Dante’s Inferno
the biggest self insert known to mankind
I won’t lie. I wanted to read this book primarily to understand all the literary references in Hozier’s Unreal Unearth. Am I a few months too late? Perhaps. But I’m here now, alright.
Now, this book was not an easy read. It’s gorgeously written, but at times it made no sense. I had to read it a few times to grasp what was happening. My conclusion: Dante just wrote biblical fanfiction. Let me break it down for you.
Dante Alighieri was an Italian poet born in Florence at a time when the church and the crown did not get along (to put it mildly). Dante was, for siding with the church, later exiled from the city. And let’s just say he had a lot of political opinions, a lot of it very clear in his work. Dante wrote his Comedìa in Italian at a time when Latin was the established language of literature - which is to say, it was the established language of the elite. His influence on the Italian language became such that it is now the standard literary Italian and he is often considered the “Father of the Italian Language.”
All of this to say, Dante Alighieri was very clearly a very influential and prolific poet. And by god did he know it. Throughout his journey through the nine circles of hell in Inferno, Dante meets many great figures of history (like Homer, Virgil, and Caesar) and literature, who on several occasions take the time from their eternal damnation to praise Dante’s magnificence. The Greek poet, Virgil, guides him through his journey in Inferno and often reminds him that he is meant for greatness. Who are we kidding, we’d all love for our favourites to say that to us as they guide us through hell too!
A big revelation I got while reading the book was that the idea of the nine circles of hell is not Catholic. It’s Dante. It’s become such a big part of the cultural zeitgeist that those unaware of either would believe that this is the belief of the Catholic church, who by the way, have renounced this notion. Imagine your work having that kind of influence.
Dante begins his journey “in the middle of this our mortal life.” He finds himself lost in the middle of the woods where he encounters lions and wolves until finally meeting Virgil, who tells him these monsters will prevail until Judgement Day, at the end of time, when God will get rid of all demons and souls can ascend to heaven freely. He then tells Dante that he will guide him through Inferno but he must get across Purgatorio and Paradiso by himself as he is a pagan spirit and that this itself was told to him by an angel named Beatrice (named after a girl Dante met when he was nine years old). Dante, following Virgil, reaches the gates of hell, where he comes across the infamous words:
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
As they enter in, before they get to the circles of hell, they find souls of the lost, who lived meaningless lives.
the tribe of those ill spirits both to God displeasing and to his foes. These wreatches, who ne’er lived
Dante then follows Virgil across the nine circles. One very interesting aspect of his journey is the transformation of his emotion from pity for the sinners – shedding tears and fainting at their pains – to apathy, thinking they are deserving of their griefs. And this is thought to be a positive change.
Circle One: Limbo
This circle consists of those who lived virtuously but because they weren’t baptised, or perhaps lived before the time of Jesus Christ, couldn’t find their way into Paradiso. This includes many great Greek and Roman poets, including Virgil himself.
Ere thou pass
Farther, I would thou know, that these of sin
Were blameless, and if aught they merited,
It profits not, since baptism was not theirs,
The portal to thy faith. If they before
The Gospel liv’d, they serv’d not God aright;
And among such am I.
Dante asks Virgil if anyone who came here was ever later sent to heaven and he replies that when Jesus Christ was on the cross, he came down and took some souls with him to heaven. Among them were Abel, Noah, Moses, Abraham, David, and Rachel. This event also caused a fracture to go down to the bottom of hell.
Here they meet four great bards: Homer, Flaccus, Naso, and Lucan, who turn to Dante and sing praises of his greatness (because of course they do).
Because they all that appellation own,
With which the voice singly accosted me,
Honouring they greet me thus, and well they judge me.”
They then proceeded to announce him the sixth member of their tribe.
Nor was this all, but greater honour still
They gave me, for they made me of their tribe;
And I was sixth amid so learn’d a band.
Can you see what I mean when I say the man has no sense of humility? You kind of have to respect the hustle.
He then proceeded to name a few more greats he saw in the circle before proceeding to the next.
Circle Two: Lust
When Dante and Virgil descend towards the second circle, they encounter Minos, a character from Greek mythology. Minos judges souls and decides where they go. He is such that when souls come to him, they blurt out their sins to him.
For when before him comes th’ ill fated soul,
It all confesses, and judge severe
Of sins, considering what place in hell
Suits the transgression
Here, the sinners are bound to be swayed by strong gusts of wind as they were swayed by lust in their lives. They encounter the likes of Cleopatra, Helen and Paris, Tristan, and Dido.
They then meet Francesca, who had an affair with her husband’s brother, giving us this banger of a quote:
No greater grief than to remember days
Of joy, when mis’ry is at hand!
My man, Dante, hearing all the heartbreak, through compassion, faints.
