Midway along the journey of our life I woke to find myself in a dark wood, for I had wandered off from the straight path. How hard it is to tell what it was like, this wood of wilderness, savage and stubborn (the thought of it brings back all my old fears), a bitter place! Death could scarce be bitterer. But if I would show the good that came of it I must talk about things other than the good.

The ensuing line L'ombra sua torna ch'era dipartita ("his spirit which had left us returns") is poignantly absent from the empty tomb. (The city council of Florence finally passed a motion rescinding Dante's sentence in June 2008. In 2007 a reconstruction of Dante's face was undertaken in a collaborative project.

: /ˈdænti/ US /ˈdɑːnteɪ/; Italian: [ˈdante]; c. His Divine Comedy originally called Commedia and later called Divina by Boccaccio is widely considered the greatest literary work composed in the Italian language and a masterpiece of world literature.