Next to these may be mentioned Cicero’s Vision of Scipio, of which Chaucer says:—
Chapiters seven it had, of Heaven, and Hell, And Earthe, and soules that therein do dwell.
Then follow the popular legends which were current in Dante’s age; an age when the end of all things was thought to be near at hand, and the wonders of the invisible world had laid fast hold on the imaginations of men. Prominent among these is the “Vision of Frate Albercio,” who calls himself “the humblest servant of the servants of the Lord”; and who
Saw in dreame at point-devyse Heaven, Earthe, Hell, and Paradyse.
This vision was written in Latin in the latter half of the twelfth century, and contains a description of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, with its Seven Heavens. It is for the most part a tedious tale, and bears evident marks of having been written by a friar of some monastery, when the afternoon sun was shining into his sleepy eyes. He seems, however, to have looked upon his own work with a not unfavorable opinion; for he concludes the Epistle Introductory with the words of St. John: “If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book; and if any man shall take away from these things, God shall take away his part from the good things written in this book.”
—from his notes to his translation of The Divine Comedy (1909)
CARL GUSTAV JUNG
A man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions has never overcome them.
—from Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1963)
Questions
1. Can the Inferno be read with pleasure by someone who does not believe in God and an afterlife?
2. . Are all the punishments meted out to Dante’s sinners just? Would you modify or change entirely any one of them?
3. Consider the Farinata episode: Do you see any disparity between the attitudes of Dante the character and even Dante the poet, on the one hand, and Dante the depicter of divine retribution, on the other? Do you see mixed emotions elsewhere in the Inferno?
4. Where would you place certain recent American public figures whom you consider sinners?
5. Professor Bondanella in endnote 3 to canto II says, “One of the most important lessons Dante the Pilgrim needs to learn in Hell is that God’s punishments are perfectly just. Human pity for the damned is a sure sign of spiritual weakness.” Do you agree? What episodes would you cite to support your position?
For Further Reading
Bio-Criticism
Anderson, William. Dante the Maker. London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980. The most comprehensive biography of Dante, with extensive information about the poet’s life and times.
Auerbach, Erich. Dante, Poet of the Secular World. 1929. Translated by Ralph Manheim. Reprint: Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961. A classic by the greatest literary historian of the twentieth century; still required reading.
Bergin, Thomas G. Dante. New York: Orion Press, 1965. An older overview that still rewards examination.
Hollander, Robert. Dante: A Life in Works. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001. Perhaps the best book to approach Dante’s life through his writings, with important discussions about the critical problems that have occupied Dante’s critics from the early commentators to the present; if you are going to read one book on Dante, make it this one.
Lewis, R. W. B. Dante: A Penguin Life. New York: Penguin Putnam, 2001. A brief discussion of Dante by one of America’s foremost biographers.
Quinones, Ricardo J. Dante Alighieri. Revised edition. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1998. An excellent and very readable examination of Dante’s life and works with useful bibliography and information on translations of the works.
Criticism of Dante’s Divine Comedy with Special Reference to the Inferno
Bloom, Harold, ed. Dante’s “Divine Comedy”: Modern Critical Interpretations. New York: Chelsea House, 1987. This anthology contains essays by different hands, including some of the most influential interpreters of Dante’s poem, such as Ernst Robert Cur tius, Erich Auerbach, and Charles Singleton.
Caesar, Michael, ed. Dante: The Critical Heritage, 1314(?)-1870. London: Routledge, 1989. An exhaustive collection of historically important essays on Dante, with which the reader can trace the changing views on the poet and his masterpiece from the first commentaries of the fourteenth century to the nineteenth century. Critics include important figures from Italy, England, France, Germany, and the United States.
Clements, Robert J., ed. American Critical Essays on “The Divine Comedy.” New York: New York University Press, 1967. One of the best essay collections on Dante, reprinting classic essays by major Dante scholars working in America.
Freccero, John, ed. Dante: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs. NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1965. Contains historically important essays by such diverse critics as Bruno Nardi, Gianfranco Con tini, Luigi Pirandello, and Leo Spitzer.
Gallagher, Joseph. A Modern Reader’s Guide to “The Divine Comedy.” Liguori, MO: Liguori Publications, 1999 (original title: To Hell and Back with Dante, 1996). A canto-by-canto discussion of the poem, useful for the student reader.
Giamatti, A. Bartlett, ed. Dante in America: The First Two Centuries. Binghamton, NY: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, State University of New York at Binghamton, 1983. A fascinating anthology of essays linked to the birth of American interest in Dante generated by the writings of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Charles Eliot Norton, and James Russell Lowell, plus such more recent voices as T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and other twentieth-century Dante scholars.
Hawkins, Peter S., and Rachel Jacoff, eds. The Poets’ Dante: Twentieth-Century Responses. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001. An eloquent tribute to Dante’s impact upon working contemporary poets, including essays by Eugenio Montale, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, William Butler Yeats, W. H. Auden, and many others.
Iannucci, Amilcare A., ed. Dante: Contemporary Perspectives. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997. A recent collection of fine scholarly essays written expressly for this volume on a variety of Dante topics.
Jacoff, Rachel, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Dante. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Useful introduction by a variety of experts to the major problems of Dante criticism, arranged by topic: Dante and the Bible, Dante and the Classical Poets, Dante and Florence, and so forth. The essays were written expressly for this volume and are aimed at the student.
Lansing, Richard, ed. The Dante Encyclopedia. New York: Garland Publishing, 2000. Indispensable English-language reference to every imaginable topic, character, and problem in Dante’s poem, containing nearly 1,000 entries by 144 contributors from twelve countries.
