After three months spent chipping away at it, I have finally finished The Divine Comedy. At this point in my life, I have read my share of classics, but none have felt more difficult to review than this one. Dante’s magnum opus is a work of such immense historical, literary, linguistic, and theological significance, with so many layers to it that critiquing it seems almost foolish. Therefore, it is probably best I focus this review on my personal experience with the work.
The Divine Comedy is easily among the most challenging works of literature I have ever read. I would be lying if I said it was accessible, gripping, or fun. And yet, I believe it was a worthwhile undertaking. This is largely because I heavily supplemented my reading by reading many of the footnotes in the Robin Kirkpatrick translation; absorbed hours of podcast and video analysis by academics, historians, and priests; listened to snippets of an audiobook; viewed Gustave Doré’s famous illustrations; and discussed each of the three canticles (Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso) as part of a book club. And after all that, I still feel like I only scratched the surface of Dante’s work. The entire Divine Comedy is teeming with references that, while in Dante’s time may have been well-known, are likely very obscure to readers in the twenty-first century. Across the realms of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, Dante encounters dozens (if not hundreds) of figures from the Bible, ancient history, Greek and Roman mythology, Homer and Virgil’s epics, his native Florence, and the rest of the medieval world. Philosophers, heroes, politicians, popes, prophets, saints, and Florentine citizens are name-dropped in virtually every canto, and unless you know the referenced material very well (or are willing to learn it), odds are The Divine Comedy will be overwhelming. Speaking for myself, sometimes it just did not seem worth the effort. Somewhere in the rotten pockets of Hell, I made my peace with the fact that there is only so much I could handle on my first read of The Divine Comedy without the experience becoming pure tedium.
Luckily, the richness of Dante’s work goes far beyond the density of its references. Even in translation and without the benefit of the original text’s poetic impact, Dante’s account of his journey through the realms of the afterlife is deeply impactful. At the beginning of Inferno, Dante, in the midst of a midlife crisis, finds himself lost and walking through a dark wood. It is here that the deceased love of his life, Beatrice, intervenes. With the intercession of the Virgin Mary, Beatrice arranges Dante’s tour through the afterlife. While still alive, Dante is able to see what awaits on the other side of death.
In Inferno, Dante is guided through the nine circles of Hell by his idol, the epic poet Virgil. Virgil, who himself resides in Limbo as a pre-Christian pagan, shepherds Dante through a visually disturbing rendition of Hell, in which the perpetrators of the deadly sins suffer eternally in ways commensurate to their offenses. Those who committed the sin of lust spend eternity stuck in a tempestuous windstorm in which their bodies toss and collide endlessly. The suicides are transformed into dead trees, presumably like those from which they hung themselves. Murderers are submerged in a lake of blood, watched over by centaurs who shoot them with arrows if they dare raise their heads above the depths. At the end of it all, Dante encounters Satan, a pathetic figure trapped in ice at the center of the underworld. This three-faced monstrosity is a mockery of the Holy Trinity, trapped forever by his own doing while he chews for all eternity on the bones of those who, in Dante’s mind, are the worst sinners of all—traitors (specifically Judas and Brutus). Inferno is easily the most fascinating of the three canticles. The visuals are equal parts horrific and compelling, and Dante’s hierarchy of sin invites great moral debates.
Purgatorio was my least favorite of the three canticles. After passing through Hell and emerging on the other side of the earth (somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere), Dante and Virgil continue their journey together, this time up the mountain of Purgatory. The higher one climbs, the easier the journey toward salvation. It’s an interesting inversion of Hell, and yet, some of the penances inflicted upon those in Purgatory seemed worse than some of the punishments inflicted on the damned. Once Dante finally gets to the top of the mountain, he is reunited with Beatrice in the Garden of Eden, and Virgil disappears, never to be seen again.
In Paradiso, Beatrice guides Dante through the spheres of Heaven. Visually, Paradiso is a lot less structured and interesting than its predecessors. Other than the massive eagle formed out of multiple angelic souls and the giant rose, Paradiso largely involves Dante and Beatrice hopping among the planets and encountering sanctified beings who deliver long speeches about the nature of God and the state of the Church and its monastic orders. It is certainly more ethereal, and yet I preferred Paradiso to Purgatorio because of a few compelling moments. Early in Dante and Beatrice’s journey, they encounter the spirit of Piccarda Donati, a Florentine woman whom Dante knew before her death, and sister of Corso and Forese Donati, who appeared in Inferno and Purgatorio, respectively. In life, Piccarda took holy vows as a nun, but was then forced by her brother to renounce them and enter into a marriage to improve the family’s fortune. Despite neglecting her vows, Piccarda is still afforded a space in the outer realm of Heaven. When Dante asks her whether she regrets not being in a higher celestial sphere, she rejects the notion, explaining to Dante that in Heaven, all things are content and exist in perfect order and in oneness with God, exactly as they should. This deconstruction of hierarchy contrasts with the maps of Hell and Purgatory and persists throughout Paradiso. Paradiso also has wonderful reflections on the nature of love and beauty. Dante illustrates this best through Beatrice, in whose eyes he sees God reflected back at him. In essence, Beatrice serves to teach Dante that all beauty and love he has ever known is ultimately lovely and beautiful because it is one with God. Finally, I noticed that in Paradiso, Dante seems to be grappling with some of the harsher condemnations he established in Inferno. Here, he suggests in the symmetrical rose surrounding the Virgin Mary that, through her intercession, it is possible for those who lived before Christ and those who died unbaptized in infancy to be saved after all.
Overall, I am grateful I read The Divine Comedy, and that I did so with a group with whom I could discuss it, and with access to so many supplemental resources to make Dante just a little more accessible. I do not know if I will ever read the entire Divine Comedy again, but I look forward to future explorations of its themes and symbolism now that I have a basic knowledge of the source material.
