Dante’s Inferno
A guided tour through hell
Dante Alighieri
•
•
•
•
•
Born 1265
Died 1321
Exiled from Florence by his political enemies in 1302
Wrote Divine Comedy in 1312
First major writer to use the Italian language
Divine Comedy
• Inferno=Hell
• Purgatorio=Purgatory
• Paradiso=Heaven
Not surprisingly
Dante’s Inferno is
the most popular
book of the Divine
Comedy
The Principle of the Trinity
Dante’s Organizing Principle
• Poem has 3 parts
• Each part has 33
Cantos
• The verse is Terza
Rima
• Journey took 3 days
from Good Friday
to Easter Sunday.
Allegory
• Work that has 2 meanings (literal and
symbolic
• Rowboat=person
• Water=flow of time
• Two oars=hard work and persistence
• Rudder=love or guidance
Dante’s Inferno is an allegory
• Dante’s literal journey=his struggle for
redemption
His Guide
• Beatrice
• Virgil
Important Places in Inferno
• City of Dis: The Capital Of Hell. The city comprises all of
lower hell. At the center of the city, Dis (Satan) is
imprisoned.
• Cocytus: The final pit of Hell.
• Great Tower, The - The tower signals Phlegyas to bring souls
over the river Styx.
• Lethe, the river - In classical mythology, the river of
forgetfulness, from which souls drink before being born. In
Dante's Divine Comedy, it flows down from Purgatory, where
it has washed away the memory of sins from souls who are
undergoing purification. Then the River Lethe delivers that
memory to Hell, which draws all sin to itself.
• Lower Hell - The second division of Hell where souls are
punished for the various sins of violence and bestiality (sins
of the Lion), and fraud and malice (sins of the Leopard).
Important Places in Inferno
• Malebolge (In Italian Bolgia=“ditch”
Therefore, Malebolge is a ditch of evil
• Phlegethon, the river - The river of boiling blood that
composes the first round of the seventh circle. It sluices
through the Wood of Suicides and the Burning Plain. The
river plunges over the edge of the seventh circle to form a
waterfall. The river has miraculous powers that protect
Dante from the torments of Hell.
• Upper Hell - The first division of Hell where sinners are
punished for the various sins of Incontinence (sins of
excess, the She-Wolf).
• Wall Of Dis - The flaming wall that encloses all of Lower
Hell
A Detailed Outline Of Inferno
I.
II.
Gate of Hell
Vestibule: The Opportunists
Upper Hell
A. River Acheron
B. Circle I (Limbo)
Virtuous Pagans
Unbaptized Children
Minos
C. Circle II
Carnal
D. Circle III
Gluttons
Plutus
E. Circle IV
Hoarders
Wasters
F. Circle V (Styx)
Wrathful
Sullen
Phlegyas
Wall of Dis (Fiends And Furies)
III. Lower Hell
G. Circle VI
Heretics, The Minotaur, Centaurs
H. Circle VII
1. Round One: Phlegethon
Violent against Others
2. Round Two: Wood of Suicides
The Harpies, Suicides, and
Wasters of their Substance
3. Round Three: Burning Plain
Blasphemers,
Sodomites, and
Usurers, Geryon
I. Circle VIII (Malebolge)
1. Bolge I: Panderers, Horned Devils With
Lashes, and Seducers
2. Bolge Two Flatterers
3. Bolge Three Simoniacs
4. Bolge Four Fortune Tellers and Diviners
5. Bolge Five Grafters and Blacktalons
6. Bolge Six Hypocrites
7. Bolge Seven Thieves
8. Bolge Eight Evil Counselors
9. Bolge Nine Sowers Of Discord
10. Bolge Ten Falseifiers
Central Well and Titans
J. Circle IX (Cocytus)
1. Caina
Treacherous To Kin
2. Antenora
Treacherous To Country
3. Ptolomea
Treacherous To Guest or Host
4. Judecca
Treacherous To Master
Brutus
Cassius
Judas Iscariot
“Abandon all hope, ye
who enter here.”
