Inferno (Dante)

Gustave Doré's engravings illustrated the Divine Comedy (1861–1868); here Dante is lost in Canto 1 of the Inferno.

Inferno (Italian for "Hell") is the first part of Dante's Divine Comedy. It is an allegory

telling of the journey of Dante through what is largely the medeival concept of the

Christian Hell, guided by the Roman poet Virgil. In the poem, hell is depicted as 9 Circles

of suffering located within the earth. It was written in the early 13th century.

Overview

The poem begins on the night before Good Friday in the year 1300, "halfway along our

life's path" (Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita). Dante is thirty-five years old, half

of the biblical life expectancy of 70 (Psalm 90:10), lost in a dark

wood (perhaps, allegorically, contemplating suicide—as "wood" is

figured in Canto XIII, and the mention of suicide is made in Canto I of Purgatorio with

"This man has not yet seen his last evening; But, through his madness, was so close to it,

That there was hardly time to turn about" implying that when Virgil came to him he was on

the verge of suicide or morally passing the point of no return), assailed by beasts (a

lion, a leopard, and a she-wolf) he cannot evade, and unable to find the

"straight way" (diritta via) - also translatable as "right way" - to salvation

(symbolized by the sun behind the mountain). Conscious that he is ruining himself and that

he is falling into a "deep place" (basso loco) where the sun is silent (l sol

tace), Dante is at last rescued by Virgil, and the two of them begin their journey to the

underworld. Each sin's punishment in Inferno is a contrapasso, a symbolic instance of

poetic justice; for example, fortune-tellers have to walk forwards with their heads on

backwards, unable to see what is ahead, because they tried to do so in life.

Allegorically, the Inferno represents the Christian soul seeing sin for what it

really is, and the three beasts represent three types of sin: the self-indulgent, the

violent, and the malicious. These three types of sin also provide the three main divisions of Dante's Hell:

Upper Hell (the first 5 Circles) for the the self-indulgent sins; Circles 6 and 7 for the

violent sins; and Circles 8 and 9 for the malicious sins.

Dante passes through the gate of Hell, which bears an inscription, the ninth (and final)

line of which is the famous phrase "Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate", or "Abandon all hope, ye who enter

here" Before entering Hell completely, Dante and his guide see the Uncommitted, souls of

people who in life did nothing, neither for good nor evil (among these Dante recognizes

either Pope Celestine V or Pontius Pilate; the text is ambiguous). Mixed with them

are outcasts who took no side in the Rebellion of Angels. These souls are

neither in Hell nor out of it, but reside on the shores of the Acheron, their

punishment to eternally pursue a banner (i.e. self interest) while pursued by wasps

and hornets that continually sting them while maggots and other such insects drink

their blood and tears. This symbolizes the sting of their conscience and the repugnance

of sin.

Then Dante and Virgil reach the ferry that will take them across the river Acheron and to

Hell. 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 means of another famous

line Vuolsi così colà ove si puote (which translates to So it is wanted there where

the power lies, referring to the fact that Dante is on his journey on divine grounds), but

their passage across is undescribed since Dante faints and does not awake until he is on the

other side.

Virgil guides Dante through the nine circles of Hell. The circles are concentric,

representing a gradual increase in wickedness, and culminating at the center of the earth,

where Satan is held in bondage. Each circle's sinners are punished in a fashion fitting

their crimes: each sinner is afflicted for all of eternity by the chief sin he committed.

People who sinned but prayed for forgiveness before their deaths are found not in Hell but

in Purgatory, where they labor to be free of their sins. Those in Hell are people who

tried to justify their sins and are unrepentant. Furthermore, those in Hell have knowledge

of the past and future, but not of the present. This is a joke on them in Dante's mind

because after the Last Judgment, time ends; those in Hell would then know nothing.

First Circle (Limbo)

Here reside the unbaptized and the virtuous pagans, who, though not sinful,

did not accept Christ. They are not punished in an active sense, but rather grieve only

their separation from God, without hope of reconciliation. Limbo shares many

characteristics with the Elysian Fields; thus the guiltless damned are punished

by living in a deficient form of Heaven. Without baptism ("the portal of faith," Canto

IV.36) they lacked the hope for something greater than rational minds can conceive. Limbo

includes green fields and a castle, the dwelling place of the wisest men of antiquity,

including Virgil himself, as well as the Islamic philosophers Averroes and

Avicenna. In the castle Dante meets the poets Homer, Horace, Ovid, and

Lucan and the philosophers Socrates and Aristotle as well

as the Roman general and politician Julius Caesar.

