Chapter 2 · The Gate and the AntehellvalleyPlayable
The Antehell
A valley dug into the rock, walled on every side, where the road is a loop and not a line.
La porta di qua non ha niente scritto: le parole guardano fuori. È «sanza serrame» (Inf. VIII, 126), cioè non si chiude, e nemmeno si riapre da questa parte. Da adesso l’unica strada è in giù.
e dietro le venìa sì lunga trattadi gente, ch’i’ non averei credutoche morte tanta n’avesse disfatta.
In the third canto, between the gate and the river, there are three things and in this order: the voices in the dark just past the threshold, the file chasing the banner, and the crowd waiting on the shore. The valley holds all three, and adds the eastern stream, which is in the text too: «e ’l sangue e le lagrime ... da fastidiosi vermi era ricolto» (Inf. III 68-69).
The floor exists only where you walk, and every edge of it raises a wall seventeen metres high: the valley closes itself instead of being fenced. At the centre there is a hollow you can leave in any direction, a ring to the west and a gully to the east, and between the hollow and the shore a narrows.
What is served here is not much of a sentence, and that is the point: they ran behind a banner alive and they are running behind one now. The tail of that file has stopped and plugs the narrows. It does not move aside, because it does not care about you. Framed from this side, the gate says the words face outward, that it does not shut and does not reopen from here, and that from now on the only road is down.
The numbers
| What | How much |
|---|---|
| Height of the rock walls | 17 metres |
| Radius of the banner’s ring | 17 metres |