Dante’s Inferno is:
· On a still deeper level, a political work
Dante uses an imaginary afterlife as a means of revenge on his own political enemies and those that did not conform to his own medieval world view.
Biography
Dante Alighieri was born in 11265 in Florence, Italy, to a family of moderate wealth that had a history of involvement in the complex Florentine political scene.
· The Whites wished to remain independent of both the Holy Roman Emperor and the Pope
· Blacks saw the Pope as an ally against imperial power
· At Dante’s request—and in the cause of peace—the leaders of both factions were exiled
· Pope Boniface VIII enabled the leaders of the Blacks to return to Florence in 1301, and they seized power
· They banned Dante from the city in 1302 for two years, fining him heavily. He refused to pay, and was therefore condemned to death in his absence.
· Dante spent his exile in northern Italian cities—mainly Verona—and in Paris.
· Eventually, he became a Ghibelline.
· All of Dante’s work on The Comedy later called The Divine Comedy, and consisting of three books: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso) was done in exile.
· He completed Inferno, which depicts and allegorical journey through Hell, in 1314.
· He died in exile in 1321
· The title Divine Comedy refers to the ancient definition of Comedy, which describes the perfect union of man and God in heaven.
· It is considered the greatest work written in vernacular medieval Italian.
About Inferno
Dante was a great fan of the Roman poet Virgil, and he based his idea of the cosmography of hell on Virgil’s pre-Christian description of the underworld as is found in Book 6 of Aeneid. In Inferno, Virgil resides in the top layer of Hell known as Limbo (having bee unlucky enough to have been contemporary with Christ and therefore not aware of Christianity). He is Dante’s guide. As they descend lower and lower into the depths of Hell, the punishments inflicted on Dante’s political enemies become more horrific.
Hell is organized into a series of circles, one on top of the other, narrowing as it gets deeper and deeper, until the travelers reach the centermost, deepest part. The deepest part of hell (called the “Malebolge”) is located directly beneath Jerusalem. According to Dante, when Satan fell, he pierced the earth’s crust at that point and became embedded in the Malebolge.
Some of the souls interrogated by Dante are talkative, and some are ashamed and tell him to leave them alone. Some, indeed, Dante has a sneaking admiration for, while some recognize that Dante’s physical body has substance and inquire of him why he has reached the afterlife before his time.
Themes, Motifs & Symbols
Themes
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.
1. The Perfection of God’s Justice
Dante creates an imaginative correspondence between a soul’s sin on Earth and the punishment he or she receives in Hell. The Sullen choke on mud, the Wrathful attack one another, the Gluttonous are forced to eat excrement, and so on. This simple idea provides many of Inferno’s moments of spectacular imagery and symbolic power, but also serves to illuminate one of Dante’s major themes: the perfection of God’s justice. The inscription over the gates of Hell in Canto III explicitly states that God was moved to create Hell by justice (III.7). Hell exists to punish sin, and the suitability of Hell’s specific punishments testify to the divine perfection that all sin violates.
This notion of the suitability of God’s punishments figures significantly in Dante’s larger moral messages and structures Dante’s Hell. To modern readers, the torments Dante and Virgil behold may seem shockingly harsh: homosexuals must endure an eternity of walking on hot sand; those who charge interest on loans sit beneath a rain of fire. However, when we view the poem as a whole, it becomes clear that the guiding principle of these punishments is one of balance. Sinners suffer punishment to a degree befitting the gravity of their sin, in a manner matching that sin’s nature. The design of the poem serves to reinforce this correspondence: in its plot it progresses from minor sins to major ones (a matter of degree); and in the geographical structure it posits, the various regions of Hell correspond to types of sin (a matter of kind). Because this notion of balance informs all of God’s chosen punishments, His justice emerges as rigidly objective, mechanical, and impersonal; there are no extenuating circumstances in Hell, and punishment becomes a matter of nearly scientific formula.
Early in Inferno, Dante builds a great deal of tension between the objective impersonality of God’s justice and the character Dante’s human sympathy for the souls that he sees around him. As the story progresses, however, the character becomes less and less inclined toward pity, and repeated comments by Virgil encourage this development. Thus, the text asserts the infinite wisdom of divine justice: sinners receive punishment in perfect proportion to their sin; to pity their suffering is to demonstrate a lack of understanding.
2. Man’s relationship with God
In The Inferno, God is not presented as all-loving and benevolent. Rather, the creator is curiously absent; he is only mentioned as either a consequence of sin or as the party injured by the sinner. Otherwise, the poem deals exclusively with hell and sinners. Likewise, there is no mercy, no absolution, and no interference from God of any kind. In fact, it is Beatrice who takes interest in the dispensation of Dante’s soul, not God.
3. Sin and Punishment
It is primarily in the description of the punishment for individual sin that the Inferno has any logic. The sin “fits” the crime. Specifically, the punishment repays the sinner in the exact way the sinner harmed himself and/or others. Therefore, the reader is permitted to understand why the sins are punishable in the way they are.
4. Political revenge
Dante uses Inferno as a vehicle to assassinate the characters of—and thereby get revenge on—his political enemies. The poem is written in the vernacular, so the common, ill-educated man might read it. The common man is far more likely to accept the poem as gospel truth, and so therefore believe what Dante says of his enemies.
5. Evil as the Contradiction of God’s Will
In many ways, Dante’s Inferno can be seen as a kind of imaginative taxonomy of human evil, the various types of which Dante classifies, isolates, explores, and judges. At times we may question its organizing principle, wondering why, for example, a sin punished in the Eighth Circle of Hell, such as accepting a bribe, should be considered worse than a sin punished in the Sixth Circle of Hell, such as murder. To understand this organization, one must realize that Dante’s narration follows strict doctrinal Christian values. His moral system prioritizes not human happiness or harmony on Earth but rather God’s will in Heaven. Dante thus considers violence less evil than fraud: of these two sins, fraud constitutes the greater opposition to God’s will. God wills that we treat each other with the love he extends to us as individuals; while violence acts against this love, fraud constitutes a perversion of it. A fraudulent person affects care and love while perpetrating sin against it. Yet, while Inferno implies these moral arguments, it generally engages in little discussion of them. In the end, it declares that evil is evil simply because it contradicts God’s will, and God’s will does not need further justification. Dante’s exploration of evil probes neither the causes of evil, nor the psychology of evil, nor the earthly consequences of bad behavior. Inferno is not a philosophical text; its intention is not to think critically about evil but rather to teach and reinforce the relevant Christian doctrines.
