Dante's Inferno Creative and Cruel

Dante Alighieri was born in Florence, Italy in 1265. In his life, he composed two major books of poetry: Vita Nuova and The Comedy. The Vita Nuova is a compilation of his love poems, sonnets, and lyrics. The Comedy, which was later renamed The Divine Comedy, is an epic poem broken down into three books in each of which Dante recounts his travels through the hell, purgatory, and heaven. The first section of The Comedy, Dante's Inferno, is an especially magnificent narrative. He narrates his descent and observation of hell through the various circles and pouches. One wonderful part of this depiction is his descriptions of the various punishments that each of the different sinners have received.

The various punishments that Dante envisions the sinners receiving are broken down into two types. The first type he borrows from various gruesome and cruel forms of medieval torture and the second type, though often less physically agonizing, is Dante's creative and imaginative punishment for sins. The borrowed torturous forms of punishments create a physical and bodily pain for the sinners and thus designed to be interpreted literally; whereas, the creative punishments are used to inflict a mental and psychological pain and meant to be understood on a metaphorical plane of thought. However, it is possible for the creative punishments to inflict both a mental and physical pain upon the sinner.

Several punishments that Dante envisions for the various sinners are borrowed from contemporary forms of medieval torture and imprisonment. The medieval prisons were often dark rooms engulfed in vile stenches in which groups of ragged and naked men were chained to the hard stone floors. Dante used this theme of vile smells and dim lighting to describe the overall atmosphere in The Inferno. These medieval prisons also forced their prisoners to freeze in the winters and roast in the summers by providing them with little ventilation or protection from the cold. [1] This theme of unbearable and unavoidable extremes of temperature is also certainly consistently used in The Inferno. The prisoners often urinated, defecated, vomited, and bled all over the stones upon which they slept and created a smell so horrible that "the stench would itself become a punishment." [2] Sometimes, the guards would throw a bucket of water over the stones to cleanse them; however, there were prisoners who were kept beneath the other prisoners and the water would wash all of the blood, urine, excrement, and vomit down through iron gratings and drip onto the bodies of the standing prisoners who "dare not lie down and could not stand up" because of the vile filth on them and around their feet. [3] These are only a few descriptions of the various practices of cruelty. Nevertheless, Dante borrows some of these ideas, and others, to inflict physical pain upon the sinners.

The first cruel and physical punishment Dante borrows from the medieval torture is his punishment for heresy. The penalty in the medieval era for heresy was often "public humiliation, imprisonment" or "to suffer death by burning." [4] For Dante, to be a heretic was to follow one's own opinion and not the doctrines of the Christian Church. Dante's punishment for the "arch heretics and those who followed them" was that they be "ensepulchered" and to have some "heated more, some less." [5] These red-hot sepulchers were similar to the prescription for the punishment of heretics in that the sinners were imprisoned and burned. Since the archheretics believed that everything died with the body and that there was no soul, Dante not only punishes them with the hot and crowded tombs, but he punishes them with their beliefs and lets them feel what it is like to die eternally and thus lie in a tomb until apocalypse, as they believe it would happen when you die. This punishment by Dante is

one in which he was more focused on inflicting a physical and bodily pain rather than a mental one.

A second sin whose punishment was administered with the intention of creating a physical anguish was flattery. When Dante is walking over a bridge, he looks down and sees the flatterers "plunged in excrement that seemed\ as if had been poured from human privies." [6] Although this punishment is quite vile and repulsive (and quite possibly used for torture), the punishment is purely punitive and designed to inflict a physical agony, in this case, of laying in shit. Dante, however, always has reasons for punishing sinners as he does. In this case, it is intentionally ironic that the flatterers, whose mouths we-e always spewing shit through flattery, now sit immersed in it. Although this particular practice is more disgusting and vile than actually painful, Dante does use known practices of torture to inflict severe pain and anguish on the sinners.

One example of this is the penalty the simonists, those who use their power in the church to acquire money and wealth, pay. There are two descriptions of tortures which are very similar to the punishment of the simonists. The first one is described by the author John Robinson as such: a man would be chained down to a bare bed with his feet hanging off of the end, and then his feet would then be seared by a "charcoal brazier." [7] The second torture that is similar is the penalty that hired assassins famed upon conviction: to be buried head down alive. [8] Dante seems to have fused the two punishments into that of the simonists. Dante describes their punishment as such:"Out of the mouth of each hole there emerged\ a sinner's feet....both soles of every sinner were on fire writhing with violence." [9] Dante's penalty for simony obviously inflicts a severe physical pain, but it is also designed this way for a rather complex reason. In baptismal practices, it is common to dip a baby, head first, under water in order to cleanse the soul. In a reversal of the baptismal practices, the simonists are put head down into dark and narrow pits, as opposed to the open and refreshing holy water, and fire burns their feet and soul, rather than there heads and souls being cleansed by the holy water. Although he uses, and sometimes melds, various torturous practices in The Inferno in order to inflict physical agony, he does, sometimes, use famous acts of cruelty to punish the sinners. One such punishment is that which Dante borrows from the court of Emperor Frederick II. Frederick II was well-known for his lead capes with which he punished various criminals: He had a leaden cover made for the condemned man, to cover him entirely. The cover was about an inch thick. Then, he had the man placed in a cauldron, and the leaden cape put over him. Then he had a fire made under the cauldron. The heat melted the lead which took the skin off piece by piece. Finally, both the lead and the condemned man boiled. [10] Dante uses part of Frederick's punishment to punish the hypocrites in hell. He places all of the hypocrites in "gilded" cloaks that "dazzled;\ but inside they were all of lead, so heavy\ that Frederick's capes were straw compared to them." [11] Dante uses this analogy to Frederick to demonstrate the extent of cruelty of his cloaks in The Inferno as well as those of Frederick's. If Dante describes one of the most evil punishments ever as mild compared to those in his Inferno, he effectively demonstrates how horrible hell truly is. Although this punishment for the hypocrites is quite physically painful, this punishment contains a rather brilliant metaphor. For Dante, the hypocrites were those who were seemingly virtuous and good, but beneath page their facades they were quite sinful. The cloaks are a metaphor for the hypocrites characters: gilded and dazzling on the surface and cloaked in lead or sin underneath.

