“Abandon hope, all ye who enter here”. No, not to this blog (though it’s a consideration) but to the entrance to Hell, this inscription appearing on the gates thereof in the early part of Dante Alighieri’s Inferno, Book I of his Divine Comedy (Divina Commedia). Thus begins an epic journey through the Inferno (Hell), the Purgatorio (Purgatory), and the Paradiso (Heaven). And we are talking epic here: 14,233 lines of terza rima (three-line rhyming scheme in the pattern aba bcb cdc ded etc), begun in 1308 and completed in 1320, a year before Dante’s death. It is widely recognised as one of the greatest works of world literature; indeed, in T S Eliot’s estimation, “Dante and Shakespeare divide the world”.
The narrative describes Dante’s travels through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, allegorically representing the soul’s journey towards God. He is accompanied throughout by a guide: in Hell and Purgatory it’s the great Roman poet, Virgil, whilst in Heaven it’s Beatrice, thought to be Dante’s “ideal woman” and based on a real Florentine woman he had admired from a distance.
In Hell, Virgil shows Dante the poor souls suffering a punishment directly related to the nature of their sin. This is contrapasso (“suffer the opposite”): for example, the punishment for soothsayers and fortune-tellers (who had tried to see the future by forbidden means) is to walk with their heads on backwards so that they cannot see what is ahead. The lustful, who allowed their passions to blow them astray, are now constantly buffeted back and forth by stormy winds. Such poetic justice is similarly meted out to the gluttonous and greedy, the wrathful and violent, the fraudulent and hypocritical, and to the heretics and blasphemers. Many real personages of Dante’s time are named and shamed, damned by their incontinence in life. It paid to live an upright life in Dante’s day!
Purgatory is conceived as a terraced mountain to climb, representing spiritual growth. Dante discusses the nature of sin, vice and virtue, and moral issues prevalent in the Church and politics of the day. The 13th century was a rich time for medieval theology and philosophy, and Dante draws heavily from the body of work produced by philosophers such as Siger of Brabant, Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas.
The third and final part, Heaven, is depicted as a series of concentric spheres around Earth, and here, Beatrice takes over the role of guide from Virgil, representing divine knowledge superseding human reason. Here we encounter the cardinal virtues, such as prudence, fortitude, justice and temperance, and ever upward, Dante finally has a vision of the ultimate and in a flash of understanding that he cannot express, he sees God himself.
If you’re imagining that a reading of the Divine Comedy could be a great adventure, you’d be right, but if you’re baulking at its length, an excellent alternative is to seek out the audio book narrated by (of all people) John Cleese, who does a smashing job of narrating this great poem.
