“A greater fear I do not think there was ... when I perceived myself on all sides in the air, and saw extinguished the sight of everything but the monster.”

-From The Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri, Italian poet and philosopher, 1265-1321.

This quote is from Dante’s Divine Comedy, written between 1308 and 1320. The epic poem explored the idea of an afterlife, and various themes related to verticality. The main story arc is the soul’s progression through three stages: Inferno (hell), Purgatorio (purgatory), and Paradiso (heaven). These three stages correlate to the underground, surface, and sky from the main verticality narrative, respectively, and they’re arranged vertically along the axis-mundi.

The above quote is from Canto XXVII of Inferno, when Dante and Virgil mount the back of the great beast Geryon and fly down from the seventh to the eighth circle of hell. When Geryon jumps from the seventh circle, Dante is filled with fear and can only focus on Geryon. He also compares his experience with Icarus and Phaedus, two figures in Greek mythology who had similar experiences with flight. The full passage follows:

There where his breast had been he turned his tail,
And that extended like an eel he moved,
And with his paws drew to himself the air.

A greater fear I do not think there was
What time abandoned Phaeton the reins,
Whereby the heavens, as still appears, were scorched;

Nor when the wretched Icarus his flanks
Felt stripped of feathers by the melting wax,
His father crying, “An ill way thou takest!”

Than was my own, when I perceived myself
On all sides in the air, and saw extinguished
The sight of everything but of the monster.

-Inferno, Canto XXVII, lines 106-114.

By referencing Icarus and Phaeton, Dante is tapping into the human need for flight, and the fear he experiences is a common one among humans. The danger of falling is an ever-present possibility when flying, and Dante, having never experienced flight before, is so fear-stricken that he can focus on nothing but the beast carrying him.

Read more about Dante’s Divine Comedy here.