A Brief Overview of Dante’s Inferno
Gate of hell
Vestibule
River Acheron and Charon
Circle I: Limbo
Circle II: Lust
Circle III: Gluttony
Circle IV: Avarice and Prodigality
Circle V: Wrath or Sullenness
Circle VI: Heresy
Circle VII: Violence
Circle VIII: Fraud
Circle IX: Treachery
The Vestibule: The Opportunists
Here sighs and cries and wails coiled and recoiled
on the starless air, spilling [your] soul to tears....
They are mixed here with the despicable corps
of angels who neither for God nor Satan,
but only for themselves. The High Creator
scourged them from Heaven for its perfect beauty,
and Hell will not receive them since the wicked
might feel some glory over them...
These wretches never born and never dead
ran naked in swarms of wasps and hornets
that goaded them the more the more they fled,
and made their faces stream with bloody gouts
of pus and tears that dribbled to their feet
to be swallowed there by loathsome worms and maggots.
Inferno 03.022-03.066
*The
Opportunists are souls who, in life, were neither good nor
evil but only for
themselves. Mixed with them are the angels who took no sides
in the Rebellion
of the Angels. These souls are neither in Hell nor out of it.
"Charon,
bite
back
your
spleen:
this has
been
willed
where
what is
willed
must be,
and is
not
yours to
ask what
it may
mean."
Inferno
03.09103.093
Charon and the River
Acheron
1There
are three main rivers in Hell, all three come from the same
source.
2There into Acheron flow Periphlegethon and Cocytus, which is a branch
of the water of the Styx; and there is a rock, and the meeting place of
the two roaring rivers.
Odyssey 510-515
Circle I: Limbo
(a) the temporary place
or state of the souls of
the just who, although
purified from sin, were
excluded from
Heaven.
(b)the permanent state
of unbaptized children
and virtuous pagans
(those who were
moral individuals, but
not Christians)
Circle II: The Lustful
The first division of Hell punishes for the various sins of Incontinence (sins of excess). These
sinners receive the least punishment because an excess of sexual passion is the most natural
sin; it is the sin most closely associated with love.
[You come] to a place stripped bare of every light
and roaring on the naked dark like seas
wracked by a war of winds. Their hellish flight of
storm and counterstorm through time foregone,
sweeps the souls of the damned before its charge.
Wirling and battering it drives them on,
and when they pass the ruined gap of Hell
through which [you] had come, their shrieks begin
anew.
There they blaspheme the power of God eternal.
And this...was the never ending flight
of those who sinned in the flesh, the carnal and lusty
who betrayed reason to their appetite.
Here, there, up, down, they whirl and, whirling,
strain
with never a hope of hope to comfort them,
not of release, but even of less pain.
Inferno 05.031-05.048
Circle III: Gluttony
Huge hailstones, dirty water, and black snow
pour from the dismal air to putrefy
the putrid slush that waits for them below
Here monstrous Cerberus, the ravening beast,
howls through his triple throats like a mad dog
over the spirits sunk in that foul paste.
His eyes are red, his beard is greased with
phlegm, his belly is swollen, and his hands are
claws to rip the wretches and flay and mangle
them.
And they, too, howl like dogs in the freezing
storm, turning and turning from it as if they
thought one naked side could keep the other
warm.
Inferno 6
A great storm of putrefaction falls incessantly, a mixture of stinking snow and freezing rain, which forms
into a vile slush underfoot. The Third Circle is meant to resemble a giant garbage dump. In life the
Gluttons made no higher use of the gifts of God than to wallow in food and drink, producers of nothing
but garbage and offal. Here they lie in all eternity, themselves like garbage, half buried in fetid slush
while Cerberus slavers over them as they in life slavered over their food.
