A travellers guide to Dante's Inferno

Dante’s Inferno 

‘Abandon all hope ye who enter here’

The immortal worlds that send Dante Alighieri spiraling into the abyss: Nine circles, funneling down, the souls damned for eternity. Here, sinners reside in darkness, punished under God’s mandate: Enslaved and shackled; burned by fire; boiled in pitch; frozen in ice; whipped, maimed and even eviscerated. Not even Orpheus when he sought Eurydice in the underworld, stepped as far as this poet.

T.S. Eliot claimed the Divine Comedy is the foundational work of the European canon: That Dante himself, is ‘the master, for a poet writing today in any language.’ For Eliot, art should to be founded on the tradition which precedes it, and allegory was the exquisite form to bridge the past and present. There are some great writers: Dickens, Wordsworth, Camus, Mann, Chekhov and Twain. Then there are writers who happen to be geniuses; those who have reached such lofty heights, that only the stars surround them: Shakespeare, Milton, Goethe, Tolstoy, and finally Dante are such examples. 

Dante’s Inferno is not just a grotesque tapestry of darkness and evil. It is also a social commentary. A work which addresses the fate of 12th century Florence, Italy, Europe and even the Holy Roman Empire. Furthermore, it is art at the highest level, because it the addresses the timeless themes of suffering, justice, life and death in analogical terms. This is not Piers Plowman. the Divine Comedy is the foundational book of European literature, because of its form and philosophy, and it starts in the Inferno.

Map I: The Inferno. Copyright: Driftless Area Review

Map II: Bartolomeo's Inferno c. 1430

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Dante begins in crisis: ‘In the midway of this our mortal life, I found myself in a dark forest.’ Lost and in despair, the poet is stalked by ‘leopard’, ‘lion’ and the ‘she-wolf.’ The forest is a metaphor of sin and ignorance. The beasts are symbols of vice: The leopard represents sexual promiscuity, the lion, is a metaphor of pride and the She-wolf denotes ambition. If prey falls victim to predator, as surely it will, Dante’s place in heaven is jeopardized. Luckily he is rescued by Virgil, the classical author of Aeneid. He has been sent by Beatrice, to deliver Dante into the safe hands of God. However first they must go through hell and back. Virgil is the symbol of wisdom and intellect. Dante cannot find salvation alone, and needs reason to discover it. Virgil starts with characteristic foreknowledge: ‘Through me you go into the city of weeping. Through me you go into eternal pain. Through me you go among the lost people.’ In hell, Contrapasso is the rule of law: In other words, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, what you reap is what you sow, and the punishment will always fit the crime. With that in mind, Charon the ferryman leads the two poets into the first circle.

Dark Wood, Gustave Dore, 1890 

Charon, Gustave Dore, 1890

First Circle
Limbo, and here there is a ‘noble castle surrounded by lofty walls.’ The inmates are the righteous pagans, who strove to do good, but nevertheless remain unbaptised, and thus cut out of God’s plan. In the gloomy palace lodge, the poets, Homer, Horace and Ovid. The mathematician Euclid. The statesman Cicero. The doctor Hippocrates. The philosophers, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Orpheus, the first artist, is also here among others. In limbo, there ‘sadness without torment,’ which nevertheless makes the very ‘air tremble.’ It is a place of melancholy, but a haven compared to what lies beneath.

The Castle of Limbo priamo della Quercia, 1444-52 

The Second Circle
The supreme judge Minos holds court and decides the fate of the new prisoners. He ‘whips his tail around himself as many circles the sinner must go down.’ The second circle is for those who lived their lives following lust and desire. Here, in the ‘black air,’ an ‘infernal gale, blows and never pauses/directs the spirits which it carries before it, harassing them with turning and buffeting.’ The sinners in their earthly life, where subject to the whims of passion, and so here they must also be subject to the same; thrown about here and there by the insensate gales. Among those being blown about are Achilles, Helen of Troy, Lancelot and Guinevere, and Cleopatra.

Minos, Gustave Dore, 1890

Circle of the lustful, William Blake 1824

Third Circle
Here in the third circle, ‘it rains eternally [...] great hailstones, muddy water mixed with snow, fall through the darkened air.’ Cerebus, the three headed dog guards this realm: ‘His eyes are red, his beard greasy and black, his belly huge, and fingers clawed. He scratches the spirits, skins them and then pulls them to pits.’ This is the circle for gluttons and we all know how greedy dogs are. Accordingly the sinners, ‘were beaten under the heavy rain [...] empty shades which looked like bodies/ they lay upon the ground strewn here and there’. In their earthly life these prisoners were entrenched in greed and addiction. In death, they are entrenched in swampland, force fed whatever falls from out the darkened sky, into their open mouths. 