6. Storytelling as a Way to Achieve Immortality
Dante places much emphasis in his poem on the notion of immortality through storytelling, everlasting life through legend and literary legacy. Several shades ask the character Dante to recall their names and stories on Earth upon his return. They hope, perhaps, that the retelling of their stories will allow them to live in people’s memories. The character Dante does not always oblige; for example, he ignores the request of the Italian souls in the Ninth Pouch of the Eighth Circle of Hell that he bring word of them back to certain men on Earth as warnings. However, the poet Dante seems to have his own agenda, for his poem takes the recounting of their stories as a central part of its project. Although the poet repeatedly emphasizes the perfection of divine justice and the suitability of the sinners’ punishments, by incorporating the sinners’ narratives into his text he also allows them to live on in some capacity aboveground.
Yet, in retelling the sinners’ stories, the poet Dante may be acting less in consideration of the sinners’ immortality than of his own. Indeed, Dante frequently takes opportunities to advance his own glory. Thus, for example, in Canto XXIV, halfway through his description of the Thieves’ punishment, Dante declares outright that he has outdone both Ovid and Lucan in his ability to write scenes of metamorphosis and transformation (Ovid’s Metamorphoses focuses entirely on transformations; Lucan wrote the Pharsalia, an account of the Roman political transition and turmoil in the first century b.c.). By claiming to have surpassed two of the classical poets most renowned for their mythological inventions and vivid imagery, Dante seeks to secure his own immortality.
Thus, Dante presents storytelling as a vehicle for multiple legacies: that of the story’s subject as well as that of the storyteller. While the plot of a story may preserve the living memory of its protagonist, the story’s style and skill may serve the greater glory of its author. Although many of his sinners die a thousand deaths—being burned, torn to bits, or chewed to pieces, only to be reconstituted again and again—Dante emphasizes with almost equal incessancy the power of his narrative to give both its subjects and its author the gift of eternal life.
Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
1. Political Arguments
An unquestionably significant part of Dante’s aim in writing Inferno was to offer a large-scale commentary on the political nightmare of fourteenth-century Florence, from which he had recently been exiled. He makes his assertions in various ways. First, he condemns political figures with whom he disagreed by scattering them ruthlessly throughout Hell. Second, because Dante sets the action of Inferno several years before the years in which he wrote it, he can predict, as it were, certain events that had already taken place by the time of his writing. He issues these seeming predictions via the voices of the damned, apparently endowed at death with prophetic powers. In these souls’ emphasis on the corruption and turmoil of the so-called future Florence, Dante aims pointed criticism at his former home. Third, Dante asserts throughout the poem his personal political belief that church and state should exist as separate but equal powers on Earth, with the former governing man’s spirit and the latter governing his person. Thus, in his many references to Rome, Dante carefully mentions both its spiritual and secular importance.
The poem’s arresting final image provides another testament to the equal importance of church and state: Lucifer chews both on Judas (the betrayer of Christ, the ultimate spiritual leader) and on Cassius and Brutus (the betrayers of Caesar, the ultimate political leader). Treachery against religion and against government both warrant placement in Hell’s final circle. While Dante emphasizes the equality of these two institutions, he also asserts the necessity of their separation. He assigns particularly harsh punishments to souls guilty of broaching this separation, such as priests or popes who accepted bribes or yearned for political power.
2. Classical Literature and Mythology
Although the values that Inferno asserts are decidedly Christian, on a thematic and literary level, the poem owes almost as much to Greek and Roman tradition as it does to Christian morality literature. Dante’s Christian Hell features a large variety of mythological and ancient literary creatures, ranging from the Centaurs to Minos to Ulysses. He even incorporates mythological places, such as the rivers Acheron and Styx. In addition, Dante often refers to and imitates the styles of great classical writers such as Homer, Ovid, Lucan, and Virgil himself. He therefore attempts to situate himself within the tradition of classical epics while proving that he is a greater writer than any of the classical poets.
Dante incorporates this ancient material for other reasons too, including the simple fact that mythological elements contain much dramatic potential. More important, however, Dante includes mythological and classical literary elements in his poem to indicate that Christianity has subsumed these famous stories; by bringing many religious strands under one umbrella, Dante heightens the urgency and importance of his quest—a quest that he believes necessary for all human beings.
Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
It is impossible to reduce the iconic complexity of Inferno to a short list of important symbols. Because the poem is an overarching allegory, it explores its themes using dozens, even hundreds, of symbols, ranging from the minutely particular (the blank banner chased by the Uncommitted in Canto III, symbolizing the meaninglessness of their activity in life) to the hugely general (the entire story of The Divine Comedy itself, symbolizing the spiritual quest of human life). Many of the symbols in Inferno are clear and easily interpretable, such as the beast Geryon—with the head of an innocent man and the body of a foul serpent, he represents dishonesty and fraud. Others are much more nuanced and difficult to pin down, such as the trio of creatures that stops Dante from climbing the sunlit mountain in Canto I. When reading Inferno, it is extremely important to consider each element of the poem according to how it fits into Dante’s larger system of symbolism—what it says about the scene, story, and themes of the work and about human life.
Perhaps the most important local uses of symbolism in Inferno involve the punishments of the sinners, which are always constructed so as to correspond allegorically to the sins that they committed in life. The Lustful, for example, who were blown about by passion in life, are now doomed to be blown about by a ferocious storm for all of time. Other major types of symbols include figures who represent human qualities, such as Virgil, representative of reason, and Beatrice, representative of spiritual love; settings that represent emotional states, such as the dark forest in Canto I, embodying Dante’s confusion and fear; and figures among the damned who may represent something more than merely their sins, such as Farinata, who seems to represent qualities of leadership and political commitment that transcend his identity as a Heretic in Hell.
