Dante's Inferno (excerpt)

by Dante Alighieri

Even as the little vessel shoves from shore,

Backward, still backward, so he thence withdrew;

And when he wholly felt himself afloat,

There where his breast had been he turned his tail,

And that extended like an eel he moved,

And with his paws drew to himself the air.

A greater fear I do not think there was

What time abandoned Phaeton the reins,

Whereby the heavens, as still appears, were scorched;

Nor when the wretched Icarus his flanks

Felt stripped of feathers by the melting wax,

His father crying, "An ill way thou takest!"

Than was my own, when I perceived myself

On all sides in the air, and saw extinguished

The sight of everything but of the monster.

Dante Alighieri:

• He is most well-known for The Divine Comedy, the epic poem that is called the “greatest work of literature composed in Italian.”
• When he was a child, he met a girl named Beatrice, and he was known to have expressed that he experienced love at first sight. Beatrice did not feel the same way, and Dante was doomed to a life of hopelessly courting her from afar.
• After Beatrice passed away, Dante put her as a character in The Divine Comedy, as if to immortalize her.
• After his passing, Dante was secretly buried in the wall of San Pier Maggiore's Church in Ravenna instead of in a cemetery.