Giovanni Stradano, Canto 6

Fourth Circle
This the house of avarice. Those who hoarded treasure, and those who squandered it.  Here the sinners, ‘had come together with great howls. From one side to the other, and rolling heavy weights forward against their chest. So they struck one another when they met; and then turned round and rolling back. Some shouted: why hold on, why let go.’ Virgil explains, the arbiter of God’s plan, is Fortune, and in accordance with the divine will, she elevates man only to sink him later. Those who try to outwit Fortune end up here. The rocks are the transformed treasure, accumulated in life, now dragged as heavy burdens for all the next. ‘What do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul?’ Dante answers accordingly. 

Avaricious and Prodigal, Gustave Dore, 1890

Fifth Circle
Dante and his guide, next descend to the marshy banks of the river Styx; ‘the sad brooklet’ and ‘I who stood there looking down intently, saw people covered in mud [...] And anger on their faces [...] They struck each other, and not only with their hands, but with their heads and chests, and with their feet, biting each other to pieces.’ The fifth circle is for those who lived an earthly life of rage and bitterness. The prisoners of this realm are condemned to ‘wallow like pigs in the mire,’ and in this sense, anger is a mud that sticks. Wrath the swamp that you drown in it. After passing such scenes, Dante espies ‘the city which takes its name from Dis, with its grave citizens, and huge armies.’ Dis is the stronghold of Satan, the Republic and Capital, of the Inferno. 

The Stygian Lake with the Ireful Sinners Fighting, William Blake, 1824-27

Sixth Circle
 Breaching the iron walls of the city signifies the entry into the deepest part of the underworld. Upper-hell is characterized by sins of weakness: Ignorance, lust, anger, greed, and gluttony. Lower-hell, on the other hand, is for those who act out of wickedness. Beyond the walls, ‘three infernal furies marked with blood rise up [..] [and] around their middles were tied bright green hydras, and they had small snakes and horned vipers for hair.’ Further along the wasteland Dante sees, ‘tombs that make the ground on every side uneven. Among the tombs were scattered flames, by which they were made completely incandescent [...] The lids of all of them were open and from the insides came harsh lamentations.’ The sixth circle is for heretics. Taunted by the gorgons they are condemned to burn in their coffins, while still alive. This is price they pay for denying the existence of the afterlife, and spreading false doctrine.

Farinata, Gustave Dore, 1890

Seventh circle
The seventh circle of hell is famous for a reason: All sinners who have committed acts of depraved violence reside here. Whether it is against person, property or self, the punishments are meted out measure by measure. The first crest of the circle is guarded by the ‘infamy of crete:’ The Minotaur, who stalks the track, ready to gore anyone who dares bate him. Evading the beast, Dante and Virgil approach the Phlegethon: ‘A river of blood in which everyone boils who does harm to their neighbors’ and ‘from which came the shrill cries of the scalded.’ The centaurs running along the bank ‘armed with arrows’ proclaim: ‘These are tyrants who gave themselves over to blood and rapine.’ In earthly life their lust for killing was unquenched, in Hell, they are made to boil in the blood  they shed. Its victims among others, include Alexander the Great, Dionysus, and Attila the Hun. 

the Minotaur, William Blake, 1824-27

Entrance to Dis, Priamo Della Quercia, 1444-52

Dante and Virgil cross the phlegethon and climb down to the second crest, the realm of suicides. In a wood ‘not green, but of a dark colour’ with trees ‘knotted and twisted’  and marked by ‘poisonous thorns’ they learn of punishment given to those who have taken their own life. Virgil commands Dante to pick a twig off one of the branches, and ‘the trunk called out: Why are you tearing me/ It grew a little dark with blood and said once again: Why are you dismembering me, have you no compassion.’ Compassion is the virtue that suicides lack for themselves, and because of this, they will never be resurrected on the day of judgement. As trees, they languish away all of eternity while ‘filthy harpies make their nests’ in the branches. 

