Canto VI-Canto XII

He answered--"Silence, accursed wolf! Attack
Your own insides with your devouring rage:
Bound for the pit, this is no causeless trek.

It is willed above, where Michael wreaked revenge
On pride's rebellion." Just as sails swollen with wind
As soon as the mast is snapped collapse and plunge,

That savage beast fell shrinking to the ground.
So we descended to the fourth defile
To experience more of that despondent land

That sacks up all the universe's ill.
Justice of God! Who is it that heaps together
So much peculiar torture and travail?

How is it that we choose to sin and wither?
Like waves above Charybdis, each crashing apart
Against the one it rushes to meet, here gather

People who hurry forward till they must meet
And dance their round. Here I saw more souls
Than elsewhere, spreading far to the left and right:

Each pushes a weight against his chest, and howls
At his opponent each time that they clash:
"Why do you squander?" and "Why do you hoard?" Each wheels

To roll his weight back round again: they rush
Toward the circle's opposite point, collide
Painfully once more, and curse each other afresh;

And after that refrain each one must head through his half-circle again, to his next joust.
My own heart pained by those collisions, I said:

"Who are these, Master?--and are the shades who contest
Here on our left all clergy, with tonsured head?"
He answered: "Every one of the shades here massed

In the first life had a mind so squinty-eyed
That in his spending he heeded no proportion--
A fact they bark out plainly when they collide

At the circle's facing points, that mark division
Between opposite faults. Those bare of head
Were clerics, cardinals, popes, in whom the passion

Of avarice was wrought excess." I said,
"Among these, Master, I'm sure I'll recognize
Some who were thus polluted." He replied,

"The thought you hold is vain: just as the ways
That made these would so foul were undiscerning,
So they are dim to discernment in this place.

Here they will keep eternally returning
To the two butting places: from the grave
These will arise fists closed; and those, pates shining.

Wrongness in how to give and how to have
Took the fair world from them and brought them this,
Their ugly brawl, which words need not retrieve.

Now you can see, my son, how ludicrous
And brief are all the good in Fortune's ken,
Which humankind contend for: you see from this

How all the gold there is beneath the moon,
Or that there ever was, could not relieve
One of these weary souls," I; "Master, say then

What is this Fortune you mention, that it should have
The world's goods in its grip?" He: "Foolish creatures,
How great an ignorance plagues you..."

The reasons for which The Inferno of Dante is so utterly dark and dismal are several. The obvious reason: the author's use of adjectives and meticulous description.
However, another unexpected characteristic adds to the darkness: the ugliness of eternal monotony, as well as the circularity or the cycles of Hell.