Walt Whitman and Inferno

Dante's Inferno

The opening section of Dante's poetic series, which he wrote in the 1400s is called The Inferno, which means 'Hell' in Italian. The titles under the series christened the Divine Comedy are Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso, and they tell of a voyage through a primitive picture of Hell, a place that Dante portrays as nine rings of torment. The journey of a soul towards God with the identification and impact of iniquity summarizes the tale of The Divine Comedy.

"Vexilla regis produent inferni; the banners of the king go forth, the king of Hell" (Vergani 74).

Transgressors such as Brutus, Cassius and Judas Iscariot are broken into pieces by Lucifer's monstrous jaws. Judas is named as the most gruesome transgressor of all residents of Hell and gets his flesh shredded off his back as his punishment. The style of description of this happening is quite explicit. Dante's Inferno contains many indirect references to the challenges people faced contemporarily. Some of these references target political issues while others focused on religion and societal problems. These subtle references provide a basis on which recent happenings are measured, comparing them to the events of time past. Quite a large number of the hidden messages uncovered in The Inferno represent various beliefs and principles, expressed via action and deeds, which Dante was certain have a negative effect on Italians and the whole world at large. (Landas)

This report deliberates on the use of subtle or indirect references in classical literary works whose value transcend time and space, with Dante's Inferno as a case study. Equally, an in-depth study of the various methods of creation of poetic literature and its importance to humanity in the past and well as the present is examined.

Unfaithfulness

A generally accepted opinion states the severity of offences has its basis on "desert," which is believed to be influenced primarily by the wrongdoer's mental condition as well the effect such crimes have on the public.

Dante believed unfaithfulness is a grievous crime and should attract equally severe penalties, an opinion he developed due to the principles and laws during his time. Dante believed this offence is intentional and has a major harmful effect on the society in many ways. Present day legislature has judged offences of violence as more worthy of retribution than that of unfaithfulness, a decision which was formed based on ancient customs, customs even Dante believed in. While grading these offences in this manner, the law has transformed its notions about "intent" and the damage to the public so thoroughly that the idea of "desert" has become less reasonable. Despite this, the significance of trust in modern days is grossly underappreciated in the modern grading of offences (Chevigny)

Could Dante have been a Brain Doctor?

One of the little-known attributes of Dante was that he had a comprehensive understanding of medicine and its application, an attribute most likely obtained from his scholastic learning. In his poems, primitive impressions of neuroanatomy and neurophysiology (e.g. the link between the brain and the spinal cord, purpose of the optic and peripheral nerves, information about vegetative nervous system), as well as explanation of neurological disorders (e.g. epileptic seizures, influence of metal poisoning on the nervous system and narcolepsy) are found, particularly in the Inferno, the opening section of Dante's work of art, the Divine Comedy. Dante's precise explanations have created an opinion among other writers that he might have contracted a neurologic disease (epilepsy or hypersomnia) himself. Condemned souls in the Inferno were also portrayed to have been plagued with psychiatric disorders e.g. melancholia and depression (Riva, Bellani and Tremolizzo).

Accounts of symptoms and indicators that could be attributed to neurological afflictions were also common in Dante's works. For instance, a detailed account of an epileptic fit may be found in XXIV Canto of The Inferno. According to Dante, in Malebolge, which is the Eighth Circle of the Hell where the robbers face their retribution, he set eyes on a serpent that strikes one of the condemned men on the neck making him to fall. When the said man rises, Dante likens this to the revival of an epilepsy sufferer after suffering a fit. Certain scholars believe that, the employment of such expressions like smarrito (bewildered, angoscia (anguish) and sphira (to sigh) which precisely describes the mental condition of an epilepsy patient after his customary seizure, could mean that Dante himself endured the spasms. (Riva, Bellani and Tremolizzo).

Describing Emotional State

A hypothesis states that sinners in Hell are subjected to emotional torment. Fundamental emotional notions are stated and a line is drawn between "what is said" and "what is shown" in Dante's works. Characteristics of the mind-sets of the gorger Ciacco, the profane speaker Capaneus, and the immoral woman Francesca are studied (Alcorn) and from these, three wide trends of emotional understanding are discovered.

i. All categories of sinners undergo their own numerous unusual adverse feelings. A close study of one of these categories, the faint-hearted who suffer at one of the outer rings of Hell, is given in the article.

ii. Offenders are clearly devoid of any form of regret. The write-up describes an ironic level of pitilessness.

iii. The condemned souls fight against hopelessness.

In the write-up, it is shown that a strain exists between cruel judgements and human thinking. It rounds-up with a short argument on the interwoven nature of literature, history and psychology.

