“I looked on high and saw its shoulders clad already with the planet’s beams who's light leadeth men straight, through all paths good or bad”
. . . . .
Halfway through life, Dante finds himself lost in a dark wood and can't remember how he got there. Dante is advocating a strict adherence to medieval Catholic theology: Man must consciously strive for righteousness and morality (instead of being trapped in the lethargy of day-to day affairs). He sees sun shining on a hilltop and attempts to climb towards it but is stopped by a leopard, then a hungry lion before a she-wolf drives Dante back into the darkness of the valley. A figure “not a man now, but once I was” representing poet Virgil, who wrote Aeneid and lived in the time of false gods, offers help. Virgil says he must go another way as the she-wolf (desire) snares and kills all things. Virgil says he can guide only as far as paradise because Virgil born before Jesus cannot be admitted to the ‘blessed realms’. Virgil stands for human reason and virtue, admirable but not enough to gain salvation. In Aeneid virgil had already made a journey through Hell so was a perfect guide. From the first image (Inferno, 1) it is clear that Dalí is not a mere illustrator. With a few exceptions, the narcissistic Dalí draws as much from his own obsessions and previous work as from Dante. The compositional element of the road tapering toward a vanishing point is common in Dalí’s work, beginning with The First Days of Spring, a 1929 oil and collage on panel now kept in St Petersburg, FL.