There is a saying that states, “If you tell yourself a lie long enough, it becomes your truth.” There is a startling amount of accuracy to this statement. After reading selections from Dante Alighieri's La Divina Commedia: Inferno, I realized that many people derive their idea of Hell from Dante and not the Bible. Dante narrates his trip through the 9 levels of Hell, describing what he sees and who is there. Where the Bible describes Hell as the lake of fire, Dante actually portrays most of the torment to be a result of ice. Of course, it is a possibility that the presence of ice holds a double meaning as an allegory for the coldness of the sinner's hearts.
Dante's work holds three of the four central concepts: humanism, individualism, and historical self-consciousness. There is a huge emphasis on humanism in the Inferno, the reader sees many great philosophers and writers in Limbo such as Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, and Homer. Limbo is the in between area for the noble that died before Jesus died for salvation. Dante expresses his high opinion of this group of people and even categorizes himself with them.
Another element of humanism is asking questions, trying to get to the bottom of things. Dante is essentially doing that by writing the book, by exploring a topic that no writer dared to explore yet. Date also asks questions of his guide and “master” Vergil. Through Dante's questions, the reader is able to better understand what is going on since the majority of the poem is just descriptive of what Dante is seeing. One of the most haunting questions is asked at the Vestibule of Hell, “Master, what gnaws at them so hideously their lamentation stuns the very air?” Virgil's reply is, “They have no hope of death” (110).
I do believe that in this dim narrative there is still a flicker of hope. A great example would be the first three stanzas of the poem, which state, “Midway in our life's journey, I went astray/ from the straight road and woke to find myself/ alone in a dark wood. How shall I say/ what wood that was! I never saw so drear,/ so rank, so arduous a wilderness!/ Its very memory give a shape to fear./ Death could scarce be more bitter than that place!/ But since it came to good, I will recount all that I found revealed there by God's grace” (100). As human beings we have all sinned and probably all committed one of sins that Dante describes: being neither hot nor cold; lust; gluttony; hoarding or wasting; being wrathful or sullen; being a heretic; committing violence towards neighbor, self, or God, committing simple fraud; or committing compound fraud. Does this mean that we are all damned to Hell? No, according to Dante, he too was once in the “dark wood.” If there is true remorse and repentance, a soul can be pardoned from Hell because of Jesus' great sacrifice.
There is also an emphasis on individualism, but in a different way that we are used to seeing it in Renaissance texts. Instead of celebrating the versatility and virtuosity of the human being, the reader sees each individual made the choice to be there. Essentially, the individual even chooses their own punishment because the punishment is inversely related to the sin. For example, the lustful are trapped in whirlwinds just out of their lover's reach. Some of the punishments are so horrible and grotesque that Dante faints at the sight of them.
Lastly, there is also a sense of historical self-consciousness that can be seen in the Inferno. Since it was written in the early 1300s, it would be considered a transitional piece between the dark ages and the Renaissance. I believe that Dante knew that he was setting the stage for a very special time period and he wanted to give people the tools to get there. And he certainly did it well, his beautifully written poem was extremely long and constructed by a complex rhyming scheme. I don't think that he wanted readers to take his narrative as a truth, but he instead wanted people to realize that there are consequences for their actions. I think Dante also wanted people's curiosity to be spiked, so they could investigate the truth for themselves. It doesn't get any more Renaissance than that!
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