![]() The Violent against themselves, in person or property. The Violent against their neighbor, in person or property. ![]() The sins punished in them areâ â I Incontinence. They are separated from each other by great spaces in the infernal abyss. The three divisions of the Inferno are minutely described and explained by Dante in Canto XI. The whole number of cantos is one hundred, the perfect number ten multiplied into itself but if we count the first canto of the Inferno as a Prelude, which it really is, each part will consist of thirty-three cantos, making ninety-nine in all and so the favorite mystic numbers reappear. Moreover, he says the number nine was friendly to her, because the nine heavens were in conjunction at her birth and that she was herself the number nine, âthat is, a miracle whose root is the wonderful Trinity.âįollowing out this idea, we find the Divine Comedy written in terza rima, or threefold rhyme, divided into three parts, and each part again subdivided in its structure into three. Whoever has read the Vita Nuova will remember the stress which Dante lays upon the mystic numbers Nine and Three his first meeting with Beatrice at the beginning of her ninth year, and the end of his his nine daysâ illness, and the thought of her death which came to him on the ninth day her death on the ninth day of the ninth month, âcomputing by the Syrian method,â and in that year of our Lord âwhen the perfect number ten was nine times completed in that centuryâ which was the thirteenth. In these lines we have the earliest glimpse of the Divine Comedy, as it rose in the authorâs mind. And then may it please Him, who is the Sire of courtesy, that my soul may depart to look upon the glory of its Lady, that is to say, of the blessed Beatrice, who in glory gazes into the face of Him, qui est per omnia sæcula benedictus.â So that if it shall be the pleasure of Him, through whom all things live, that my life continue somewhat longer, I hope to say of her what never yet was said of any woman. And to attain thereunto, truly I strive with all my power, as she knoweth. ![]() ÂAfter this sonnet there appeared to me a wonderful vision, in which I beheld things that made me propose to say no more of this blessed one, until I shall be able to treat of her more worthily. The Vita Nuova of Dante closes with these words:â â
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