Dante begins by waking in a wood. He does not know how he got there or where he is. He looks up a mountain to see the sun rising over it. He has a sense that he should go up there, but he is suddenly confronted by savage beasts, blocking his way. Into his terror appears a man who causes the beasts to disappear. Answering Dante's question as to his identity, he reveals himself to be the long dead Virgil, author of the Aenid, one of Dante's inspirational texts. Virgil is there to lead Dante in a journey through the Inferno, or Hell. Dante wonders how it is that he, a mere ordinary mortal, should be allowed to see what only those like Paul and ancient heroes have seen. Virgil replies that it is at the special request of Dante's deceased love, Beatrice. They have Divine permission and protection to travel the depths.
After crossing the river Acheron on Charon's ferry with the other souls, they enter the first of nine layers of concentric circles which move ever downward towards the deepest depths of Hell. This is called Limbo. As a virtuous, but nevertheless unbaptized man, it is the home of Virgil. Here we find other pre-Christians, like Socrates and Plato, as well as many other Greeks, and unbaptized infants. Their eternal fate is simply knowing they missed out on salvation. It is not a place of torment, but of hopelessness.
The next circle is for those guilty of lust. These souls, notably Paolo and Francesca and Helen of Troy, are swept up in a storm gale. Unable to control themselves in life, they are unable to control their movement in Hell. Around and around they fly. It is in this level they encounter Minos, the judge of which level a soul will descend.
After escaping Cerberus, the mythical three-headed dog that guards hell, they descend to level three, the place of the gluttonous. It is here that the souls, who were never satisfied in life, endure a punishing rain of sewage. They are subjected to an overabundance, a punishment fitting for those who couldn't get enough. It is here that Dante meets Ciacco, a fellow Florentine, who tells Dante of the future of his beloved city. One quirk of Hell is that the damned can see the future, but not the present. They know what will happen, but are never sure of what is happening.
They continue onto the fourth circle where the avaricious find their home. No one is directly named here, but as they push their boulders at one another, they jeer and mock each other. As they sought more and more material goods in life, so they are eternally bound to their boulders, a manifestation of their greed, eternally striving in their Sisyphean task.
In the fifth circle they find both those condemned by wrath and the sullen. It is in this level that they encounter the river, Styx. On its banks the wrathful are forever fighting, never winning their battles. They are confronted by Filippo Argenti, a personal enemy of Dante's. He is eventually ripped to pieces by the others at the river. Of course, he will not die, but will be reconstructed to repeat this process again. Such is the justice of Hell. They cross the river with Phlegyas as their ferryman to encounter the high walls of Dis. This walls seems to separate the levels of sin. Beyond this wall are those who more actively engaged in their sin. At this point they encounter the demons who guard the gate and will not let them pass. They must wait for an angel to appear to open the gates for them.
Now in the sixth level, Dante meets more fellow Florentines including Farinata, a part of the warring political factions. He also meets his friend's father. They have a discussion as to whether or not the man's son is already dead. This is where we come to understand the dead are destined to never know the present. These heretics, who denied the existence of a soul, are condemned to reside forever in burning graves, suffering bodily pain.
As they descend into the seventh circle, the home of the violent, they pass the tomb of Pope Anastasius just on the inner rim of the sixth circle. While not a heretic, he did try to compromise too much, thereby not really upholding the truth.
The seventh level is divided into three parts according to whom the violence was done against - self, others, or God. Those who did violence to God are further divided into the blasphemers, Sodomites, and usurers. This circle is guarded by the Minotaur and the Centaurs guard the banks of its river, Phlegethon. In this boiling river are the murderers who are shot at as they try to escape. They spilled blood and will now spend an eternity bathing in it. Notables in this area include Alexander the Great and Attila the Hun. One can presume Hitler would find his home here if Dante lived today. Those who committed violence against themselves are entombed as living trees. Like trees, their branches break, but as humans, they bleed. Those who hurt themselves are to be constantly hurt by others. Dante meets a famous poet, Pierre della Vigna, who killed himself when imprisoned and subjected to slander. This needless death of an honorable man and the conflation of the created with the creator, causes some sympathy from Dante, but ultimately these are below the murders of others. The violent against God suffer rains of fire on a burning desert landscape. The blasphemers are forced to lay flat on the burning sand. It recalls Moses, removing his sandals because he is standing on holy ground. These sprawl on the ground, naked and exposed as they tried to hide the truth. The Sodomites must run continually through the burning fire. Dante alludes to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah with the raining sulfur. This violence against God denies the natural order of man. Virgil summons the monster Geryon by throwing Dante's belt over a cliff and flies on his back to the eighth circle. On the way, they fly over the usurers, those who demanded unreasonable interest. This is considered violence against God because it attacks the honest value of labor, causing others to be caught in a trap they could not get out of no matter how hard they worked.
