Question

INFERNO CANTO III:

"Through Me Pass into the Painful City,

Through Me Pass into Eternal Grief,

Through Me Pass among the Lost People. . . .


Before Me Nothing Was Created That

Was Not Eternal, and I Last Eternally.

All Hope Abandon, You Who Enter Here."

At the gate of Hell, Dante sees this inscription that he calls “hard to take." How does the use of anaphora affect the impact of the inscription?

Answer 1

Anaphora is the rhetoric use of words referring to or replacing a word used earlier. The successive clauses lent the inscription more emphasis by the (replacement words with) multiple intense ideas that describe the path. It painted a clearer and more colorful picture of the path Dante was passing.