The Inferno by Dante | Notes & Summary

When I had journeyed half of our life’s way,

I found myself within a shadowed forest,

for I had lost the path that does not stray.

So begins Dante’s Inferno. We are immediately introduced to a central polarity within the text. “I” reveals that this is a text about a personal journey while “our” hints at a significance that transcends the individual. In the next few lines, we are met with another polarity as Dante’s voice shifts from the journeying Dante to the journeyed Dante reflecting back on his trip:

But to retell the good discovered there,

I’ll also tell the other things I saw.

This is a polarity between the present and the retrospective, a polarity that is perhaps even more central if not only for the fact that it is reflected in the “ABA||BCB||CDC||DED…” rhyme scheme that only resolves a peculiarity in the present tercet in the future tercet.

Both polarities contain paradox. How can an individual’s private experience be significant or even intelligible to others? How can we act on the present if it cannot be fully understood without a retrospective glance from the future? Literature, both portrayed in the Inferno and the Inferno in particular, is a mediator that breaches both distances. That is to say, through literature, private experiences become intelligible to an other, and, at the same time, one gains access to a future, hypothetical but potent, from which point a retrospective glance can make intelligible the present.

Virgil

The most obvious exemplar of literature as mediation is Virgil, Dante’s guide and a symbol of literary greatness. He often asks as an interpreter to direct Dante’s attention:

See Helen, for whose sake so many years

of evil had to pass; see great Achilles,

who finally met love—in his last battle.

See Paris, Tristan…”—and he pointed out

and named to me more than a thousand shades

departed from our life because of love.

It is through Virgil in particular and literature in general that Dante knows where to direct his gaze and what to observe. The repetition “See Helen … see great Achilles … see Paris” is an invitation to observe those before us who are, in a sense, from the future. This observation is mediated through literature whose vividness renders the private accessible and whose completeness transports us to a plausible future from which we can examine our own lives. Its goal is to learn,” so that your seeing of them may suffice, learn now the how and why of their confinement” from example and not personal tragedy.  Seeing is the telos of Dante’s journey to hell, for the former’s exhaustion marks the latter’s completion: “it is time for us to leave; we have seen everything.

Medusa

In the Inferno, there is a more subtle layer of mediation that occurs in all literature but one that Dante has made explicit: between the protagonist and the reader mediated by the text itself. The scene when Medusa approaches Dante and Virgil is a prime example[1]:

Turn round and keep your eyes shut fast, for should

the Gorgon show herself and you behold her,

never again would you return above,”

my master said; and he himself turned me

around and, not content with just my hands,

used his as well to cover up my eyes.

O you possessed of sturdy intellects,

observe the teaching that is hidden here

beneath the veil of verses so obscure.

Virgil, as discussed, mediates the lessons of the underworld to Dante while protecting him from harm, in this case, narrating the occurrence while covering his eyes. Dante reveals in the last tercet that he is doing the same for his readers. We have already established seeing and sight as a bridge across both polarities. It is significant then that Dante is effectively blind in this scene with “eyes shut fast” yet, breaking the fourth wall, he commands the readers to open their eyes as wide as possible to “observe”. Because of Dante’s proximity with evil, he cannot afford to look and observe. But just as Perseus slew Medusa by glancing at her reflection through the Shield of Minerva, so can us readers observe great evils through the mediation of the Inferno without the fear of petrification. One such “teaching that is hidden here beneath the veil of verses so obscure” is precisely the mediating capacities of literature. The inferno in particular and literature in general is our Shield of Minerva, through which readers can gain proximity to tragedy without suffering the consequences. This hidden teaching sheds light on the otherwise inexplicable occurrences when Dante breaks the flow of his narrative and speaks directly to the reader insisting that the events in the Inferno actually occurred. Much like how the Shield of Minerva must have distorted Medusa’s image, the Inferno might not portray literally realistic events but reflect nonetheless legitimate dangers looming behind the surface.

Literature, and here I expand the definition of literature to include the likes of Aristotle’s Physics, can mediate because it is imitative.

And if you read your Physics carefully,

not many pages from the start, you’ll see

that when it can, your art would follow nature,

just as a pupil imitates his master;

so that your art is almost God’s grandchild.

From these two, art and nature, it is fitting,

if you recall how Genesis begins,

for men to make their way, to gain their living;

Dante paints a hierarchical view of God, nature, and art each imitating the previous. And we, as readers, the great-grandchild of God if you will, imitate art. Aristotle’s Physics, representing literature in general, is described as a pupil who imitates the master of nature. But it is also the master who is imitated by the pupil of readers. This comparison between literature and the master-pupil relationship highlights the relationships we have already touched upon between Virgil and Dante as well as Dante and his readers. Literature can mediate because, in Dante’s world, it imitates the creation of God and illuminates the natural order.

That is not to say the mediation of literature is wholly unproblematic. Francesca and Paolo recount their sin of lust:

One day, to pass the time away, we read

of Lancelot—how love had overcome him.

We were alone, and we suspected nothing.

And time and time again that reading led

our eyes to meet, and made our faces pale,

and yet one point alone defeated us.

“Overcome”, “suspect”, “defeated” this polemic word choice captures the real danger that literature can inflame one’s passions so much as to overpower the will. Indeed, Francesca recognizes the mediation of literature in the whole affair: “A Gallehault indeed, that book and he who wrote it, too.” Gallehault is a fictional character who mediated the love between Lancelot and his lover. In like manner, the book and its author, by capturing Lancelot’s romance in so vivid detail facilitated the lustful relationship between Francesca and Paolo. But we ought not forget that the two other forms of mediation is still occurring in this scene. Mediated through Virgil’s guidance, Dante learns and grieves for Francesca’s sins at the same time mediated through the Inferno, we too gain access to hard-won wisdom.

In the final analysis, literature, with its power to mediate between the individual and the collective and the present and the future is a powerful tool that can lead us away from our sins as much as further entrench us in them. 

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