The first time I read Dante "seriously," I was twenty-five years old and, as a brand-new instructor, had to lead students through Inferno for a week in the "Great Books" course that is still required of all students at Columbia College. The one thing that I knew I did not understand (there were of course many, many other things) was the way in which the poem signified. I was able to put a word to my puzzlement: "allegory." Almost anyone coming to the Comedy for the first time has probably heard two things about its larger strategies -- it is the most Christian of poems and it is "an allegory." But an allegory of what? And what is allegory in the first place? 1
The most simple medieval definition of allegory is found in the seventh-century Spanish encyclopedist, Isidore of Seville (Lind.1911.1 -- Etymologiae I, xxxvii, 22): "Allegoria est alieniloquium, aliud enim sonat, aliud intelligitur" (Allegory is "otherspeech," for it occurs when one thing is said and another is understood). This definition, which may be taken as being either global or narrowly particular (it is in fact offered as a definition of one kind of irony by Isidore), is frequently referred to in discussions of allegory and is thus included here. (For a recent discussion of allegory as it is defined by grammarians and rhetoricians see (Ales.1987.1.) In fact, however, it does not resolve the problem in a helpful way, especially for students of Dante, who himself referred to two kinds of allegory, which he called the "allegory of the poets" and the "allegory of the theologians" (Conv.II.i.3-4). If we can understand what Dante meant in his discussion, we may be able to understand better what he did in his poem.
Allegory, as practised by poets, may be generally described as possessing the following characteristics. The work involving it (1) is to be understood as being fictive and not in any way recording events that have occurred (e.g., the Romance of the Rose [13th century]), while also (2) being developed as an extended metaphor (e.g., the Christian life portrayed as a continual "war," an inner struggle against inner temptations and external forces ranged against the would-be Christian -- see the Psychomachia of Prudentius, ca. 405). In concert with these two characteristics, allegory of the poets (3) presents its action as being internal, as taking place in the mind or soul of a single figure (e.g., Prince Arthur in Spenser's Faerie Queene, 1596) or of an anonymous "everyman" (e.g., Pilgrim in John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, 1678). Further, allegorical fictions (4) tend to rely heavily on the use of personifications, generally of vices (e.g., Incontinence, Despair) and virtues (e.g., Continence, Hope), "ladies" (abstractions in Latin generally take the feminine gender, e.g., continentia, spes) who perform physical actions in battle with other "ladies," as in the Psychomachia. Not every allegorical work has all these characteristics; all, however, possess some of them.
Now let us examine Dante's definition of allegory in the opening pages of the second treatise of Convivio: "The first [sense of a text] is called the literal, and this is the sense that does not go beyond the surface of the letter, as in the fables of the poets. The next is called the allegorical, and this is the one that is hidden beneath the cloak of these fables, and it is a truth hidden beneath a beautiful [lie].... Indeed the theologians take this sense otherwise than do the poets; but since it is my intention here to follow the method of the poets, I shall take the allegorical sense according to the usage of the poets" (Conv.II.i.3-4 -- trans. R. Lansing [Lans.1990.1]). For Dante the distinguishing element of the allegory of the poets is that it is literally untrue. But are not all poems literally fictive? Before attempting to respond to that question, let us consider what Dante believes to be the distinguishing mark of theological allegory, the way in which "the theologians take this sense otherwise than do the poets." It is clear that he is now speaking of a privileged and limited class of texts, the historical passages in the Bible that medieval exegetes believed to possess four senses. 2
For now we observe only a single and crucial particular. As opposed to the literal sense of poets' allegory, the literal sense of theological allegory is historically true, found only in events narrated in the Bible (e.g., the fall of Adam and Eve, Moses leading the Israelites in the Exodus, the birth of Jesus, the Crucifixion). In his discussion in Convivio II Dante, unsurprisingly, goes on to say that he will employ the allegory of the poets to elucidate the meaning of the "allegorical" Lady Philosophy (clearly, by the way, a personification) found in his odes. What has not received sufficient attention is the astounding fact that he claims that he could have employed theological allegory in his analysis of his poems. In the Middle Ages the line separating the two kinds of allegorical exegesis was clearly drawn. All secular literature of an imaginative kind was dealt with as being fictive and not historical. 3
Further, theological allegory was limited to a single use, interpreting the several meanings found in certain (far from all) historical passages in Scripture. Dante, in one rather alarming step, had crossed that line -- in theory if not in practice. Nonetheless, the claim he had staked when he wrote Convivio (ca. 1304-6) lay ready to be put to use when he moved on to the Comedy (ca. 1307).
Later in his life Dante wrote a letter to one of his most important supporters, Cangrande della Scala, a sort of preamble to his Paradiso, in which he explains many of the essential strategies of the Comedy, and most particularly its use of allegory. It must immediately be said that, for nearly two hundred years, the authenticity of this document has been hotly debated, with those finding in the negative almost always doing so because they do not find what is said in the Epistle concordant with their views of Dante's opinions or practice. This writer is among those convinced that Dante did in fact write it (see Holl.1993.2). Certainly its most astounding and controversial assertion is that the fourfold interpretation of texts used to elucidate the historical meanings of the Bible was the very method to be used in order to understand the Comedy. This is surely the stuff of heresy. For the position at the very least and unmistakably implies that the literal sense of the poem is historical, i.e., that Dante's seven-day visit to the afterworld is to be treated as historical fact. Whether or not Dante wrote this document, some contemporary students of the issue make the point that his practice in the poem is such as to indicate that the Epistle, whoever wrote it, only makes explicit what had already been accomplished in the poem (e.g., Barolini [Baro.1990.1], p. 142, and Hollander [Holl.1990.1], pp. 33, 43).
Dante, faced with the strong opposition of theologians to the idea that secular literature had any meaningful claim to purvey truth, made a bold decision. Rather than employ the allegory of the poets, which admitted, even insisted, that the literal sense of a work was untrue, he chose to employ the allegory of the theologians, with the consequence that everything recounted in the poem as having actually occurred is to be treated as "historical," since the poet insistently claims that what he relates is nothing less than literally true. We do not have to agree that such was in reality the case, only that the poet makes precisely this claim -- and no less than it. If we can acknowledge that much, we have come a long way toward demystifying this subject. However the four senses of theological allegory may function in the Comedy, we can come to the understanding that its pretext is that it is to be read historically. 4
Charles Singleton, one of the leading exponents of the "theological school," put the matter succinctly: "The fiction of the Divine Comedy is that it is not fiction" Sing.1957.1, p. 129. The crucial and noteworthy result of framing the question in this way is to be freed of the interpretive shackles imposed by forcing the "allegory of the poets" onto the poem. And that is exactly what has been its fate from the time of the earliest commentators (for a brief survey of the commentary tradition see Holl.1993.3). An example may help. When Virgil enters the poem in its first canto, the vast majority of early commentators (and the phenomenon, surprisingly, persists) treat him as an abstraction, an allegory (often of "Human Reason" or something similar). But even a cursory reading of the text that presents him ( [Inf I 67-75]) reveals that he stands before us as the son of Mantuan parents who lived at Rome at the time of the Caesars and who wrote the Aeneid.
