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Divine Comedy | Introduction

Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) wrote his epic poem, the Divine Comedy, during the last thirteen years of his life (circa 1308-21), while in exile from his native Florence. There are three parts to this massive work: Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise. In each section Dante the poet recounts the travels of the Pilgrim—his alter ego—through hell, purgatory, and heaven, where he meets God face to face. The primary theme is clear. In a letter to his patron, Can Grande della Scala, Dante wrote that his poem was, on the literal level, about "The state of souls after death." It is, of course, that and much more. The poem works on a number of symbolic levels, much like the Bible, one of its primary sources. Like that sacred text, Dante meant his work and his Pilgrim traveler to serve as models for the reader. He hoped to lead that reader to a greater understanding of his place in the universe and to prepare him for the next life, for the life that begins after death.

The greatness of the Divine Comedy lies in its construction as a summa, or a summation of knowledge and experience. Dante was able to weave together pagan myth, literature, philosophy; Christian theology and doctrine, physics, astrology, cartography, mathematics, literary theory, history, and politics into a complex poem that a wide audience, not just the highly educated, could read. For Dante boldly chose to write his poem of salvation in his own Italian dialect, not in Latin, which was the language of Church, State, and epic poetry during his time. Its impact was so great that Dante's Tuscan dialect became what we recognize as modern Italian.

As one of the greatest works, not just of the late Middle Ages but of world literature in its entirety, the influence of the Divine Comedy has been incalculable. The poem was immediately successful— Dante's own sons, Pietro and Jacopo, wrote the first commentaries on it—and it continues to be read and taught today. Many of western literature's major figures were indebted to Dante's masterwork. A highly selective list includes: Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-75); Geoffrey Chaucer (circa 1344-1400); Don Inigo Lopez de Mendoza, the first Marques de Santillana (1389-1458); John Milton (1608-74); William Blake (1757-1827); Victor Hugo (1802-85); Joseph Conrad (Teodor Josef Konrad Korzeniowski) (1857-1924); James Joyce (1882-1941); Ezra Pound (1885-1972); Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986); and Italo Calvino (1923-85).

If this impressive list were not testament enough, one has only to consider the four to five hundred manuscripts of the Divine Comedy in existence (an almost unheard-of number), the four-hundred-some Italian printed editions and the hundreds of English translations to get some idea of this work's impact on Western culture. Clearly, readers have found the Divine Comedy relevant to their lives since its composition nearly seven hundred years ago. Perhaps this is because Dante Alighieri, for all the differences between his era and subsequent ones, wrestled with and wrote about concerns that affect all people who have ever stopped to think about them: What is the purpose of this life? Is there an afterlife? If so, how should I prepare for it? Why, in short, am I here? Dante's answers to those questions will not necessarily be the same as those of each of his many readers, but by asking them he forces each reader to ask them, too, and to wonder how to answer them.

Divine Comedy Summary

Dante's Divine Comedy is bewilderingly complex to the first-time reader, even on the literal level. (This complexity remains after many rereadings, but for many readers, it enhances the poem's appeal rather than hindering the reader's understanding.) Trying to keep track of the poem's more than five hundred characters often produces frustration, as do attempts to sort out thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Florentine politics and the city-state's conflicts with the papacy. However Dante lived during a time when categorization—the orderly arrangement of knowledge—bordered on the obsessional, and his Divine Comedy is no exception. Indeed, it is a prime example of this drive to order. Therefore, its very structure helps the reader navigate and make sense of its complex world.

The poem is divided into three books or cantiche. Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise. Each book is then broken down into canti or what we might call chapters: Inferno has thirty-four, Purgatory has thirty-three, and Paradise has thirty-three. There are, then, a total of one hundred canti, and each volume has thirty-three chapters. (The first one in Inferno introduces the entire poem and thus in a sense stands alone.) This ordering system is a prime example of medieval Christian numerology, the science of attributing religious significance to numerals. In this system, three is the ideal number, since it represents the Holy Trinity: God the Father, Christ the Son, and the Holy Spirit. One hundred, the number of canti in the poem, is the square of the perfect number 10. One hundred represents the belief that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are individuals yet indivisible from one another: 100 = 1+0 + 0=1. This simple example only hints at the extent to which Divine Comedy uses such tight structures to produce meaning and to deliver its message of salvation.

Inferno: Layout and Journey
Dante's Hell is cone-shaped and points to the center of the earth. Dante divided his Hellish cone into a hierarchy, an orderly structure that he split into two major divisions, upper and lower Hell. Three rivers circle around three levels of the cone. As they circle, the rivers Acheron, Phlegethon, and Styx flow down to the pit at the bottom of Hell. There they become part of Cocytus, the ice lake which imprisons Lucifer.

Through this region (Hell) Dante sent his alter ego, the Pilgrim, and Virgil the Pilgrim's guide. Virgil was one of the greatest classical Latin poets. He wrote the Aeneid, which starts after the Trojan War and tells the story of Aeneas, the Trojan hero who founded Rome—at least according to Virgil. In general, Virgil represents Reason, a quality the Pilgrim needs to get him through the first two regions, Hell and Purgatory. When he reaches the third, Paradise, his faith largely takes over, although he is guided there, too.

Upper Hell has a vestibule (an entry way) and nine levels around and down which the Pilgrim and Virgil travel. Upper Hell's five levels correspond to five of Christianity's seven deadly sins: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, and wrath. Lower Hell holds the shades of those guilty of the other two deadly sins, envy and pride. Starting at the top, at ground level, and working downward, the divisions of upper Hell are: 1) the Vestibule, which holds the indecisive, including the angels who sided neither with God nor with Lucifer during his revolt; 2) Circle One, Limbo, where those, like Virgil and other Classical poets and philosophers, who lived before Christ's birth, are; 3) Circle Two, the lustful; 4) Circle Three, the gluttons; 5) Circle Four, the greedy and wasteful; 6) Circle Five, the wrathful. Here stands the City of Dis, which separates the upper and lower regions.

Circle Six begins lower Hell and is the level on which the heretics are punished. Circle Seven punishes three groups of sinners: those who were violent against their neighbors, against themselves (the suicides), and those who were violent against art, nature, and God. The Great Barrier, a sheer drop, separates Circle Seven from the rest of lower Hell, and Dante and Virgil descend to it on the back of Geryon, a fantastical, multicolored beast with the face of a man and a scorpion's tail. Circle Eight is divided into ten concentric circles. These circles are called "evil ditches," or malebolge, and are crossed by seven bridges, which radiate out from the center like a spokes on a wheel. All seven bridges are broken over the sixth ditch. Into each ditch, or bolgia, are placed sinners: 1) panderers and seducers; 2) flatterers; 3) those guilty of simony, of selling pardons for sins; 4) sorcerers; 5) barrators, those who provoked discord or division; 6) hypocrites; 7) thieves; 8) deceivers; 9) others who provoked discord or division; 10) falsifiers.

Circle Nine, the last, holds the worst group of sinners: traitors to family, country, guests, and lords. This vast ice lake, Cocytus, is divided into four Circles: 1) Caina; after Cain, the Bible's first murderer; 2) Antenora, after Antenor, the treasonous Trojan warrior; 3) Ptolomea, either after the biblical Ptolemy, who had his father-in-law and two sons killed; or after Ptolemy XII, the Egyptian king who invited Pompey to his kingdom and then killed him; 4) Judecca, after Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Christ. At the center of this lake stands three-headed, six-winged Lucifer,... » Complete Divine Comedy Summary