The brink of the abyss
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Vero è che ’n su la proda mi trovai de la valle d’ abisso dolorosa che ’ntrono accoglie d’ infiniti guai.
True it is that I found myself on the very brink of the sorrowful valley of the abyss, which gathers into itself a thunder of countless laments.
He finds himself on the very edge of the valley of the pit, which gathers an endless roar of laments.
Dante stands, quite literally, at the edge: <i>su la proda de la valle d’abisso</i>. Hell is figured as one immense valley funneling downward, and its sound reaches him before its sights do — a single <i>’ntrono</i>, a roar assembled from infinite separate cries.
The detail is acoustic and terrible. The thunder that woke him has an echo in the thunder of the pit itself, as if the whole abyss were one continuous noise of grief, too vast to resolve into individual voices.
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