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The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. The Italian Text with a Translation in English Blank Verse and a Commentary by Courtney Langdon, vol. 1 (Inferno) (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1918).

Author: Dante Alighieri
Translator: Courtney Langdon

Part of: The Divine Comedy, in 3 vols. (Langdon trans.)

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CANTO II

Introduction to the Inferno. The Mission of Virgil. The Three Blessed Ladies. Beatrice, Man’s Spiritual Nature

In this canto Man’s three spiritual friends are contrasted with the three brutal enemies from which his Reason rescued him in Canto I, while Beatrice, who represents God’s spirit in Man, is by the poet identified in line , as frequently in the poem, with the historical Florentine girl, Beatrice Portinari, whom Dante had loved since his childhood, of whom he had written in his Vita Nuova, and to say of whom “what had never been said of any woman” he had prepared himself in every way ever since her death in 1290.