Cook and Herzman’s lectures on Dante’s INFERNO – notes
Introduction:






The Divine Comedy is a remarkable, unmatched literary achievement from any point of view.
It is a journey in three parts of the Christian afterlife: hell, purgatory, heaven.
It is cosmic in scale – Dante travels through the entire universe from the deepest, coldest pit
of hell to the very summit of heaven where God dwells in endless glory.
It addresses human concerns and questions that are valid for all times, issues of our day as
well as Dante’s. Questions addressed:
o What is justice?
o How should we be governed?
o What does spiritual transformation mean?
o Why write or read poetry? What is any art for?
The poem is more than 14,000 lines long in a very demanding verse form (terza rima) –
o it is a poetic and stylistic tour de force.
o It is very difficult to correctly translate from the Italian because of the intricate
rhyme scheme – terza rima.
o The 100 cantos (literally “songs”) average 140 lines each and are made up of threeline units called tercets.
o Rhyming is much easier in Italian than in English, because almost all Italian words
end in vowels, thus giving the poet more words that rhyme with each other.
o You cannot imitate the Italian rhyming form in English.
Dante casts himself as the “hero” of his own poem.
o His biography is essential to our understanding of the poem.
o Dante sets the poem “halfway” through his life, in the year 1300.
o Dante was born in Florence in 1265.
o He came from a wealthy family of the merchant class.
o He was involved in Florence’s political life.
o He ended his life with two decades of involuntary exile from Florence.
o He wrote love poetry as a young man.
o The climax of this “youthful” poetic career was the VITA NUOVA – an intricate
combination of poems and commentary in honor of Beatrice.
o Dante wrote much of the Commedia while in exile and died in Ravenna where he is
buried, thought an honorary tomb was built to him in Florence.
Dante and Florence:



To be a member of Dante’s afterlife, you have to be dead by 1300.
The Florence of Dante’s day: a tightly packed city of about 100,000 people with a socially
diverse population with nobility, middle class, and the poor living in close proximity.
Conversations easily overheard.
Florentine politics was intensely local and many sources of tension existed.











Political strife was caused by disputes among local families. (The breakup of an arranged
marriage between two important households in 1215 lead to a long-lasting blood feud.)
Different factions in the city who quarreled over who had power and the best way to
govern. (Think of Verona’s warring families in Romeo and Juliet. )
Florentine politics was concerned also with larger struggles taking place in Italy and Europe
as a whole –
o Two major powers: the Pope and the Emperor contended for “world rulership.”
o The Guelf faction supported the Pope, the Ghibellines supported the Emperor.
Emperor Frederick II (of Hohenstaufen), also king in southern Italy, tried to assert control
over northern Italy starting around 1220.
By 1300, the Guelfs had control over Florence – the Ghilbellines were the minority and
relied on external allies.
o In 1260, the Ghibellines joined the rival city of Siena to defeat Florence at the Battle
of Monteperti.
Infighting in the Guelfs causes a split into two factions: the Whites and the Blacks.
o Both sides appealed for Papal support – although the struggle was mainly over
power.
o Pope Boniface VIII supported the Black Guelfs and sent troops to expel the Whites –
the direct cause of Dante’s exile.
Dante’s exile is a necessary condition for the writing of the poem –
The issues of exile become a part of the poem.
Exile is both spiritual and eternal as well as physical and transitory.
The poem can be seen as Dante’s way of making sense of his exile –
o it is a song of exile – permeated by this theme at every level.
o At first he tried to escape exile, but then he learned how to come to terms with his
exile and make something good come out of it.
Dante believed this earthly life was not the ultimate end, but it is important both in itself
and because it is where one’s eternal destiny is shaped.
Literary Antecedents: the Bible and the Aeneid