Circle IV: Avarice and Prodigality
Here, too, [you see] a nation of lost souls,
far more than were above: they
strained with their chests
against enormous weights, and with
mad howls
rolled them at one another. Then in
haste they rolled them back, one
party shouting out:
"Why do you hoard?" and the other:
"Why do you waste?"
So back around the ring they puff and
blow, each faction to its course, until
they reach opposite sides, and
screaming as they go
the madmen turn and start their
weights again
to crash against the maniacs...
Inferno 07.025-07.035
One mob is made up of the HOARDERS, the other
of the WASTERS. In life, they lacked all
moderation in regulation their expenses; they
destroyed the light of God within themselves by
thinking of nothing but money. Thus in death their
souls are encumbered by dead weights.
The River Styx
And crossing over the
chasm's edge
[you come] to a spring
that boiled and overflowed
through a great crevice
worn into the ledge.
By that foul water, black
from its very source,
[You find] a nightmare
path among the rocks
and followed the dark
stream along its course.
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.
Circle V: Wrath or Sullenness
“[keep your] eyes on those foul souls that swallow
the slime of Hell…”
...a swarm of spirits in that
bog savage with anger,
naked, slimebesmutched
They thumped at one
another in that slime
with hands and feet,
and they butted, and
they bit
as if each would tear
the other limb from limb.
Inferno 08.110-08.131
'Sullen were we in the air made sweet by the Sun;
in glory of his shining our hearts poured
a bitter smoke. Sullen were we begun;
sullen we lie forever in this ditch.'
This litany they gargle in their throats
as if they sang, but lacked the words and pitch."
Circle VI: Heresy
By Heretic, Dante means
specifically those who did
violence to God by denying
immortality. Since they
taught that the soul dies
with the body, so their
punishment is an eternal
grave in the fiery morgue of
God's wrath.
“for, in a ring around each tomb, great fires raised every wall to a red heat. No
smith works hotter iron in his forge. The biers stood with their lids upraised,
and from their pits an anguished moaning rose on dead air from the
desolation of tormented spirits.”
Inferno 09.109-09.120
The Minotaur
As a bull that breaks its
chain just when the
knife
has struck its deathblow, cannot stand nor
run
but leaps from side to
side with its last lifeso danced the
Minotaur...
Inferno 12.022-12.025
The Minotaur was more beast than human, he was conceived in a sodomitic union,
and he was a devourer of human flesh- in all ways a fitting symbol of the souls he
guards in the seventh circle.
The Centaurs
They run by that
stream in
thousands,
snapping their bows
at any wraith who
dares to raise
himself
out of the blood
more than his guilt
allows.
Inferno 12.07212.075
Centaur - The centaur is a being part human and part horse. Usually the head and
upper body are human, and the lower body is equine. The centaur is a potentially
uncontrollable creature, often associated with drunkenness, lust, licentiousness and
physical, especially sexual, violence.
Circle VII
Round One: Violence Against Others
"But turn your eyes to
the valley; there we
shall find
the river of boiling blood
in which are steeped
all who struck down
their fellow men." Oh
blind!
Oh ignorant, self
seeking cupidity
which spurs us so in the
short mortal life
and steeps us so
through all eternity!
Inferno 12.046-12.051
Round Two: Wood of Suicides
Harpies, Suicides, and Wasters of their Substance
[You break] off a
branchlet from an
enormous thorn:
and the great trunk of
it cried:"Why do you
break me?"
And after blood had
darkened all the bowl
of the wound, it cried
again: "Why do you
tear me?
Is there no pity left in
any soul?”
Inferno 13.013-13.015
More on the suicides…
The souls of the suicides are encased in
thorny trees whose leaves are eaten by
the odious Harpies, the overseers of
these damned. When the Harpies feed
upon them, damaging their leaves and
limbs, the wound bleeds. Only as long
as the blood flows are the souls of the
trees able to speak. Thus, they who
destroyed their own bodies are denied
human form; and just as the supreme
expression of their lives was self
destruction, so they are permitted to
speak only through that which tears
and destroys them. Only through their
own blood do they find a voice.
