Commentary Inf XVII 115-126

This, perhaps the single most melodramatic and implausible narrative passage in the Comedy, is accomplished with considerable art. Dante, his face at first pushed up against the body of the beast, sees nothing. He feels the wind on his face, hears the torrent below, finally gets his eyes into play and sees the flames of lower hell, hears the cries of the damned, and finally, now that he is able to look, realizes the pattern of his descending flight from the 'approach' of the circling and rising hellscape.