Dante builds on texts that previously exist. He brings together the biblical and classical
traditions in his text.
Bible was his most important source.
o In the Middle Ages, the Bible was read topologically – that is, while events the Old
Testament was considered historical and important in their own right – they were
neither complete or completely binding (e.g. Mosaic dietary and ritual laws).
o Figures in the OT looked forward to the NT.
o Makes use of three biblical prophets into the Commedia: They “forth-tell” divinely
inspired, but hard to hear truths out of intense concern for the present. Dante’s
voice is a prophetic voice concerning his own times.
Guide for 2/3 of poem is VIRGIL(70-19 BCE).
o Virgil lived during the reign of emperor Augustus, the first Roman emperor.
Aeneid is the model and source for the Commedia.
The story of Troy contains the seed of Roman history.
“Empire” has a direction – from East to West, from defeat to victory, from tragic loss
to newfound land.
o The Aeneid is thus a secular analogue of the biblical story of the Exodus.
o For Dante – the story of the Roman Empire continues to his own day – Rome’s
history is Dante’s history.
o The Church is now headquartered in Rome – thus Rome’s world empire will be
governed well and provide a good model for the world.
Love story of Dido and Aeneas – a love story serves to define what it means to be a Roman.
In Dante,
o Dido is a sinner who submits reason to desire.
o Virgil suggests that love and duty are not compatible, for while Dido dallies with
Aeneas, Carthage is neglected.
o Aeneas must press forward on his mission. Dido commits suicide.
o Here, Dante suggests that love and duty can be compatible for Aeneas’s ability to
recover after his mistake suggests a positive model for Dante the pilgrim, while Dido
is a negative model.
Book VI of Aeneid in underworld.
o Much of Dante’s geography is taken from Virgil.
o Also, the sense that one gets the kind of afterlife one deserves is from Virgil.
Another literary influence: Augustine’s Confessions
o Augustine makes use of both the Bible and Virgil.
o In writing his own spiritual biography, Augustine provides Dante with a model for
writing about himself.
o
o
o



Abandon Every Hope, All You Who Enter:








Hell is where unrepentant sinners dwell.
It consists of concentric circles in the earth – each smaller than the previous one.
The geography of Hell is a moral geography as well as a physical one – reflecting the nature
of the sin.
Three major categories of moral failure in hell: incontinence, violence, and fraud.
o These are inversions of the classical virtues of moderation, courage, and wisdom.
o The fourth classical virtue: Justice is also reflected in hell.
o The poet is constructing an unjust city.
The deeper Dante journeys the more serious the sin he encounters.
The sinners are both universal and local Florentine figures.
The sinners have in common a desire to justify themselves and to put the blame for their
actions elsewhere.
The sinners lack all self-knowledge.
o As Virgil says, they have lost the “good of intellect”





Canto 1: Pilgrim is “midway through the journey of life” caught in a dark wood (selva
oscura) of error.
o Three beast impede his progress.
o He is rescued by Virgil.
Canto 2: Dante is negotiating with Virgil about the nature of the journey.
o Virgil says three blessed ladies have sent him to Dante: the Virgin Mary, Saint Lucy
(Lucia), and Beatrice.
o The journey is not a reward for Dante, but a last-ditch effort to save him from his
spiritual disorientation and confusion.
Canto 3: They pass through the gates of hell. Hell’s inscription warns of what happens there.
o Dante finds himself in the “vestibule of hell” where he encounters those who refused
to make choices while on earth.
These sinners get what they deserve: chase banners eternally – no names.
Canto 4: Dante encounters the virtuous pagans,, including great figures from antiquity.
o The only punishment here is separation from God.
o Baptism is necessary for salvation.
o The abode for the Old Testament figures who were led out by Christ during the
“Harrowing of Hell” when Christ during the three days at Easter (Triduum) went
down to hell then up to risen life – providing a model for Dante’s journey.
o Dante will make a descent that is meant to lead people out of hell or off the hellbound trail.
The Sin of Incontinence:




If Dante is journeying to God, why does he need to go to hell?
o He needs to descend in order to ascend.
o He needs to learn the nature of sin from the unrepentant.
o He needs to learn how to overcome these same tendencies in himself.
The sinners he spends most time with are those who have the most to say to him personally
and in terms of his own moral development.
o These sinners help teach the reader about Dante.
The sinners’ plights and punishments are not arbitrarily imposed; they are self-chosen.
Canto 5: Circle of the lustful.
o Here the sin of lust is described through the very geography of the region: sinners
are whirled about in a “never-ending storm.”
o Storm = lust = submitting reason to desire. Lust is one of the sins of incontinence.
o Famous sinners suffering for lust: Dido (Dante blames her in a way that rewrites
Virgil).
o Francesca da Rimini was a front-page news item from Dante’s time.
 Francesca tells a story while Paolo sits by quietly.
 She blames love and a book – the courtly tale of Lancelot and Guinever’s
adultery – for her fate.
 She, like all sinners, shifts the blame from herself.
 Like all sinners, she embodies massive self-centeredness.
Dante feels sorry for her, but her choice was deliberately made.
Her story ends with an echo of Augustine’s confession in the Confessions:
Augustine’s famous tolle lege.
Shows that the canto is concerned with the proper way of reading a text.


o
Sin of Heresy:








Canto 10: Circle 6 – heretics – proving hell deals with wrong belief as well as wrong action.
Heresy is presented after INCONTINENCE and before VIOLENCE.
Heresy is a uniquely Christian sin – sandwiched between categories based on classical
virtues.
Two encounters:
o the first about politics:
o the second about poetry,
o both major concerns of the poet.
Farinata – important Ghibelline leader a generation before Dante’s birth. Recognizes Dante
by his “Tuscan way of speech.”
o Farinata the Ghibelline and Dante the Guelf go after each other – recreating the
bitterness of partisan politics.
o Farinata is proud and taunts Dante about the superiority of F’s family and ancestors.
Interrupted by Cavalcante, the father of Florentine poet and Dante’s friend, Guido
Cavalcante.
o Taunts Dante that his son is better poet.
o He seems to view coming to hell as a prize Dante has won instead of his son.
o C. falls back into tomb,
F. resumes his discussion and predicts Dante’s exile.
o He justifies his own political actions in a totally self-serving way.
o He answers Dante’s questions about souls being able to see into the future.
Heresy – divides what should be whole.—true of politics and poetry as well as church
doctrine.
o Both politics and poetry concerned with the proper and improper uses of language –
an important issue throughout the poem.
o Dante in danger of these tendencies to be a heretic in a verbally and politically,
though not formal sense.
The Sin of Violence: Circle 7 (Canto 11)




Violence is classified according to its object – who is hurt.
Violence can be directed at others, self, or God.
Violence against God includes blasphemy, as well as sodomy and usury (which are directed
against God’s child, nature, and God’s grandchildren, etc.)
Canto 13 – the Wood of the Suicides – spiritual geography again.
o Images of negation and by harsh and barren shrubbery.
Souls have been turned into shrubs who can only talk by having one of their
branches broken.
o They have lost self-determination with their sin.
Pier delle Vigne – “chief of staff” to Emperor Frederick II, who writes a “posthumous suicide
note.”
o Pier – loyal and faithful to Frederick.
o Pier blames his fall and suicide on the envy of the court, a description that is
extremely self-serving.
o Highly charged religious language to describe the relationship between himself and
Frederick, a heretic in Canto 10.
o Suicide – self-justification and getting even with one’s enemies
o Ghost of Christmas future for Dante.
o Takes place in a dark wood – like the beginning.
o Dante too will have to deal with the powerlessness of exile separated from the body
politic of Florence.
o Pier – how not to act in exile – strong warning to Dante. Dante tempted by suicide –
or merely the selfish, despairing attitude that Pier represents.
Canto 15 – Violence against God in the form of sodomy.
o Biblical concept in Genesis of being fruitful and multiplying.
Conversation with old teacher – poet, rhetorician, and Guelf leader Brunetto Latini.
o Dante was his star pupil and he encourages Dante to “follow his star,” but Brunetto
is really thinking of his own fame.
o Fame is a kind of idol , a false form of eternal life.
o A barren earthly fame becomes an analogous way of talking about sodomy.
o Dangerous ways of writing here.
o Brunetto’s discourse connected also to important ideas of free will and
determination.
Circle 8: FRAUD – a general name for all the sins of the misguided intellect.
o This circle divided into 10 ditches containing a different kind of fraud.
Fraud – concerned with the destruction of possibilities for community. Vices that threaten
not only a person, but all of society.
Fraud also concerned with perversions of language and speech (flatterers).
Simoniacs – those guilty of perverting their spiritual office by buying and selling church
offices – especially reprehensible.
Dante addresses followers of Simon Magus (Simon the Magician) who tried to buy the gifts
of the spirit (Acts 8).
o Followers of Simon Magus are buried upside-down in rock in hell, imitating the fall
of Simon.
o Flames burn their upended feet in an inversion of the flame of the Holy Spirit on the
Apostles’ heads at Pentecost.
o Simon Magus is an inversion of the ideal presented by Simon Peter, the first Pope.
Dante describes an incident from his youth when he smashed a baptismal font to save
someone from drowning in it.
o









