The Commedia consists of 14223 hendecasyllables in three-line stanzas called terzine, with a triadic rhyming structure. Its 100 canti of varying lengths are arranged into 3 cantiche, two of which have 33 canti while Inferno has 34, its first canto serving as a prologue to the whole poem. The poem’s overall architecture is thus based on the recurrence of the numbers 3 and 10 and multiples of these numbers, linking their use to the symbolism of the trinity: Inferno is divided into 9 circles, Purgatorio into 9 sections and Paradiso into 9 heavens; 3 wild beasts block Dante’s way and 3 guides accompany him. The rigorously symmetrical structure is further reinforced by frequent references and internal correspondences. For instance, in each cantica, the sixth canto deals with politics, each cantica ends with the word stele (“stars”) and at the beginning of each cantica are souls that did not exercise their will freely, such as the neutrals in Inferno, the negligent in Purgatorio and the souls of the inconstant in Paradiso.
This number system frames the whole story, presented as a first person account of a journey that started in the spring of 1300 and lasted one week. At the age of 35, Dante, auctor and agens, becomes lost in a wood and is threatened by three wild beasts. Virgil comes to his aid, leading him through Inferno and Purgatorio, to Beatrice, who then takes him through the nine heavens of Paradiso to the Empyrean. Here, accompanied by Saint Bernard, he finally achieves a vision of God. This journey towards knowledge enables him to deal with a wide range of subject matter (the relationship between faith and reason, the question of free will, his fierce denunciation of political corruption, reflection on language and literature). Along the path, the protagonist meets more than 500 characters, both famous and otherwise. In a series of episodes of varying length they recount their own life story, thereby adding to the journey’s main plot a large number of secondary ones.
The Commedia: structure and content
