Elephant folio edition.
"Scarce the ascent
Began, when, lo! a panther, nimble, light,
And cover'd with a speckled skin, appear'd,
Nor, when it saw me, vanish'd ..."
Canto I, lines 29-32.
Tag Archives: Gustave Dore
“I came to myself, in a dark wood, where the direct way was lost.”
In the middle of the journey of our life, I came to myself, in a dark wood, where the direct way was lost. It is a hard thing to speak of, how wild, harsh and impenetrable that wood was, so that thinking of it recreates the fear. It is scarcely less bitter than death: but, in order to tell of the good that I found there, I must tell of the other things I saw there.
I cannot rightly say how I entered it. I was so full of sleep, at that point where I abandoned the true way. But when I reached the foot of a hill, where the valley, that had pierced my heart with fear, came to an end, I looked up and saw its shoulders brightened with the rays of that sun that leads men rightly on every road. Then the fear, that had settled in the lake of my heart, through the night that I had spent so miserably, became a little calmer. And as a man, who, with panting breath, has escaped from the deep sea to the shore, turns back towards the perilous waters and stares, so my mind, still fugitive, turned back to see that pass again …
— from Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy, 1321 (Canto I)
Gustave Dore, 1857
Illustration from Dante Alighieri’s “Inferno,” Gustave Dore, 1857
Canto 9, Verses 87 – 89.
When one Dore closes, another Dore opens.
That weird moment when you discover that a poster for one of your favorite TV shows was a reference to a Gustave Dore drawing. Its title is “The Ice Was All Around,” and Dore completed it for an 1876 edition of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”
“Satan descends upon Earth.” Gustave Dore, 1866
Engraving. Illustration for John Milton’s Paradise Lost.
It would be a hell of a lot of fun.
My latest brilliant idea — somebody should make a board game based on Dante’s Inferno. Like a send-up of Monopoly or Sorry.
Hell, you wouldn’t even need advertising art. All those Gustave Dore illustrations are in the public domain.
RUN WITH THIS, people.
Pictured: fun.
Illustration by Gustave Dore for John Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” 1866
“Satan Talks to the Council of Hell.” Engraving.
“The Gnarled Monster,” Gustave Dore, 1870
Engraving.
“The Almighty hath not built Here for his envy.”
Here at least
we shall be free; the Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
to reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.
— John Milton, Paradise Lost
Illustration by Gustave Dore, 1866
Illustration of Canto 7 of Dante Alighieri’s “Inferno,” by Gustave Dore, 1892
The artist died in 1883. The date above refers to the illustration’s publication by Cassell and Company in its 1892 edition of Dante’s Inferno.
The caption reads, “Now seest thou, Son!/ The souls of those, whose anger overcame. — Canto VII, Lines 118-119.”
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 