If the student who is wrestling with this difficult matter for the first time takes only this much away from this discussion, it should be of considerable aid. You are not asked by the poem to see Virgil as Reason, Beatrice as Faith (or Revelation), Francesca as Lust, Farinata as Heresy. You may banish such abstractions from your mind unless Dante himself insists on them (as on occasion he does -- e.g., the noble castle in Limbo [see C.Inf.IV.106-111] or the Lady Poverty, beloved of St. Francis [Par XI 74], who is not to be confused with any historical earthly woman but is to be regarded as the ideal of Christ's and the Apostles' renunciation of the things of this world). It is a useful and pleasing freedom that you enjoy: "The allegory of the Comedy is not allegory as the commentators urge me to apply it. I may read this poem as history, and understand it better." When I first taught this poem, in 1958, I wish someone had given me that gift.
(February 1998)
One of the most difficult problems for a twenty-first-century reader of the Comedy is to find a moral point of view from which to consider the actions portrayed in the poem. Doing so is not quite as problematic for readers of the last two cantiche, in which those on their way to becoming saints in heaven and those already there contribute to the establishment of a moral ground that is unmistakable. Even a non-Christian reader cannot overlook the essential moral meaning of these parts of the work. Inferno, on the other hand, at least seems to be a far less morally-defined space. Indeed, debates about how we are meant to respond to the most attractive sinners whom we meet in hell have been frequent features of nineteenth- and twentieth-century discussions of the poem. This will not be an attempt to review that debate, but only to describe its most salient features.
The rediscovery of Dante in Europe at the end of the eighteenth century brought his poem into a context that tended to reformulate its moral argument. Later Romantic readers only widened this tendency. The understanding of Dante that we eventually find in many authoritative late-nineteenth (e.g., Francesco De Sanctis) and early-twentieth-century (e.g., Benedetto Croce) critics does not, one should probably agree, conform with the text its author left us. How may we define this view of the poem? In keeping with some of the most attractive tenets of Romantic artistic values -- spontaneity of expression, vividness of portrayed emotion, gravity of subject matter, integrity of the writer's feeling -- Dante became, as it were, a contemporary of the Romantics. The core of such a view is located in the moral point of view of the critic, not in that of the poem. In a not-very-exaggerated shorthand, Francesca, one of the most beguiling of Dante's sinners, replaces the sainted Beatrice as the guarantor of the poem's (and the poet's) greatness; Dante becomes the unrivalled portraitist of Great Feeling. The debate that continues into our own day has its roots in the Romantic rediscovery of Dante, one based particularly on readings of the most moving figures in the Inferno: Francesca da Rimini (canto V), Farinata degli Uberti (canto X), Pier delle Vigne (canto XIII), Brunetto Latini (canto XV), Ulysses (canto XXVI), and Ugolino della Gherardesca (canto XXXIII), with Francesca, Ulysses, and Ugolino representing perhaps the three most beloved and discussed of Dante's Infernal characters.
It is not my purpose to argue that Dante's "sympathetic sinners" are not indeed sympathetic, but that we, as readers, are meant to avoid the trap into which the poem's protagonist himself several times falls. We should try to honor the distinction the text itself clearly draws, that between a narrator, who has had a journey through the created universe, culminating in his vision of God, and who, as a result, understands all things about as well as a human being can, and a protagonist who moves, like St. Augustine before him (in Dante's own formulation [Conv.I.ii.14]), "from not good to good, from good to better, and from better to best," when at the last he becomes the narrator ([Par I 1-36]). Dante's poem creates some of its drama from the tension that operates between the narrator's view of events (in Inferno often represented by Virgil's interpretive remarks) and that of the protagonist. What makes our task difficult is that at some pivotal moments neither the narrator nor Virgil makes clear judgmental statements of a moralizing kind. Instead, the poet uses irony to undercut the alluring words of sinners who present themselves rather as victims than as perpetrators of outrage in the eye of God. The commentary that accompanies the text of the poem will frequently analyze the subtleties of Dante's presentation of these sympathetic sinners. Here, speaking more generally, I would like to resuscitate an old gloss of Guido da Pisa (Guido.Inf.XX.28-30), who puts the matter succinctly: "Sed circa miserias damnatorum, Sacra Pagina attestante, nulla compassione movetur. Et ratio est ista: In isto enim mundo est tempus misericordie; in alio autem, est solum tempus iustitie" (But the suffering of the damned should move no one to compassion, as the Bible attests. And the reason for this is that the time for mercy is here in this world, while in the world to come it is time only for justice). If it was John Milton's task to "justify the ways of God to men" (Paradise Lost I, 26), Dante before him had taken on the responsibility of showing that all that is found in this world and in the next is measured by justice. Everything in God is just; only in the mortal world of sin and death do we find injustice. It is the mark of Cain on most human agents. And it is small wonder that Dante believes that it is only few alive in his time who will find salvation ([Par XXXII 25-27]). Words for "justice" and "just" recur frequently in the poem, the noun some thirty-five times, the adjective, some thirty-six. If one were asked to epitomize the central concern of the poem in a single word, "justice" might embody the best choice.
In the Inferno we see the justice of God insisted on from the opening lines describing hell proper, the inscription over the gate of hell: "Giustizia mosse il mio alto fattore" (Justice moved my maker on high). If God is just, it follows logically that there can be absolutely no question concerning the justness of His judgments. All who are condemned to hell are justly condemned. Thus, when we observe that the protagonist feels pity for some of the damned, we are meant to realize that it is he who is at fault. This is perhaps the most available test of us as readers. If we sympathize with the damned, we follow a bad example. In such a view, the protagonist's at times harsh reaction to various sinners, e.g., Filippo Argenti (canto VIII), Pope Nicholas III (canto XIX), Bocca degli Abati (canto XXXII), is not (even if it seems so to some contemporary readers) a sign of his falling into sinful attitudes himself, but proof of his righteous indignation as he learns to hate sin.
