Virgil leads Dante through the gate of Hell and introduces him to the horrors within.
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I AM[1]The opening tercets of this canto are words engraved into the stone above the gates of Hell. But the use of the first person adds a frightful sense of solemnity and mystery, as though the inscription … Continue reading THE WAY INTO THE CITY OF PAIN,
I AM THE WAY INTO ETERNAL GRIEF,
I AM THE WAY TO A PEOPLE LOST FOREVER.
JUSTICE MOVED MY GRAND CREATOR:
IT WAS DIVINE POWER THAT CREATED ME,
ALONG WITH THE HIGHEST WISDOM AND PRIMORDIAL LOVE.[2]Justice, Power, Wisdom, and Love: powerful virtues that may be the moral cornerstones of this place, but there’s irony among these words: the inhabitants of this place, in one way or another, … Continue reading
BEFORE ME ONLY ETERNAL THINGS EXISTED.
I SHALL LAST ETERNALLY.
ABANDON ALL HOPE, YOU WHO ENTER HERE![3]Considering the final destination of Dante’s journey, it’s ironic that, having just begun, these are probably the poem’s most famous words.
These ominous words were carved into the dark ledge above a gate we came to. “Master, what fearsome words these are,” I said.
Speaking from experience, he answered: “From now on, let go of any distrust you may have, and let any cowardice die right here. We’ve come to the place I referred to earlier, when I told you that you would see those who suffer eternally because they lost the good of their intellects.”[4]This last point is important to an understanding of Hell. In the Paradiso, Dante will be told that God’s greatest gift to us is free will, the gift most like Himself (Par. 5:19ff). Sadly, all those … Continue reading Then, kindly taking my hand in his, and smiling in a way that reassured me, he led me into that mysterious place.
Oh, my God! The cries, the sighs, the shrieks of lamentation that bounded through the air of this black place – I myself started crying. A confusion of words, horrid strains of anguish, the anger, the outcries, vile groaning, the slapping sounds of hands – this endless black storm whirled everywhere upon itself. And in the midst of this assaulting horror I began: “My Teacher, what is this I hear? Who are the souls in this place so overwhelmed in this outrage?”[5]Dante may have thought, perhaps because of his guide’s kindliness, that his introduction to Hell would be gradual. Instead, he is immediately assaulted by the sounds of this place as though he were … Continue reading
He replied, “What you hear is the miserable state of those pathetic souls who lived their lives completely neutral: without blame, without praise. Into this place they’ve been thrown with those repulsive angels who remained neutral and who, in the face of God, stood only for themselves. As a result, Heaven threw them out and Hell, too, will not receive them lest the damned might think themselves better than they.”
“But what is it that causes them to wail with such shrieks?” I asked.
And he replied: “I can tell you in a few words: these wretches have absolutely no hope of ever dying. In this blind prison their existence is so wretched that they envy every other punishment. Not only that, the world keeps no record of their ever having been there, and Heaven’s mercy and justice simply ignore them. Let us do the same.”[6]For having never exercised their will, neither for the good nor the bad, these neutral sinners suffer a triple fate: they are erased from the memory of life itself, they are actually outcasts from … Continue reading
As I looked around, I caught sight of a great banner flying around aimlessly, but fast, as though it would never stay still. And behind that flying rag rushed such a countless train of souls that I had to wonder how Death could ever have taken so many.[7]Not only do we get a sense here of the countless number of souls in Hell, we also get a first look at the workings of the contrapasso, a kind of Dantean karma, and a feature we will see at work all … Continue reading I actually recognized a few of them, and saw that cowardly soul who made the great refusal.[8]Nearly all commentators identify this nameless soul as Pope Celestine V, who spent most of his life as a saintly monk whose name was Pietro Da Morrone. Late in his life, as the conclave to elect a … Continue reading Then it became clear to me that all these evil souls were hateful both to God and His enemies. These people had never truly lived, and, how do I describe them… they were all naked surrounded by hornets and wasps, stinging them continually so that their faces ran with blood. Their blood and their tears dripped down to the ground and disgusting maggots wiggled in the collected pus!
