The Bleeding Branch

Virgil’s wounded tree and Harpies enter Dante’s forest

A broken branch reveals a human wound. Virgil places this discovery among the Trojans’ early landfalls, alongside their encounter with the Harpies. Dante brings both images into the wood of the suicides, where reading about suffering proves different from recognizing it.

1. Aeneid 3.22–30
2. Aeneid 3.37–48
3. Aeneid 3.209–218
4. Inferno 13.10–15
5. Inferno 13.31–39
6. Inferno 13.46–51