If some readers think that the protagonist is too zealous in his reaction to some sinners, far more are of the opinion that his sympathetic responses to others correspond to those that we ourselves may legitimately feel. To be sure, Francesca is portrayed more sympathetically than Thaïs (canto XVIII), Ulysses than Mosca dei Lamberti (canto XXVIII), etc. Yet it also seems to some readers that Dante's treatment of Francesca, Ulysses, and others asks us to put the question of damnation to one side, leaving us to admire their most pleasing human traits in a moral vacuum, as it were. I think it is better to understand that we are never authorized by the poem to embrace such a view. If we are struck by Francesca's courteous speech, we note that she is also in the habit of blaming others for her own difficulties; if we admire Farinata's magnanimity, we also note that his soul contains no room for God; if we are wrung by Pier delle Vigne's piteous narrative, we also consider that he has totally abandoned his allegiance to God for his belief in the power of his emperor; if we are moved by Brunetto Latini's devotion to his pupil, we become aware that his view of Dante's earthly mission has little of religion in it; if we are swept up in enthusiasm for the noble vigor of Ulysses, we eventually understand that he is maniacally egotistical; if we weep for Ugolino's piteous paternal feelings, we finally understand that he, too, is centrally concerned with himself.
Dante's risky technique was to trust us, his readers, with the responsibility for seizing upon the details in the narratives told by these sympathetic sinners in order to condemn them on the evidence that issues from their own mouths. It was indeed, as we can see from the many readers who fail to take note of this evidence, a perilous decision for him to have made. Yet we are given at least two totally clear indicators of the attitude that should be ours. Twice in Inferno figures from heaven descend to hell to further God's purpose in sending Dante on his mission. Virgil relates the coming of Beatrice to Limbo. She tells him, in no uncertain terms, that she feels nothing for the tribulations of the damned and cannot be harmed in any way by them or by the destructive agents of the place that contains them ([Inf II 88-93]). All she longs to do is to return to her seat in Paradise ([Inf II 71]). And when the angelic intercessor arrives to open the gates of Dis, slammed shut against Virgil, we are told that this benign presence has absolutely no interest in the situation of the damned or even of the living Dante. All he desires is to complete his mission and be done with such things ([Inf IX 88], [Inf IX 100-103]), reminding us of Beatrice's similar lack of interest in the damned.
Such indicators should point us in the right direction. It is a continuing monument to the complexity of Dante's poem and to some readers' desire to turn it into a less morally- determined text than it ultimately is that so many of us have such difficulty wrestling with its moral implications. This is not to say that the poem is less because of its complexity, but precisely the opposite. Its greatness is reflected in its rich and full realization of the complex nature of human behavior and of the difficulty of moral judgment for living mortals. It asks us to learn, as does the protagonist, as we proceed. His journey is the model for our voyage through his text.
(February 1998)
(Expanded version of the article "Virgil" in the Dante Encyclopedia, ed. Richard Lansing, New York, Garland Publishing, Inc., 2000. Reproduced by permission.)
Born in 70 B.C. not far from Mantua, Virgil began his poetic career with the publication of his Eclogues ca. 37 B.C. These were followed by the Georgics some seven years later. The Aeneid, begun perhaps in 30 B.C., occupied him until his death in 19 B.C. (For those with Italian the current major source of information about Virgil's biography and his works is the Enciclopedia virgiliana.) It was his wish that the work, not brought to the degree of completion that he insisted on, be destroyed. It was preserved through the intervention of no less a personage than the emperor Augustus himself.
Dante's involvement with the works of Virgil is one of western literature's most renowned and most complex examples of the way in which a later writer appropriates the texts of a precursor. It is difficult to conceive of a major literary text that might be as closely involved with an earlier masterwork as is the Commedia with the Aeneid, with the major exception of Virgil's epic with those of Homer. However, Dante's early works show little special, or more than conventional, admiration either for Virgil or for classical poetry in general. In his first work, Vita Nuova, the single gesture in the direction of classical poetry (VN XXV.3) reveals a concern on the young writer's part to relate his work to a tradition of writerly excellence in the lofty style of classical antiquity. This stance is also evident in De vulgari Eloquentia, as is perhaps only to be expected in a work dealing with contemporary poetry in the vernacular, a work written by a poet who wants to put his contemporaries and himself (especially himself) on something like an equal footing with glorious antecedents. The case of Convivio is more complicated. Its first three treatises are written more or less in a similar spirit, revisiting classical sources in a nearly perfunctory way. In the fourth treatise, however, we find a major change, as was first noted by Ulrich Leo in a justly celebrated article (Leo.1951.1). Virgil and some other classical writers now become important more for what they are saying than for the nobility of their expression. The case of Monarchia is a complicated one. The question of its date is essential and difficult to resolve. The author of this article sides with those who argue for a later dating (ca. 1317?). If the work is composed after the Commedia was begun, the thickness of allusions to Virgil (divinus poeta noster ["our divine poet"] -- 2.3.6) in Book 2 (there are nineteen in all in this book, according to Richard Kay [Kay.1986.1]) would indicate a similar lofty view of Virgil as auctor, while the total absence of Virgilian citation in the concluding third book might seem to show a sudden lack of classicizing interest on Dante's part. The sudden shift, however, is more likely to indicate rather a change in strategy (discussing theological matters he will resort only to theologically valid texts) than a change of heart with regard to the Latin poet. One must also be aware of the indisputably Virgilian spirit, essentially one of imitation of his Eclogues, found in Dante's own Latin Eclogues, composed late in his career. Concerning the minor works composed before the Commedia one may say that, with the exception of the last treatise of Convivio, which should probably be understood as being composed at a moment of considerable pressure and of a consequent change in direction toward a new writerly identity, there is little by way of a deeply involved reading of classical text evident in his texts.
