Join Dante and Virgil on a descent into hell in the “Inferno” from Dante Alighieri’s
The Divine Comedy (1315)

P
Pride
E
Envy
W
Wrath
S
Sloth
A
Avarice
G
Gluttony
L
Lust
Michelino

Dante Alighieri, translated by John Ciardi, guides us from to
Fra Angelico Here’s how . . .
Fra Angelico

Midway in his life, Dante realizes he has strayed from the True Way into the Dark Wood of Error (Worldliness).
He sees the sunrise, a symbol of Divine Illumination, over a little hill, the Mount of Joy, and he is filled with relief.
He starts towards the light and hill but finds his way blocked.
Dore

Three fierce beasts block his path:
The Leopard of Malice and Fraud,
The Lion of Violence and Ambition, and
The She – Wolf of Incontinence.
Of these three, Dante is most intimidated by the She – Wolf.
He begins to despair and move deeper into the Dark Wood of Error.
But suddenly . . .
Dore

Virgil, the greatest Latin poet and author of the Aeneid, appears to rescue Dante.
Virgil, symbolizing Human Reason, explains that he has been sent to guide Dante away from error.
However, there is no easy way out.
Any man who would escape the three beasts must travel a longer and harder path.
Blake

First, Virgil will guide Dante through a recognition of his sin in a descent through hell (The Inferno ).
Then, Virgil will guide Dante to renounce his sins in an ascent through Purgatory
(The Purgatorio ).
Finally, Virgil, who is pagan and also limited by the boundaries of human reason and therefore cannot cross into heaven, will turn Dante over to Beatrice who will guide Dante’s path to the Light of God in heaven
(The Paradiso ).
Dore

Blake
Virgil leads Dante away from the Dark Wood and up to the Gate of Hell.
There they read
I AM THE WAY INTO THE CITY OF WOE
I AM THE WAY TO A FORSAKEN PEOPLE
I AM THE WAY INTO ETERNAL SORROW. . . .
ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE.

The first souls in torment Dante and Virgil encounter are the Opportunists, those souls who in life were neither for good nor evil but only for themselves.
They race round and round on the beach of the River Acheron while pursuing a wavering banner.
As they run they are pursued by swarms of wasps and hornets, which sting them and produce a constant flow of blood and putrid matter fed on by maggots on the ground.
Dore

The poets reach Acheron, the first of the rivers of Hell.
Here newly – arrived souls of the damned gather and wait for the monster Charon to ferry them over to their punishments.
Charon does not want the living Dante to board, but Virgil demands passage for their divine mission.
Charon gives in, and Dante faints.
Dore

Botticelli
Dante wakes up on the brink of Hell, which Dante conceives as a great funnel – shaped cave lying below the northern hemisphere with its bottom at the earth’s center.
Each ledge is called a Circle, and each Circle holds one category of sin.

Blake
Here Dante and Virgil find the Virtuous Pagans.
Since they were born without the light of Christ’s revelation, they cannot come into the light of God, but they are not tormented.
Their only pain is that they have no hope.

Virgil is welcomed back to his Circle by the greatest Classical poets, including Homer and Ovid.
The great men welcome Dante as one of their own.
Limbo is the highest state man can attain without God.
Dore

Blocking the way to Hell proper, beginning in Circle 2,
Sits king Minos, a half – man / half – bull Minotaur like Minos’ illegitimate stepson in
Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
He judges the souls of the damned, wrapping his long tail one time around his huge body for each circle the damned soul must descend.
Dore

Blake

On a dark ledge, swept by a great whirlwind,
Dante encounters famous lovers including Helen, Paris, and Dido.
Virgil explains that their sin was to abandon themselves to passion, so they are swept in forever in a tempest.
Paolo and Francesca explain their sad tale of an illicit kiss, inspired by reading about Sir Lancelot, and, in pity, Dante faints again.
Dore

When Dante wakes in Circle 3, he is in a great storm of putrefaction, stinking snow, freezing rain, and vile slush.
Dore

In the muck, the souls of the Gluttonous are eternally ripped apart by the three – headed dog, Cerberus.
Since in life they made no greater use of their lives than to produce offal and garbage, in death they themselves are steeped in offal and treated like garbage.
Blake

Blake
Between Circles Three and Four,
Virgil and Dante come upon the great, menacing figure of Plutus.
However, Virgil once again shows himself more powerful than the rages of hell, and the poets enter the Fourth Circle.

In the Fourth Circle, Dante and Virgil find a war in progress.
On one side are the Hoarders, on the other the Wasters.
Each soul strains madly at a great boulder weight.
When the two sides meet, they clash their weights against each other, separate, and begin all over again.
In life, these sinners were encumbered by money; in death, they are encumbered by weight.
Nattini

Dante and Virgil enter the Marsh of Styx.
Here the Wrathful attack each other with teeth and nail in the foul slime, each ripped apart by his own anger.
Dore

Dore
Dore
Beneath them, under the mud, the Slothful lie gargling in the stinking waters, tormented by their own laziness.

Circle Six contains the
City of Dis and the Heretics.
Here are the Furies,
Medusa, and any people who thought the soul died with the body.
Botticelli

Dore
In Circle 7 Dante encounters
The Violent against Neighbors,
The Violent against Themselves, and
The Violent against God, Art, and Nature.

