“Se non etterne, e io etterno duro”: Translating the Hardest Line on Hell’s Gate

Most readers remember “Abandon all hope” — the last line of the inscription on Hell’s gate in Canto III. Few stop on the line that precedes it, the one that is, in some ways, the most philosophically and theologically dense of the nine:

Dinanzi a me non fuor cose create
se non etterne, e io etterno duro.

“Before me nothing was created, except eternal things, and I endure eternally.”

This is line 7-8 of the inscription, and it contains a double use of the root word etterne/etterno — eternal — that is both theologically precise and sonically beautiful. And it is one of the hardest lines in the inscription for translators to handle.

What the Line Actually Claims

Throughout the inscription, the gate speaks in first person. Here it says: before the gate existed, only eternal things had been created. Eternal things, in medieval Christian theology, means: God, the angels, the empyrean (the highest heaven), and — crucially for the logic of the poem — hell itself.

The chronology implied is important. When did hell come into existence? Not with the creation of the physical universe (which happens with the sun and stars and Earth). God created hell before all of that — at the moment of Lucifer’s fall, when the rebel angels required a place of confinement. The Gate of Hell is, in this sense, one of the oldest created things in existence.

The line’s second claim is that the gate endures eternally: io etterno duro. “I endure forever.” This is an implicit contrast with everything mortal — humans, animals, the temporal world — which does not endure. The gate has been here since before the stars, and it will be here after them.

Dante’s doubling of etterne/etterno is intentional. Dante is making the gate echo itself, creating a sonic loop that mirrors the eternal circularity it describes.

The Full Inscription: Context

Before focusing on line 8, it helps to see the inscription whole. Here is the Italian of Canto III, lines 1-9:

Per me si va ne la città dolente,
per me si va ne l’etterno dolore,
per me si va tra la perduta gente.
Giustizia mosse il mio alto fattore;
fecemi la divina podestate,
la somma sapienza e ‘l primo amore.
Dinanzi a me non fuor cose create
se non etterne, e io etterno duro.
Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate.

Notice the structural symmetry: the first three lines concern the gate’s function (through me you go to…), and the middle three concern its creation (Justice moved my maker; Divine Power, supreme Wisdom, and primal Love made me). The last three concern its permanence (before me nothing but eternal things, and I endure forever — abandon all hope).

Line 8 is the hinge of the third section. It explains the gate’s absolute authority: it is older than the human world, made by the same divine forces that made heaven. “Abandon all hope” lands harder because we’ve just been told the gate is eternal.

The Translation Problem: Double Eternals

The core challenge is the repetition of etterne/etterno. In Italian, the two forms (plural feminine adjective modifying cose, and masculine adjective modifying the gate itself) are different enough to read clearly. In English, “eternal/eternal” or “eternity/eternal” risks becoming tautological rather than resonant.

Let’s look at how the major translators handle this line:

Henry Francis Cary (1814)

“Before me things create were none, save things / Eternal, and eternal I endure.”

Cary got here first, and he keeps both eternals — at the price of English that was already antique when he published it. “Things create were none” uses create as a past participle, a Miltonic move, and bends the word order almost out of shape to land “Eternal” at the head of its line the way Dante lands etterne. He preserves the doubling and sacrifices plain sense to do it, which is the trade every translator after him has had to price differently.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1867)

“Before me there were no created things, / Only eterne, and I eternal last.”

Longfellow uses “eterne” (an archaic English form that would have been recognisable to his nineteenth-century readers) for the first instance and “eternal” for the second. The distinction is subtle — “eterne” sounds older, more formal, more Latinate. The gate is “eternal” in the ordinary sense; the things before it are “eterne” in the cosmic, divine sense. It’s a nice distinction, if you know to hear it.

Dorothy Sayers (1949)

“Nothing ere I was made was made to be / Save things eternal, and eternal I shall be.”

Sayers rhymes here (as she attempts throughout), using “be/be” as her terminal rhyme. The double “eternal” is preserved, and the gate’s self-assertion (“eternal I shall be”) has a note of defiance — almost pride — that is interesting. The rearrangement is dramatic rather than literal.

John Ciardi (1954)

“Only those elements time cannot wear / were made before me, and beyond time I stand.”

Ciardi does the one thing nobody else here attempts: he throws the word “eternal” away. Both instances of Dante’s root become time — “elements time cannot wear,” “beyond time I stand” — so the figure built out of repeating one word is replaced by a figure built out of repeating a different one. It is the boldest version on this page and the least literal. Dante’s claim is about partaking of eternity; Ciardi’s is about outlasting duration, which is not quite the same metaphysics. It is also the only one of the six you can imagine actually carved into something.

Allen Mandelbaum (1980)

“Before me nothing but eternal things were made, / and I endure eternally.”

Mandelbaum takes the plainest road available: adjective and then adverb, the root intact in both halves, and not one inversion or archaism anywhere. Set beside Cary’s contortions and Ciardi’s substitution, it is the version that trusts the reader to supply the awe on their own. The cost is that “I endure eternally” is a phrase you could meet in a contract — the gate briefly stops sounding like an inscription.

Mary Jo Bang (2012)

“Before me was only what lasts forever. / I will also last forever.”

Bang makes the most drastic change — “eternal things” becomes “what lasts forever,” and “I endure eternally” becomes “I will also last forever.” The repetition of “last forever” is her version of Dante’s double etterno. The effect is stark and conversational, stripping the cosmic Latin vocabulary entirely. Whether this helps or hurts depends on whether you feel the philosophical weight of the line lives in its vocabulary or in its logic — Bang bets on the logic.

What the Repetition Does

The most interesting question about this line is why Dante chose to repeat the root at all. He was a supremely conscious craftsman — every word in the inscription is deliberate.

I think the repetition does two things simultaneously. First, it creates a circle: the inscription begins with etterno dolore (eternal pain, line 2) and arrives at io etterno duro (I endure eternally, line 8) — the gate has been resonating with “eternity” throughout, and the full weight lands just before “abandon all hope.” The repetition is a formal preparation for the final line.

Second, it establishes the gate’s authority by analogy. The eternal things that existed before the gate are, in theological terms, God and the divine realm. The gate endures “eternally” in the same mode — not because it is divine, but because it partakes of divine permanence. Hell lasts because God’s justice lasts. The double etterno is an argument: I am what I am because what is before me is what it is.

That double — which most translators preserve in some form but which no English version fully captures — is the sound of that argument closing on itself. It’s one of those moments where reading Dante in Italian, even haltingly, rewards the effort.