Inferno · Canto III ·
Inferno III — The Gate
Reading Divine Comedy · canto 3 of 100 · Inferno, Canto III
Before reading
The journey begins here. After the prologue of canto I and the night-before of canto II, this is the canto in which the pilgrim actually enters Hell — but not the Hell of the punished sinners, not yet. He enters first an antechamber, then a riverbank, then a boat. The canto is the Comedy's threshold scene: short, formal, and built to be remembered.
Where the canto sits
Inferno is structured as a great inverted cone descending from the surface of the earth to its centre. The canto you are about to read does not yet enter any of its circles; it stops in the space between the gate and the first circle, on the near side of the river Acheron. Everything that happens in this canto happens before Hell proper begins. The poem is teaching the reader, with extraordinary care, that there are entrances within entrances.
What it helps to know
The canto opens with an inscription carved above the gate. It is the most famous gate inscription in any literature, and the last of its nine lines is the most quoted single line in Italian. You do not need to know it in advance — let it land — but know that it is the gate itself speaking, not the narrator and not Virgil. The gate is granted a voice.
In the antechamber just inside, you will meet a category of souls Dante invented for this canto: those who were neither for nor against, who refused to take sides while they lived. Among them, Dante will glimpse one specific historical figure — unnamed, but described in a way that has been read for seven hundred years as a coded portrait of Pope Celestine V. Celestine was a saintly hermit who was elected pope in 1294, served five months, and resigned, which made room for his successor Boniface VIII — the pope Dante held responsible, more than any other figure, for his political exile from Florence. The cold judgment Dante is about to pass on the man who resigned the papacy is a piece of personal politics. Keep your eye out for the great refusal.
At the river, an old man will appear. This is Charon, the boatman of the classical Greek underworld — lifted by Dante almost word for word out of Aeneid VI, where Aeneas met him in the same office. The Comedy's procedure is being established: Dante will use the stage furniture of pagan Hades as if it were real, set inside a Christian moral order. The first official Hell sends to meet the pilgrim is a Roman one.
What to read for
Read the gate inscription carefully. It names who built Hell — and the answer it gives is theologically the most difficult thing the Commedia ever says. Sit with the difficulty. The rest of Inferno will be a test of whether the claim can be lived with.
Notice the canto's quiet politics of naming. Dante will name some souls and leave others unnamed — and which ones he chooses to silence is as authored as which ones he chooses to call out.
When Charon refuses to take the pilgrim across, listen for the line by which Virgil silences him. It is six words in Italian, and it will return word for word in canto V to silence the next gatekeeper. The poem is establishing a formula.
The canto ends without ever explicitly showing the pilgrim cross the river. Notice the blank. The first true entrance into Hell is given to the reader as a withholding.
From here on: illustrations and analysis. The three images below are scenes from the canto, and after them comes the close reading — famous lines quoted in full, paradoxes explained, political and theological freight unpacked. If you have not yet read the canto, stop here — read it, then come back.
After reading
What the canto did
The canto is a threshold scene built out of three pieces — the inscription, the antechamber, the river — and each piece is doing structural work for the whole poem. The inscription announces, before any soul is encountered, the most difficult theological claim the Commedia will ever make: that Hell is a creation of Justice, Omnipotence, Wisdom, and Love. Hell is presented not as an outrage but as an act of the same Trinity that built everything else. The antechamber introduces a category Dante invented — the souls who refused to choose — and assigns to them a punishment of pure motion without meaning, an eternity of chasing a banner that has no device on it. The river introduces the Comedy's procedure for using pagan stage furniture inside a Christian moral order: Charon walks out of Aeneid VI and into Hell as if he had always been waiting there. The canto closes with the pilgrim crossing Acheron unconscious. The first true entrance into Hell is given to the reader as a blank — a withholding the poem will repeat at every later threshold.
The vestibule of the neutrals
There is no scriptural or patristic precedent for the antechamber of the indifferent. Dante invented it for this canto and assigned to it the souls he most despised: those who lived without infamy or praise, those who were neither rebellious nor faithful to God, but were for themselves. They are denied even the fame of damnation. Mercy and Justice both disdain them. The poem opens its catalogue of sins by punishing the absence of choice — one of the Commedia's sharpest ethical statements. Notice the strange small logic of their exclusion from Hell proper: Hell will not take them because the damned would gain glory from their presence. They have made themselves beneath even damnation.
The great refusal and the politics of silence
Colui che fece per viltade il gran rifiuto — him who made through cowardice the great refusal — has been consensus-identified for seven centuries as Pope Celestine V (Pietro da Morrone), the pious hermit who abdicated the papacy in 1294 and thereby opened the way to Boniface VIII, the pope Dante held responsible above all others for his exile. To place Celestine in the vestibule of the cowards, unnamed, is an act of devastating political authorship. Dante's silences in this poem are as authored as his sentences. Compare canto V, where Virgil will refuse to name Dido. The poem teaches the reader, by ear, that some of its judgments are delivered by withholding.