In Round Two, the Souls of the Suicides are encased in thorny trees whose leaves are eaten by the odious Harpies.
Thus, those who destroyed their own bodies are denied a human form.
Blake

Dante and Virgil leave
Upper Hell and travel to Lower Hell by riding on the back of
Geryon.
Dante depicts Geryon, a mythical king of Spain killed by Hercules, as a monster with the shape of a dragon, the tail of a scorpion, hairy arms, a reptilian body, and the face of a just and honest man.
?

The Eighth Circle, or Maleboge, is made up of evil ditches.
Botticelli
In the Eighth Bolgia (ditch) of the Eighth Circle,
Dante and Virgil encounter the Evil Counselors, endlessly hidden in flames.
Since they sinned by the glibness of their tongues, they are encased in flames shaped like tongues.
Here Dante speaks with Ulysses, who tricked the Trojans with the wooden horse.

At the bottom of Hell’s funnel,
Dante finds the huge, frozen lake of Cocytus and the Ninth Circle.
Here, fixed in ice, each according to his guilt, are punished sinners guilty of treachery against those to whom they were bound by special ties.
Since these sinners denied all divine love and human warmth, they are forever encased in ice.
They are furthest removed from God’s love and the light and warmth of the sun.
Blake

In the center of Lake Cocytus is Satan.
He is fixed into the ice at the center.
As he beats his wings as if to escape, their icy wind only freezes him more surely into the polluted ice.
In a grotesque parody of the Trinity, he has three faces, each a different color, and in each mouth he clamps a sinner whom he rips eternally with his teeth:
Judas Iscariot, Brutus, and Cassius.
Dore

To leave hell, Dante and Virgil climb down Satan’s hairy legs and, when they have passed through the center of all gravity, emerge from Hell.
Blake

Dante and Virgil enter Purgatory, a mountain organized as a mirror image of the pit of hell.
Shades in purgatory repented of their sins before they died but must still spend some time atoning for those sins before they can move on to Paradise.
Blake

Blake
Those whose sins are the most grave begin at the bottom of the mountain and have the farthest to go.
Those whose sins are the least grave begin at the top of the mountain and have the least distance to cover before entering Paradise.

Lustful (on top) encased in wall of fire
Gluttonous stand emaciated around a tree of fruit
Avaricious lie motionless, bound hand and foot, with faces in dust
Slothful hurriedly run in a line
Wrathful plunged in darkness by acrid, stinging smoke
Blake
Envious blinded and dressed in haircloth, support each other against cliff
Proud (on bottom) crawl round and round under the crushing weight

Dante crosses the river Lethe
(River of Forgetfulness) at the end of Purgatory.
Virgil parts with Dante as Dante, purified by fire, leaves Purgatory.
Blake

At the end of the Purgatorio ,
Virgil and Dante encounter
Beatrice in a heavenly pageant.
Beatrice takes over from Virgil as Dante’s guide
In Paradise.
Dante follows her instructions and emerges out of Purgatory
“perfect, pure, and ready for the stars.”
Blake

Dante and Beatrice journey up through the planetary spheres and view the heavenly host
Dore

Dante beholds a vision of God as a non – dimensional point of light ringed by nine glowing spheres representing the angel hierarchy.
Chartres Cathedral

Heaven is depicted as a
Mythical Rose containing inexpressible beauty:
“I saw within Its depth how It conceives
All things in a single volume bound by Love,
Of which the universe is the scattered leaves.”
Dore

Dante returns to his earthly life, renewed in his quest for ultimate redemption.
Giotto
Raphael

Another of Dante’s poems,
La Vita Nuova “The New Life,” records the inspiration for his character Beatrice.
In the poem Dante records the story of a boy of nine who falls in love at first sight with a girl of the same age.
At 18, in a second encounter, they exchange a greeting.
At 25, she suddenly dies and he is filled with grief.
When the boy is 27, the girl suddenly appears to him in a vision.
Rossetti

seven deadly sins: Pride, Envy, Wrath, Sloth, Avarice, Gluttony, Lust allegory: the discussion of one subject by disguising it as another;
Dante’s literal descent into hell is a figurative spiritual and psychological journey terza rima : Dante’s three line stanzas rhyming aba, bab, cdc, ded, etc. vernacular: the local dialect; Dante wrote in Italian, not Latin archetype: an image, symbol, or pattern that appears in literature of many cultures
In the Divine Comedy Dante separates from society in the Dark Wood, is initiated through his journeys in the Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso, and returns to earth to share his tale through his writing epic simile: a long, extended comparison using the word “like” or “as” allusion: a reference to a mythological, literary, or historical person, place, thing, or idea catalog: a long list epithet: descriptive words and phrases composed of an adjective and a proper noun imagery: descriptive language that appeals to one of the five senses

Dali
The Divine Comedy has three parts:
Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso
Inferno has 1 canto on earth and 33 in hell
Purgatorio has 33 cantos
Paradiso has 33 cantos
100 (10 x 10) total cantos = perfection
Dante wrote in three
– line stanzas called terza rima
Dante’s journey lasts three days, beginning on Good Friday and Ending on Easter Sunday
Dante’s Trinity includes Father, Son, and Holy Ghost
There are three main characters: Dante, Virgil, and Beatrice
Cerberus has three heads
How many other 3s can you find?