If one considers the question from a later vantage point, however, one can hardly overestimate the importance of Virgil for Dante. Here is the evaluation of Curtius: "The conception of the Commedia is based upon a spiritual meeting with Virgil. In the realm of European literature there is little which may be compared with this phenomenon. The 'awakening' to Aristotle in the thirteenth century was the work of generations and took place in the cool light of intellectual research. The awakening of Virgil by Dante is an arc of flame which leaps from one great soul to another. The tradition of the European spirit knows no situation of such affecting loftiness, tenderness, fruitfulness. It is the meeting of the two greatest Latins" (Curt.1948.1, p. 358). There can be no doubt that Virgil plays an essential role in almost every aspect of Dante's composition of his great poem, and probably with his very decision to write an "epic" poem, leaving incomplete his two treatises, Convivio and De vulgari Eloquentia, in order to attach himself firmly to the great Latin tradition of writing about serious things in verse. As has frequently been pointed out, Virgil's example may be found as seminal for many aspects of Dante's poetic strategies in the Commedia: to write a poem that prominently features a visit to the underworld (Dante did not know Homer's texts, if he did know about them -- thus he can behave as though Virgil were uniquely qualified to serve as his model) and that celebrates the Roman concept of political order as exemplified in the empire; that is narrated by a poet who has been lent prophetic powers.
As one of the principal characters in Dante's poem (Toynbee, in his entry for the Roman poet, offers a convenient listing of all of his appearances [Virgilio]), Virgil's presence as guide in this most Christian of poems is something of a scandal. It is at least possible that puzzlement about Dante's reasons for choosing him for this role is at the root of the early commentators' tactic of treating the poem, not as the "history" of an actual experience that Dante claims it to be (with a consequent treatment of Virgil as the historical figure he is so clearly meant to be considered), but as an allegorical fiction. While in fact the introductory information processed in the poem ([Inf I 67-75]) makes Virgil entirely and recognizably historical (Mantuan parents, approximate dating of birth and career, authorship of Aeneid), commentators responded (and, sometimes, still respond) by making Virgil "Reason" or some related allegorical characteristic of the human psyche. The poem that is created by such interpretation is thus meant to be considered the record of an internal struggle in a threatened Christian soul, as represented by the contending forces of appetite (whose role is supposedly played by the character Dante) and those of reason (personified in Virgil). While the Aeneid itself was subjected to such readings by interpreters like Fulgentius and (the pseudo- [?]) Bernard Silvester, it seems clear that Dante himself, at least not when he was composing the Commedia, did not read Virgil's poem in this manner nor write the Commedia with such criteria in mind. Dante's treatment of the greatest Latin poet makes his Virgil a problematic character for the earliest interpreters of the Commedia. Yet there are other problems, not of a commentator's devising, that afflict our attempt to come to grips with Dante's choice of Virgil as the guide in his poem. And these problems arise from Dante's own troubled perception of his pagan poetic hero. One tradition of Christian reception of Virgil, which is at least as old as the emperor Constantine, held that Virgil's much-discussed fourth Eclogue actually foretold the coming of Christ. Had Dante so believed, his choice of Virgil might have been less burdensome. However, we may be certain from Monarchia (Mon.I.xi.1) that Dante knew that Virgil's "Virgin" was not the blessèd Mary but Astraea, or "justice." Any number of passages within the Commedia make it plain that Dante did not consider the Roman a Christian avant-la-lettre. We must conclude that Dante willfully chose a pagan as his guide, leaving us to fathom his reasons for doing so. In recent years a growing number of Dante's interpreters have been arguing for the view that Dante deliberately undercuts his guide, showing that both in some of his decisions as guide and in some of his own actual texts he is, from Dante's later and Christian vantage point, prone to error. If this is the case, we must not forget that Dante at the same time is intent upon glorifying Virgil. And then we might consider the proposition that Dante's love for Virgil, genuine and heartfelt, needed to be held at arm's length and gently chastised, perhaps revealing to a pagan-hating reader that Dante knows full well the limitations of his Virgil. Yet he could not do without him. Virgil is the guide in Dante's poem because he served in that role in Dante's life. It was Virgil, and not Aristotle or Aquinas, who served as model for the poem; it was Virgil who, more than any other author, helped make Dante Dante.
In the 14,233 verses of this theologized epic, verses of Virgil make themselves heard with greater frequency than any other sources except for the Bible and the texts of Aristotle (see Moore [Moor.1896.1]; and for the most recent [if provisional] "census" of Virgilian text in the Commedia see Hollander [Holl.1993.1]). In the opening action of the first two cantos, as this writer has argued (see Holl.1969.1, pp. 81-92), Dante carefully (and inobtrusively) interlaces strands from the first Book of the Aeneid into his narrative fabric. And this pattern of quotation, while not as persistent later in the text (roughly one-fifth of all Dante's citations of Virgil occur in the first five cantos of the poem), runs through its entirety, even after Virgil leaves the poem as a character in Purgatorio XXX. We are therefore not surprised when Dante has his character Virgil inform us that the younger poet knows his master's poem by heart ([Inf XX 114]). The medieval Virgil, a figure of legend, subject of tales of magic that pleased the popular imagination (as has been documented by Comparetti [Comp.1872.1]), is essentially missing from the highly literary focus of Dante's reading of Virgilian text. Whatever Virgil meant for Dante, it was the fact that he was a poet that seems to have meant the most to him. It has not been emphasized enough that the rereading of the Aeneid had the effect of turning him from writing in mixed verse and prose to composing a lengthy poem intended to stand entirely on its own feet.
Yet Dante's great affection for Virgil does not get in the way of his careful sifting of the work of his maestro and autore for what he considers problematic in it. In recent years, some of his readers have been pointing out that Virgil is not allowed only an honorable afterlife in Dante's pages, but is frequently dealt with in ways that distance even his greatest medieval admirer from him (see Holl.1980.1; Ryan.1982.1; Holl.1983.1). This effect is found in two aspects of the poem, moments in which the authority of Virgil as guide is undermined, and those in which his texts are found to be defective in one respect or another. Among those in the former category, in Inferno we find Virgil denied entrance to the city of Dis by the rebellious forces that guard that city (VIII); his confused and Empedoclean explanation of the meaning of the Crucifixion ([Inf XII 37-45]); his several incorrect interpretations of the wicked intentions of the Malebranche and consequent annoyance at having been tricked by them (XXI-XXIII). In Purgatorio we see him chastised by Cato along with the saved souls who lent their ears and hearts to Casella's song (II and III); find him intrinsically compared to the loser in the simile that opens the sixth canto, in which Dante is like a winner in a game of chance; hear him have difficulty in understanding how Statius could have been saved (XXII). None of these scenes, or others like them, would have been presented had Dante not wanted to make his reader aware that this Christian poet had not "gone over to the other side" in his veneration of Virgil.
