Dante's Inferno

This blog is about one of my all-time favorite books and, in my opinion, hands down one of the greatest books ever written: Infierno (or The Inferno) by Dante Alighieri.

A book that has been held in critical acclaim from its first publication to present day, it is without argument the most influential book on the Western perception of Hell. While Dante took many of facets of his work from early Christian Apocalypses, he melded them together with other modern perceptions in such a way that only a true master of language could possibly attain. The first book in his trilogy “The Divine Comedy,” in which Dante travels through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, finally seeing God in person, it is by far the most well-known and well-read. What truly fascinates me is just how flawless he managed to make his work, because of the sheer layout of the ‘Divine Comedy.’ It is divided into three books, each book has 33 cantos (chapters), each canto is divided into 33 stanzas, and each stanza is three lines, following an ABACDC rhyme scheme, and each book ends with the word ‘stars.’ When I first learned that, I was dumbfounded, and truly awestruck that a man was capable of doing this six centuries after he had died.

The Inferno follows Dante through Hell itself, lead by the poet Roman Virgil, whom in real life Dante greatly admired. Hell exists as an inverted cylinder, sinking further and further into the Earth, until the very center is found, with Satan himself trapped. Each level holds punishments worse than the next, each for sinners of greater and greater sin. The circles of Hell hold sinners as follows: virtuous pagans and unbaptized children, the lustful, the gluttonous, hoarders and wasters, the wrathful, the heretics, the violent, simple fraud, and finally compound fraud. The greatest sin is reserved for those who are treacherous to their benefactors. The three greatest sinners of humanity: Cassius, Brutus, and Judas, are forever chewed by Satan, who is himself trapped for all eternity in a lake of frozen ice.

The punishments Dante doles out to sinners is an ironic twist on their sin. Those who were gluttons in life spend their death bloated and sickened, those who were wrathful drag giant boulders behind them while attacking tooth and claw others who share their fate.