In the earlier cantos, as indeed throughout the poem, the main difficulties with which we meet depend far more on interpretation than on the mere “construing” of the words; and even if it were otherwise, all purely linguistic difficulties have been so fully dealt with over and over again in commentaries and translations that it would, as has been said, be quite superfluous to enter here upon any discussion of them. The opening canto, as every reader will at once perceive, is symbolism and allegory from beginning to end, from the “dark wood” in which the action of the poem begins to the “hound” who is to free Italy. These, more especially the latter, have given as much trouble to the interpreter as anything in the whole poem; indeed it may be said that in the matter of the _Veltro_ we have not made much advance on Boccaccio, who frankly admitted that he could not tell what was meant. But between these two points we have some hundred lines in nearly every one of which, beside its obvious and literal interpretation, we must look for all the others enumerated by Dante in the famous passage of his letter to Can Grande. The second canto is of much the same character, in some respects almost in more need of close study. The significance of the three beasts who hinder Dante is easier to make out than that of the three heavenly ladies who assist him. Meantime, if we are content to read the poem as narrative merely, there is no great difficulty to be overcome. The language is straightforward on the whole, almost the only _crux_ being ii. 108, which has not yet been satisfactorily explained, nor is the imagery other than simple.
With Canto iii. and the arrival within the actual portal of Hell (though hardly in Hell properly so called) we enter upon a fresh subdivision of the poem; and are very soon brought up by the first, and one of the most perplexing, of the allusions to contemporary history with which it abounds. The elucidation of these would constantly offer almost hopeless difficulties, were it not for the early commentators, who are often able to explain them from personal knowledge. Now and then, however, it happens that they differ, and then the modern student is at a loss. This has been in some measure the case with the famous “gran rifiuto,” iii. 60; so that while we may with a high degree of probability accept the more usual view that the allusion is to the abdication of Celestine V., we cannot without further evidence feel so certain about it as we could wish. The whole conception of this canto seems to be due to Dante’s own invention; only to a nature like his, keenly alive to the eternal distinction between right and wrong, and burning with zeal in the cause of right, could it have occurred to mark off for special ignominy people whose sole fault seems to have been that they “took things too easily.” When, in Canto iv., we pass the river of Acheron, and find ourselves for the first time actually on the border of Hell itself, we are conscious at first of an alleviation. Melancholy there is, but it is a dignified melancholy, as different from the sordid misery of the wretches we have just left, as the “noble city” and the green sward enclosed by it are different from the murky air and the foul mud among which they have to dwell. Both in this and in the second circle we have punishment indeed but without degradation, even with some mitigation. Virgil at least enjoys the converse of the sages and great men of old and, in so far as non-Christians go, of recent times; while Francesca is solaced by the perpetual companionship of him for whose sake she has lost her soul. Even the penalty which she suffers, of being whirled for ever on the storm, is not exactly humiliating. From this point, however, we are conscious of a change. The gluttons seated or lying on putrid earth and exposed to lashing rain; the misusers of wealth, with all human lineaments effaced, and engaged in a foolish and wearisome scuffle; the ill-tempered, floating on the surface of the foul marsh of Styx or lying submerged in it according as their disposition was to fierce wrath or sullen brooding--all these are not merely tormented but degraded as well.
