Commentary Inf XV 49-51

Dante's reflection upon his own lostness at the outset ([Inf I 3], [Inf I 14]) picks up, as a few commentators have sensed (Pietrobono perhaps the first [DDP Pietrobono.Inf.XV.50), a similar passage in Brunetto's Tesoretto, vv. 186-90:

e io, in tal corrotto

pensando a capo chino,

perdei il gran cammino,

e tenni a la traversa

d'una selva diversa.

(And I, in such great vexation, my head bowed down, lost the main road and came upon a path that crossed a strange wood.)

The phrase a capo chino (my head bowed down) has perhaps already been used to describe Dante's reverence before Brunetto (v. 44 -- see C.Inf.XV.28-30), at once both a fitting tribute to the author of the poem which served as the closest vernacular precedent for Dante's own vernacular narrative poem and a reminder that Brunetto's 'lostness' would become permanent, while Dante's is only temporary.