![]() As Mandelbaum points out, “Dante himself learned within 50 months how difficult it is to try to return from exile” (Notes, Canto X, 81). ![]() Dante is told of his future difficulties in returning to Florence from exile: “‘If they were slow,’ he said, to learn that art,/ that is more torment to me than this bed./ And yet the Lady who is ruler here/ will not have her face kindled fifty times/ before you learn how heavy is that art'” (X, 77-81). The tangle of temporalities is never more evident than in the Sixth Circle, comprised of Heretics. This “presaging” underscores the theme of cyclical time in the epic, that of historical repetition with confused tenses. Of course, Dante was in exile when he wrote The Inferno, but his journey takes place beforehand. He examines this alienated state through a geographic metaphor: “And just as he who, with exhausted breath,/ Having escaped from sea to shore, turns back/ To watch the dangerous waters he has quit,/ so did my spirit, still a fugitive,/ turn back to look intently at the pass/ that never has let any man survive” (I, 22-27). This division of self can best be explained by Dante’s exile and his loss of national identity. Dante is nearly sleepwalking, yet another fusion of two worlds, the conscious and unconscious. Indeed, he is anything but entrenched in position: “I cannot clearly say how I had entered/ the wood I was so full of sleep just at/ The point where I abandoned the true path” (I, 10-12). ![]() Echoes of these famous lines can be heard in Robert Frost’s “The Road Less Traveled” whereas Frost’s poem concerns itself with the duality and firmness of decision, Dante’s tercet implies an interval of great indecision and limbo. The Inferno is a work of transition between two points, as attested by the opening lines: “When I had journeyed half of our life’s way,/ I found myself within a shadowed forest,/ for I had lost the path that does not stray” (I, 1-3).
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