Cassell, Lectura Dantis Americana: вЂњInfernoвЂќ I, p. A recent commentator has suggested that Dante's view of his kinship with Hezekiah, like himself 'a model of the sinner who finds himself and redeems himself by means of repentance and hope,' was shaped by Bernard of Clairvaux, whose thoughts about Hezekiah are found in his Sermones de diversis III, PL 183.546-51 (see Anthony K. Many commentators have pointed out that this opening verse echoes a biblical text, Isaiah's account of the words of Hezekiah, afflicted by the 'sickness unto death' (Isaiah 38:10): 'in dimidio dierum meorum vadam ad portas inferi' (in the cutting off of my days, I shall go to the gates of the nether region). There are so many issues raised in the poem, so many raised by its commentators, that one reads Francesco Mazzoni's extraordinarily helpful gloss to this single verse with admiration and instruction without, at first, even noticing that it is twelve pages in length (Mazzoni, Saggio di un nuovo commento alla вЂњDivina CommediaвЂќ: вЂњInfernoвЂќ вЂ“Canti I-III, pp. It also immediately compels a reader to realize that this is a difficult text, one that may not be read passively, but must be 'interpreted.' And the exegetical tradition that has grown upon (and sometimes over) the text is so responsive to these characteristics that it often seems to overwhelm its object.

The first of the 14,233 lines that constitute the Comedy immediately establishes a context for the poem that is both universal and particular.

O vuo bene ancora raffaello