Circle Three: Gluttony
Dante wakes up in the third circle and we only have to presume Virgil carried him there (kinda romantic if you ask me). The gluttonous are punished by a continuous heavy storm of hail and snow. Moreover, the three-headed dog, Cerberus, of Greek mythology tears the souls into pieces. But of course, since they cannot die, they either lie there in eternal anguish or return to their state to be torn back into bits.
He tears the spirits, flays them, and their limbs
Piecemeal disparts.
It is also important to note here that Cerebrus himself is described as looking torn up and dismantled.
Here they meet, Ciacco, who tells them the woes of this torment. To which Dante says to him: Yeah, that sucks so much for you. How are things at Florence?
Ciacco! Thy dire affliction grieves me much
Even to tears. But tell me, if thou know’st
What shall at length befall the citizens
Of the divided city
To which Ciacco replies, telling him the bloodshed goes on.
As Virgil finds Dante disturbed by what he has seen so far, he tells him it only gets worse. He tells him when Judgement Day comes, all souls shall return to their bodies and perfection will be achieved. Dante asks:
Shall these tortures, Sir!
When the great sentence passes, be increas’d,
Or mitigated, or as now severe?
And Virgil gives this bombshell reply:
As each thing to more perfection grows,
It feels more sensibly both good and pain
So, when Judgement Day comes, the sinners will suffer even more? Alright, Virgil, chill out.
Circle Four: Greed
In the fourth circle are the greedy who now fight and bicker amongst themselves for eternity, as they did for wealth on earth.
In their first life these all
In mind were so distorted, that they made,
According to due measure, of their wealth,
No use.
Virgil also tells Dante that no matter your wealth while on earth, it won’t buy you out of eternal damnation.
Not all the gold, that is beneath the moon,
Or ever hath been, of these toil-worn sould
Might purchase rest for one.
Circle Five: Wrath
They then walk to the fifth circle where the wrathful and gloomy are tormented in the Stygian lake.
They with their hands alone
Struck not , but with the head, the breast, the feet,
Cutting each other piecemeal with their fangs.
Sad once were we
In the sweet air made gladsome by the sun,
Carrying a foul and lazy mist within:
Now in these murky settlings are we sad.
Continuing on their journey, they meet Phlegyas, the ferryman of the lake, who crosses Virgil and Dante to the other side to get to the city of Dis. However, they are denied entry to the city. Virgil then announces that they cannot be denied as they are on a mission from God.
Fear not: for of our passage none
Hath power to disappoint us, by such high
Authority permitted.
After encountering some hellish furies and monsters, they enter the city of Dis with the help of an angel, thus, passing onwards to the sixth circle.
Circle Six: Heresy
When encountered with torments and attacks, Dante and Virgil watch as an angel descends and announces that anyone who hinders their journey from God will face the same fate as Cerebrus, thus implying Cerebrus at one point hindered someone’s journey, which explains his state when we saw him in circle three.
Outcasts of heaven! O abject race and scorned!
Whence doth with this wild excess of insolence
Lodge in you? Wherefore kick you ‘gainst that will
Ne’er frustrate of its end, and which so oft
Hath laid on you enforcement of your pangs?
What profits at the fays to but the horn?
Your Cerebrus, if ye remember, hence
Bears still, peeled of their hair, his throat and maw.
In the sixth circle, the heretics are punished. There are several tombs, each at a different degree of heat to punish according to the sin.
The arch-heretics are here, accompanied
By every sect their followers, and much more,
Than thou believest, tombs are freighted: like
With like is buried, and the monuments
Are different in degrees of heat
Having said this, they pass on forward. Virgil tells him that in this circle are Epicurus (a Greek philosopher who told his followers that the afterlife doesn’t exist) and his followers. They meet Farinta degli Uberti and Cavalcante Cavalcanti who lie in open tombs which will not be closed until after the last judgement. Farinta tells Dante that they are condemned to know the past and the future, but not the present, which they only know about when someone from earth comes down and tells them.
We view, as one who hath an evil sight
Plainly, objects far remote
So much of his large splendour yet imparts
The Almighty Ruler, but when they approach
Or actually exist, our intellect
Then wholly fails, nor of your human state
Except what others bring us know we aught.
Circle Seven: Violence
On arriving at the seventh circle, they are faced with a putrid smell, to get used to it they settle near a sepulchre on which is written:
I have in charge
Pope Anastasius, whom Photinus drew
From the right path.
Here, Virgil explains to Dante how the following three layers are designed. The first is for those who commit violence against others, the second for those who commit violence against themselves, and the third for those who commit violence against God or Nature. He tells Dante:
But fraud, because of man peculiar evil,
To God is more displeasing, and beneath
The fraudulent are therefore doom’d to endure
Severer pang.
Dante and Virgil find the seventh circle guarded by the Minotaur, another figure from Greek mythology, showing once again how greatly influenced Dante was by the Greek and Roman myths in telling this story (despite placing their poets in his version of hell).
