Dantes Divine Comedy
In Dante's Divine Comedy, Dante incorporates Virgil's portrayal of Hades from 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 judgment 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.
For example, there are periodic challenges to the living as they walk through hell, and the boatman warns Virgil, "It breaks eternal law for the Stygian craft to carry living bodies. The main purpose of Aeneas' visit to the underworld is to see his father, and the encounter with Anchises is one of the high points of the Aeneid. Dante's hell is a closed system, with no escape for the damned, whereas Virgil's open underworld encompasses purgatory and paradise as well. In comparison with Virgil's experience, Dante's journey is an epic in itself, and the arrangement and order of Dante's journey is an epic in itself, and the arrangement and order of Dante's hell is complex enough to justify a study in itself. (885) 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. Satan is a bizarre figure who is more pagan than Christian in his appearance as of Dante had to resort to primitive images to convey the ugliness of the anti-Christ. At one point, Dante is so moved that he faints: While the one spirit said this the other wept so that for pity I swooned as in death and dropped like a dead body. Satan has three heads and needs all of them to inflict pain on his victims: With six eyes he was weeping and over three chins Dripped tears and bloody foam. But all Virgil's dead are condemned to the same hopeless fate, and it is only the memory of life, which torments them. Conscious of this, Aeneas apologizes to Dido for deserting her at the behest of the gods; unfortunately, Dido repudiates him and joins Sychaeus, her former mate. Most important of all, however, is the knowledge that the living Aeneas will go on to found Rome and create a line of Caesars. Dante's fear is calmed greatly when he learns that his companion is to be the great Latin poet who had himself described the underworld in his own epic: Art thou then that Virgil, that fountain which pours forth so rich a stream of speech? O glory and light of other poets, let the long study and great love that has made me search thy volume avail me. There are many similarities between Virgil and Dante's hells.
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Acceptance Essays
