Inferno

Recente Inferno, translatum ab Anthony Esolen, e scrinio meo sustuli et legere coepi. Haec editio est pulchra et acris et vere loquitur. Hac magisquam ea quae translatum a John Ciardi fruor. Considera hos versus:

Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself in a dark wilderness,
for I had wandered from the straight and true. (Canto I.1-3)

How I had entered, I can't bring tomind,
I was so full of sleep just at that point
when I first left the way of truth behind. (Canto I.10-12)

Haec verba me vere describunt, nam ego etiam in tenebris ambulo, petens veritatem de ecclesia Christi. Nescio, somnii plenus, quomodo huc advenerim, sed hic sum et solacium invenio in his verbis:

It is so bitter, death is hardly more --
but to reveal the good that came to me,
I shall relate the other things I saw. (Canto I.7-9)

Ei mihi! Quam spero bonum me exspectare ad itineris mei terminum!

Tum Esolen scribit:

And as a man who unwills what he wills,
changing his plan for every little thought,
till he withdraws from any kind of start,

So did I turn my mind on that dark verge,
for thinking ate away the enterprise
so prompt in the beginning to set forth. (Canto II.37-42)

Nonne hi versus revocant Augustinum in Confessionibus in parte in qua scribit de luctando animae suae? Scribit:

Nam non solum ire verum etiam pervenire illuc nihil erat aliud quam velle ire, sed velle fortiter et integre, non semisauciam hac atque hac versare et iactare voluntatem parte adsurgente cum alia parte cadente luctantem. (Confessiones 8.8.19)

Et dum cum Vergilio et Dante ambulo per circulos Inferni, gaudeo in corde meo terrores bonos aequosque invenire. Bonum est mihi timere, nam timor Domini principium sapientiæ. (Proverbia I.7)

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P.S. Salve, Gabriella! Ad hunc codicillum magno cum gaudio accipio!