The "Law of Nature"

One of the few laws contained in Dante's Inferno is named Contrapasso. It is called the "law of nature" applicable to Hell and it states that is all sinners will be punished there in accordance to the severity of their offences. Despite this rule, the said punishments are seldom straight-forward and are usually figuratively and not directly related to the corresponding offences. A Dante researcher Lino Pertile even stated that Contrapasso varies with not just the offences committed but also with the various offenders subjected to it. Due to the complex nature of this rule, many different correspondences appear between offence and retribution. A number of the exciting ones lay emphasis on the relationship between Dante's idea of judgement and the conventional i.e. biblical opinion of judgement. Dante does not intend to re-enact the biblical idea of judgement deliberately, but also does not agree with this idea in order to be inoffensive. Instead of trying to give Hell a different meaning, Dante instead attempts to describe Hell, by taking the unclear idea and giving it a solid definition so that the common person can easily understand it. This is why Dante wrote his poems in the native dialect. Though quite a large number of people in Dante's era had adequate knowledge of the Bible, frequent study was still restricted to the little number who had the time. Furthermore, the contemporary customs, such as speaking mass, only in Latin also played a huge part in preventing the ordinary man from having a rich knowledge of Bible doctrine (Kameen).

As a result, Dante describes Hell in the native dialect aiming to explain using the conventional opinions, though unavoidably adding his own ideas to the work. To achieve this, Dante created a very intricate succession of Contrapassos, which would make the reader create his own opinion of the best punishment for the offender. Accordingly, Dante does not aim to recreate a new form of judgement; instead, his purpose is to make his faith easy to understand by the common man, to be to the reader as Virgil is to the Pilgrim: a "sun that heals every clouded sight" (Kameen).

Eliot's The Wasteland and its similarities to Inferno

Several indirect references to Dante's Divine Comedy particularly The Inferno appear in "The Waste Land." "The Burial of the Dead," the opening section of The Waste Land contains one of these references. In this section, Dante visits Hell and meets souls whose offence was doubt. Virgil in his words to Dante says

"such is the miserable con- /

dition of the sorry souls of those who lived /

without infamy and without praise."

Furthermore, Dante recalls the inscription on the Gate of Hell in Canto III

"Through me you enter the woeful city, /

Through me you enter eternal grief, /

Through me you enter among the lost"

He also tells of the multitude of souls who were gathering close to the Acheron for their opportunity to go across the sea on Charon's ferry. (Bertrand).

McCarthy's Road and similarities to Inferno

Dante Alighieri's Inferno, which he wrote in the 1400s, describes his journey through Hell in a perilous and dry terrain where he comes across all forms of offences on his way to purgatory and Heaven. Cormac Mccarthy's The Road describes similar tale of an unidentified man and his son's journey through an American countryside destroyed by war through which they battle against subhuman temperatures and vicious fighters in order to reach the sea side before the dawn of winter. The opening verse of the Road states "When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he'd reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him" (Lane).

Notwithstanding the writers' huge displacement in time and setting, the opening verses of these poems, which are further broken down later, unveil written and dramatic similarities in these verses. The Inferno simulates a setting that portrays the biggest worries of the primitive Catholics of Dante's era while The Road reveals the deepest fears of the present day American. The gloomy stories are in line with the normalities of a dystopia (fraught with adversities), the opposite of a utopia. By redefining the language of sin, torment and despair in Inferno, Mccarthy produces a dystopia that shows the importance of historical ideas to our time by showing the problems of the public, particularly in the American society that has had recent problems like September 11th attacks, the Iraq War, Hurricane Katrina, and the environmental crisis (Lane).

Heart of Darkness and Inferno

Heart of Darkness contained a lot of references to Europe. Paradoxical and expressive aspects of European history, as also characteristic official text showed up frequently in the text. These carefully chosen references are perfectly entwined with the basics of the text and are given specific expressive functions. Arguably, the most commonly used reference in Heart of Darkness is the one aimed at Dante Alighieri's Inferno. As well as creating a theme similar to that of colonized Congo and Hades/Underworld, Conrad's work also bears certain similarities to Dante's Hell (Farahbaksh).

The idea encompassed is quite clear: everyone involved, including the servants, their leaders and associates, who had a hand in the colonization of Congo are now resident in the Inferno which Dante portrays as: "realm... of those who have rejected spiritual values by yielding to bestial appetites or violence, or by perverting their human intellect to fraud or malice against their fellowmen." In Heart of Darkness, the personality best described by Dante phrase "those who have rejected spiritual values" is Kurtz, who dwells and reigns in the depth of darkness and bears certain similarities to Judas, who according to The Inferno, dwells in the last (ninth) ring of hell (Farahbaksh).