Looking beyond this flying crowd of souls, I could make out in the dim light another huge crowd along the shore of a wide river, and I said to Virgil: “Master, who are those people there, and why do they seem so eager to cross that river?”
And he said: “All will be made clear when we get to the shore of the Acheron there.”[9]If the souls seem eager to cross the river, Dante is just as eager to find out who they are and what they’re doing. Like a good guide, however, Virgil is a model of patience. Acheron, “the river … Continue reading His response made me feel embarrassed that I might have spoken out of turn. So I kept quiet until we got there.
Suddenly, from a boat that was speeding toward the shore, an ancient old man shouted at us: “Woe to you, you perverted souls! You’ll never see Heaven because I’m going to take you to that other shore over there – where there’s eternal darkness, ice, and even fire![10]Contrary to popular notions that all of Hell is a fiery place, there is hardly any fire in Dante’s Hell. And you – the living one there – get away from all these dead souls!”[11]As we will learn almost immediately, this fierce old man is Charon of classical mythology, who ferries souls into the underworld. From his sharp words to both the damned souls and Dante, we can tell … Continue reading But when I stood my ground, he said: “Right…you’re headed toward a different port and a lighter boat than this one will take you there.”[12]Only at the beginning of the Purgatorio will we learn that the souls of the redeemed depart from a different port. Nevertheless, Charon’s words to Dante are among several “hints” he will hear … Continue reading
Then my guide piped in: “Charon, drop the anger! His crossing is willed, and you know where that power is. That’s all you need to know.”[13]This is the first of many interventions Virgil will make on behalf of Dante. It is clever that the pagan poet is the one who actually names the mythological ferryman here, not Dante. However, … Continue reading
That silenced the bearded old boatman whose eyes were like fiery pinwheels.[14]A fascinating image, but see Virgil’s description of him in Aeneid 6:298-300: “A grim warden guards these waters and streams, terrible in his squalor – Charon, on whose chin lies a mass of … Continue reading But all the other souls gathered there, naked and despairing, turned pale and shivered with fear at the prospect of their eternal doom. They cursed God! They cursed their parents! They cursed the human race! They cursed the moment of their conception! And weeping piteously, they crowded themselves along that fateful shoreline that awaits everyone who holds God in contempt.[15]Four great curses – it’s hard to read this, perhaps, until we realize what these sinners realize, who (off stage) have probably just come from The Judgment: they have lost everything, including … Continue reading
That devil, Charon, with his glowing eyes, signaled them all together and smacked a lazy sinner with an oar. You know how in Autumn all the leaves that were on the trees’ branches end up on the ground? Just so, each of those wicked descendants of Adam dropped from the shore right into the boat as though they had been lured there like birds.[16]This is one of many wonderful similes Dante creates throughout the poem. Here, we might forget that we’re in Hell and for a moment imagine colorful leaves gently blown from the trees by October … Continue reading Off they went – across that dark river – and before they got to the other side there was already a new crowd getting ready to make that terrible crossing.[17]The great crowds of sinners Dante sees here amplifies his earlier experience among the neutrals claiming that he never imagined so many people had died (let alone died and gone to Hell!).
