“O human race, born to fly upward, wherefore at a little wind dost thou so fall?”

-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 Dante’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 quote is spoken by an angel in Canto XII in Purgatorio. Dante and Virgil are ascending from the first to the second circle of Purgatorio, and the angel is explaining that very few humans have made it so high. It’s interesting that the angel describes the human race as born to fly upward, which is a reference to our innate need for verticality.

Read more about Dante’s Divine Comedy here.


Lines from: Alighieri, Dante. The Divine Comedy. Purgatorio, Canto XII, lines 95-96.