I lifted you from the beast
Read the full text in our reader
E venni a te così com’ ella volse: d’ inanzi a quella fiera ti levai che del bel monte il corto andar ti tolse.
And so I came to you, just as she wished: I lifted you from before that beast which had barred your short way up the fair mountain.
And so Virgil came to Dante as she wished: he raised him from before that beast which had barred his short way up the fair mountain.
Virgil closes his long account by returning to where Canto I ended — the she-wolf on the slope that drove Dante back from the sunlit hill. Now that setback is reframed: it was not the end of the road but the reason Heaven sent help.
<i>Ti levai</i> — I raised you — is the same lifting the whole canto has enacted, from cowardice toward courage. The scaffolding of grace has been laid bare, and Virgil turns from narrative to challenge.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Inferno 2.118 in the full reader
Always open passages in the reader
You are reading a page of the Inferno — the whole book is free in our interlinear reader.
The Great Library Project presses the classics in their original languages, glossed word by word — free to read, always. Browse the whole library.
Also on our shelves:
Inferno 2.118 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/dante-inferno/2.118/