Interestingly, he also sees Saladin in Limbo (Canto IV). Dante implies that all virtuous

pagans find themselves here, although he later encounters two in heaven and one ([[Cato

the Younger|Cato of Utica]]) in Purgatory.

Beyond the first circle, all of those condemned for active, deliberately willed sin are

judged by Minos, who sentences each soul to one of the lower eight circles by wrapping

his tail around himself a corresponding number of times. The lower circles are structured

according to the classical (Aristotelian) conception of virtue and vice, so that they are

grouped into the sins of incontinence, violence, and fraud (which for many commentators are

represented by the leopard, lion, and she-wolf). The sins of incontinence — weakness in

controlling one's desires and natural urges — are the mildest among them, and,

correspondingly, appear first, while the sins of violence and fraud appear lower down.

[[Image:Gianciotto Discovers Paolo and Francesca Jean Auguste Dominique

Ingres.jpg|right|thumb|Gianciotto Discovers Paolo and Francesca by [[Jean Auguste

Dominique Ingres]].]]

Second Circle

Those overcome by lust are punished in this circle. They are the first ones to be truly

punished in Hell. These souls are blown about to and fro by a violent storm, without hope of

rest. This symbolizes the power of lust to blow one about needlessly and aimlessly. In this

circle, Dante sees Semiramis, Dido, Cleopatra,

Achilles and many others who were overcome by sensual love during their life. Dante is

informed by Francesca da Rimini of how she and her husband's brother Paolo committed

adultery and died a violent death at the hands of her husband (Canto V).

Third Circle

Cerberus guards the gluttons, forced to lie in a vile slush made by

freezing rain, black snow, and hail. This symbolizes the garbage that the gluttons made of

their lives on earth, slavering over food. Dante converses with a Florentine contemporary

identified as Ciacco ("Hog" — probably a nickname) regarding strife in Florence and the

fate of prominent Florentines (Canto VI).

Fourth Circle

[[File:Gustave Doré - Dante Alighieri - Inferno - Plate 22 (Canto VII - Hoarders and

Wasters).jpg|thumb|250px|left|In Gustave Doré's illustrations for the fourth circle, the

damned push huge money bags.]] Those whose attitude toward material goods deviated from the desired mean are punished in

this circle. They include the avaricious or miserly, who hoarded possessions, and

the prodigal, who squandered them. Guarded by Plutus, the miserly group pushes great

rocks towards the center of the circle; the wasters must take the rocks back to their own

side of the circle (Canto VII). This is an antithetical punishment; the sinners must do the

opposite of the actions they carried out in life.

Fifth Circle

In the swamp-like water of the river Styx, the wrathful fight each

other on the surface, and the sullen or slothful lie gurgling beneath the water.

Phlegyas reluctantly transports Dante and Virgil across the Styx in his skiff. On the

way they are accosted by Filippo Argenti, a Black Guelph

from a prominent family (Cantos VII and VIII). All the wrathful throw themselves against

Argenti, who is torn apart.

The lower parts of hell are contained within the walls of the city of [[Dis (Divine

Comedy)|Dis]], which is itself surrounded by the Stygian marsh. Punished within Dis are

active (rather than passive) sins. The walls of Dis are guarded by fallen angels. Virgil

is unable to convince them to let Dante and him enter, and the Furies and

Medusa threaten Dante. An angel sent from Heaven secures entry for the poets (Cantos

VIII and IX).

Sixth Circle

Heretics are trapped in flaming tombs. Dante holds discourse with a

pair of Florentines in one of the tombs: Farinata degli Uberti, a [[Guelphs and

Ghibellines|Ghibelline]]; and Cavalcante de' Cavalcanti, a [[Guelphs and

Ghibellines|Guelph]] who was the father of Dante's friend and fellow poet [[Guido

Cavalcanti]] (Cantos X and XI). The followers of Epicurus are also located here (Canto

X).

Seventh Circle

Dis]], in an illustration by Stradanus. There is a drop from the sixth circle to the three rings of the seventh circle, then again to the ten rings of the eighth circle, and, at the bottom, to the icy ninth circle.

