Hell in Dante's Divine Comedy

Hell in the divine Comedy and Aeneid

In Dante’s Divine Comedy, Dante incorporates Virgil’s portrayal of Hades (In The Aeneid) into his poem, and similarities between the Inferno and Hades can be drawn, however Dante wasn’t attempting to duplicate Virgil’s works. Although the Hell depicted in Dante’s Inferno is essentially based on the literary construction of the underworld found in Virgil’s Aeneid, in their particulars the two kingdoms are quite different. Virgil’s underworld is largely undifferentiated, and Aeneas walks through it without taking any particular notice of the landscape or the quality of suffering that takes place among the dead. Aeneas’ first concern is with the fate of his friends, then with meeting his father once more: the philosophical and religious significance of sin and death is nothing to him, and there is no moral judgement implied in the fate of the departed. In Dante’s Inferno, on the other hand, there is a systematic differentiation of the landscape, and each progressively lower circle of hell implies a deadlier sin. The quality of punishment given out to the sinners is thus increased as Dante’s descend, and Dante’s compassion for the dead lessens as he moves downward to the bottom of hell.

Virgil’s underworld is really an extension of the natural world, being entered through a cave mouth at the end of a beach at the Euboian settlement of Cumae, renowned as the dwelling of Sibyl, it is she who permits his passage to the realm below: The cavern was profound, wide-mouthed and huge, Rough underfoot, defended by dark pool

And gloomy forest. Overhead, flying things Could never take their way, such deathly

Exhalations rose from the black gorge Into the dome of heaven.(Fitzgerald, p168)

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...eping and over three chins Dripped tears and bloody foam. In each mouth he crushed A sinner with his teeth as with a heckle and thus kept Three of them in pain…(Sinclair, p. 423)

As if to balance his references to the Christian and classical worlds, Dante places Cassius and Brutus alongside Judas in the mouth of Satan, as all are betrayers. Dante’s hell is a closed system, with no escape for the damned, whereas Virgil’s open underworld encompasses purgatory and paradise as well.

Bibliography:

· Fitzgerald, Robert. The Aeneid. Translation of Virgil’s “The Aeneid”, New York: Random House, 1983.

· Sinclair, John D. The Divine Comedy of Dante: Vol: Inferno. New York: Oxford University Press, 1961.

· Payton, Rodney J. A Modern Readers Guide to Dante’s Inferno. New York: P. Lang, 1992.

· Virgil, The Aeneid.

· Dante, The Divine Comedy.