"The Inferno – The Perfect Picture of Hell" by Erl D

The Inferno is the first part of a 14^th century epic poem Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri. It tells of Dante’s journey through nine circles of Hell which is then continued by Purgatorio and Paradiso. From the names of the sequels, one can already tell that The Inferno is not written in the English language. The Inferno was written in the Italian. While it would have been ideal for me to read the original text and interpret the story from the original, my inability to read and understand Italian hinders me. Thus, I read an English translation of The Inferno by a modern reader, John Ciardi.

           

The story starts when Dante (a poet) realizes that somehow in his seventy years of his life he has strayed from the “True Way” and into the “Dark Wood of Error” and makes an effort to return to his path. However, the Three Beasts of Worldliness hinder his way and drive him back into the “Dark Wood”. He is then greeted by Virgil (a Roman Poet) who explains that he has been sent by Beatrice (the Divine Symbol of Love) to guide Dante in his journey to the “True Way.” Virgil elaborates that Dante cannot take a direct path of going through the Three Beasts to achieve salvation, but instead has to embark on a more arduous journey which includes passage through all nine circles of Hell in order to complete a portion of his path, the Recognition of Sin.

           

During his journey, Dante learns of the experiences of the sinners from each area of the nine circles which determined their placement in Hell and learns of the sufferings as a result of their sins. In order to give his readers a vivid experience of Hell, Dante uses imagery which stimulates the senses of auditory, touch, olfaction, and especially sight. Included in the imagery of sight, Dante uses the light and dark to symbolize the holiness and the sacrilegious. Dante describes Hell as a place devoid of light which is also a place without virtue and purity. Ciardi praises Dante’s grotesque imagery and follows suit in his translation of The Inferno in using such imagery to describe scenes in Hell. As a result, there are many cases where his readers become sick from such disgusting descriptions (thankfully I am not included in this group).

           

A theme related to the horrible scenes of Hell is that people who are condemned in Hell do not deserve sympathy but deserve eternal damnation. In the beginning of his journey, Dante’s innocence inclined him to sympathize with many of the damned whom spend eternity suffering greatly for their sins done in the mundane world. Virgil rebukes Dante for his misplaced pity numerous times and shows approval when Dante chastised the sinners. Virgil reasons that God’s judgment placed the sinners in their place in Hell and that people should not be dissatisfied with that judgment.

           

Most often, the sinners whom Dante and Virgil see in their journey are significant figures from myths, stories, tragedies, epics, and history itself. This profuse use of allusions allow the reader to make many more connections with the story and better sympathize with each of the sinners. Furthermore, more likely, than not, each of these sinners only committed one sin which had a transient effect on whoever was wronged but suffers eternally in Hell. This leads to another theme that it only takes one sin to become a sinner worth punishing in Hell.

           

Throughout the book, Dante uses many epithets to directly characterize his characters without having to separately, explicitly state his characterization. This is most easily seen with the protective and wise Virgil. Virgil is the book is often called “beloved master”, “Guide”, “all-knowing guide”, and “poet.” Each of the epithets are used to emphasize a characteristic that Dante wishes to highlight at certain moments to affect the reader’s viewpoint of a subject.

           

As a translator of the part of the Divine Comedy, Ciardi organized the lines of the poem in stanzas of three lines with an A-B-A rhyme scheme. While his translation required many enjambments from stanza to stanza and line to line, the rhyme scheme of A-B-A is present throughout the whole Inferno.

Overall, the Inferno by Dante Alighieri that’s translated by John Ciardi is worth reading, especially if one cannot read Italian and is interested looking at how people in the 14^th century viewed Hell and how it influenced their actions. This piece of literature may also be interesting to those interested in the possible punishments one may face in Hell. Hopefully none of us go there!