This circle houses the violent. Its entry is guarded by the Minotaur, and it is divided

into three rings:

• Outer ring, housing the violent against people and property, who are immersed in

Phlegethon, a river of boiling blood, to a level commensurate with their sins. The

Centaurs, commanded by Chiron, patrol the ring, firing arrows into those trying to

escape. The centaur Nessus guides the poets along Phlegethon and

across a ford in the river (Canto XII). This passage may have been influenced by the early

medieval Visio Karoli Grossi.

• Middle ring: In this ring are the suicides, who are transformed into gnarled thorny

bushes and trees. They are torn at by the Harpies. Unique among the dead, the

suicides will not be bodily resurrected after the final judgment, having given their bodies

away through suicide. Instead they will maintain their bushy form, with their own corpses

hanging from the limbs. Dante breaks a twig off one of the bushes and hears the tale of

Pier delle Vigne, who committed suicide after falling out of favor

with Emperor Frederick II. The other residents of this

ring are the profligates, who destroyed their lives by destroying the means by which

life is sustained (i.e. money and property). They are perpetually chased by ferocious dogs

through the thorny undergrowth. (Canto XIII) The trees are a metaphor; in life the only way

of the relief of suffering was through pain (i.e. suicide) and in Hell, the only form of

relief of the suffering is through pain (breaking of the limbs to bleed).

• Inner ring: The violent against God (blasphemers), the violent against

nature (sodomites), and the violent against order (usurers), all reside

in a desert of flaming sand with fiery flakes raining from the sky. The blasphemers lie on

the sand, the usurers sit, and the sodomites wander about in groups. Dante converses with

two Florentine sodomites from different groups. One of them is Dante's mentor, [[Brunetto

Latini]]. Dante is very surprised and touched by this encounter and shows Brunetto great

respect for what he has taught him. The other is Iacopo Rusticucci, a politician.

(Cantos XIV through XVI) Those punished here for usury include the Florentines

Catello di Rosso Gianfigliazzi, Ciappo Ubriachi, and Giovanni di Buiamonte and

the Paduans Reginaldo degli Scrovegni and Vitaliano di Iacopo Vitaliani.

Eighth Circle

The last two circles of Hell punish sins that involve conscious fraud or treachery. The

circles can be reached only by descending a vast cliff, which Dante and Virgil do on the

back of Geryon, a winged monster represented by Dante as having the face of an honest

man and a body that ends in a scorpion-like stinger (Canto XVII).

The fraudulent—those guilty of deliberate, knowing evil—are located in a circle

named Malebolge ("Evil Pockets"), divided into ten bolgie, or ditches of stone, with

bridges spanning the ditches:

• Bolgia 1: Panderers (pimps) and seducers march in separate lines in

opposite directions, whipped by demons. Just as they misled others in life, they are driven

to march by demons for all eternity. In the group of panderers the poets notice [[Venedico

Caccianemico]], who sold his own sister to the Marchese d'Este, and in

the group of seducers Virgil points out Jason (Canto XVIII).

• Bolgia 2: Flatterers are steeped in human excrement. This is because their flatteries

on earth were nothing but "a load of excrement" (Canto XVIII).

• Bolgia 3: Those who committed simony are placed head-first in holes in the rock,

with flames burning on the soles of their feet (resembling an inverted baptism). One of

them, Pope Nicholas III, denounces as simonists two of his successors, [[Pope Boniface

VIII]] and Pope Clement V (Canto XIX).

File:Inferno Canto 21 verses 22-213.jpg

Ciampolo escapes back into the pitch.

Dante's guide rebuffs Malacoda and his fiends between bolgie five and six in the Eighth Circle of Hell, Inferno, Canto 21.

Dante climbs the flinty steps in bolgia seven in the Eighth Circle of Hell, Inferno, Canto 26.

Dante speaks to the traitors in the ice, Inferno, Canto 32.

• Bolgia 4: Sorcerers and false prophets have their heads

twisted around on their bodies backward. In addition, they cry so many tears that they

cannot see. This is symbolic because these people tried to see into the future by forbidden

means (and possibly retribution for the delusions they concocted that probably led their

followers to their own perils); thus in Hell they can only see what is behind them and

cannot see forward (Canto XX).

• Bolgia 5: Corrupt politicians (barrators) are immersed in a lake of

boiling pitch, which represents the sticky fingers and dark secrets of their corrupt deals.

