The
Inferno is the first of three parts of Dante's epic poem, the Divine Comedy,
which depicts an imaginary trip through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. Dante is
the hero, who loses his way in the "dark woods" and journeys to nine regions
arranged around the wall of a huge conduit in nine concentric circles on behalf
of Hell. He is led by the ghost of Virgil, the Roman poet, who has come to
rescue Dante from the dark forest and lead him through the realms of the
afterlife. The first circle they enter is Limbo, which consists of heathen and
the unidentified, who led decent lives. The second through the fifth circles are
for the lustful, gluttonous, prodigal, and wrathful. The sixth circle is where
heretics are punished. The seventh circle is devoted to the punishment of
violence. The eighth is devoted to those guilty of fraud and the ninth for those
who betrayed others. In the last section, Satan remains imprisoned in a frozen
lake. (Michele, page 23)
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Dante, as evident and influential leader of the Whites, was banished within a
year. Dante became something of a party unto himself after his exile. His
approaches were at times, closer to those of a Ghibelline than a Guelph, so much
did he abhor Boniface. The pope, as well as a multitude of other characters from
Florentine politics, has a place in the Hell that Dante depicts in Inferno and
not a pleasant one. (European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, page 348.)
Dante meets Virgil in inferno who leads Dante through the gates of Hell, marked
by the haunting inscription. They enter the outlying region of Hell, the
Ante-Inferno, where the souls who in life could not entrust to either good or
evil now must run in a futile pursue after a blank banner, day after day, while
hornets bite them and worms lap their blood. Dante witnesses their suffering
with disgust and pity. The ferryman Charon then takes him and his guide across
the river Acheron, the real border of Hell. The First Circle of Hell, Limbo,
houses pagans, with Virgil and many of the other great writers and poets of
antiquity, who died without meaningful of Christ. After meeting Horace, Ovid,
and Lucan, Dante continues into the Second Circle of Hell, reserved for the sin
of Lust. At the border of the Second Circle, the monster Minos lurks, assigning
fated souls to their punishments. Inside the Second Circle, Dante watches the
souls of the Lustful whirl about in a terrible storm; Dante meets Francesca, who
tells him the story of her fated love affair with her husband's brother; the
relationship has landed both in Hell.
In the Third Circle of Hell, the Greedy must lie in mud and endure a rain of
filth and excrement. In the Fourth Circle, the Avaricious and the Dissolute are
made to charge at one another with giant boulders. The Fifth Circle of Hell
contains the river Styx, a swampy, fetid drain in which the Wrathful spend
eternity struggling with one another; the sullen lie bound beneath the Styx's
waters, choking on the mud.
Virgil and Dante next go on to the walls of the city of Dis, a city contained
inside the larger region of Hell. The Sixth Circle of Hell houses the Heretics.
A deep valley leads into the First Ring of the Seventh Circle of Hell, where
those who were violent toward others spend time without end in a river of
boiling blood. Virgil and Dante meet a group of Centaurs, creatures who are half
man, half horse. One of them, Nessus, gets them into the Second Ring of the
Seventh Circle of Hell, where they meet those who were violent toward
themselves. These souls must endure time without end in the form of trees. Dante
there speaks with Pier della Vigna. Going deeper into the Seventh Circle of
Hell, the travelers find those who were aggressive toward God; Dante meets his
old patron, Brunetto Latini, walking among the souls of those who were violent
toward Nature on a desert of burning sand. They also stumble upon the Usurers,
those who were violent toward Art.