Self murderers and the Harpies 

Spendthrifts running through the wood of Suicides, Gustave Dore, 1890 

The third crest is for those who are violent in speech towards God, and the perverts, paedophiles and rapists of the world. Here: ‘Droves of naked souls all of them weeping in great wretchedness’ wander aimlessly or lay supine or sat derelict on the scorched ground. ‘Upon them, all the great sand, falling slowly, rained down dilated flakes of fire.’ God hasn’t forgotten his old method and like Sodom and Gomorrah, this land and its inhabitants are laid waste. For many of the sexual deviants, while on earth their body has been the vessel of pleasure. In death, it is stripped of its dignity and becomes the vessel of pain. 

Violent Against Nature: Sandro Botticelli 1495 

The Eight Circle
Only reached via a black vortex, Dante and Virgil are flown down on the back of Geryon: ‘The savage beast with the pointed tail, who sails over mountains and breaks walls and weapons. The one who infects the whole world.’ Nevertheless Geryon has ‘the face of a just man, so mild [...] yet the rest of his body was a reptile’s.’ Needless to say, looks can be deceiving, and Geryon on an allegorical level is the symbol of Fraud. The first crest of the eight circle is for panderers and seducers. Here, ‘horned devils with great whips lashed [the sinners] from behind.’ Just as they beguiled others to do their bidding, the role is reversed and they are forced to do the bidding of others. 

Greyon, William Blake 1827

The next crest of the circle is for flatterers and Dante sees ‘people plunged in excrement.’ This a visual representation of the known trait of flatterers to speak bullshit. Now instead of exiting their mouth, the false words are going back in, clogging up the throats.

Punishment of the panderers, Sandro Botticelli, 1495

Below is a special place is for those who have committed the crime of simony; the selling of church offices. Dante comes across ‘a livid stone wall full of perforations [...] from each of these holes, there stuck out in the air, the feet and the legs, up to the calves of a sinner, the rest remaining hidden out of sight. [...] The soles of their feet of all of them were on fire, which made the joints wiggle.’ A lot of the clergy end up here, the burns to the ‘soles’ of their feet, is a ghastly inversion of the baptism, which anoints the ‘soul’ residing in the head to God. They also have their head literally buried in the sand, demonstrating their arrogance and ignorance of God’s plan. 

Punishment of the Simonists, Priamo Della Quercia, 1452

still further down, fortune tellers, wander the wasteland ‘silent and weeping.’ To Dante’s horror he sees, ‘each one of them seemed to be twisted round between the chin and the point where the thorax begins [...] So that the head was turned back to front, and they were therefore obliged to walk backwards.’ Fitting punishment for men who claimed to look ahead, they now can only see behind.

punishment of the diviners, Priamo della Quercia, 1452

politicians are boiling in tar in the next crest. Taunted by demons who bellow: ‘Unless you want to feel our hooks better not come up from out that pitch’ ‘Bit with a hundred prongs’ the black pitch is the sticky substance of corruption, that cannot be washed off. 

Hypocrites are seen as ‘painted people, who went around with very slow steps, weeping and looking exhausted’ On the outside their coats, ‘are gilded so that they are dazzling. But inside all lead and so heavy.’ The hypocrite is made to carry the weight of his lying, forced to embody the doctrine all that glitters is not gold. 

The next crest is for thieves: Dante sees them ‘running naked, terrified, without hope [...] hands tied behind them by snakes’ One particular, is so transfixed by a viper that ‘he caught fire, and burnt to ashes, [...] When he was in this manner destroyed, the dust collected itself without assistance and suddenly returned to the same shape.’ Each prisoner is condemned like the phoenix to rise from the ashes, only there is no flight. Instead serpents lay hold of each body and ‘no ivy ever clung so horribly and then they stuck together’ so much so the ‘colours began to run.’ These sinners appear to undergo some sort of grotesque transformation, where man and viper merge into a single monster. Just as they stole from others the substance of their life, so must their very life-substance be stolen from them in death. 

punishment of the thieves, William Blake, 1827

The next crest has men who are no longer human but embodiments of fire. These are the evil counselors and con men, who have encouraged others to illegal activity. 

Below is little nook reserved for the sowers of discord and schisms: Dante wonders: ‘Who could even in prose description, give an account of all the blood and wounds, I saw then.’ ‘Even a cask with the bottom knocked out does not gape in the way I saw one, ripped open from the chin to where he farts [..] Between his legs his guts hanging out.’ In life they caused divisions and split the state, in hell they must also be divided and their bodies split into parts. 

