• The action of the poem begins on Good Friday of the year 1300, at which time Dante, who was born in 1265, had reached the middle of the Scriptural threescore years and ten. It ends on the first Sunday after Easter, making in all ten days. ↩
• The dark forest of human life, with its passions, vices, and perplexities of all kinds; politically the state of Florence with its factions Guelf and Ghibelline. Dante, Convito , IV 25, says:⁠— “Thus the adolescent, who enters into the erroneous forest of this life, would not know how to keep the right way if he were not guided by his elders.” Brunetto Latini, Tesoretto , II 75:⁠— “Pensando a capo chino Perdei il gran cammino, E tenni alia traversa D’ una selva diversa.” Spenser, Faerie Queene , IV ii 45:⁠— “Seeking adventures in the salvage wood.” ↩
• Bunyan, in his Pilgrim’s Progress , which is a kind of Divine Comedy in prose, says:⁠— “I beheld then that they all went on till they came to the foot of the hill Difficulty.⁠ ⁠… But the narrow way lay right up the hill, and the name of the going up the side of the hill is called Difficulty.⁠ ⁠… They went then till they came to the Delectable Mountains, which mountains belong to the Lord of that hill of which we have spoken before.” ↩