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Questions About Inferno

by Dante Alighieri

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Answered Questions (21)

As this book is very old, so i was wondering is it tough to read and understand? I mean the Vocab and all.

Edward That's kind of a tricky question. Most people will read it in translation from the original 13th-century Italian, so the vocabulary will vary in diffiâ€¦m´Ç°ù±ðThat's kind of a tricky question. Most people will read it in translation from the original 13th-century Italian, so the vocabulary will vary in difficulty depending on the translators' goals. In general, any reasonably recent translation will be quite intelligible to most readers. I have seen bright teenagers handle it without any trouble at all, in terms of their ability to comprehend the vocab.

The real challenge is the historical and theological background of Inferno, which is complex. Dante was a high-ranking career politician in Florence, and was subsequently exiled from there, stripped of his property and forced to flee for his life. He was an intensely political man, extremely well educated, and he was nursing grudges that show up in the poem. He makes a lot of references to political events that most modern readers won't understand. And also, he spends a lot of time talking about medieval Roman Catholic theology, applying it to the story at hand. Again, modern readers tend to have trouble.

The best way to ensure a good experience with this poem is for you to choose a translation that is intended to be readable, with good notes on the text. I cut my teeth on the poem with the translation by Mark Musa, which you can find in The Portable Dante. It has fairly good explanatory notes.

A more recent, and possibly better choice, especially if you like parallel text translations, is the Inferno translation by Durling and Martinez, which has excellent notes. It's easily my favorite of those that are commonly available, and I have had glowing reviews of it from friends who wanted an accessible introduction to the poem.(less)

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Is this book supposed to lead us on a better path to God so we don't end up in Hell?

Edward Not really.

I mean, yes, obviously the Comedy as a whole is religious in character. It certainly engages with themes of sin, penance, salvation and redâ€¦m´Ç°ù±ðNot really.

I mean, yes, obviously the Comedy as a whole is religious in character. It certainly engages with themes of sin, penance, salvation and redemption. But that's not all it is, and a lot of the stuff that shows up in it is arguably at odds with the advice Dante the Pilgrim gives his readers. So it's "about" religion and how to live a righteous life, but that's not all it is about.

The book is supremely political, although all the political figures in it are now historical figures, and some of them are really obscure if you don't already know a lot about late 13th/early 14th century Italian history. Many of the characters in Hell are people Dante personally disliked, or political opponents of his (Dante was a career politician in Florence, and when things went badly for his political party, he was exiled from the city and all his property was seized).

Others are people he didn't have anything against, but they were famous at the time for assorted sins--consider them the equivalent of Kim Kardashian and her sex tape. Is it a book about medieval Italian politics and pop culture? Sort of, but again, that's not all it is.

And then there's the whole thing with Beatrice, who was this woman that Dante had a crush on in real life before she died of the pox. Beatrice-the-character is an idealization of the real woman, Bice Donati, who never had any interest in him in real life. But in the poem, she loves him enough to dispatch a guide to take him through hell and into heaven. There's all sorts of emotional baggage at work there, some of it kinda creepy, some of it kinda sad. The Comedy is "about" this relationship, too

And there's Virgil, who was a real poet that Dante considered the beginning of the same literary tradition that he was writing in. Picking this guy to be Dante's guide through Hell and Purgatory makes it a story about being an author, and also a story about literary influence.

Saying that the book is supposed to instruct the reader about how to lead a righteous life is . . . true, but also missing the point. Really great literature usually is about everything and nothing.

I mean, really, Dante tells you what it's about in the first lines.

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,
che la diritta via era smaritta.

In the middle of the road of our life, I came back to myself in a dark forest, where the straight way was lost.

In the story, this is literally true--he starts out lost in a forest, literally and also figuratively. And then the rest of the book is about how he got out of the woods, again literally and also figuratively.(less)

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Why is he obsessed with hell?

Zee Dante was disgusted with politicians and powerful people of his time and found the way to punish them - very successfuly and for all times. They may hâ€¦m´Ç°ù±ðDante was disgusted with politicians and powerful people of his time and found the way to punish them - very successfuly and for all times. They may have ruled during his lifetime and made his life miserable, but the poetry brands them as evil forever. Danteâ€™s muse and love interest who died young and innocent appears in Paradise, the third part of the Divine Comedy. Keep in mind that in the 13th century Italy religion was huge, bigger than today, although sometimes I wonder about some contemporary Americans.(less)

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Can Dante's Divine Comedy (Inferno, specifically) may be considered renaissance literature? Why yes, or why not?

Edward Yes, of course it is. It's early Renaissance literature, as the Italian Renaissance was the earliest phase of the general Renaissance movement that swâ€¦m´Ç°ù±ðYes, of course it is. It's early Renaissance literature, as the Italian Renaissance was the earliest phase of the general Renaissance movement that swept Western Europe. Depending whom you cite as authority on the matter, the Italian Renaissance started in the late 1200s or early 1300s. Dante was born in 1265, so either way, he was writing at the very dawn of the Renaissance period.

Characteristics of Dante's work that support its classification as early Renaissance versus late medieval: include (1) that the Comedy is full of references to classical antiquity, in particular Vergil's Aeneid; (2) that Inferno explicitly attempts to rehabilitate the pagan philosophers and poets on whose work Dante (and later, the entire Renaissance) drew so heavily by placing them in Limbo, which, although part of hell, comes across as a sort of deficient heaven designed to contain pre-Christian pagan souls; (3) that Dante's work is explicitly political and urban, in a way that simply doesn't appear in medieval literature (compare, say, Chaucer, who actually was born AFTER Dante's death, in his reluctance to directly criticize political leaders in his work, as well as in his work's focus on rural/village life), because the medieval period was characterized by de-urbanization after the dissolution of the Roman Empire, which first began to reverse itself in the Italian city-states.(less)

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Why do you suppose Dante decided to place those who came before Christ in Hell when they would never have had a chance to prevent themselves from ending up there? If these people never had the chance to worship Christ, I don't understand how they can be condemned to such a place.

Kumari de Silva It wasn't up to Dante, he was describing the Church doctrine that existed in his day. Given the deep respect he has for the writers and philosophers hâ€¦m´Ç°ù±ðIt wasn't up to Dante, he was describing the Church doctrine that existed in his day. Given the deep respect he has for the writers and philosophers he meets from ancient Rome and Greece he might well have been arguing for the defense, i.e. maybe he agreed with us: that they did NOT deserve to be in Hell. As I understand it, eventually the church changed it's official view on this situation. (less)

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