The same may be said with respect to the second category, in which it is the works of Virgil that are seen as requiring correction from a Christian point of view. In Inferno I ([Inf I 125]) we learn from Virgil's lips that he was "ribellante" against God's law. And even if his regret for the reasons of his perdition may make him overstate his guilt, the signs of the wrongness of his work are frequent in Dante's text. If we limit ourselves to two examples from each cantica (and, both in this category as in the former, there are other significant examples), in Inferno we observe the authority of Virgil's text gently questioned when the protagonist uses a formulation for the words of his new-found guide that intrinsically compares his truthfulness to that of the Bible ([Inf II 25], [Inf II 28]): Virgil, as author, gives Aeneas the right to boast over his voyage to the otherworld, while Paul requires no such authorial intervention: he simply went there ("Andovvi poi lo Vas d'elezïone"); and when Virgil retells the tale of Manto (not to mention that of Eurypylus) in canto XX he does so in such a way as deliberately to contradict the narrative details found in the Aeneid (Aen.X.198-203). In Purgatorio, in the very canto in which he is intrinsically compared to a loser in a game of chance, he is also put in the position of explaining how the message of the Aeneid (Aen.VI.376), which would clearly seem to deny the efficacy of prayer, is not in fact at odds with Christian doctrine ([Purg VI 28-42]); and there is the extraordinary passage ([Purg XXII 37-42]) in which Statius informs the protagonist (and listening Virgil) that Virgil's denunciation of avarice (Aen.III.56-57), is in fact a call for restraint in prodigality, thus anticipating a still more central deliberate misreading of a Virgilian text, the opening of the fourth Eclogue ([Purg XXII 67-72]), which Statius read as a prophecy of the coming of Christ, and which we know Dante believed to have concerned Astraea, not Mary. In Paradiso we read the deliberate and otherwise unnecessary questioning of Virgil's veracity when he described the welcoming gesture of Anchises to Aeneas in Elysium, "se fede merta nostra maggior musa" (if our greatest poet is worthy of belief -- [Par XV 26]); and, still more dramatic, the insistence on the salvation of Ripheus ([Par XX 67-69]), in Virgil the most just of the Trojans, if abandoned by the gods to his lonely death ("dis aliter visum" [Aen.II.428]). In these and in other passages we perceive that Virgil's authority, not only as guide, but as auctor, is held up to frequent and insistent question.
The association of Virgil with tragedy ([Inf XX 113]) and Dante with comedy ([Inf XVI 128]; [Inf XXI 2]) not only associates the former with the lofty style, the latter with the low style intrinsic to the choice of the vernacular for his poem but, as few currently acknowledge, the Aeneid with a tragic plot, one that ends badly, the Comedy with a comic and positive ending. Most today do not believe that this was Dante's understanding. Yet the description of Virgil's poem as "l'alta mia tragedìa" ([Inf XX 113]) would involve a pleonasm if the noun does not stand for something different from the adjective: if the noun refers only to the (high) style of the Latin poem, the adjective is unnecessary. What Dante is making Virgil say is that his poem is exalted in style and unhappy in its conclusion. The nineteenth-century commentator Raffaele Andreoli put the matter succinctly in his gloss to this verse (Andr.Inf.XX.113): Virgil's poem is a tragedy "pel tristo fine dell'Eneide terminante con la morte di Turno, e per la nobile lingua usata da Virgilio" (both for the sad ending of the Aeneid, culminating with the death of Turnus, and for the noble language employed by Virgil). Both Jacopo della Lana and Francesco da Buti had previously made similar points, but Andreoli's view was and remains very much a minority position, especially among Italian Dantists. It is difficult to say why, especially since Dante himself, in Monarchia (Mon.II.ix.14), acknowledges the possibility of a "happy ending" for the Aeneid had Aeneas not observed the offending baldric that Turnus had stripped from Pallas and moved away from exercising clemency.
For Dante Virgil is the most welcome of sources, the most necessary of poetic guides. It is simply impossible to imagine a Comedy without him. And no one before Dante, and perhaps very few after, ever loved Virgil as he did. At the same time there is a hard-edged sense of Virgil's crucial failure as poet of Rome, the city Dante celebrates for its two suns, Church and empire, but which Virgil saw only in the light of the one. For Dante, that is his great failure. As unfair as it seems to us, so much so that we frequently fail to note how often Virgil is criticized by the later poet who so loved him, it is the price that Dante forces him to pay when he enters this Christian precinct. And it may have been the price that he exerted from himself, lest he seem too available to the beautiful voices from the pagan past, seem less firm as the poet of both Romes. The Virgilian voice of the Comedy is the voice that brings us, more often and more touchingly than any other, the sense of tragedy that lies beneath the Comedy.
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Map of Dante's Hell
Summary
I. The Dark Forest. The Hill of Difficulty. The Panther, the Lion, and the Wolf. Virgil.
II. The Descent. Dante's Protest and Virgil's Appeal. The Intercession of the Three Ladies Benedight.
III. The Gate of Hell. The Inefficient or Indifferent. Pope Celestine V. The Shores of Acheron. Charon. The Earthquake and the Swoon.
IV. The First Circle, Limbo: Virtuous Pagans and the Unbaptized. The Four Poets, Homer, Horace, Ovid, and Lucan. The Noble Castle of Philosophy.
V. The Second Circle: The Wanton. Minos. The Infernal Hurricane. Francesca da Rimini.
VI. The Third Circle: The Gluttonous. Cerberus. The Eternal Rain. Ciacco. Florence.
VII. The Fourth Circle: The Avaricious and the Prodigal. Plutus. Fortune and her Wheel. The Fifth Circle: The Irascible and the Sullen. Styx.
VIII. Phlegyas. Philippo Argenti. The Gate of the City of Dis.
IX. The Furies and Medusa. The Angel. The City of Dis. The Sixth Circle: Heresiarchs.
X. Farinata and Cavalcante de' Cavalcanti. Discourse on the Knowledge of the Damned.
XI. The Broken Rocks. Pope Anastasius. General Description of the Inferno and its Divisions.
XII. The Minotaur. The Seventh Circle: The Violent. The River Phlegethon. The Violent against their Neighbours. The Centaurs. Tyrants.
