Inferno (Dante)


Inferno is the first part of the Italian writer Dante Alighieri's 14th-century narrative poem The Divine Comedy, followed by Purgatorio and Paradiso. The Inferno describes the journey of a fictionalised version of Dante himself through Hell, guided by the ancient Roman poet Virgil. In the poem, Hell is depicted as nine concentric circles of torment located within the Earth; it is the "realm of those who have rejected spiritual values by yielding to bestial appetites or violence, or by perverting their human intellect to fraud or malice against their fellowmen". As an allegory, the Divine Comedy represents the journey of the soul toward God, with the Inferno describing the recognition and rejection of sin.

Prelude to Hell

Canto I

The poem begins on the night of Maundy Thursday on March 24, 1300, shortly before the dawn of Good Friday. The narrator, Dante himself, is 35 years old, and thus "midway in the journey of our life" – half of the biblical lifespan of 70. The poet finds himself lost in a dark wood, astray from the "straight way" of salvation. He sets out to climb directly up a small mountain, but his way is blocked by three beasts he cannot evade: a lonza, a leone, and a lupa. The three beasts, taken from Jeremiah 5:6, are thought to symbolize the three kinds of sin that bring the unrepentant soul into one of the three major divisions of Hell. According to John Ciardi, these are incontinence ; violence and bestiality ; and fraud and malice.
It is now dawn of Good Friday, April 8, with the sun rising in Aries. The beasts drive him back despairing into the darkness of error, a "lower place" where the sun is silent. However, Dante is rescued by a figure who announces that he was born sub and lived under Augustus: it is the shade of the Roman poet Virgil, author of the Aeneid, a Latin epic which also featured a journey through the underworld.

Canto II

On the evening of Good Friday, Dante hesitates as he follows Virgil; Virgil explains that he has been sent by Beatrice, the symbol of Divine Love. Beatrice had been moved to aid Dante by the Virgin Mary and Saint Lucia. Rachel, symbolic of the contemplative life, also appears in the heavenly scene recounted by Virgil. The two of them then begin their journey to the underworld.
Feeling uncertain of his worthiness for the journey, Dante reflects on the paths of Aeneas and Paul, who were granted access to the realms of the afterlife, and doubts his own capability to undertake such a passage.

Canto III: Vestibule of Hell

Dante passes through the gate of Hell, which bears an inscription ending with the phrase "Lasciate ", most frequently translated as "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here". Dante and his guide hear the anguished screams of the Uncommitted. These are the souls of people who in life took no sides; the opportunists who were for neither good nor evil, but instead were merely concerned with themselves. Among these Dante recognises a figure who made the "great refusal", implied to be Pope Celestine V, whose "cowardice served as the door through which so much evil entered the Church". Mixed with them are outcasts who took no side in the Rebellion of Angels. These souls are forever unclassified; they are neither in Hell nor out of it, but reside on the shores of the Acheron. Naked and futile, they race around through the mist in eternal pursuit of an elusive, wavering banner while relentlessly chased by swarms of wasps and hornets, who continually sting them. Loathsome maggots and worms at the sinners' feet drink the putrid mixture of blood, pus, and tears that flows down their bodies, symbolising the sting of their guilty conscience and the repugnance of sin. This may also be seen as a reflection of the spiritual stagnation in which they lived.
After passing through the vestibule, Dante and Virgil reach the ferry that will take them across the river Acheron and to Hell proper. The ferry is piloted by Charon, who does not want to let Dante enter, for he is a living being. Virgil forces Charon to take him by declaring, Vuolsi così colà dove si puote / ciò che si vuole, referring to the fact that Dante is on his journey on divine grounds. The wailing and blasphemy of the damned souls entering Charon's boat contrast with the joyful singing of the blessed souls arriving by ferry in the Purgatorio. The passage across the Acheron, however, is undescribed, since Dante faints and does not awaken until they reach the other side.

