Commedia. Inferno

Midway upon the journey of our life, I found myself within a forest dark, for the straightforward path had been lost. Fear gripped me as I stumbled through the shadowed wood, until the first rays of the sun illuminated a mountain, offering a glimmer of hope. But my ascent was swiftly blocked by three beasts: a leopard, a lion, and a she-wolf, each driving me back into the deepening gloom. Just as despair threatened to consume me, a figure appeared, faint at first, then solidifying into the shade of Virgil, the great Roman poet. He spoke of a different path, a journey through the eternal realms, commanded by my beloved Beatrice, that would lead me back to the light.

Together, we approached the gate of Hell, an ominous arch bearing the chilling inscription, "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here." Beyond it lay the Vestibule, where the indifferent souls, those who lived without praise or infamy, pursued a wavering banner, stung by wasps and flies. Their laments mingled with the cries of the unbaptized infants, a mournful prelude to the true torments within. Soon, we reached the river Acheron, where the ancient ferryman Charon, with eyes of burning coal, reluctantly took us across the murky waters after Virgil assured him of my divinely sanctioned journey.

Our descent truly began in Limbo, the First Circle, a place not of torment but of longing, where virtuous pagans and unbaptized souls dwelled without hope of God's light. Here, I saw the great poets of antiquity - Homer, Horace, Ovid, Lucan - and felt a profound honor to walk among them. Moving deeper, the air grew thick with lamentations, and the Second Circle revealed the carnal sinners, swept ceaselessly by a furious, dark wind, forever denied peace, just as their passions had denied them reason in life. Among them, I spoke with Francesca da Rimini, whose tragic tale of forbidden love and violent death moved me to pity, causing me to swoon.

We plunged further, through the Third Circle, where gluttons lay prostrate in icy, filthy rain, gnawed by the three-headed dog Cerberus. Then came the Fourth, a realm of ceaseless jousting for the avaricious and the prodigal, forever pushing enormous weights against each other, their faces obscured by grime. The Fifth Circle presented the wrathful, tearing at each other in the muddy waters of the Styx, while the sullen lay submerged beneath. We crossed the Styx and approached the fiery City of Dis, its walls guarded by demons who initially denied us passage until an angelic messenger forced the gates open. Within, the Sixth Circle held the heretics, entombed in flaming sepulchers, their eternal resting place a burning mockery of their denial of immortality.

The journey pressed on to the Seventh Circle, reserved for the violent, divided into three rings. First, those violent against neighbors writhed in a river of boiling blood, guarded by centaurs. Next, the suicides, twisted into gnarled trees, were fed upon by Harpies, their only speech through their broken branches. Finally, the violent against God, nature, and art suffered on a desert of burning sand, beneath a perpetual rain of fire. Our guide, Virgil, then summoned the monstrous Geryon, a creature with the face of an honest man, the body of a serpent, and a scorpion's tail, who carried us across a vast chasm to the Eighth Circle, Malebolge - the "evil pouches."

Malebolge was a horrifying landscape of ten concentric ditches, each a unique torment for those who committed fraud. I witnessed panderers and seducers lashed by demons, flatterers steeped in excrement, simoniacs buried headfirst with burning feet, and sorcerers with their heads twisted backward. Further on, corrupt politicians swam in boiling pitch, hypocrites wore gilded leaden cloaks, and thieves were tormented by serpents, their bodies transforming into ash and reforming. Schismatics were perpetually hacked apart by a demon, their wounds healing only to be reopened, and falsifiers suffered from gruesome diseases.

At last, we reached the lowest, Ninth Circle, a frozen lake named Cocytus, where the treacherous were entombed in ice. This circle was divided into four concentric rings, each for a different degree of treachery: Caina for betrayers of kin, Antenora for betrayers of country, Ptolomea for betrayers of guests, and Judecca for betrayers of their lords. Here, frozen solid, sometimes with only their faces exposed, were the souls of those who had committed the most heinous betrayals. In the very center, waist-deep in the ice, stood the three-headed giant Lucifer himself, a grotesque parody of divine power. From each of his three mouths, he ceaselessly chewed on the three greatest traitors: Judas Iscariot, Brutus, and Cassius. With Virgil leading the way, we climbed down Lucifer's hairy flanks, passing through the very center of the Earth, until we emerged, on Easter morning, to behold the stars once more.