They are guarded by devils called the Malebranche ("Evil Claws"). Their leader, Malacoda

("Evil Tail"), assigns a troop to escort Virgil and Dante to the next bridge. The troop hook

and torment one of the sinners (identified by early commentators as Ciampolo), who names

some Italian grafters and then tricks the Malebranche in order to escape back into the

pitch. (Cantos XXI through XXIII)

• Bolgia 6: The bridge over this bolgia is broken: the poets climb down into it and

find the Hypocrites listlessly walking along wearing gilded lead cloaks. Dante speaks with

Catalano and Loderingo, members of the Jovial Friars. The poets also discover that the guardians of the fraudulent (the malebranche) are

hypocrites themselves, as they find that they have lied to them, giving false directions,

when at the same time they are punishing liars for similar sins. Caiaphas, the high

priest responsible for ordering Jesus crucified, is seen here; he is crucified to the

ground, while the others trample over him. (Canto XXIII)

• Bolgia 7: Thieves, guarded by the centaur (as Dante describes him) Cacus, are

pursued and bitten by snakes and lizards. The snake bites make them undergo various

transformations, with some resurrected after being turned to ashes, some mutating into new

creatures, and still others exchanging natures with the reptiles, becoming lizards

themselves that chase the other thieves in turn. Just as the thieves stole other people's

substance in life, and because thievery is reptilian in its secrecy, the thieves' substance

is eaten away by reptiles and their bodies are constantly stolen by other thieves. (Cantos

XXIV and XXV)

• Bolgia 8: Fraudulent advisors are encased in individual flames. Dante includes

Ulysses and Diomedes together here for their role in the Trojan War.

Ulysses tells the tale of his fatal final voyage (an invention of Dante's), where he left

his home and family to sail to the end of the Earth. He equated life as a pursuit of

knowledge that humanity can attain through effort, and in his search God sank his ship

outside of Mount Purgatory. Guido da Montefeltro recounts how his

advice to Pope Boniface VIII resulted in his damnation, despite Boniface's promise of

absolution. (Cantos XXVI and XXVII)

• Bolgia 9: A sword-wielding demon hacks at the sowers of discord. As they make their

rounds the wounds heal, only to have the demon tear apart their bodies again. "See how I

rend myself! How mutilated, see, is Mahomet; In front of me doth Ali weeping go, Cleft in

the face from forelock unto chin; And all the others whom thou here beholdest, Disseminators

of scandal and of schism. While living were, and therefore are cleft thus." Muhammad

tells Dante to warn the schismatic and heretic Fra Dolcino (Cantos XXVIII and XXIX).

Dante writes of Muhammad as a schismatic, apparently viewing Islam as an off-shoot from

Christianity, and similarly Dante seems to condemn Ali for schism between Sunni

and Shiite.

• Bolgia 10: Here various sorts of falsifiers (alchemists,

counterfeiters, perjurers, and impersonators), who are a

disease on society, are themselves afflicted with different types of diseases (Cantos

XXIX and XXX). Potiphar's wife is briefly mentioned here for her false accusation of

Joseph. In the notes on her translation, Dorothy L. Sayers

remarks that Malebolge "began with the sale of the sexual relationship, and went on to

the sale of Church and State; now, the very money is itself corrupted, every affirmation has

become perjury, and every identity a lie; no medium of exchange remains."

Ninth Circle

The Ninth Circle is ringed by classical and Biblical giants. The

giants are standing either on the ninth circle of Hell, or on a ledge above it, and are

visible from the waist up at the ninth circle of the Malebolge. The giant Antaeus lowers

Dante and Virgil into the pit that forms the ninth circle of Hell. (Canto XXXI) Traitors, distinguished from the "merely" fraudulent in that their acts involve betraying

one in a special relationship to the betrayer, are frozen in a lake of ice known as

Cocytus. Each group of traitors is encased in ice to a different depth, ranging from

only the neck and through to complete immersion. The circle is divided into four concentric

zones:

• Round 1: Caïna, named for Cain, is home to traitors to their kindred. The souls

here are immersed in the ice up to their necks. (Canto XXXII)