Lee, Joe. Dante for Beginners. New York: Writers and Readers Publishing, 2001. The amusing cartoon drawings and sense of humor in this student-oriented guide do not detract from its excellent canto-by-canto discussions of The Divine Comedy.
Mandelbaum, Allen, Anthony Oldcorn, and Charles Ross, eds. Lectura Dantis: Inferno—A Canto-by-Canto Commentary. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. Thirty-four interpretations of the Inferno, one for each canto, by academics from a variety of perspectives, suitable for the more advanced reader.
Mazzotta, Giuseppe, ed. Critical Essays on Dante. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1991. A collection of pieces by different authors, particularly useful for its reprinting of a number of the early medieval and Renaissance commentaries on the poem.
Selected Internet Sites for Dante and Dante’s Inferno
I. Danteworlds
danteworlds.lamc.utexas.edu
This site is one of the most attractive and useful internet sites available and is devoted entirely to the Inferno. Besides an audio component of the most important lines of the poem read in Italian, a video component presents virtually all famous illustrations of the work from medieval manuscripts through Botticelli, William Blake, and Gustave Doré to the present and are arranged by canto. Major themes are outlined, important characters and i
mages are discussed, and study questions for each canto are provided. Additional materials for Purgatorio and Paradiso are in preparation. The site is supported by the University of Texas and operated by Dante scholar Guy Raffa.
II. Digital Dante
dante.ilt.columbia.edu/new/index.html
This website includes the entire Longfellow translation of Dante’s The Divine Comedy and permits the visitor to compare it to the original Italian or to a more recent translation. In addition, the site includes other works by Dante, a search engine, a resource for illustrations of Dante’s work by famous artists such as Sandro Botticelli, Salvador Dali, among others, along with numerous useful links for the student and scholar.
a The rays of the sun.
b The “forest savage” of line 5.
c Springtime.
d Even.
e Without.
f Toward the darkness.
g Aeneas.
h Troy.
i The mountain of line 13.
j Money.
k God.
l This present sinful condition and etemal damnation.
m Difficult passage or journey.
n God.
o Dante the Pilgrim.
p Make known.
q The Empyrean, or Heaven proper.
r The Virgin Mary.
s Both physical and spiritual death.
t Blessed.
u The “city dolent” is the city of woe; “eternal dole” is eternal pain; and the “people lost” are those condemned to Hell.
v Etemal.
w both difficult to understand and harsh.
x Wicked (from the Italian cattivo).
y Mercy, or pity.
z White with age.
aa Predatory bird, often with red eyes; hence, of red, glowing like coals.
ab Adam.
ac jacob.
ad Broad-bladed sword used in Dante’s time.
ae That of poet.
af Stream.
ag Falconlike.
ah Pain or suffering.
ai Divine power.
aj Cursed.
ak Ladies of old and knights.
al with blood.
am The city of Ravenna.
an With strength or intensity.
ao Clerics or priests.
ap Myopic, or short-sighted in how they spent and saved.
aq Foolish.
ar Spring.
as Dreary, sorry.
at Sprinkled with mud.
au Many times—no precise figure is intended.
av The first circle, or Limbo.
aw Harmful.
ax Contempt.
ay Prayers.
az Cheerful, happy.
ba Less angry, wrathful.
bb Angry, wrathful.
bc This is Beatrice.
bd Always, ever.
be Love.
bf The grieving forest of the suicides.
bg Predatory birds (the cinders are like the eyes of such birds).
bh Insults, acts of defiance, offenses.
bi Brook, rivulet.
bj Rim, edge.
bk Wash, bathe.
bl Before.
bm God.
bn The dark woods of Canto I.
bo A tree that bears tart sorb apples.
bp Prophecy.
bq The peasant his spade.
br Formerly (archaic).
bs Boats.
bt Heraldic representation of a coat of arms.
bu Pregnant.
bv Recurrent chill or fit of shivering.
bw I have seen this person before.
bx Excrement, dung (merda in the original Italian; literally, “shit‘).
by Head.
bz The next bolgia.
ca The Church.
cb The papacy.
cc With speed or haste.
cd Marsh, swamp.
ce Gladly, preferably.
cf Beggar.
cg Hindrance.
ch Members of an army’s advance guard.
ci Human being, creature.
cj Also (archaic).
ck Really.
cl Brave sparrowhawk.
cm Young hare.
cn In addition to incense, the three substances are, respectively, balsam, a balm, and a gum resin used in perfumes and incense.
co Shroud.
cp Also (archaic).
cq The penis.
cr Of his own penis.
cs Peasant.
ct At dusk (Longfellow translates la zanzara as “gnat” rather than “mosquito”).
cu Fireflies.
cv Italian.
cw People living in the Romagna area of Italy.
cx Augurs, used for boring holes in wood.
cy Perhaps (archaic).
cz Even.
da Confronting, opposing.
db Sword’s edge.
dc Tunic armor made from chain mail.
dd Burden.
de Consumprive.
df Always, ever.
dg Reward.
dh Enterprise or adventure.
di In that direction.
dj From side to side.
dk Figuratively. the throat; literally, armor over the throat.
dl Opened up.
dm Cage for hawks when molting, often in a tower.
dn Flagging, tiring.
do Tusks, sharp teeth.
dp Grieving, full of pain and sorrow.
dq A thing that brings disgrace.
dr Hell, the kingdom of pain and sorrow.
ds Fierce.
dt Canopy.
du Christ.
dv Once.
The Inferno (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Page 31