“'In the middle of our life’s journey, I found myself in a dark wood.' So begins one of the most celebrated and challenging Divine Comedy poems ever written, Dante’s, a fourteen-thousand-line epic about the soul’s journey through the afterlife. The ten- sion between the pronouns says it all: although the 'I' belongs to Dante, who died in 1321, his journey is also part of 'our life.' We will all find ourselves in a dark wood one day, the lines suggest.”