• Round 2: Antenora is named for Antenor of Troy, who according

to medieval tradition betrayed his city to the Greeks. Traitors to political entities, such

as party, city, or country, are located here. Count Ugolino

pauses from gnawing on the head of his rival Archbishop Ruggieri to describe how Ruggieri

imprisoned and starved him and his children. The souls here are immersed at almost the same

level as those in Caïna, except they are unable to bend their necks. (Cantos XXXII and

XXXIII)

• Round 3: Ptolomaea is probably named for Ptolemy, the captain of Jericho, who invited

Simon Maccabaeus and his sons to a banquet and then killed them. Traitors to their

guests are punished here. Fra Alberigo explains that sometimes a soul falls here before

Atropos cuts the thread of life. Their bodies on Earth are immediately possessed by a

demon. The souls here are immersed so that only half of their faces are above the ice. As

they cry, their tears freeze and seal their eyes shut–they are denied even the comfort of

tears. (Canto XXXIII)

• Round 4: Judecca, named for Judas Iscariot, Biblical betrayer of Christ, is for

traitors to their lords and benefactors. All of the sinners punished within are completely

encapsulated in ice, distorted in all conceivable positions.

Satan is trapped in the frozen central zone in the Ninth Circle of Hell, Inferno, Canto 34.

Dante and Virgil, with no one to talk to, quickly move on to the center of hell. Condemned

to the very center of hell for committing the ultimate sin (treachery against God) is

Satan, who has three faces, one red, one black, and one a pale yellow, each having a

mouth that chews on a prominent traitor. Satan himself is represented as a giant, terrifying

beast, weeping tears from his six eyes, which mix with the traitors' blood sickeningly. He

is waist deep in ice, and beats his six wings as if trying to escape, but the icy wind that

emanates only further ensures his imprisonment (as well as that of the others in the ring).

The sinners in the mouths of Satan are Brutus and [[Gaius Cassius

Longinus|Cassius]] in the left and right mouths, respectively. They were involved in the

assassination of Julius Caesar—an act which, to Dante, represented the destruction of a

unified Italy and the killing of the man who was divinely appointed to govern the

world. In the central,

most vicious mouth is Judas Iscariot—the namesake of this zone and the betrayer of

Jesus. Judas is being administered the most horrifying torture of the three traitors,

his head in the mouth of Lucifer, and his back being forever skinned by the claws of

Lucifer. (Canto XXXIV) What is seen here is a perverted trinity. Satan is impotent,

ignorant, and evil while God can be attributed as the opposite: all powerful, all knowing,

and good. The two poets escape by climbing down the ragged fur of Lucifer, passing through the center

of the earth, emerging in the other hemisphere just before dawn on Easter Sunday beneath

a sky studded with stars.

See also

• List of cultural references in The Divine Comedy
• Allegory in the Middle Ages

External links

• World of Dante Multimedia website that offers Italian text

of Divine Comedy, Allen Mandelbaum's translation, gallery, interactive maps, timeline,

musical recordings, and searchable database for students and teachers by Deborah Parker and

IATH (Institute for Advanced Technologies in the Humanities) of the University of Virginia

• Princeton Dante Project Website that offers

the complete text of the Divine Comedy (and Dante's other works) in Italian and English

along with audio accompaniment in both languages. Includes historical and interpretive

annotation.

• Dante Dartmouth Project: Full text of more than 70 Italian,

Latin, and English commentaries on the Commedia, ranging in date from 1322 (Iacopo

Alighieri) to the 2000s (Robert Hollander)

• Dante's Divine Comedy presented by the

Electronic Literature Foundation. Multiple editions, with

Italian and English facing page and interpolated versions.

• The Comedy in English: [http://bulfinch.englishatheist.org/dante/hell/hellindex.htm

trans. Cary (with Doré's illustrations)] (HTML), [http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/8800 trans.

Cary (with Doré's illustrations)] (zipped HTML downloadable from Project Gutenberg),

Cary/Longfellow/Mandelbaum parallel edition

• On-line Concordance to the Divine Comedy
• Audiobooks: Public domain recordings from LibriVox

(in Italian,

Longfellow translation);

some additional recordings

• Wikisummaries summary and analysis of "Inferno"
• Danteworlds, multimedia presentation of the Divine

Comedy for students by Guy Raffa of the University of Texas

• Dante's Places: a map (still a prototype) of

the places named by Dante in the Commedia, created with GoogleMaps. An explanatory PDF is

available for download at the same page