Dante has slowed down considerably in his writing by this point of the story. He has ceased describing one level per canto and now devotes several cantos to each area. I believe this is a deliberate way to closely examine those ways in which certain sins most offend a holy God.
We are halfway through the poem, but only to the eighth circle, that of the fraudulent. Like the violent, Dante give separate areas to different types of fraud. This level has ten ditches or what Dante calls "malebolges" - evil pouches, connected by bridges. They cannot go in the ditches, but they can look down into them.
The first is filled with the seducers and panderers. These run back and forth, whipped by demons.
The second is full of the flatterers and excrement, a physical representation of what they heaped on their listeners.
The third pouch holds the Simonists, "those who use church offices for profiteering," who rest upside down in baptismal founts, their feet burned according to the depth of their sin. The irony is that they turned their office upside down. In addition, instead of washing other's feet, their own feet are burned. But the most dramatic part of this poem is that not only is a pope found here, but he prophesies that the current pope will join him!
The diviners and astrologers fill the fourth hole. Punished for thinking they could foretell the future, their heads are screwed on backwards. They are forced to forever walk the circumference of the circle, never knowing what lies in their path.
The fifth ditch contains the grafters or those who bribed public officials. They resided in a river of boiling tar, guarded by a group of demons united in their buffoonery and mutual contempt. This is public service gone horribly awry.
In the sixth chasm, we find the hypocrites. Once again, we see religious figures forced to pay for their sins. These wear heavy lead cloaks that are guilded on the outside, a manifestation of their hypocrisy. These weighted down souls, traverse the ditch ever-so-slowly, while trampling across a naked Caiaphas, crucified to the ground.
We see the thieves in the next hole. As they are constantly bit by serpents, they transfigure into the snakes, then they burst into flames, only to regenerate and have the process repeated. Their transmission speaks to their lack of boundaries in life, taking what wasn't theirs.
The eighth ditch contains the fraudulent counselors. Here we find Ulysses and Diomedes. These are constantly engulfed in a flame. Interestingly, Dante gets Ulysses to tell the tale of how he died. Discontented at home, he convinces men to join him in a journey beyond the sea. Although this tale is original to Dante, it was so popular, it made it into the Ulysses' mythology. We also hear of the corruption of the still alive Pope Boniface.
Next to last, we find the sowers of discord. Here resides Mohammed. Since they divided peoples and nations in life, their bodies are slashed and dismembered.
"The last of the Evil Pouches is stuffed full of confidence men, quacks, charlatans, imposters, and assorted clever artists of various bunk. They are the dry rot of a people. Afflicted with this or that lingering and nauseating disease, in Hell they now sit propped against one another like pans in an over, or they scratch themselves ceaselessly like flea-ridden dogs." (p. 503) Like the entire circle, this pouch is further divided into those who falsified metals, persons, coins, and words.
Finally they descend to the final, ninth circle of Hell. Here they find the traitors. Once again, there are different levels as Dante and Virgil approach the final level of the Inferno. This final circle is also subdivided. He first encounters the very dull-witted giants. These thought to subvert God by the strength of their raw power. Here, they are left with little brains and their power does them no good. Here we also find the traitors to family, homeland, guests, and benefactors. Once again, many religious figures permeate this level. In one particularly gruesome encounter, Dante finds a man chewing on the brains of an archbishop who betrayed him and his family. Soon, Dante notices a wind blowing and the temperature dropping.
At the very bottom level, we encounter Satan, chomping on Brutus, Judas, and Cassius, the most infamous of all traitors. Satan himself is biggest traitor of the all. He is encased in ice from his waist down and his wings flap furiously as he tries to free himself. It is this motion that creates the wind and keeps the ice frozen. Dante eschews the usual picture of Hell as burning hot. He believes light and warmth belong to God. Eventually, by climbing down Satan's hide and then reversing themselves as they pass through the center of the earth, they emerge in the Southern hemisphere, ready to venture onto the next epic, that of Purgatory.
The imagination of Dante is stunning, but one of the most shocking part is his inclusion of real people. He has definitely not only passed judgment on them and placed them in Hell, he has decided exactly which part they will inhabit. It's fascinating how he pulls no punches, even condemning those still alive and in power. It's also interesting that he makes no distinction between mythical figures and real human beings. Ulysses occupies the same universe as Virgil and Socrates, along with the Minotaur and the Cyclops.
It would definitely be helpful to be familiar with all the people he references in order to understand the nuances of their placement. However, it's still a good book for the imagery and the meaning behind the ironic punishments. Clearly, Dante has put a lot of thought into this. I really believe he is onto something. Obviously, we cannot know what Hell is like, but Dante engages in a vivid thought experiment asking us to journey with him into the Inferno.
I got a lot of use out of this chart. It does an excellent job of describing each level and who resides therein.
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