Dante's Hell, Purgatory and Paradise

THERE are three factors that make a classic a book that you don't read for the first time. First, great literature - novel, poem or play - is never anything but a philosophy expressed in images or an allegory. And in a classic, the philosophy disappears into the images. A work cannot endure without ideas, without the sub-text telling us what it is all about. And this secret fusion of experience and thought, of life and reflection on the meaning of life is what makes a great work.

Second, literature is not about language alone but about life - life as a journey, that is, to be in flux, in change, in metamorphosis with all the uncertainties that accompany each stage of the journey. Because even in the most ordered of lives, there are always moments when established structures collapse, the contingencies must be examined. Why this and that, this woman or that job, and so on. To put it in a nutshell, the work must consider not what it means "to be" something or someone, but what it means "not to be".

Third, any work must be judged by its aesthetic considerations, that is, by the play of language and style. This does not mean that moral or political factors are entirely ruled out from framing critical judgments. It does mean, however, that anyone who cares about literature has to consider the expressive and evocative power of the work before going on to condemn it on moral or political grounds. And the converse also applies. That is, the aesthetic weaknesses of a work ought not to be overlooked or denied just because it happens to embody moral or political sentiments with which you happen to agree. (This point has to be emphasised because something called "political correctness" happens to be the guiding principle in assessing the worth of a piece of art these days).

Put the three together, and the near-unanimous choice would be Dante Alighieri's "The Divine Comedy", apart from, of course, Shakespeare, with whom Dante has often been compared by some European critics. The "Comedy", the largest lyrical poem of all time with its 100 cantos, is set in a prose narrative to tell the story of Dante's love for the mysterious Beatrice that closes with the picture of her "what hath never be said of an woman." The poem takes the form of a spiritual journey in which Dante is led by Virgil - the poet of Rome and her Empire become the symbol of human philosophy based on reason - through three stages - "Hell" or "Inferno" (Book I), "Purgatory" (Book 2) and "Paradise" (Book 3). Beatrice, the symbol of divine science based on the Revelation, takes the poet through nine moving spheres of paradise to an anticipation of the Vision of God and with that to a deeper understanding of the man within. Considered as one of the most enduring of Christian allegories, the great narrative poem explores the relationship that Dante believed existed between God, as Creator of the Universe and the human being as a creature of God.

At the very start, Dante tells the reader how the poem has to be read:

The subject of this work must first be considered in the literal sense, then be considered allegorically. The subject of the work, taken in its literal sense, is simply the state of souls after death for the movement of the whole work hinges on this. But if the work has to be taken allegorically, its subject is how man by the exercise of his free will justly merits reward or punishment.

So, then, in this our life on earth, as in life after death, man gets what he chooses, and reward and punishment are meted out with perfect justice. And justice is done so that punishment is proportionate to the sin, as reward is to intrinsic goodness. Given the limitations of space, the poem will be read here primarily as an allegory with the story inter-weaved into it.

The journey begins with a descent into Hell; and in Hell Dante sets himself to deal with the reality of God who has all the attributes of a person and is known to be "Justice, Power, Wisdom and Love". God expresses himself in particular acts of judgments upon his creatures and these judgments are represented in the plan of punishments and moral logic that underlines the geography of Hell. The layout of Hell, as of all three sections of the poem, is based on the number scheme of 3, 7, 9, 10, almost in mathematical terms. The primary division of 3, is raised by a sub-division to 7, then by additions of 9 and lastly to 10. This is an almost Aristotelean classification which defines Hell as:

1. Incontinence which includes all wrong actions due to inadequate control of natural appetites or desires;

2. Brutishness or Bestiality, that is, characteristic of morbid states in what is naturally repulsive becomes attractive;

3. Fraud or Violence, which consists of those evil actions which involve the use of the specifically human attributes of reason.

Dante does not enter Hell until canto III, when the damned souls have to be ferried across the river Acheron by Charon, the classical ferryman of the dead:

They press to pass the river, for the fire

Of Heavenly justice stings and spurs them so

That all their fear is changed into desire.

The core of Dante's philosophical sub-text in "Inferno" concerns the debasement of human nature through its enslavement to the appetites. Of these, it is the sin of avarice that has particular significance: it is "economic activity" that is the major cause of social unrest and injustice. In cantos VI to IX which deal with greed, he describes human beings who have lost their dignity and reduced themselves to moral ciphers, wallowing in the slime of Hell and pursuing infinitely repetitive and monotonous tasks.

Against this background, Dante introduces seven cantos dealing with deliberate acts of violence in which philosophy, fantasy and the tragic facts of history are all of equal importance. In Canto XI, Dante provides a philosophical exposition of Hell and the nature of sin. He observes that the failure of heretics to perceive and pursue the truth will lead to the living death of the tombs in which heretics are confined. Moreover, while the pain of sin applies to the whole of Hell, it is illustrated very fully in the circles of violence that brings with it both injury and injustice to the individual and "the human inhabitants of the landscape of Hell."

In its tragic aspects, the art of these cantos lies in revealing the minute degree of misadjustment that can lead a mind - even at its most sophisticated - to be divided against itself. "I made myself unjust against any own just self". Dante completes the elegiac picture of the wasteland on the plane of history and fact.

But complete as the picture of Hell is, Dante cannot leave us alone in this melancholy and mythic world any more than he could leave the question of sin as a metaphysical analysis. So he takes us to the "Purgatory". The protagonist, escaping from the "eternal prison" of Hell is one who goes seeking for liberty and, when, after he has climbed Mount Purgatory he is about to enter Earthly Paradise, Dante declares him to be "free, upright and whole".

What does freedom mean? The "Inferno" had shown us what it does not mean: freedom is not the breaking of bonds, still less irresponsibility towards others. Yet, the disciplines of Purgation are not restrictions but the means by which the individual places himself in relation to other beings - both divine and human. Law becomes love, and freedom is finally seen as residing in that interdependence of all beings which is fully enjoyed in "Paradise".

The journey finally ends in Paradise that is best described in some of the verses:

From top to base, across from arm to arm

bright lights were moving, sparkling brilliantly

As they would meet and pass each other's glow.

Theology gives way to politics and the circular becomes the linear:

so, constellated in the depths of Mars,

these rays of light crossed in the holy sign

which quadrants make when joining in a circle.

The straight line now becomes a circle again towards the end:

no sooner had the eaves of my eyes drunk

within those waters, than the river turned

from its straight course to a circumference.

And finally the image of the concept of God as both the centre and circumference of the same circle:

In figure of a circle this light spreads,

and is so vast that its circumference

would be too loose a belt to bind the sun.

And all this leads to the final vision of the Godhead with three circles clearly seen in the same circumference:

Within its deathless clarity of substance

I saw the Great Light shine into three circles

in three clear colours bound in one same space

And finally the Pilgrim's wish to square the circle is granted for one brief moment, even though it is impossible to do:

but, like a wheel in perfect balance turning,

I felt my will and my desire impelled...

by the Love that moves the sun and the other stars.

"The Divine Comedy" is too complex to allow any reviewer to claim (or for the reader to assume) that it can be compressed into a review of this kind. But the essential fact of this epic poem is that it is full of relevant arguments even today and your time would be well spent in going through it at leisure.

RAVI VYAS

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Features
Previous : District to Delhi
Next     : The 'Mona Lisa' of literature