XIII. The Wood of Thorns. The Harpies. The Violent against themselves. Suicides. Pier della Vigna. Lano and Jacopo da Sant' Andrea.
XIV. The Sand Waste and the Rain of Fire. The Violent against God. Capaneus. The Statue of Time, and the Four Infernal Rivers.
XV. The Violent against Nature. Brunetto Latini.
XVI. Guidoguerra, Aldobrandi, and Rusticucci. Cataract of the River of Blood.
XVII. Geryon. The Violent against Art. Usurers. Descent into the Abyss of Malebolge.
XVIII. The Eighth Circle, Malebolge: The Fraudulent and the Malicious. The First Bolgia: Seducers and Panders. Venedico Caccianimico. Jason. The Second Bolgia: Flatterers. Allessio Interminelli. Thais.
XIX. The Third Bolgia: Simoniacs. Pope Nicholas III. Dante's Reproof of corrupt Prelates.
XX. The Fourth Bolgia: Soothsayers. Amphiaraus, Tiresias, Aruns, Manto, Eryphylus, Michael Scott, Guido Bonatti, and Asdente. Virgil reproaches Dante's Pity. Mantua's Foundation.
XXI. The Fifth Bolgia: Peculators. The Elder of Santa Zita. Malacoda and other Devils.
XXII. Ciampolo, Friar Gomita, and Michael Zanche. The Malabranche quarrel.
XXIII. Escape from the Malabranche. The Sixth Bolgia: Hypocrites. Catalano and Loderingo. Caiaphas.
XXIV. The Seventh Bolgia: Thieves. Vanni Fucci. Serpents.
XXV. Vanni Fucci's Punishment. Agnello Brunelleschi, Buoso degli Abati, Puccio Sciancato, Cianfa de' Donati, and Guercio Cavalcanti.
XXVI. The Eighth Bolgia: Evil Counsellors. Ulysses and Diomed. Ulysses' Last Voyage.
XXVII. Guido da Montefeltro. His deception by Pope Boniface VIII.
XXVIII. The Ninth Bolgia: Schismatics. Mahomet and Ali. Pier da Medicina, Curio, Mosca, and Bertrand de Born.
XXIX. Geri del Bello. The Tenth Bolgia: Alchemists. Griffolino d' Arezzo and Capocchino.
XXX. Other Falsifiers or Forgers. Gianni Schicchi, Myrrha, Adam of Brescia, Potiphar's Wife, and Sinon of Troy.
XXXI. The Giants, Nimrod, Ephialtes, and Antaeus. Descent to Cocytus.
XXXII. The Ninth Circle: Traitors. The Frozen Lake of Cocytus. First Division, Caina: Traitors to their Kindred. Camicion de' Pazzi. Second Division, Antenora: Traitors to their Country. Dante questions Bocca degli Abati. Buoso da Duera.
XXXIII. Count Ugolino and the Archbishop Ruggieri. The Death of Count Ugolino's Sons. Third Division of the Ninth Circle, Ptolomaea: Traitors to their Friends. Friar Alberigo, Branco d' Oria.
XXXIV. Fourth Division of the Ninth Circle, the Judecca: Traitors to their Lords and Benefactors. Lucifer, Judas Iscariot, Brutus, and Cassius. The Chasm of Lethe. The Ascent.
Philosophical questions for ponderance…..
1. Are we a more individual-centered society (by society, I mean modern global society) or a group-centered society? In other words, do we value the person over the whole or the whole over the person? Give a SPECIFIC example and your opinion of this philosophy.
THE “HIGH SCHOOL ‘HELL’” PROJECT
The HELL PROJECT
In Dante’s Inferno, those who sin against God and nature reside in Hell, and they are punished in ways appropriate to the sin. In this project, you will create your own Hell that is specific to a particular type of person or experience (for example, The Football Hell, Cheerleader Hell, etc.). :
1. Design the Nine Circles of your hell
2. Place in them the “sinners” specific to your hell (for Cheerleader Hell, maybe it would be the cheerleaders who break into spontaneous cheer for no apparent reason in the quad. For English Teacher Hell, maybe it would be the teacher who gives pop quizzes on material they haven’t yet taught)
3. Describe the punishments for those sins (maybe the quiz-loving teachers would be forced to take their quizzes, over and over, for all eternity—and their work would not be graded on a curve)
4. Identify the guide who, like Dante’s Virgil, would travel with you.
5. Identify the “Satan” of your particular hell (for Cheerleader Hell, it might be Paula Abdul, because, as choreographer for the Laker’s Girls in the eighties, more cheerleaders were injured, fired, and generally abused than at any other time in the organization’s history)
6. Find an interesting way to present your “hell.” In the past, students have created comic books, models, game boards, posters, dioramas, etc. HAVE FUN WITH THIS ONE!
Group "Circle of Hell" Project
GROUP CANTO ASSIGNMENT
Because The Inferno is a very long work (34 Cantos, to be exact), it can be rather tedious reading every Canto and discussing in class. Therefore, we will divide up the reading burden, and assign the Cantos to groups for study and explication. Each group will receive 3 Cantos to analyze. Each group will be responsible for preparing a poster and a handout for the class explaining the Cantos.
Analyses (in oral presentation) Should Include:
1. The circle numbers and the sinners who are punished in them
2. A definition of the sin (What does “Simoniacs” mean?!?)
3. Who is in the Circle? Anyone of politico-historic significance (check the end notes for each Canto; you may not recognize the names)? Is there a reference to anyone from mythology, or from The Iliad or The Odyssey?
4. A description of the punishment
5. A summary (brief!) of what happens plot-wise to Dante as he travels through the Circle.
6. An explanation of the degree to which the punishment is appropriate to the sin
7. An explanation of any symbolism present in the Cantos
8. A discussion, if relevant, of the extent to which contemporary attitudes deal with the nature of the sin. For example, do we view adultery differently today than in Dante’s time? How might a contemporary reader judge the nature of what Dante writes in his Cantos? Would they be justified?
The poster (perhaps one per Canto, or, if the content of the three different Cantos are closely linked, perhaps they could be combined) should include 1 and 2 from above, as well as an illustration. The handouts should summarize what you present to the class.