The people who lost the good of the mind
Read the full text in our reader
Noi siam venuti al loco ov’ i’ t’ ho detto che tu vedrai le genti dolorose c’ hanno perduto il ben de l’ intelletto».
We have come to the place where I told you that you would see the grieving people who have lost the good of the intellect.
Virgil says they have reached the place he foretold, where Dante will see the souls who lost the good of the intellect.
Virgil defines damnation in one phrase, and it is not fire or torment: <i>c'hanno perduto il ben de l'intelletto</i> — they have lost the good of the intellect. For Dante the intellect's proper good is the knowledge and vision of God; to lose it is to lose the only thing a mind was made to hold.
That is why the damned are <i>dolorose</i>, grieving. Their pain is not primarily physical. It is the ache of a faculty cut off forever from what would fulfill it, a hunger built into the very shape of the soul.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Inferno 3.16 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 3.16 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/dante-inferno/3.16/