin in life, and instead carelessly disregard their lives with suicide.[6] Thus, in Hell, the shades are denied those faculties that express our “wakefulness” or life, and a trapped within forests of their own design.
This connection to entrapment and wakefulness is further expressed when Virgil instructs Dante to break off a branch in this dark wood, and to his horror, Dante finds a tree not leaking the typical sap, but human blood. Along with blood, the tree/shades voice is temporarily released:
It cried again: ‘Why do you tear me?
Are you completely without pity?[7]
[...]
So from the broken splinter oozed
Blood and words together, and I let drop
The twig and stood like one afraid.[8]
For the trees, the speech act is only possible along with bleeding, as both bleeding and voice are qualities of life- wakefulness,[9] which the trees had denied by choosing death/sleep and thus are restricted of both in death.
Yet it is not merely the trees of Canto thirteen that exhibit this pattern of refusing to wake. It reoccurs in several of Dante’s more callous encounters where his pity is questioned. The first of such reactions is in circle four of the Wrathful. The Styx swamp simmering embodies the shade’s suppressed anger.[10] These are souls tramped in denied expression, which rises to the surface in an uncontrolled fury as they fight, only pulling each other back below the swamp. When Dante’s old enemy Filippo Argenti rises out of this swamp to talk, Dante denies him an outlet for expression through anger and instead watches joyfully as Filippo is pulled back below.[11]
At first glance, it appears cruel, but we forget that Filippo is already dead- he has had his chance to express anger correctly through articulation, repentance, and forgiveness. Instead, he denied himself this outlet because it required wakefulness- deliberate recognition that he was wrong, and therefore lost and trapped in the swamp of his own wrath.[12]
Much later, this same cold denial occurs when Dante meets Fra Alberigo:
‘lift from my face these rigid veils
so I can vent a while the grief that swells
my heart, until my tears freeze up again.[13]
However, Dante, as with Filippo, does not participate in their temporary relief and offers no pity.[14] Alberigo also wishes for release from a trap, believes he desires expression and release, but cannot see past the temporary, revealing a will still entirely frozen: asleep and trapped.[15]
In all three cases, the denial of expression takes the form of a natural barrier- a muddy swamp, encased in a tree, an icy lake- trapping these shades physically, but also restricts their qualities of wakefulness: expression of anger, bleeding, words, and tears. In these cases, the denial is the contrapasso: feelings of anger being denied proper expression; Guests denied proper hospitality; and in the tragic case of the trees, a forest of men who denied themselves their humanness: their very lives.
Therefore, to understand Dante is to understand the forest. However, to understand the forest one must understand these trapped shades. Dante does not help Filippo and Alberigo because he cannot help them. We must ask what exactly it is we expected Dante to do for Filippo; or why Alberigo would ask for so pithy a release. Because they had already denied themselves the condition that would end the entirety of the suffering.[16] They hold on to their sullenness, depression, and betrayals, refusing to wake to their lost and trapped states as Dante chose to do. After all, the shades sink below the Styx again; the ice crawls back up to block the tears again, and the blood will eventually clot and scab over the tree again. It is their condition of unhealed-unrepentant sin that they refuse to address- wake up to and recognize that they are lost. Instead, they doctor their festering wounds with expedient solutions. Indeed, the forest itself embodies those who sought the most expedient solution to life: an ending of it.
And so, we return to the original question: What is the difference between the forests of Cantos one and thirteen. The answer is none. What has changed is not the forest: it remains harrowing, pathless, and deadly. What has changed is Dante. He is no longer overcome because he woke up and chose to recognize his lostness and need for Devine guidance. The shades of Inferno are stuck in eternal states of entrapment because they are all asleep and willingly so. To “wake up” as Dante has, is not necessarily easy: it means every soul would have had to let go of their hardened will, and wake to their lost state, which is not easy. For Dante, it meant a painful journey to the lowest and darkest corners of himself, and then through the trials of refinement on mount purgatory, and up through the spheres to heaven. But it is Dante’s choice to wake up to this realization of his lost state and acceptance of a guide that separates him from the shades of the suicide forest. Dante is not trapped and lost in the forest because he is not asleep. He woke up and came to himself before it was too late.
[1] Baxter, Jason M. A Beginner’s Guide to Dante’s Divine Comedy (USA: Baker Academic, 2018), p. 7. [2] Alighieri, Dante. The Inferno, translated by Robert Hollander and Joan Hollander (USA: First Anchor Books, 2002), Canto 1, lines 2-7. [3] Dante, Inferno, 13.2-6. [4] Baxter, Devine Comedy, 12. [5] Dante, Inferno, 13.24. [6] Baxter, Devine Comedy, 46. [7] Dante, Inferno, 13.35-36. [8] Dante, Inferno, 13.43-45. [9] Baxter, Devine Comedy, 44. [10] Dante, Inferno, 8.117-120. [11] Dante, Inferno, 8.58-63. [12] Dante, Inferno, 8.121-126. [13] Dante, Inferno, 33.112-114. [14] Dante, Inferno, Canto 33, footnote 148-150. [15] Baxter, Devine Comedy, 66. [16] Baxter, Devine Comedy, 67.
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