“Son,” my gentle leader said to me, “everyone who dies in contempt of God – no matter where – ends up here at this river bank. You see how eager they are to get across? That’s because God’s justice spurs them on, turning their fear into desire. No good soul ever comes to this place – now you understand why Charon grumbled at you.”[18]Here Virgil answers the two questions Dante asked when they first caught sight of the Acheron and its crowded shores. Since these damned souls have chosen to be here, why shouldn’t they be eager to … Continue reading
But right then, that awful place rocked in a terrible earthquake. It frightened me out of my wits and still does when I remember it. And then, to make matters worse, a powerful wind blasted at us coloring everything with a reddish glow. It knocked me out and I dropped to the ground like someone who falls into a deep sleep.[19]This great upheaval of Nature and Dante’s swoon serves several purposes. On the surface, it brings an already dramatic entrance into Hell to an equally dramatic end; and in doing so, it also serves … Continue reading
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Notes & Commentary
| ↑1 | The opening tercets of this canto are words engraved into the stone above the gates of Hell. But the use of the first person adds a frightful sense of solemnity and mystery, as though the inscription literally speaks for itself. At the same time, the “voice” makes clear that Hell is a real place; that Dante “hears” the voice makes clear that he is really there. In many editions of the Comedy, these first three tercets are rendered in uppercase letters, adding to the affect of the words. |
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| ↑2 | Justice, Power, Wisdom, and Love: powerful virtues that may be the moral cornerstones of this place, but there’s irony among these words: the inhabitants of this place, in one way or another, perverted all of them! Commentators point to a further irony in this trinity of virtues: Power, Wisdom, and Love are attributes of God. As far as we can get from God, Dante has us pass into this place with a doxology on our lips. |
| ↑3 | Considering the final destination of Dante’s journey, it’s ironic that, having just begun, these are probably the poem’s most famous words. |
| ↑4 | This last point is important to an understanding of Hell. In the Paradiso, Dante will be told that God’s greatest gift to us is free will, the gift most like Himself (Par. 5:19ff). Sadly, all those in Hell freely used that greatest gift for evil rather than for good. Having chosen to forfeit that gift which made them uniquely human, they have become like animals. And yes, everyone in Hell has chosen to be here! |
| ↑5 | Dante may have thought, perhaps because of his guide’s kindliness, that his introduction to Hell would be gradual. Instead, he is immediately assaulted by the sounds of this place as though he were physically beaten! Once again, this journey is real, this place is real, Dante is real, and he fully intends for us to be really there with him. |
| ↑6 | For having never exercised their will, neither for the good nor the bad, these neutral sinners suffer a triple fate: they are erased from the memory of life itself, they are actually outcasts from Hell proper, and they envy the sufferings of everyone else in Hell. We can also surmise that this place was already populated from the beginning of time by those angels who stood only for themselves when Lucifer rebelled against his Creator. As we continue through the Comedy, the warning in the Book of Revelation will make greater sense: “Because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will vomit you out of My mouth” (Rev. 3:16). |
| ↑7 | Not only do we get a sense here of the countless number of souls in Hell, we also get a first look at the workings of the contrapasso, a kind of Dantean karma, and a feature we will see at work all through the Inferno and much of the Purgatorio. This a highly imaginative and symbolic feature of the poem, but it also highlights the workings of that divine Justice we saw noted over the gate of Hell. In the contrapasso, the punishment fits the crime. In this case, the nameless neutrals, who never did anything memorable in life, rush about for all eternity following a banner that flies here and there without stopping. More than that, we will see in a moment that these idle souls not only rush madly after a shifting banner, but they themselves are chased by swarms of bees that sting them continually. |
| ↑8 | Nearly all commentators identify this nameless soul as Pope Celestine V, who spent most of his life as a saintly monk whose name was Pietro Da Morrone. Late in his life, as the conclave to elect a successor to Pope Nicholas IV dragged on for more than two years, he sent a stern letter to the assembled cardinals in 1294 warning them that God would punish them severely if they didn’t come to a decision soon. The letter had the desired effect: over his strong objections it was he who was elected! The “great refusal” seems to have been Celestine’s abdication of the papacy a few months after his election. He was succeeded by Dante’s papal nemesis, Pope Boniface VIII, whose chicanery, according to some, frightened the poor monk-pope into abdication. He then had him imprisoned until he died two years later. Only three popes have abdicated: Celestine in 1294, Gregory XII in 1414, and Benedict XVI in 2013. It may well be that Dante put Celestine in Hell because his abdication brought onto the world stage at the time a pope (Boniface VIII) whom Dante blamed for widespread ecclesiastical corruption and political interference which, in fact, led to Dante’s permanent exile from his beloved Florence in 1302. He will appear again in Canto 19. It should be noted that among the commentators there are a few who name Pontius Pilate as the cowardly candidate for this great refusal. There is something to be said for this possibility if we keep in mind that this is the evening of Good Friday, and a central figure in the Passion drama for this day is Pilate, whose cowardly refusal to defend Him sent Jesus to his death. How appropriate that he should be among the first whom Dante meets in Hell! |
