Inferno: A guide through Dante’s vision of hell
As we scale the first few decades of the 21st century, the percentage of the world identifying with any religious belief is steadily declining. In the Western world, Christianity is in decline due to a convergence of factors. Primarily, advances in scientific understanding have shed light on some subjects previously explained by the will of an all-powerful deity. Secular ideologies are nothing new; since the 19th century, doubt cast over religion has led to dramatic changes in Western culture and, notably, the literature and art we create.
When Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1440, the new technology was first used to produce indulgences for the Church. At this point in our history, the fear of God and the prospect of Hell guided human morality and proved handy in maintaining the status quo, wherein monarchies presided over harshly unequal societies. Naturally, almost all literary output and visual art pieces were inspired by the Christian belief system in the West.
From a modern perspective, it is easy to disregard the Bible as an obsolete text fraught with damaging ideologies and inaccuracies. However, such religious tomes are still important in understanding the development of theology and philosophy over time. For instance, Darwinism put a bit of a dampener on the Book of Genesis, but there is still plenty we can learn from the didactic story of Adam and Eve.
With this in mind, secular readers shouldn’t necessarily banish all religious texts from their regimen. What a shame it would be for an aspiring young poet to miss out on The Divine Comedy, arguably one of the finest poetic works in history, simply because of its religious connexions. Dante Alighieri’s epic narrative poem is a cornerstone of Italian literature and remains entirely relevant in the 21st century thanks to its artistically compelling examination of moral and philosophical issues.
The Divine Comedy, begun in 1308 and finished circa 1321, is divided into three main parts: Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso. Of the three, Inferno is by far the most popular, reflecting humankind’s natural intrigue with all things morbid and shocking. Dante began with Inferno (Italian for Hell), giving his readers an unsettlingly vivid depiction of eternal damnation.
Across 34 cantos, Dante embarks on his journey through Hell, imagining it with nine concentric circles, each attached to a different degree of sin. At the very beginning, Dante awakens to discover that he has fallen into Limbo, the first circle of Hell, where those unbaptised yet without sin might find themselves. Here, he finds the ancient Roman poet Virgil, who guides him through the deeper levels of the abyss.
Here are the nine circles of Hell as Dante envisaged in Inferno.
A guide through Dante’s Inferno:
- First Circle – Limbo: The shallowest circle is reserved primarily for virtuous non-Christians and unbaptised infants. Though they are not tormented, they suffer from eternal separation from God. Besides his guide, Virgil, Dante encounters several other historical figures, including Homer and Socrates.
- Second Circle – Lust: Any souls who were overcome by lust in life are punished in the second ring, blown about by a violent, never-ending storm. The wild tempest symbolises the lack of control the residents exhibited in life. Famous residents include Cleopatra and Helen of Troy.
- Third Circle – Gluttony: Once again, Dante depicts a punishment by poor weather conditions. Here, gluttonous souls are punished by being forced to wallow in a repulsive slush produced by relentless foul, icy rain. Cerberus, the mythical three-headed dog, guards this ring.
- Fourth Circle – Greed: Those who hoard or squandered wealth in life are condemned to push heavy weights in opposite directions, failing to make any progress as they crash into each other. This punishment reflects the futility and selfishness of their sinful ways.
- Fifth Circle – Wrath and Sullenness: Those guilty of wrath fight one another on the surface of the River Styx. Meanwhile, the sullen lay beneath the water, choking on the silt. These punishments symbolise the dangerous consequences uncontrolled rage and passive aggression might also bring about in life.
- Sixth Circle – Heresy: Heretics lie at the heart of Hell in burning tombs, representing their denial of religious doctrines and the resulting spiritual demise.
- Seventh Circle – Violence: This level is divided into three distinct rings: in the outer ring, those violent against people and property are submerged in Phlegethon, a river of boiling blood; in the central ring, suicidal souls are transformed into thorny bushes, which are fed upon by mythical Harpies; in the inner ring, blasphemers and sodomites suffer in a desert of flaming sand while fire rains down from the sky.
- Eighth Circle – Fraud: Also known as Malebolge, this circle is divided into ten ditches (Bolgia), each containing different types of fraudsters, including panderers, flatterers, and sorcerers. Punishment here can involve all manner of unspeakable torment, including immersion in human excrement or being whipped raw by demons.
- Ninth Circle – Treachery: The lowest circle of Hell is actually not so hot; it is a frozen lake called Cocytus. Traitors are enveloped by the ice with a degree of punishment decided by the severity of treason. Satan sits at the very core, feeding eternally on familiar inmates such as Judas Iscariot, Brutus, and Cassius.
