Canto Four

Pilgrim awakens and proceeds to the abyss...

9 containing thundering, unending wailings.

10 That valley, dark and deep and filled with mist,
11 is such that, though I gazed into its pit,
12 I was unable to discern a thing.

26 there was no outcry louder than the sighs
27 that caused the everlasting air to tremble.

28 The sighs arose from sorrow without torments,

Pilgrim asks about the source...

(of the "thunder of infinite ululations...obscure, profound it was, and nebulous"--9/10 of Longfellow)

...and receives this answer...

34 they (those who) did not sin; and yet, though they have merits,
35 that's not enough, because they lacked baptism,
36 the portal of the faith that you embrace.

Merit is not the criteria for escaping the inferno...

(rather the portal is "faith embraced" or "identification with Christ"--and not [for me at least] Dante's consolation of "baptism".)

37 And if they lived before Christianity,
38 they did not worship God in fitting ways;
39 and of such spirits I myself (the sage) am one.

40 For these defects, and for no other evil,
41 we now are lost and punished just with this:
42 we have no hope and yet we live in longing.

43 Great sorrow seized my heart on hearing him,
44 for I had seen some estimable men
45 among the souls suspended in that limbo.

Pilgrim ponders...

49 did any ever go by his own merit
50 or others'- from this place toward blessedness?
51 And he, who understood my covert speech,

52 replied: I was new-entered on this state
53 when I beheld a Great Lord enter here;
54 the crown he wore, a sign of victory.

55 He carried off the shade of our first father (Adam),
(and other specific Old Testament heros and general...)

61 and many others and He made them blessed;
62 and I should have you know that, before them,
63 there were no human souls that had been saved.

Yet he did see a place possessed of honorable men (72)...

73 O you who honor art and science both,
74 who are these souls whose dignity has kept
75 their way of being, separate from the rest?

76 And he to me: The honor of their name,
77 which echoes up above within your life,
78 gains Heaven's grace, and that advances them.

...and even chatted with them as the moved along...

103 So did we move along and toward the light,
104 talking of things about which silence here
105 is just as seemly as our speech was there.

145 I cannot here describe them all in full;
146 my ample theme impels me onward so:
147 what's told is often less than the event.

Thought...

There are estimable men and women...of honor and dignity...in hell. All those who did not worship God in fitting ways...though they have merits they did not have the "identification with Christ" that is the portal generated by a faith embraced.