In sum, these four examples of punishment that are physically agonizing and inflictive of bodily suffering are only some of the punishments that Dante borrows from the medieval forms of torture. These punishments were meant, by Dante, to be interpreted literally. On the other hand, Dante's creative and more original punishments are delightful and very interesting to analyze. These types of punishment are more metaphorical; however, it is possible for some of the creative punishments to inflict both a physical and psychological suffering.

The first of Dante's more creative punishments was for those who were "damned because they sinned within the flesh\ subjecting reason to the rule of lust." The lustful, members of the sinners of incontinence, are condemned to swirl forever in "the hellish hurricane, which never rests." [12] Dante's punishment for the lustful and adulterous is both creative and simple. The lustful are swirled around in a storm just as they were tossed about in life by the storms and tempests of lust. Although the sinners experience severe physical discomfort, the real punishment is psychological: since these sinners were incapable of desirous control, they are now condemned to an eternal lack of control. This condemnation is one example of the difference between the literal and the more metaphorical punishments of sinners.

One of Dante's most witty and ingenious punishments are those for the avaricious and the prodigal. The avaricious sinners are those who were miserly on earth, and the prodigal were squanderers. Dante's punishment for them is that the two groups of sinners were paired up with an opposite. Then, the two individuals would roll the weights around in a semi-circle until "they [the weights] struck each other; at that point,\ each turned around and, wheeling back those weights,\ [cry] out: 'Why do you hoard?''Why do you squander?"'[13] These sinners were condemned to forever roll these weights back and forth and forever yell at each other every time the weights collide. These punishments involve no real physical torment other than pushing the weights; therefore, the punishment is designed primarily as a mental torture. Dante was very intelligent for handling sinners who essentially committed the same sin, misuse of material goods (either miserliness or squanderings), and at the same time punishing them as individual sins, each with something different to yell in anger. He condemns these sinners, whom are traditionally bullheaded and stubborn, to mutual antagonism. As opposed to the two part punishment for the lustful who committed physical and mental sins - which combines both a mental and physical anguish, this punishment is one sided and brilliant because these sinners, who committed no physical harm or sin, merely a mental one (decision about their rate of expenditure), are tortured only psychologically and not physically.

This idea of punishment as a counter penalty for one's actions is discussed by one of the victims of the most gruesome and horrifying of all of the creative punishments that Dante envisions. Bertran de Born, one of the sowers of discord and scandal, was an advisor to a "fledgling king" and because he gave bad advice and "made the son and father enemies", he is condemned to walk about with his head "carried by the hair just like a lantern." [14] In a discussion with Dante at the end of Canto 28, Bertran reveals to Dante the "law of counter penalty" as the guiding principle for the punishments in The Inferno. In Bertran's case since he severed the ties between father and son, so will his head be severed from his body. This punishment is especially gruesome and physically cruel, but psychologically it is quite ingenious: Since Bertran severed filial ties, his head must forever be severed. The similarity between punishment and sin is not only what makes these punishments so compelling and interesting, but also what allows Dante to show his creativity in his punishments.

As a last example, and far less gruesome one also, of Dante's creative punishments, there is the punishment for the fortunetellers. In Canto 20, Dante describes a procession of "mute and weeping" bodies whom had "their faces twisted toward their haunches\ and found it necessary to walk backward\ because they could not see ahead of them." [15] This description of pathetic souls is an example of one of the psychologically painful punishments invented by Dante. Although it must have been uncomfortable to have one's head twisted around backwards, the mental torture is far greater. For Dante, who was raised in a religious background, fortune telling was a form of blasphemy because only God knew the future. Since these sinners claimed to be able to see the future, Dante has angrily punished them to forever look behind them and to walk backwards as well. His punishment is very creative and original. The medieval punishment for blasphemy was often death through fire, and instead of taking some version of this, Dante creates a rather sensible and coherent punishment for these sinners. This punishment is the fourth example of his creative punishments. Although some of them have been especially psychologically torturous, some have also been physically quite painful.

Through the two types of punishments that Dante has used, he has clearly illustrated how horrible hell truly is. His physical tortures are horrifying in their disgusting and excruciating extremes and his creative tortures are psychologically vicious and cruel. The various punishments are all are designed to adequately penalize each sin through his law of counter penalty. In this, there are two major differences in these punishments. First, there are differences in the origin of the idea for the punishment. Second, there is a difference in the intention of the punishment: to punish with psychological or physical anguish. These differences add to the poem's complexity and mysterious and unexpected qualities about the poem. Finally, the differences in the punishments can be viewed as a metaphor for The Inferno as a whole. Not only is The Inferno a combination of borrowed visions of hell (i.e. Ovid and Vergil) and original ideas, but The Inferno is also a journey with elements both physical and mental, or spiritual, in nature.