Round Two Continued…
Wasters of their Substance
...And suddenly in his rush,
perhaps because his breath was failing him,
he hid himself inside a thorny bush
and cowered among its leaves. Then at his
back,
the wood leaped with black bitches, swift as
greyhounds
escaping from their leash, and all the pack
sprang on him; with their fangs they opened him
and tore him savagely, then withdrew,
carrying his body with them, limb by limb.
Inferno 13.121-13.129
They are driven naked through the thorny woods pursued by ravenous dogs who tear
them to pieces and carry off the limbs. The dogs may be taken as symbolizing
conscience, the last besieging creditors of the damned who must satisfy their claims
by dividing their wretched bodies, since nothing else is left of them.
Round Three: Burning Plain
Blasphemers, Sodomites, and Usurers
Enormous herds of naked souls [you
see],
lamenting till their eyes were burned of
tears;
they seemed condemned by an unequal
law,
for some were stretched supine upon the
ground,
some squatted with their arms about
themselves, and others without pause
roamed round and round.
And over all that sand on which they lay
or crouched or roamed, great flakes of
flame fell slowly
as snow falls in the Alps on a windless
day.
just so in Hell descended the long rain
upon the damned, kindling the snad like tinder
under flint and steel, doubling the pain.
In a never ending fit upon those sands,
the arms of the damned twitched all about their bodies,
now here, now there, brushing away the brands.
Inferno 14.016-14.039
Geryon
...swimming up through that
foul air
a shape to astonish the
most doughty soul,
a shape like one returning
through the sea
from working loose an
anchor run afoul
of something on the
bottom-so it rose,
its arms spread upward
and its feet drawn close.
Inferno 16.129-16.134
Circle VIII: Malebolge
1. Bolge One Panderers, Horned
Devils With Lashes, and Seducers
2. Bolge Two Flatterers
3. Bolge Three Simoniacs
4. Bolge Four Fortune Tellers and
Diviners
5. Bolge Five Grafters and Blacktalons
6. Bolge Six Hypocrits
7. Bolge Seven Thieves
8. Bolge Eight Evil Counselors
9. Bolge Nine Sowers Of Discord
10. Bolge Ten Falseifiers
Central Well and Titans
Bolge One:
Panderers, Horned
Devils, and
Seducers
All of these sinners were naked; on our side
of the middle they walked toward us; on the other,
in our direction, but with swifter stride.
And everywhere along that hideous track
[there are] horned demons with enormous lashes
move through the souls, scourging them on the back.
Inferno 18.022-18.039
Bolge Two: Flatterers
Here [you hear] people
whine in the next chasm,
and knock and bump
themselves with open palms,
and blubber through their
snouts as if in spasm.
Streaming from that pit, a
vapour rose over the banks,
crusting them with a slime
that sickens eyes and
hammer at the nose.
Once there, [you peer] down
; and [you see] long lines of
people in a river of
excrement that seemed the
overflow of the world's
latrines.
Inferno 18.103-18.117
Bolge Three: Simoniacs
Along the walls and on the
ground were long rows of
holes cut in livid stone; all
were cut to a size, and all
were round.
From every mouth a
sinner's leg struck out
as far as the calf. The
soles were ablaze
and the joints of the legs
quivered and writhed
about.
As oiled things blaze upon
the surface only,
so did they burn from heel
to the point of their toes.
Inferno 19.013-19.027
Bolge Four: Fortune Tellers and Diviners
[Your] vantage point
permitted a clear view,
of the depths of the pit
below: a desolation
bathed with the tears of
its tormented crew,
who moved about the
circle of the pit at about
the pace of a litany
procession. Silent
weeping, they wound
round and round it.