Nine circles of Hell

Overview

Virgil proceeds to guide Dante through the nine circles of Hell. The circles are concentric, representing a gradual increase in wickedness, and culminating at the centre of the earth, where Satan is held in bondage. The sinners of each circle are punished for eternity in a fashion fitting their crimes: each punishment is a contrapasso, a symbolic instance of poetic justice. For example, later in the poem, Dante and Virgil encounter fortune-tellers who must walk forward with their heads on backward, unable to see what is ahead, because they tried to see the future through forbidden means. Such a contrapasso "functions not merely as a form of divine revenge, but rather as the fulfilment of a destiny freely chosen by each soul during his or her life". People who sinned, but prayed for forgiveness before their deaths are found not in Hell but in Purgatory, where they labour to become free of their sins. Those in Hell are people who tried to justify their sins and were unrepentant.
File:Sandro Botticelli - La Carte de l'Enfer.jpg|thumb|left|upright=1.4|The Map of Hell painting by Sandro Botticelli, among the extant ninety-two drawings originally included in his illustrated manuscript of the poem
Dante's Hell is structurally based on the ideas of Aristotle, but with "certain Christian symbolisms, exceptions, and misconstructions of Aristotle's text", and a further supplement from Cicero's De Officiis. Virgil reminds Dante of "Those pages where the Ethics tells of three / Conditions contrary to Heaven's will and rule / Incontinence, vice, and brute bestiality". Cicero, for his part, had divided sins between violence and fraud. By conflating Cicero's violence with Aristotle's bestiality, and his fraud with malice or vice, Dante the poet obtained three major categories of sin, as symbolized by the three beasts that Dante encounters in Canto I: these are Incontinence, Violence/Bestiality, and Fraud/Malice. Sinners punished for incontinence – the lustful, the gluttonous, the hoarders and wasters, and the wrathful and sullen – all demonstrated weakness in controlling their appetites, desires, and natural urges; according to Aristotle's Ethics, incontinence is less condemnable than malice or bestiality, and therefore these sinners are located in four circles of Upper Hell. These sinners endure lesser torments than do those consigned to Lower Hell, located within the walls of the City of Dis, for committing acts of violence and fraud – the latter of which involves, as Dorothy L. Sayers writes, "abuse of the specifically human faculty of reason". The deeper levels are organised into one circle for violence and two circles for fraud. As a Christian, Dante adds Circle 1 to Upper Hell and Circle 6 to Lower Hell, making 9 Circles in total; incorporating the Vestibule of the Futile, this leads to Hell containing 10 main divisions. This "9+1=10" structure is also found within the Purgatorio and Paradiso. Lower Hell is further subdivided: Circle 7 is divided into three rings, Circle 8 is divided into ten bolge, and Circle 9 is divided into four regions. Thus, Hell contains 24 divisions in total.

First Circle (Limbo)

Canto IV

Dante awakens to find that he has crossed the Acheron, and Virgil leads him to the first circle of the abyss, Limbo, where Virgil himself resides. The first circle contains the unbaptised and the virtuous pagans, who, although not sinful enough to warrant damnation, did not accept Christ. Dorothy L. Sayers writes, "After those who refused choice come those without opportunity of choice. They could not, that is, choose Christ; they could, and did, choose human virtue, and for that they have their reward." Limbo shares many characteristics with the Asphodel Meadows, and thus, the guiltless damned are punished by living in a deficient form of Heaven. Without baptism they lacked the hope for something greater than rational minds can conceive. When Dante asked if anyone has ever left Limbo, Virgil states that he saw Jesus descend into Limbo and take Adam, Abel, Noah, Moses, Abraham, David, Rachel, and others into his all-forgiving arms and transport them to Heaven as the first human souls to be saved. The event, known as the Harrowing of Hell, supposedly occurred around AD 33 or 34.
Dante encounters the poets Homer, Horace, Ovid, and Lucan, who include him in their number and make him "sixth in that high company". They reach the base of a great Castle – the dwelling place of the wisest men of antiquity – surrounded by seven gates, and a flowing brook. After passing through the seven gates, the group comes to an exquisite green meadow and Dante encounters the inhabitants of the Citadel. These include figures associated with the Trojans and their descendants : Electra, Hector, Aeneas, Julius Caesar in his role as Roman general, Camilla, Penthesilea, King Latinus and his daughter, Lavinia, Lucius Junius Brutus, Lucretia, Julia, Marcia, and Cornelia Africana. Dante also sees Saladin, a Muslim military leader known for his battle against the Crusaders, as well as his generous, chivalrous, and merciful conduct.
Dante next encounters a group of philosophers, including Aristotle with Socrates and Plato at his side, as well as Democritus, "Diogenes", Anaxagoras, Thales, Empedocles, Heraclitus, and "Zeno". He sees the scientist Dioscorides, the mythical Greek poets Orpheus and Linus, and Roman statesmen Marcus Tullius Cicero and Seneca. Dante sees the Alexandrian geometer Euclid and Ptolemy, the Alexandrian astronomer and geographer, as well as the physicians Hippocrates and Galen. He also encounters Avicenna, a Persian polymath, and Averroes, a medieval Andalusian polymath known for his commentaries on Aristotle's works. Dante and Virgil depart from the four other poets and continue their journey.
Although Dante implies that all virtuous non-Christians find themselves here, he later encounters two in Purgatory and two in Heaven. In Purgatorio XXII, Virgil names several additional inhabitants of Limbo who were not mentioned in the ''Inferno.''