Divine Comedy - Definition and Overview

This article is about the epic poem. For information about the band of the same name, see The Divine Comedy (band).

The Divine Comedy (in Italian "Comedia" or "Commedia", later christened "Divina" by Giovanni Boccaccio), written by Dante Alighieri between 1265 and his death in 1321, is widely considered the greatest epic poem of Italian literature, and one of the greatest of world literature.

Structure and story

The Divine Comedy is composed of three canticas (volumes), Inferno (Hell), Purgatorio (Purgatory), and Paradiso (Paradise), composed respectively of 34, 33, and 33 cantos. The verse scheme used, terza rima, is the hendecasyllable (line of eleven syllables), with the lines composing tercets according to the rhyme scheme ABA BCB CDC...YZY Z.

The poet tells in the first person his travel through the three realms of the dead, lasting during Holy Week in the spring of 1300. His guide through Hell and Purgatory is the Latin poet Virgil and the guide through Paradise is Beatrice, Dante's ideal of a perfect woman.

Inferno

The poem begins with the author lost in a dark wood and assailed by allegorical forces of darkness and spiritual calamity (Canto 1). He is rescued by Virgil at the intercession of Beatrice (Canto 2), and he and Virgil journey to the underworld.

Dante and Virgil enter the Gate of Hell and first past through the Vestibule of the Futile, containing those whose actions and characters were so insignificant and indecisive that they do not deserve to be counted in Heaven or Hell: they are forever chasing after a penant and being stung on by wasps (Canto 3). They are ferried across the river Acheron to Hell proper.

Virgil guides Dante through the nine circles of Hell. The circles are concentric, with each new one representing further and further evil, culminating in the center of the earth, where Satan is held bound. Each circle's sin is punished in a different way. The nine circles are:

1. Limbo - the unbaptized and virtuous pagans, who though not sinful did not accept Christ. They are not punished in an active sense, but are merely unable to reach Heaven and denied God's presence for eternity (Canto 4).
   
   All of the condemned proper are judged by Minos, who sentences each soul to one of the lower circles. These are structured according to the classical (Aristotelian) conception of virtue and vice, so that they are grouped into sins of incontinence, sins of pride, and sins of malice. The sins of incontinence--weakness in controlling ones desires and natural urges, are the mildest among them, and correspondingly appear first:
2. Those overcome by lust, trapped in a violent storm (Canto 5).
3. Gluttons, facedown in the mud and gnawed apart by Cerberus (Canto 6).
4. The greedy who hoarded possessions and the indulgent who squandered them, forced to push giant rocks in opposite directions (Canto 7).
5. The wrathful, fighting each other in the swamplike water of the river Styx, and the slothful, trapped beneath the water (Canto 8).
   
   The lower parts of hell are contained within the walls of the city of Dis which is itself surrounded by the river Styx (Canto 9). These are the active rather than passive sins; first are the sins of pride or violence:
6. Heretics, trapped in flaming tombs (Cantos 10-11).
7. The violent (Cantos 12-17). These are divided into three rings:
   1. The violent against people and property, in a river of boiling blood (Canto 12).
   2. The violent against themselves - suicides and profligates, turned into thorny black trees(Canto 13). (uniquely among the dead, they will not be bodily reincarnated after the final judgment. Where others will continue to occupy Hell (and Heaven) in corporeal rather than merely spiritual form, suicides--because they alienated themselves from their own body--spend eternity in the body of a tree with their own corpse hanging from the limbs.)
   3. The violent against God, Art, and Nature - blasphemers, sodomites, usurers, in a desert where fire rains from the sky (Canto 14-17).
      