The final crest is for perjurers and impostors. In ‘the air full of sickness’ they are ‘creeping along as best they could.’ ‘Spotted with scabs’ prone to ‘insane itching.’ These counterfeiters, in earthly life were a disease on society, in death they become a disease unto themselves; stricken by leprosy or the plague, they wither away only to live again.  

The Ninth Circle

The final circle is for those guilty of treachery, and is patrolled by ‘horrible giants whom Jove still menaces [...] When he hurtles down his thunder.’ These exiled titans, compass the track, and lead Dante and Virgil into the well of Cocytus: ‘Not a matter to take lightly, describing the lowest point of the universe. Not something to be done in baby-talk.’

Virgil pointing out Ephialtes, Gustave Dore, 1890

The first round of the circle is for those who have betrayed their kin. Dante sees beneath him, ‘a lake, which was frozen [....] discoloured up to where disgrace appears. So were the shadows tortured in the ice, and with their chattering teeth sounding like storks.’

Cocytus, Gustave Dore, 1890

the second is for political traitors. They too are encased in the frozen water: ‘A thousand faces blue with cold’ who have now resorted to cannibalism, for Dante espies: ‘Two so frozen in one hole [...] And as in hunger people gnaw bread, so the one on top fixed his teeth into the lower one, just where the brain joins the nape of the neck.’

The third is for those who betray their guests. Overlooked by the ‘tower of hunger’ ‘the icy cold has harshly bound another group [...] their faces not turned down but thrown back’ Here laying supine ‘their tears do not allow them to weep, and the grief which finds the ice blocking their eyes, turns inward.’

The lowest region of the ninth circle is known as Judecca, after Judas of iscariot who sold out Christ for the price of 30 pieces of silver. This is the prison for men who have betrayed their benefactors. Here resides the angel who instigated the greatest rebellion in heaven: ‘The emperor of the kingdom of pain’  Satan himself, portrayed a giant malformed monster. He is locked waist deep in frozen waters of Cocytus, the lowest point that can ever be reached. Dante marvels at the sight:

‘Half his chest sticking out of the ice [...] 

Three faces on his head.

 One which was fiery red in the front,

 the other two grafted to that [...]

 Under each face protruded two great wings [...] 

that fluttered [...] 

It was by them all Cocytus was frozen.

 With six eyes he wept,

 and down three chins, dripped tears mixed with blood.

 In each mouth he was chewing with his teeth a sinner.’ 

Stradano, Lucifer 

Lucifer, William Blake, 1827

After this final nightmare; the vision that is culmination of all previous visions, Dante and Virgil make their escape. ‘My guide and I started out on that road, through its obscurity to return to the bright world’ Dante leaves us with a final promise: ‘I saw some of the lovely things that are in the heavens [...] [and] emerged to see the stars again.’ 

Dante and Virgil Gazing at the Stars, Gustave Dore, 1890

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I have read Purgatorio and Paradiso but they are forgettable. In today’s world God is characterized by his absence, so to, is happiness for that matter, because it remains something intangible, defined by the stasis, which for us discontented humans can never be reached. Pain on the other hand is visceral and common, and Evil recognizable. Dante’s Inferno is not just under the world but upon it; flooding the surface, as if bubbling up from Cocytus. Punishments laid down there, whether they are executed by fire or ice, are also witnessed in our world. It is the legacy of postmodernism to know that Hell is also a place on earth.

To deviate ever so slightly into theology, this means the divine-plan has failed: We are either all victims, subject to God and the Devil’s capricious Law which attacks the weak and innocent. Or we are all sinners, caught up in a web of evil so vast and interconnected, that it is impossible not to be condemned. Dante’s Divine Comedy continues to resonate with readers, not just because it gives us front row seats to the freak show, but because, the scenes delineated are recognizable. Though couched in the stuff of nightmares, some of what Dante sees has an all too human reality about it. Our knowledge of hell may be belated, but Dante’s vision remains, because it is is a work of art which recognises humanity’s darkest fears, and deepest dreams. It is the poem that has become the palimpsest in which all other latter-day works of art are scribed. 

Allegorical Portrait of Dante, Bronzino, 1530

Early picture of Dante, 1336, by the School of Giotta, Florence