And when I looked
down from their faces, I
saw that each of them
was hideously distorted
between the top of their
chests and the lines of the
jaw; for the face was
reversed on the neck, and
they came on backwards,
staring backwards at their
loins, for to look before
them was forbidden.
[You see] the image of our
humanity
distorted so that the tears
that burst from from their
eyes
ran down the cleft of their
buttocks...
Inferno 07.025-07.035
Bolge Five: Grafters
All...attention was fixed upon
the pitch: to observe the
people who were boiling in
it,
and the customs and
punishments of that ditch.
So now and then, some
soul, to ease his pain,
showed us a glimpse of his
back above the pitch and
quick as lightning
disappeared again.
and Catclaw, who was
nearest, ran a hook through
the sinner’s pitchy hair and
hauled him in. He looked
like an otter dripping from
the brook.
Inferno 22.016-22.042
Here the crew of demons cried
all together, “Give him a taste of
your claws. Dig him open a little.
Off with his hide."
Bolge Five: Blacktalons
They turned along the
left bank in a line;
but before they started,
all of them together
had stuck their pointed
tongues out as a sign
to their captain that
they wished
permission to pass,
and he had made a
trumpet of his ass.
Inferno 21.136-21.140
Bolge Six: Hypocrites
All wore great cloaks
cut to as ample a size
as those worn by the
Benedictines of Cluny.
The enormous hoods
were drawn over their
eyes.
The outside dazzled,
golden and fair;
the inside, lead…
"These burnished robes
are of thick lead," said
one,"and are hung on
us like counterweights,
so heavy that we, their
weary fulcrums, creak
and groan."
Inferno 23.057-23.099
Bolge Seven: Thieves
Amid that swarm, naked
and without hope,
people ran terrified, not
even dreaming
of a hole to hide in…
Their hands were
bound behind by coils
of serpents which thrust
their heads and tails
between the loins and
bunched in the front, a
mass of knotted
torments.
Inferno 24
Bolge Eight: Evil Counselors
such myriads of
flames...shine through the
gloom of the eighth abyss
when [you arrive] at the rim
from which its bed comes
into view.
As he the bears avenged so
fearfully beheld Elijah's
chariot depart- the horses
rise toward heaven-but could
not see
more than a the flame, a cloudlet
in the sky, once it had risen-so
within the fosse only those
flames, forever passing by
were visible, ahead, to right, to
left; for through each steals a
sinner's soul from view not one
among them leaves a trace of
the theft.
Inferno 26
Bolge Nine: Sowers of Discord
Between his legs all of his
red guts hung with his heart,
the lungs, the liver, the gall
bladder, and the shriveled
sac that passes shit to the
bung. Opening his own
breast with both hands he
cried: "See how I rip myself!
See how Mahomet's
mangled and split open!
Ahead of me walks Ali in his
tears, his head cleft from topknot to chin.
And all other souls that bleed
and mourn
along this ditch were sowers
of scandal and schism: as
they tore others apart, so are
they torn.
Inferno 28
Bolge Ten: Falsifiers
Malebolge's final cloister lay outspread,
and all of its brethren might have been
in sight but for the murk; and from those
dead
such shrieks and strangled agonies shrill
through [you]
like shafts, but barbed with pity, that [your]
hands flew to [your] ears. If all the misery
that crams the hospitals of pestilence
in Maremma, Valdichiano, and Sardinia
in the summer months when death sits like
a presence
on the marsh air, were dumped into one
trenchthat might suggest their pain. And through
the screams,
putrid flesh spread up its sickening stench.
They were covered with great scabs from
head to foot.
No stable boy in a hurry home,
or for whom his master waits impatiently,
ever scrubbed harder with his currycomb
than those two spirits of the stinking ditch
scrubbed at themselves with their own
bloody claws
to ease the furious burning of the itch.
And as they scrubbed and clawed
themselves, their nails
drew down the scabbs the way a knife
scrapes bream
or some other fishwith even larger scales.