Virgil pacifies the Minotaur by basically asking him to stfu. When Dante wonders how the passage they are walking on came to be, Virgil tells him that when Jesus Christ came, there was an earthquake that caused ripples to form, creating cracks on which they walk.
They then approach the river of blood – which explains the putrid smell from before. Here they find Alexander the Great, near the shore of the river and Virgil explains that the greater your sin, the lower you are in the river.
They then walk towards the second compartment of the seventh circle. Here are those who have committed violence against themselves. Dante finds the place filled with tree-like beings on which Harpies – yet another Greek mythology figure – make their nests. On asking where all the souls are, Virgil tells Dante to pluck the branch off one of the trees and Dante obeys. The tree then exclaims:
“Why plusck’st thou me?”
Then as the dark blood trickled down its side,
These words it added: “Wherefore tear’st me thus?
Is there no touch of mercy in thy breast?”
He tells Dante that they were once men and are now rooted there like trees. Virgil explains to the soul that he had to ask Dante to pull the branch out because otherwise, he would never believe that these were souls. Which... I mean... Be so for real, Virgil.
Moreover, every time the branches come off, they sprout fruits which the Harpies feed on, which is obviously very painful.
The Harpies, on its leaves
Then feeding, cause both pain and for the pain
A vent to grief.
They then move on to the third compartment of the seventh circle where those who commit violence against God, against Nature, and against Art are tormented by flakes of fire, which showers on them eternally.
O’er all the sand fell slowly wafting down
Dilated flakes of fire, as flakes of snow
On Alpine summit, when the wind is hush’d.
Here they find Capaneus, who among wailing souls, announces that he feels no pain, of which Virgil explains that he pretends to be unaffected because he does not wish for Jove to be satisfied. He then tells Capaneus:
Capaneus!
Thou art more punish’d, in that this thy pride
Lives yet unquench’d: no torrent, save thy rage,
Were to thy fury pain proportion’d full.
After meeting a few more souls, Virgil tells Dante that it is time they quit the woods and move on forward.
They now meet Dante’s mentor, the distinguished Brunetto Latini. He is presumably in this circle of hell because it is thought that he was gay. And our guy, Dante considers homosexuality a worse sin than murder, it seems. He really said, “I can excuse murder, but I draw the line at homosexuality.”
He asks Latini if he can sit down with him, to which Latini gives a very interesting reply. He says:
O son! Whoever of this throng
One instant stops, lies then a hundred years,
No fan to ventilate him, when the fire
Smites sorest.
I mean that’s a pretty brutal punishment. You have to keep going in the dry, scorching desert and if you stop for even an instant, you are bound to that position for a hundred years. Ouch!
Journeying forward, they meet two countrymen and once again Dante’s priority is asking about Florence.
An upstart multitude and sudden gains,
Pride and excess, O Florence! Have in thee
Engender’d, so that now in tears thou mourn’st!
They then encounter those who have done violence to Art and then on the back of Geryon move on to circle eight.
Circle Eight: Fraud (Malebolge)
Circle eight, called Malebolge, has those who commit fraud. Virgil tells him that God hates those who betray the kindness of others. In the eighth circle are ten gulfs, one each for different kinds of fraudulent sinners. The first are those who seduced women wrongfully. They are condemned to run between the two ends of the trench as they are whipped by demons if they are too slow. One demon exclaimed to a soul speaking with Dante:
Away! Corrupter! Here
Women are none for sale.
In the second gulf are flatterers who “jibber in low melancholy sounds.” Dante sees someone he thinks he has seen before. The soul says to him:
Me thus low down my flatteries have sunk,
Wherewith I ne’er enough could glut my tongue.
In the third gulf are those guilty of simony, that is people who sold sacred goods. This was a big issue at the time, churches were known to misuse money, sell pardons and exchange money for people’s way into heaven. The soles of the feet of these sinners are seen burning. Among these sinners is Pope Nicholas III, who used his power and influence to advance his family. This lands him in a hole with only his legs above ground, being scorched. He tells Dante that when his successor comes, he will take his place and Nicholas will himself go deeper into the hole. This implies that we now have a hole with infinite popes – not a pleasant thought, might I say.
Under my head are dragg’d
The rest, my predecessors in the guilt
Of simony. Stretch’d in their length they lie
Along an opening in the rock. ‘Midst them
I also low shall fall, soon as he comes
Dante makes his stance on the issue very clear as he goes into a rant about how Jesus didn’t charge Peter to go to heaven and that his punishment is justified. Note how this response is so starkly different from Dante fainting in the second circle.
In the fourth gulf are seers, who while living, could predict the future. They are condemned to have their faces reversed and thereby being deprived to see what is before them, and constrained to walk backwards forever. This apparently, struck Dante to tears.
