Dantes Inferno - Book Report/Review Example

Book Summary and Analysis of Dante's Inferno Inferno (which is Hell in English) is the first part of Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, which consists of three parts. The Divine Comedy is one of the most significant and brilliant poems in Italian literature of all times. In fact, it is one of the first literary works written in modern standard Italian language. This masterpiece is the main reason why Dante, who is both the author and principal character of the Divine Comedy, is often referred to as the father of literary Italian language. In this essay I will summarize and analyze the first part of Divine Comedy. The Divine Comedy was written in the first half of the 14th century in Northern Italy and was initially titled as Comedy, but few decades later it was called a Divine Comedy by Giovanni Boccaccio, a prominent poet of Italian Renaissance. And since then Dante's poem, which paints a vivid picture of his imaginative journey to the center of the universe through the nine circles of Hell, is known worldwide by the name of the Divine Comedy. It was written by Dante Alighieri at times when there was no unity between various provinces of the present-day Italy. Back in the 14th century Italy was divided into a number of kingdoms that became states at variance. Italian peninsula, which was once the stronghold of the powerful Roman Empire, became a scene for internecine contentions. Despite numerous controversies between different kingdoms and independent city-states that were located on the territory the present-day Italy, a great number of them prospered in the Middle Ages due to successful trade activity, which, in turn, was a fertile ground for intensive development of art and meaningful intellectual dialogue on the Italian peninsula, where such a unique cultural phenomenon as Renaissance originated from and ran like a wildfire all over Europe. It has to be noted that Dante created his Comedy shortly before the Renaissance period started and became the forerunner of this cultural movement. His masterpiece proved to be a touchstone of poetry and literature in what is known today as Italian language. Dante's creative endeavor that got the name of the Divine Comedy had a huge effect on the development of Italian literary language. Its value in addressing some of the systematic and structural challenges within the context of the evolution of both Italian language and Italian people as an ethnic and national unity cannot be overstated. Before Dante wrote his brilliant poem in a sophisticated and neat Italian, this language was not organized in such a perfect way in terms of a written form. At that time people in Italy spoke numerous dialects of the present-day Italian language, and every kingdom or independent city-state on Italian peninsula had their own dialects, which were often strikingly different from one another in many ways. Thus, as a matter of fact, the history of Italian nation can be roughly divided into the period that preceded the creation of the Divine Comedy and the period that followed it. Dante lived in one of the wealthiest independent city-states of Italian peninsula, Florence, where he was later exiled from for his controversial political activity as a result of his involvement in the conflict between the Florentine clans of Guelphs and Ghibellines. For a considerable span of time Dante had been going through the hard times being forced to wander from town to town in search of a place to settle down. Dante never got back to Florence and took his banishment heavily. He found creative escape from his tribulations in his Divine Comedy, which became the work of his life and was aligned with it in a way. Within the context of the plot of the Divine Comedy Dante, the narrator and one of the protagonists of the poem in one, got lost in the woods all alone. It must be noted that Dante got lost in the middle of his journey, which, according to the commentaries available in the Norton Critical Edition, might be a metaphor that literally meant the midway of Dante's life. It is a widely known fact that Dante wrote the Divine Comedy when he was around 35 years old, in other words, he was the same age as the protagonist of his poem bearing the same name. It was a dark and ominous place, which Dante described with the following words, "Death could scarce be more bitter than that place!"1 Unaware of his exact location the personage of Dante wandered through the darkness and met a deceased Roman poet, Virgil, who persuaded Dante to embark on a weird journey underground, to the center of the Earth. Guided by Virgil, Dante went through the nine circles of Hell like Limbo, Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Anger, Heresy, Violence, Fraud and Treachery, which he writes about in colorful detail in the first part of his Divine Comedy titled as Inferno. Virgil guided Dante through the gates of Hell where they met an old man with white hair who warned them in much