Dante and Virgil’s Journey

Inferno opens on the evening of fine Friday within the year 1300. Traveling thru a dark wood, Dante Alighieri has lost his course and now wanders fearfully through the forest. The sun shines down on a mountain above him, and he attempts to climb up to it but finds his way blocked via three beasts”a leopard, a lion, and a she-wolf. Frightened and helpless, Dante returns to the darkish wood. Here he encounters the ghost of Virgil, the gorgeous Roman poet, who has come to information Dante again to his path, to the top of the mountain. Virgil says that their path will take them through Hell and that they will eventually attain Heaven, the place Dante's cherished Beatrice awaits. He provides that it used to be Beatrice, alongside with two different holy women, who, seeing Dante misplaced in the wood, sent Virgil to information him.

Virgil leads Dante through the gates of Hell, marked via the haunting inscription abandon all hope, you who enter here (III.7). They enter the outlying location of Hell, the Ante-Inferno, the place the souls who in existence may want to now not commit to either properly or evil now ought to run in a futile chase after a clean banner, day after day, whilst hornets chunk them and worms lap their blood. Dante witnesses their struggling with repugnance and pity. The ferryman Charon then takes him and his information across the river Acheron, the real border of Hell. The First Circle of Hell, Limbo, homes pagans, such as Virgil and many of the other tremendous writers and poets of antiquity, who died besides understanding of Christ. After meeting Horace, Ovid, and Lucan, Dante keeps on into the Second Circle of Hell, which is reserved for the sin of Lust. At the border of the Second Circle, the monster Minos lurks, giving condemned souls to their punishments. He curls his tail around himself a certain quantity of times, indicating the number of the circle to which the soul ought to go. Inside the Second Circle, Dante watches as the souls of the Lustful swirl about in a horrible storm; Dante meets Francesca, who tells him the story of her doomed love affair with Paolo da Rimini, her husband's brother; the relationship has landed each in Hell.

In the Third Circle of Hell, the Gluttonous should lie in mud and suffer a rain of grime and excrement. In the Fourth Circle, the Avaricious and the Prodigal are made to cost at one some other with massive boulders. The Fifth Circle of Hell contains the river Styx, a swampy, fetid cesspool in which the Wrathful spend eternity struggling with one another; the Sullen lie sure below the Styx's waters, choking on the mud. Dante glimpses Filippo Argenti, a former political enemy of his, and watches in pride as different souls tear the man to pieces.

Virgil and Dante subsequent proceed to the partitions of the city of Dis, a town contained inside the large area of Hell. The demons who protect the gates refuse to open them for Virgil, and an angelic messenger arrives from Heaven to pressure the gates open before Dante. The sixth circle of hell is where you'll find Heretics, there Dante runs into Farinata a political leader. A deep valley leads into the First Ring of the Seventh Circle of Hell, the place those who have been violent toward others spend eternity in a river of boiling blood. Virgil and Dante meet a crew of Centaurs, creatures who are half man, half horse. One of them, Nessus, takes them into the Second Ring of the Seventh Circle of Hell, where they come upon those who were violent towards themselves (the Suicides). These souls have to endure eternity in the structure of trees. Dante there speaks with Pier della Vigna. Going deeper into the Seventh Circle of Hell, the vacationers discover these who had been violent toward God (the Blasphemers); Dante meets his historic patron, Brunetto Latini, taking walks among the souls of those who have been violent towards Nature (the Sodomites) on a wasteland of burning sand. They additionally come across the Usurers, those who have been violent toward Art.

The monster Geryon transports Virgil and Dante across a outstanding abyss to the Eighth Circle of Hell, acknowledged as Malebolge, or evil pockets (or pouches); the term refers to the circle's division into quite a number pockets separated by means of gorgeous folds of earth. In the First Pouch, the Panderers and the Seducers obtain lashings from whips; in the second, the Flatterers need to lie in a river of human feces. The Simoniacs in the Third Pouch grasp upside down in baptismal fonts whilst their toes burn with fire. In the Fourth Pouch are the Astrologists or Diviners, pressured to stroll with their heads on backward, a sight that moves Dante to terrific pity. In the Fifth Pouch, the Barrators (those who popular bribes) steep in pitch while demons tear them apart. The Hypocrites in the Sixth Pouch need to continuously stroll in circles, sporting heavy robes made of lead. Caiphas, the priest who proven Jesus' loss of life sentence, lies crucified on the ground; the other sinners tread on him as they walk. In the horrifying Seventh Pouch, the Thieves sit trapped in a pit of vipers, becoming vipers themselves when bitten; to regain their form, they should bite some other thief in turn.

In the Eighth Pouch of the Eighth Circle of Hell, Dante speaks to Ulysses, the outstanding hero of Homer's epics, now doomed to an eternity among those guilty of Spiritual Theft (the False Counselors) for his position in executing the ruse of the Trojan Horse. In the Ninth Pouch, the souls of Sowers of Scandal and Schism walk in a circle, constantly stricken with the aid of wounds that open and close repeatedly. In the Tenth Pouch, the Falsifiers suffer from a horrible plague and diseases.

Virgil and Dante proceed to the Ninth Circle of Hell via the Giants' Well, which leads to a massive drop to Cocytus, a fantastic frozen lake. The large Antaeus picks Virgil and Dante up and units them down at the backside of the well, in the lowest location of Hell. In Caina, the First Ring of the Ninth Circle of Hell, those who betrayed their kinfolk stand frozen up to their necks in the lake's ice. In Antenora, the Second Ring, those who betrayed their usa and party stand frozen up to their heads; right here Dante meets Count Ugolino, who spends eternity gnawing on the head of the man who imprisoned him in life. In Ptolomea, the Third Ring, these who betrayed their visitors spend eternity mendacity on their backs in the frozen lake, their tears making blocks of ice over their eyes. Dante subsequent follows Virgil into Judecca, the Fourth Ring of the Ninth Circle of Hell and the lowest depth. Here, these who betrayed their benefactors spend eternity in whole icy submersion.

A huge, mist-shrouded form lurks ahead, and Dante procedures it. It is the three-headed giant Lucifer, plunged waist-deep into the ice. His physique pierces the middle of the Earth, where he fell when God hurled him down from Heaven. Each of Lucifer's mouths chews one of history's three biggest sinners: Judas, the betrayer of Christ, and Cassius and Brutus, the betrayers of Julius Caesar. Virgil leads Dante on a climb down Lucifer's massive form, maintaining on to his frozen tufts of hair. Eventually, the poets reach the Lethe, the river of forgetfulness, and journey from there out of Hell and back onto Earth. They emerge from Hell on Easter morning, just earlier than sunrise.

Dante and Virgil's journey taught us that there is a lot to strive for. They sought out adventure, and they went and got it. Dante and Virgil started their journey as guide and teacher, respectively, and turned it to be a very successful combination. Dante ended up eventually dying of Malaria. However, his long lasting legacy.

Citation Page

1. Dante: The Divine Comedy. Poetry in Translation, www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Italian/DantnotesInf.php.
2. The Divine Comedy. Philosophy of Megaten Wiki, philosophy-of-megaten.wikia.com/wiki/The_Divine_Comedy.
3. Inferno (Dante). Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 28 Nov. 2018, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferno_(Dante).

Cite this page