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The monster Geryon transports Virgil and Dante across a great chasm to the
Eighth Circle of Hell, known as Malebolge, or "evil pockets"; the term refers to
the circle's division into various pockets alienated by great folds of earth. In
the First Pouch, the Panderers and the Seducers receive lashings from whips; in
the second, the Flatterers must lie in a river of human feces. The Simoniacs in
the Third Pouch hang upside down in baptismal fonts while their feet burn with
fire. In the Fourth Pouch are the Astrologists or Diviners, forced to walk with
their heads on toward the back, a sight that moves Dante to great pity. In the
Fifth Pouch, the Barrators sheer in pitch while demons tear them apart. The
Hypocrites in the Sixth Pouch must everlastingly walk in circles, wearing heavy
robes made of lead. Caiphas, the priest who long-established Jesus' death
sentence, lays crucified on the ground; the other sinners tread on him as they
walk. In the horrifying Seventh Pouch, the Thieves sit attentive in a pit of
vipers, becoming vipers themselves when bitten; to recover their form, they must
bite another thief in turn. Curtius, Ernst Robert.
In the Eighth Pouch of the Eighth Circle of Hell, Dante speaks to Ulysses, the
great hero of Homer's epics, now doomed to perpetuity among those guilty of
Spiritual Theft for his role in performing the ruse of the Trojan Horse. In the
Ninth Pouch, the souls of Sowers of Scandal and Schism walk in a circle,
continually afflicted by wounds that open and close frequently. In the Tenth
Pouch, the Falsifiers undergo from horrible plagues and diseases. Virgil and
Dante precede to the Ninth Circle of Hell through the Giants' Well, which leads
to a huge drop to Cocytus, a great frozen lake. The giant Antaeus picks Virgil
and Dante up and sets them down at the bottom of the well, in the lowest region
of Hell. In Caina, the First Ring of the Ninth Circle of Hell, those who
deceived their kin stand frozen up to their necks in the lake's ice. In Antenora,
the Second Ring, those who betrayed their country and party stand frozen up to
their heads; here Dante meets Count Ugolino, who spends perpetuity gnawing on
the head of the man who locked up him in life. In Ptolomea, the Third Ring,
those who betrayed their guests spend eternity deceitful on their backs in the
frozen lake, their tears making blocks of ice over their eyes. Dante next
follows Virgil into Judecca, the Fourth Ring of the Ninth Circle of Hell and the
lowest depth. Here, those who betrayed their supporters spend eternity in
complete icy submersion. (Robert, page 118)
A huge, mist-shrouded form prowls ahead and Dante approach it. It is the
three-headed giant Lucifer, plunged waist-deep into the ice. His body stabs the
center of the Earth, where he fell when God hurled him down from Heaven. Each of
Lucifer's mouths gnaws one of history's three greatest sinners: Judas, the
betrayer of Christ, and Cassius and Brutus, the betrayers of Julius Caesar.
Virgil leads Dante on a climb down Lucifer's huge form, holding on to his frozen
tufts of hair. Eventually, the poets reach the Lethe, the river of
absentmindedness, and travel from there out of Hell and back onto Earth. They
emerge from Hell on Easter morning, just before sunrise.
Dante's vision states his personal experience, through images to convey his
understanding of the nature of human survival. He writes in the first person so
the reader can identify and deeply appreciate the truths he wished to share
about the meaning of life and man's association with the Creator. Dante was a
man who lived, who saw political and artistic success, and who was in love. He
was also a man who was defeated, who felt danger and the humiliation of exile,
and who was no stranger to the cruelty and treachery possible in people. Dante
felt he was a victim of a grave injustice. He also suffered serious self-doubts,
natural for a man in exile. His works reflect his experiences and attempts to
answer some of life's difficult questions. (Domenico, page 89)
Works Cited
Barbi, Michele. “Life of Dante”, Ed. Paul Ruggiers, Berkley-L.A.: University of
California, Press, 1954, page 23.
Curtius, Ernst Robert, "Dante", European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages,
New York: Pantheon Books, 1953, page 348.
Pinsky, Robert, “The Inferno of Dante”, New York: Harper Collins, 1994. Norfolk:
New Directions, 1968, page 118.
Vittorini, Domenico, “The Age of Dante”, Syracuse: Syracuse University Press,
1957, page 89.
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