Limbo

In the poem it is the first circle, which is nobody’s punishment; in the game it is the widest band of the funnel, twelve metres of ledge and three hundred and twenty two round, and there is not one device in it that asks for a weapon.

Three things make it. The air does not move, so the trace a living body leaves stays where it is for minutes: what counts is not your breath but your route. The «selva ... di spiriti spessi» (Inf. IV 66) is ground and not an enemy: it blocks, it eats light, it drinks the trace. And the «sette volte cerchiato d’alte mura» (Inf. IV 107) stand across the ring, each with its door shifted to one side.

Behind the last of them are the four poets and the place left empty for a fifth, «Genti v’eran con occhi tardi e gravi» (Inf. IV 112). In a place where nothing hurts, the only thing left to do is read. The fire above the castle, framed, says it is the one light in Hell that is not a flame of punishment, and that it lights those who carry no guilt and no baptism.