agitation: Woe to you depraved souls! Bury here and forever all hope of Paradise: I come to lead you to other shore, into eternal dark, into fire and ice. And you who are living yet, I say begone from these who are dead.2 Those words inspired Dante with misgiving and awe and made him hesitate whether he had to descend to the underworld at all, but Virgil told him that if Beatrice dared to pay him a visit in Hell, then there was absolutely nothing to be scared about for someone who was not a hopeless sinner. Eventually curiosity got the best of Dante and he yielded to it. Entering the gates Dante and Virgil found themselves in the so-called vestibule of Hell, which is separated from it by the river called Acheron. Having crossed the river by the ferry Dante found himself in the underworld, where souls punished for the sins committed during their lifetime burst upon the eye of the astounded poet. It was the first circle of Hell, which was called Limbo. Limbo was a place where Virgil got after his death. Virgil explained Dante that there was a place in Hell for every demented sinner to suffer for their wrong-doings. It was a place where libertines and opportunists endured sufferings for their thoughts and deeds. When Virgil was alive he denied God and was an atheist, and that was one of the reasons why he got to Limbo after his death. Once Dante and Virgil descended to Limbo they heard the screams of the tormented sinners straightaway.3 According to Virgil, every circle of Hell had different punishment for the souls that were unhappy enough to get there. Every punishment, in turn, had a strong resemblance with the sins that sinners committed during their life on Earth. As a matter of fact, the first circle of Hell seems to be one of the most controversial circles out of nine as it is the place where free-thinkers reside as well. The punishment of free-thinkers might be a sarcasm that reflects Dante's own attitude towards the manners and mores of mediaeval times when atheists were persecuted for their views by the powerful institution of Catholic Church that seemed to be almighty for Dante's contemporaries. In the second circle of Hell, which was called Lust, Dante encountered souls punished for being filthy during their lifetime. There he saw some epoch-making persons like Helen of Troy or Cleopatra, for instance. They were tormented for having succumbed to temptation of pursuing simple pleasures of their flesh instead of taking care of their souls during their lives. In the third circle called Gluttony Dante saw souls of gluttons being guarded by an ugly and merciless creature Cerberus. Here Dante met Ciacco, who told him of the victory of Black Guelphs over White Guelphs that was to come in Florence as a result of which Dante was banished from the city for good. But as the souls in the third circle were forced o lie as a punishment for their selfishness in their previous life, Dante neglected the prophecy. In the fourth circle of Hell, which was called Greed, Dante learned that those who were obsessed with material wealth during their lifetime on Earth would come to this place to be punished in a quite bizarre way that made them lose their individuality being absorbed in a collective activity that they could not benefit from. To Dante's surprise he saw souls that used to be "popes and cardinals"4 during their life on Earth. In the fifth circle, Anger, Dante met Filippo Argenti, who was a well-known Florentine politician who represented the clan of Black Guelphs that banished Dante from Florence. In the sixth circle called Heresy Dante met the philosophers, such as Epicurean, for instance, who were considered to be heretics by Dante's contemporaries. The seventh circle of Hell called Violence contained those who committed violence against either themselves or other people. It was divided into three rings guarded by Minotaur. Dante saw a great number of Florentine noblemen in each of the rings, especially in the one where souls were punished for usury, among other violent sins. In the eighth circle of Hell, which was called Fraud, the souls punished for hypocrisy, treachery or roguery resided. This circle was divided into ten ditches that were made of stone. There were a huge number of sinners there, as if Dante wanted to say that our life is full of hypocrites. In the ninth circle called Treachery turned out to be quite a similar place as the previous circle but reserved for characters from the Bible. When Virgil and Dante passed the last circle of Hell and got to the center of the Earth they found out that it was the place where Satan was forced to stay eternally. All in all, the journey to the center of Earth through the nine circles of Hell to the darkest corners of torture became a catharsis for Dante and made him realize that absolutely nobody could escape the punishment for one's wrong-doings, even after death. Bibliography Alighieri, Dante. Inferno. Translated by Michael Palma. New York: W. W. Norton & Company Inc., 2008. Read More