      The last two circles of hell punish sins of malice, or sins of the intellect: that is, sins involving conscious fraud or treachery, and can only be reached by descending a vast cliff into the "pit" of Hell:
8. The fraudulent, those guilty of deliberate, knowing evil, are located in a circle named Malebolge (Cantos 18-30). This is divided into ten ditches:
   1. Panderers and Seducers, walking forever in opposite directions (Canto 18).
   2. Flatterers, steeped in human excrement (Canto 18).
   3. Those who committed simony, placed headfirst in holes with flames burning on the soles of their feet (Canto 19).
   4. Sorcerers and false prophets, their heads twisted so they can only see what is behind them (Canto 20).
   5. Corrupt politicians, trapped in a river of burning pitch (Canto 21-22).
   6. Hypocrites, made to wear gold cloaks lined with lead (Canto 23).
   7. Thieves, chased by venomous snakes (Canto 24-25).
   8. Fraudulent advisors, trapped in flames (Cantos 26-27).
   9. Sowers of discord, whose bodies are ripped apart, then heal, only to be attacked again (Canto 28-29).
   10. Falsifiers, i.e. alchemists, forgers, counterfeiters, perjurers, and impersonators. Each group is punished in a different way (Cantos 29-30).
       The passage to the ninth circle contains classical and Biblical giants (Canto 31).
       
9. Traitors, distinguished from the "merely" fraudulent in that their acts involve knowingly and deliberately betraying others, are frozen in a lake of ice (Cantos 32-34). Each group of traitors is encased in ice to a different height, ranging from only the waist down to complete immersion. This is divided into four concentric zones:
   1. Traitors to relatives (Canto 32).
   2. Traitors to political entities (party, city, country) (Canto 32-33), Count Ugolino.
   3. Traitors to guests (Canto 33).
   4. Traitors to their lords and benefactors (Canto 34). This is the harshest section of Hell, containing Satan who is eternally consuming the bodies of Brutus and Cassius and the head of Judas Iscariot.

Purgatorio

The two then ascend out of the undergloom to the Mountain of Purgatory on the far side of the world (in Dante's time, it was believed that Hell existed underneath Jerusalem). The initial parts of the book describe the shore of Purgatory (Cantos 1-2) and its slopes, where those who were excommunicated, those lazy to repent and those who repented just before death await their turn to ascend the mountain (Cantos 3-6). Finally, there is a valley housing European rulers and the door to Purgatory (Cantos 7-9).

From there, Virgil guides Dante Pilgrim through the seven terraces of Purgatory. These correspond to the seven deadly sins, with each terrace causing the purging of a particular sin in an appropriate manner:

1. Pride, by carrying a heavy weight tied around the neck that disables the wearer from standing up straight (Cantos 10-12).
2. Envy, by having one's eyes sewn shut and wearing clothing that makes the soul indistinguishable from the ground (Cantos 13-15).
3. Wrath, by walking around in acrid smoke (Cantos 15-17).
4. Sloth, by continually running (Cantos 18-19).
5. Avarice, by lying face-down on the ground (Cantos 19-21).
6. Gluttony, by abstaining from any food or drink (Cantos 22-24).
7. Lust, by burning in a flaming river (Cantos 25-27).

The ascension of terraces culminates at the summit, which is the Garden of Eden (Cantos 28-33). Virgil, as a pagan, is a permanent denizen of Limbo, the first circle of Hell; thus he may not enter Paradise. Beatrice then becomes the second guide, (accompanied by an extravagant procession) as well as a redemptrix and mediatrix. Beatrice is modeled after Beatrice Portinari, a woman Dante loved in childhood and who passed away in 1290, leaving Dante grief-stricken. She is exemplified in La Vita Nuova ("The New Life") and is further beatified.

Paradiso

After an initial ascension (Canto 1), Beatrice guides Dante Pilgrim through the nine spheres of Heaven. These are concentric and spherical, similar to Aristotelian and Ptolemaic cosmology. The addition of a moral dimension means that a soul that has reached Paradise stops at the level applicable to it. The nine spheres are:

1. The moon - those who abandoned their vows (Cantos 2-5).
2. Mercury - those who did good out of a desire for fame (Cantos 5-7).
3. Venus - those who did good out of love (Cantos 8-9).
4. The sun - souls of the wise (Cantos 10-14).
5. Mars - those who fought for Christianity (Cantos 14-18).
6. Jupiter - those who personified justice (Cantos 18-20).
7. Saturn - the contemplative (Cantos 21-22).
8. The stars - the blessed (Cantos 22-27). Here, Dante is tested on Faith by Saint Peter, Hope by Saint James and Love by Saint John.
9. The Prime Mover - angels (Cantos 27-29).

