The Inferno

The Inferno – Dante Alighieri

In the first stage of a three-part journey with the ultimate goal of reaching heaven, Dante must descend through all the levels of hell. The poet Virgil serves as his guide. His journey begins normally enough at the base of a hill, but to get to hell, he must go underground. Dante and Virgil descend through the nine levels of hell, some of which are sub-divided into as many as seven layers. Each level is reserved for a particular type of sin, the least offensive at the top levels of hell and the most offensive punished at the very center of the earth. The punishment inversely corresponds to the sin, so, for example, those who sinned by denying God and their love for God are forever frozen in hell because their hearts were so cold in life. Various demons and imaginative, disgusting punishments sprinkle the levels of hell, and Dante encounters all of them right down to Satan himself at the very center of the earth where his journey through hell finally ends.

Although I wouldn’t consider “The Inferno” to be light or easy reading, it had it’s moments and each canto went by fairly quickly. The poem is written as 33 cantos, and each canto is around 120-150 lines long, and I had to read it one canto at a time because I don’t often get the opportunity to devote a huge, uninterrupted chunk of time to reading. In the version I had, each canto also began with a brief summary of what would happen, and ended with notes about the specific references within the canto. Again, this did not make for easy reading, but it really helped to explain the poem, especially since I’m not so familiar with Virgil or 13th century Italian politics. What else helped me was a tip I got from some English class somewhere – when reading poetry, read to the punctuation, not the line breaks – so instead of pausing at the end of each line, pause at the commas and periods so you get full thoughts instead of just rhyming words.

Overall, I enjoyed “The Inferno.” It was incredibly imaginative and read like a classic epic poem. It was a good mix of Aristotelian philosophy, Ptolemaic astronomy, and Greek mythology with a heavy dose of Christian morality. Dante was very informed, very strong in his opinions, and very clever in his rendering of hell. It felt a bit dated though since his conception of hell applied specifically to his time in Italy, so I kept thinking how interesting all the updated versions might be. Instead of Dante’s Inferno, we could have the Buddhist Inferno or Paris Hilton’s Inferno or something like that. If you’re up for it, I would definitely recommend reading it, but it’s not a book you can just pick up and put down after a few minutes. It needs undivided attention.