Charon, and the formula of bypass
Charon is the Commedia's first borrowing from classical underworld machinery, and his iconography is lifted almost word for word from Aeneid VI. The procedure is announced: Dante will use the pagan stage furniture as if it were real. When Charon refuses to take the living pilgrim, Virgil silences him with a six-word formula — vuolsi così colà dove si puote / ciò che si vuole — that will return word for word in canto V to silence Minos. One way to read the Commedia is to track who and what Virgil can override and who and what he cannot. The orthodox reading: divine power is absolute and even pagan unbelievers obey it. A more searching reading: pagan officials yield to Virgil because Virgil, in the Aeneid, invented them — and the architecture of Christian Hell is built on the bones of pagan Hades the Mantuan poet himself supplied. The canto does not insist on either reading. It allows both.
Famous and meaningful passages
The inscription on the gate. The most famous gate inscription in any literature.
Through me the way is to the city dolent; Through me the way is to eternal dole; Through me the way among the people lost. Justice incited my sublime Creator; Created me divine Omnipotence, The highest Wisdom and the primal Love. Before me there were no created things, Only eterne, and I eternal last. All hope abandon, ye who enter in! (Inf. III.1–9)
Per me si va. Three times the gate names itself before it names anything else. Then the threefold Creator — Power, Wisdom, Love — the Trinity, named in the language of architecture rather than devotion. Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'intrate is the line on which the entire premise of Inferno depends.
The first sounds of Hell.
There sighs, complaints, and ululations loud Resounded through the air without a star, Whence I, at the beginning, wept thereat. Languages diverse, horrible dialects, Accents of anger, words of agony, And voices high and hoarse, with sound of hands… (Inf. III.22–27)
The first thing Hell does is sound. The air without a star is the formal opposite of every cantica's closing line — stelle, stars — and announces, in three words, what Hell most lacks.
The neutrals named.
Commingled are they with that caitiff choir Of Angels, who have not rebellious been, Nor faithful were to God, but were for self. (Inf. III.37–39)
But were for self. The most damning small phrase in the canto. The angels who chose neither side chose only themselves — and self-choice, in the Commedia's ethics, is the deepest cowardice.
The great refusal.
When some among them I had recognised, I looked, and I beheld the shade of him Who made through cowardice the great refusal. (Inf. III.58–60)
Three lines. No name. The withholding is the wound.
The dismissal.
Let us not speak of them, but look, and pass. (Inf. III.51)
Non ragioniam di lor, ma guarda e passa. The most quoted line in the canto after the inscription, and a benchmark of Virgilian judgment.
Charon at the river.
And lo! towards us coming in a boat An old man, hoary with the hair of eld, Crying: Woe unto you, ye souls depraved! Hope nevermore to look upon the heavens; I come to lead you to the other shore, To the eternal shades in heat and frost. (Inf. III.82–87)
Heat and frost: Hell will alternate burning with freezing, all the way down to the icy bottom where Satan is locked in ice.
The formula of bypass.
It is so willed there where is power to do That which is willed; and farther question not. (Inf. III.95–96)
Six Italian words carry the whole authority of Heaven into Hell — and teach the reader, by ear, that authority in this poem speaks briefly.
The autumn-leaf simile.
As in the autumn-time the leaves fall off, First one and then another, till the branch Unto the earth surrenders all its spoils; In similar wise the evil seed of Adam Throw themselves from that margin one by one, At signals, as a bird unto its lure. (Inf. III.112–117)
The natural-world simile carries inevitability; the hunting image — a bird unto its lure — carries the willed flight of the soul into its end. The image is lifted almost verbatim from Aeneid VI.
The moral hinge of the whole Inferno.
All those who perish in the wrath of God Here meet together out of every land; And ready are they to pass o'er the river, Because celestial Justice spurs them on, So that their fear is turned into desire. (Inf. III.122–126)
La tema si volve in disio. The damned cross because they want to. They want to because Justice has converted what they should have feared into what they now seek. The deepest psychological proposition in Inferno.
The closing tercet.
The land of tears gave forth a blast of wind, And fulminated a vermilion light, Which overmastered in me every sense, And as a man whom sleep doth seize I fell. (Inf. III.133–136)
The pilgrim crosses Acheron unconscious. The poem will not tell us how.
What to watch for
Watch the word star. The canto has none. The last word of Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso is, in each case, stelle. Hell's defining absence is announced here.
Watch Virgil's formula. Vuolsi così colà dove si puote ciò che si vuole. It will return to silence Minos in canto V. Charon and Minos are the only two gatekeepers Virgil overrides by name.
Watch Dante's faint. He will faint again at the end of canto V, after Francesca. Pay attention to what makes him fall — terror here, pity there. The Commedia is teaching its reader which encounters in Hell are the dangerous ones.
This post is part of Reading Divine Comedy, a slow daily companion to Dante's Commedia in the Longfellow translation — read one canto at a time, with a short orientation before and a close reading after. From Inferno I to Paradiso XXXIII.