When I beheld
Near me our form distorted in such guise,
That on the hinder parts fall’n from the face
The tears down-streaming roll’d.
What about this punishment particularly made this impact while he had been saying, “Yeah, you definitely deserve this,” for quite some time now, I do not know. But it is what it is.
Then in the fifth gulf, they found barterers and public peculators plunged in a lake of boiling pitch and guarded by demons. For whatever reason, two demons start fighting each other and both fall into the boiling lake. What happens to them then is anybody’s guess. Dante apparently does not care because as he says:
And we departing left them to that broil.
In the sixth gulf, the hypocrites are punished to pace continually around the gulf. They are wearing caps and hoods that are gilt on the outside, but leaden from within. This reflects the hypocrites themselves, beautiful on the outside and ugly from within. They also met a man lying on the ground crucified on a cross, the man Virgil proclaims, responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
That pierced spirit, whom intent
Thou view’st, was he who gave the Pharisees
Counsel, that it were fitting for one man
To suffer for the people
In the seventh gulf are the robbers, tormented by venomous and pestilent serpents. By this point, Dante was tired with “the breath exhausted from [his] lungs.” But Virgil says to him that he must be the best of men, for sitting in the shade would not bring him fame and that he must rise and move onwards.
“On,” I cried,
“For I am stout and fearless.”
In the eighth gulf, they find numberless flames, each containing an evil counsellor, wherein are Diomede and Ulysses. Ulysses then tells him how he died when God sank his ship with a whirlwind when he tried to sail to the ends of the earth.
Sowers of scandal, schismatics, and heretics are in the ninth gulf, seen with their limbs maimed or divided in different ways. Among them are Prophet Mohammed (because of course, Dante is an Islamophobe too), Piero da Medicina, Curio, Mosca, and Bertrand de Born.
In the final gulf of the eighth circle, Dante sees alchemists and forgers afflicted by plagues and diseases. Of these are Grifolino and Capocchio. There were also other imposters and counterfeiters, including Sinon of Troy and Adamo of Brescia.
Circle Nine: Treason
Following the sound of a loud horn, Virgil and Dante are led to the ninth and final circle of Inferno, where there are four rounds, each enclosed within the other.
Dante and Virgil encounter a giant with a horn looped around him. He shouts:
Raphel bai ameth sabi almi.
Virgil tells him he makes no sense, and to Dante says:
He doth accuse himself. Nimrod is this,
Through whose ill counsel in the world no more
One tongue prevails. But pass we on, nor waste
Our words; for so each language is to him,
As his to others, understood by none.
Then onwards they find another giant, Antaeus, who takes them in his arms to the bottom of the circle. It is a frozen lake with only the heads of the souls sticking out, and Dante is told:
Look how thou walkest. Take
Good heed, thy soles do tread not on the heads
Of thy poor brethren.
Dante then meets a man, Count Ugolino de Gherardeschi, biting onto the back of the head of Archbishop Ruggieri. The Count tells him how the Archbishop forced him and his children into a tower in Pisa, and how by the end of his time there, he was forced to eat his own children out of hunger. So, now the archbishop is forever the victim of the Count’s hunger. Dante’s take on the whole matter: Yeah, man, Pisa sucks.
Oh thou Pisa! Shame
Of all the people, who their dwelling make
In that fair region, where th’ Italian voice
Is heard
Here, Dante also meets Friar Alberigo. Dante wonders what he is doing here since he knows he is alive. He then tells him that when someone commits a crime so heinous as he has, their soul leaves their earthly body and comes down to hell, and their body is possessed by a demon. Okay, cool!
Know that the soul, that moment she betrays,
As I did, yields her body to a fiend
Who after moves and governs it at will,
Till all its time be rounded
In the final round of the circle are those who have betrayed their benefactor. They are wholly covered with ice and among them is Lucifer, Brutus and Cassius on either side of him, and Judas, facing him. Virgil says to Dante:
That upper spirit,
Who hath worse punishment,
Is Judas, he that hath his head within
And plies the feet without. Of th’ other two,
Whose heads are under, from the murky jaw
Who hangs, is Brutus: lo! How he doth writhe
And speaks not! Th’ other Cassius, that appears
So large of limb. But night now re-ascends,
And it is time for parting. All is seen.
They then move forward, reaching the end of their journey in Inferno, and Virgil tells him how they have now reached the exact opposite side of the hemisphere from whence they started. And Dante leaves us with the final note:
Thus issuing we again beheld the stars.
There's no doubt in hell (yes, indeed that's a pun intended) that this piece of literature is absolutely heavenly (and that's another pun intended, of course). But this man's pretentiousness knows no bounds and I don't know, maybe we have to respect that a little bit.
All of this to say, I hope I make it to Inferno Part 2 as Dante continues to send people who annoy him a little to hell (I wonder which circle I’ll be in).