| ↑9 | If the souls seem eager to cross the river, Dante is just as eager to find out who they are and what they’re doing. Like a good guide, however, Virgil is a model of patience. Acheron, “the river of lamentation,” is the first of the four rivers of Hell, whose origin Virgil will explain in Canto 14. Dante borrows the names of these rivers of the underworld from Virgil, who borrowed them from Homer. This river acts as a boundary between the Hell of the Neutrals and Hell proper. |
| ↑10 | Contrary to popular notions that all of Hell is a fiery place, there is hardly any fire in Dante’s Hell. |
| ↑11 | As we will learn almost immediately, this fierce old man is Charon of classical mythology, who ferries souls into the underworld. From his sharp words to both the damned souls and Dante, we can tell that our traveler and his guide have already moved away from the Neutrals and are close – too close? – to the sinners. Cleverly, Dante inserts no pause between Charon’s excoriation of the dead souls and his rough command to Dante, realizing he is alive and headed for a different shore. It should also be noted that from now on, Dante will seamlessly and believably weave figures from pagan mythology into his Christian epic. Finally, the reader is invited to think back to the beginning of Canto 1 and visually separate the numerous images or scenes Dante has already presented to us in this drama. Then note that the entire Comedy has been a “mine” for the visual arts almost from the beginning, with virtually every scene in the poem being illustrated throughout the centuries. Michelangelo, for example, who was devoted to Dante, puts Charon and his boat of damned souls near the bottom center of his Last Judgment fresco in the Sistine Chapel. |
| ↑12 | Only at the beginning of the Purgatorio will we learn that the souls of the redeemed depart from a different port. Nevertheless, Charon’s words to Dante are among several “hints” he will hear about his own salvation along the journey of his poem. |
| ↑13 | This is the first of many interventions Virgil will make on behalf of Dante. It is clever that the pagan poet is the one who actually names the mythological ferryman here, not Dante. However, speaking of names, Virgil does not refer to God directly in the Inferno, only indirectly as here. This is only appropriate, since he is a pagan, but more so because Hell is as far away from God as one can get; it is the utter and eternal absence of God. |
| ↑14 | A fascinating image, but see Virgil’s description of him in Aeneid 6:298-300: “A grim warden guards these waters and streams, terrible in his squalor – Charon, on whose chin lies a mass of unkempt, hoary hair; his eyes are staring orbs of flame.” Appropriately, the descriptions we get from both Dante and Virgil make Charon out to be a kind of demonic figure. But again, contrary to popular notions, Dante’s Hell is not “filled” with demons. We will encounter them only once in a while. |
| ↑15 | Four great curses – it’s hard to read this, perhaps, until we realize what these sinners realize, who (off stage) have probably just come from The Judgment: they have lost everything, including any hope for repentance, and cursing is all that’s left for them – eternally! |
| ↑16 | This is one of many wonderful similes Dante creates throughout the poem. Here, we might forget that we’re in Hell and for a moment imagine colorful leaves gently blown from the trees by October winds. Except in this case, the “leaves” are souls of the damned – countless numbers of them, strewn along the shore and herded into Charon’s boat. |
| ↑17 | The great crowds of sinners Dante sees here amplifies his earlier experience among the neutrals claiming that he never imagined so many people had died (let alone died and gone to Hell!). |
| ↑18 | Here Virgil answers the two questions Dante asked when they first caught sight of the Acheron and its crowded shores. Since these damned souls have chosen to be here, why shouldn’t they be eager to get on with it? At the same time, though, Virgil offers an interesting facet of Justice: it turns these condemned sinners’ fear into desire. They desired to sin and did so without fear. Now their fear of the consequences is turned back into desire. A kind of contrapasso in itself. |
| ↑19 | This great upheaval of Nature and Dante’s swoon serves several purposes. On the surface, it brings an already dramatic entrance into Hell to an equally dramatic end; and in doing so, it also serves to transition Dante, Virgil, and the reader across the Acheron. How this is accomplished we are not told. On a deeper, emotional, level, it highlights the fact that while Dante seems to have held up during the two major scenes in this canto – the neutrals and the Acheron – he is still in a weakened moral state, and is overwhelmed on a sensory level by the sights and sounds of countless souls of the damned. Right now he is morally “soft” and susceptible. It will take a while for him to harden against the horrors that await him. |