Inferno 29.075-29.084
The Titans
“The better to
prepare you for
strange truth,
let me explain those
shapes you see
ahead:
They are not towers
but giants. They
stand in the well
from the nave down;
stationed round its
bank
they mount guard on
the final pit of Hell."
Inferno 31.02931.033
Circle IX: Treachery
Against Kin
...stretching out ahead, a lake so
frozen
it seemed to be made of glass. So
thick a sheet
The way frogs sit to croak, their muzzles leaning
out of the water, at the time and season
when the peasant woman dreams of her day's
gleaning-
never yet hid the Danube's winter
course,
nor, far away beneath the frigid sky,
locked the Don up in its frozen
source:
Just so the livid death are sealed in place
up to the part which they blushed for shame,
and they beat their teeth like storks. Each hold
his face
for were Tanbernick and the
enormous peak
of Pietrapana to crash down on it,
not even the edges would so much
as creak.
bowed toward the ice, each of them testifies
to the cold with his chattering mouth, to his
heart's grief
with tears that flood forever from his eyes.
Inferno 32.023-32.039
Circle IX: Treachery
Against Country
In reply to Dante's exhortation , The sinner who is gnawing his
companions head looks up, with his bloody mouth on his victim
hair, and tells his harrowing story. He is Count Ugolino and the
wretch he gnaws is Archbishop Ruggieri. Both are in Antenora for
treason. In life they once plotted together. Then Ruggieri betrayed
his fellow-plotter and caused his death, by starvation, along with
his four "sons."In the most pathetic and dramatic passage in the
Inferno, Ugolino details how their prison was sealed and how his
sons dropped dead before him one by one weeping for food. His
terrible tale serves only to renew his grief and hatred, and he has
hardly finished it before he begins to gnaw Ruggieri again with
renewed fury. In th immutable law of Hell, the killer-by-starvation
becomes the food of his victim.
Satan
"Now see the face of Dis! This is the
place where you must arm your soul
against all dread."
The Emperor of the Universe of Pain
jutted his upper chest above the ice;
If he was once as beautiful as now
he is hideous, and still turned on his
Maker, well may he be the source of
every woe!
Under each head two wings rose
terribly their span proportioned to so
gross a bird: I never saw such sails
upon the sea.
He wept from his six eyes, down three
chins the tears ran mixed with bloody
froth and pus.
In every mouth he worked a broken
sinner between his rake-like teeth. Thus
he kept three in eternal pain at his
eternal dinner.
Count Ugolino and the Archbishop
Ruggieri
“He seized
the skull
again
between his
teeth
grinding it
as a mastiff
grinds a
bone.”
Inferno 33
Circle IX: Treachery
Against a Guest or Host
[You] passed on further where the frozen mine
entombs another crew in greater pain;
these wraiths are not bent over, but lie supine.
Their very weeping closes up their eyes;
and the grief that finds no outlets for its tears
turns inward to increase their agonies:
for the first tears that they shed knot instantly
in their eye-sockets, and as they freeze they form
a crystal visor above the cavity.
Inferno 33.091-33.099
Circle IX: Treachery
Against Masters
[You stand] now where the souls of the last class
(with fear my verses tell it) were covered wholly;
they shone below the ice like straws in glass.
Some lie stretched out; others fixed in place
upright, some on their heads, some on their soles;
another like a bow, bends foot to face.
Inferno 34.010-34.015
Circle IX:
Brutus, Cassius, and Judas
For the one in front the
biting seemed to play
no part compared to the
ripping: at times
the whole skin of his
back flayed away.
Of the other two, who have
their heads thrust forward,
the one who dangles down
from the black face is
Brutus: note how he
writhes without a word.
"That soul that suffers
most," explained my
guide, "is Judas
Iscariot, he who kicks
his legs on the fiery chin
and has his head
inside.
And there, with the huge
and sinewy arms, is the
soul of Cassius.-But the
night is coming on and we
must go, for we have seen
the whole."