He is thus “tearing down in order to build up” – like a biblical prophet – poetically
taking a hammer to abuses in the Church that threaten its life.
Dante hears the “confession” of a criminal – hired assassins in Florence were buried alive
upside down.
o The figure thinks Dante is Pope Boniface VIII (1294-1303) – whose place in hell is
predicted.
 Boniface was responsible for Dante’s exile.
o Figure identifies itself as Pope Nicholas III – roman Orsini (“son of the she-bear”)
o Nicholas confesses to nepotism and greed. Even after becoming Pope he cared more
about his own family’s interest than the good of the whole Church.
o Predicts the fate of Clement V (d. 1314). Infernal papal trinity (Nicholas III, Boniface
VIII, Clement V) – all of whom will wind up buried forever head-down in rock in
keeping with their sins.
o Whole scene is CONFESSION with Dante as priest, but Nicholas is false penitent. He
isn’t really sorry for what he has done.
Pilgrim ends with harangue against sin –
o The pilgrim is beginning to see hell is a place of justice.
o Pilgrim grasps the pervasive corruption caused by simony.
o Language here drawn from the Book of Revelation relating the simony of popes to
the evils of the Last Days.
o Canto echoes passages from Acts – showing the holy life and actions of St. Peter as
the ideal that his three successors have perverted.
o Dante wonders whether the Constantinian establishment of the Church was a wise
move.
Eighth bolgia – false counselors punished. Tongue of flame flickers as each damned soul
speaks.
Canto 26 – the story of Ulysses (Odysseus) – classical example
Canto 27 – the story of Guido da Montefeltro –contemporary example.
o Each has a superior intelligence.
o Each is able to attract followers.
o Ulysses encased in a tongue of flame in the 8th bolgia with Diomede, his partner in
crime.
o Ulysses inverts the virtue of pietas through his failure to be loyal to father, son, and
wife.
o Ulysses is the anti-Aeneas. – negating loyalty and commitment to virtue.
o Ulysses values adventure for its own sake – an ideal of “heroic discovery” detached
from any other set of values or obligations – morally obtuse or possibly vicious.
o Ulysses leads men to death without thought of their capabilities or needs.
o He abandons not only his family, but his kingdom with his wayward hunger for
adventure – evil social consequences.
o Ulysses is a false journeyer – a false pilgrim – negative example.
Dante must recognize that his own temptations are the temptations that come from talent,
ability, and superior intelligence.
o






Ulysses calls on his men to trust him when ironically he refuses to take anything “on
trust” – without seeing for himself.
Guido da Montefeltro – parallels Ulysses.
o Famed as military tactician – medieval think-tank strategist
o Tells Dante the story of his conversion to a religious life as a Franciscan brother.
Sincere? Or trying to trick God?
o He was “tricked “ away from his religious life and brought back to his old ways by
Boniface VIII.
o He accepted an offer of forgiveness in advance of the sin.
o He claimed it was an offer he couldn’t refuse.
o The offer was clearly a sham.
o Guido is trying to place the blame on someone else – Pope Boniface.
o He is a betrayer who is himself betrayed.
o

The Ultimate Evil






The ninth circle – the last in the Inferno is also a place of punishment for fraud.
o It is not a place of fire, but of damned souls frozen in ice.
o These sinners are guilty of more complex fraud than those in circle 8.
o These sinners betrayed a special trust , such as family, country, guests, or lord.
Three mouths of Satan, and the betrayers: Judas, Cassius, and Brutus.
At the end of Canto 32, the story of Ugolino and Ruggieri begins
o Ugilino is gnawing on the head of Ruggieri
o Both are encased in ice up to their necks.
o Both are guilty of the sin of betrayal, although only one of them will speak.
o The story of Ugolino brings together the political and the religious controversies in
the city of Pisa in Dante’s time.
 Ugolino was the Guelf Podesta – city manager.
 Ruggieri was the Ghibelline archbishop of Pisa.
 Together they plotted to betray Pisa and seize power.
o In Canto 33, Ugolino narrates a horrible story of betrayal, counter-betrayal, and
treachery.
 He was captured and, together with his young children, he was imprisoned
by Ruggieri in a tower.
 He describes their slow death by starvation.
 He suggests that to avoid his own starvation, he ate his children, but this is
disputed by Dante critics.
Cannibalism thus becomes Dante’s way of talking about absolute evil.
o Cannibalism is an inversion of the Christian Eucharist.
o It is a “logical conclusion” to the inversions that have characterized the Inferno thus
far.
In Dante’s hell – the punishment is to get what you want when nothing stands in the way of
your evil desires.
Canto 34: end of the Inferno – image of cannibalism as radical evil –




o the inversion of the good of self-donation (charity) as embodied in the Eucharist.
The three heads of Satan are a parody of the Christian trinity.
o Three sinners are found in the three mouths of Satan with Judas in the middle –
Brutus and Cassius on the sides. (Dante did not read Plutarch’s Lives on which
Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar is based.
The two ultimate betrayals are 1) of Christ and 2) of the Empire.
Dante climbs out of hell by going through Satan.
o At a certain point, he is no longer going down – he has crossed the center of the
Earth and is climbing up.
o His last image of hell is of Satan’s legs – Satan is upside down.
Dante emerges and is once more able to see the stars.