From here, Dante ascends to a substance beyond physical existence called the Empyrean Heaven (Cantos 30-33). Here he comes face-to-face with God himself and is granted understanding of the Divine and of human nature.

Thematic concerns

The Divine Comedy can be described simply as an allegory: each canto, and the episodes therein, can contain many alternate meanings. Dante's allegory, however, is more complex and in explaining how to read the poem (see the "Letter to Can Grande della Scala") he outlines other levels of meaning besides the allegory: the historical, the moral, the literal, and the anagogical.

The structure of the poem is likewise quite complex, with mathematical and numerological patterns arching throughout the work: particularly 3's and 9's. What has made the poem as great as it is are its particularly human qualities: Dante's skillful delineation of the characters he encounters in Hell, Purgatory and Paradise, his bitter denunciations of Florentine and Italian politics, and his powerful poetic imagination. The fact that he uses real characters, according to Dorothy Sayers in her introduction to her translation of "L'Inferno," allows him the freedom of not having to involve the reader in description and allows him to "[make] room in his poem for the discussion of a great many subjects of the utmost importance, thus widening its range and increasing its variety."

Response and criticism

The work was not always so well-regarded. After being recognized as a masterpiece in the first centuries after its publication, the work was largely ignored during the Enlightenment, only to be "rediscovered" by the romantic writers of the nineteenth century. Later authors as disparate as William Blake, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Samuel Beckett and James Joyce have drawn on it for inspiration; modern poets, such as Seamus Heaney, Robert Pinsky and William Merwin, have given us powerful translations of all or parts of the book.

Gustave Doré's illustrations for the Comedy are widely used in modern editions. Salvador Dalí also composed a cycle of paintings from each section of the Commedia. Contemporary artist, Jennifer Strange offers dynamic charcoal drawings inspired by the Inferno and Purgatory in the "Commedia" Inspired by Dante (http://inspiredbydante.home.att.net).

Project Dante (http://www.dante.nova.priv.pl), of the Polish artist Dariusz Nowak-Nova are an example of like Internet and the new technologies can contribute to the formation of a various approach to the literature and a new way to conceive the book.

The heavy metal band Iced Earth paid tribute to the poem with an epic song of their own, entitled "Dante's Inferno". Clocking in at 16 minutes and 29 seconds and featuring long instrumental sections, abrupt tempo changes and a pseudo-Gregorian chant choir, the song is found on the 1995 album Burnt Offerings.

The band Symphony X also pays tribute to the poem with an epic song of their own, entitled "The Divine Wings of Tragedy", although it contains some passages of famous classical music, such as The Planets by Gustav Holst.

Thom Yorke from the pop band Radiohead has also referenced Dante's Inferno as a recurring source of inspiration for his music and many references to the poem can be found in the band's lyrics.

American composer Robert W. Smith also composed a four part symphony titled after and based on the poem.

Authors Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle wrote a modern adaptation, reworking it into a sci-fi/fantasy novel about a book author who dies during a fan convention and finds himself in Hell. He escapes, with the aid of various characters he meets along the way (including Benito Mussolini and Billy the Kid). Eventually, he decides to stay behind in Hell and convince its inhabitants that they can be allowed to leave if they repent and learn enough about themselves.

Original copies

Only two known copies of the original manuscript still remain. One is in Milan and the other one is owned by the Asiatic Society of Bombay. In 1930, Mussolini offered the Society a million pounds sterling for the book, but was flatly refused.

See also

• Devil May Cry, a video game loosely based on the book with characters alluding to The Divine Comedy
• Dante Alighieri
• Dante Sparda, the protagonist of the video game Devil May Cry
• Abandon All Hope, a contemporary retelling of Dante's Inferno where a young woman requests permission from God to travel to Hell.