Dante’s Inferno: My Poem Sinned Against God
“A poet’s work … to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it from going to sleep.” – Salman Rushdie
Dante’s Inferno is like a romantic painting in the complexity of its composition and the chaotic nature of its experience. Disguised as a series of tumultuous encounters, Dante’s work methodically promotes the contemporary judgements and ethical boundaries perpetuated by the Roman Catholic church. Through each Canto, he promotes a of rules with regard to many aspects of the human experience, including art, which he defines as the ‘grandchild’ of God in Canto 11. This part is particularly intriguing, as it is not at once clear whether Dante’s own artistic attempt (the poem we read) follows the rules it promotes. For the metaphorical ‘child’ of god is in this case said to be nature, which loosely defined as the natural bonds of love between people. This idea of the bonds or unity between people is so idealized as a creation of god that accurate depiction of these bonds in art becomes a pillar to maintaining respect for god through respecting his nature. Stemming from this logic, Inferno should convey the natural bond of love he shares with his subject matter in order to serve god, giving voice to those around him. However, through the use of Virgil as an ideal poet ambassador, Dante imposes his human linguistic terms and ideas upon the spiritual world instead of respecting Nature. Dante argues that art must follow nature to respect god, but his imposition of the worldly view of the poet on hell causes him to violate god by misrepresenting hell to the reader.
In Inferno Canto 11, Dante argues that nature, which is the bond of love and trust between people, represents the will of god and that violation of such a bond is an indirect afront toward god. Dante describes a state of “Nature” as the natural bond of trust and love between human beings which to him serve the fundamental foundations of civic society. A main consideration of Canto 11 is fraud, through which the importance of this bond is demonstrated. This first bond, that of trust, is described by contrast when he considers fraud: “Fraud, which bites at every mind, a man can use / against one who trusts in him or against one who has / in his purse no cause for trust” (11.52-54). In this, Dante explores the possibility of fraud between different individuals, and the natural spirit of ‘trust’ between human beings that fraud (purposeful or not) causes. The implication here is that fraud is a negative impulse that spoils a natural state that equips humans to get along. He goes further to describe another natural bond, one of love, between different people. This latter bond is described with increasingly passionate language: “This latter mode [of fraud] seems to cut solely into the bond / that Nature makes…. The former mode forgets the love that Nature makes / and also that which is added to it, from which / special trust is created” (Dante 11.55-57, 11.61-63). This type of fraud, associated with the “traitor,” is further sentenced to “the smallest circle” of hell (Dante 11.64-66). Elsewhere in the Canto, Dante describes art as “god’s grandchild,” the offspring of Nature (Dante 11.103-105). The ‘love that Nature makes’ thus refers to a love that god generated through nature, a sin against nature being a secondhand sin against god. While fraud to him is something between humans and cannot be committed against an omniscient god, this fraud or traitorship against humanity is violence against god’s child, nature, and thus indirect violence against god. Such drastic implications of fraud in art might bring into question whether Dante himself is respectful of the natural bonds of love between people he elevates so – and upon consideration of the voice of the poem, the concern stands.
Dante uses Virgil as a mouthpiece and ‘ideal poet’ figure, taking the voice away from the inhabitants of hell and thus causing the poem to reflect the poet’s beliefs, not nature. Although the poet is traditionally associated with wisdom, he gives so much importance to the poet (Virgil) that he seems almost something divine, approaching idolatry. Dante elevates himself through his representation so much he breaks the bond of love shared by a poet and their subject. Through the voice of Virgil addressing an idealized form of art, Aristotle’s Physics, he says: “…if you take / good note of your Physics, you will see, after not / many pages, / that your art follows Nature as much as it can, as / a disciple follows the master; so that your art is / almost God’s grandchild.” (Dante 11.100-105). The voice is generalized, and seems to speak to humanity as a whole. This elevates Virgil’s perspective, which perhaps represents the ideal poet’s perspective, above all others. Unfortunately, this shows that Dante’s art might be a far cry from following nature – more accurately, it follows the poet. While the concept seems to be that Virgil is an ambassador or translator of hell to the rest of the world, this does not necessitate him imposing his narrative on everyone else – but this is what happens. He creates a great deal of distance between the poet and the residents of hell: “…we came above a crueler crowding; / and there, because of the horrible excess of stench / cast upon the abyss, we moved back beside the lid” (Dante 11.4-6). This section alienates the poet from the experiences of the inhabitants of hell, serving to distance the reader from the subject of the poem rather than uniting them. The theme continues when he says, “’Our descent will have to be delayed, so that our / sense can become a little accustomed to the evil / smell…’” (Dante 11.10-12). The poet is so removed from the inhabitants of hell that his physical senses cannot even coexist with them. He is not some kind of passive observer or interpreter, he is just another person judging the people of hell from outside its bounds. The perspective of the poem thus doesn’t represent nature (the people in hell, in this case) at all, but the poet and his reactions.
Dante’s disregard for voices besides that of the poet in Canto 11 shows a problem spanning the entire poem of elevating the poet’s narrative above the experiences of its subject. At the start of the Canto, the bias of the poet is clear: the previously described stench, the use of “I” pronouns: “…we moved back beside the lid / of a great tomb, where I saw writing…” (Dante 11.5-6). Here the prioritization is clear through speaker, who is evidently removed from the scene. Because the perspective of the narrator has human bias against hell and imposes a worldly view upon it, the poem does not serve to reflect nature but to judge it from an outsider perspective rather than respect nature that is the spiritual transcendence of hell. Further, the fact that he focuses on worldly, material issues causes him to overlook the greater spiritual issues that would demonstrate that his very arguments condemn his own poem. For instance, he puts homosexuals as the beings that sin against Nature, and, thus, sin against God indirectly. But he fails to see how his poem is also in a way scorning Nature because his poetic perspective is limited to humans looking toward god, instead of beginning with the spiritual perspective.
His prioritization of Virgil and the material causes Dante to impose worldly perspectives on hell rather than spiritual, resulting in an act of violence against god. Dante is so close to the reader he is almost part of his readership. This is made evident in cases such as in Canto 8, where he says “Think, reader, if I became weak at the sound of / those cursed words, for I did not believe I would / ever return here.” (8.94-96). The direct engagement of the reader isn’t objectively a bad thing, but by his own logic his devotion to nature through art should come before all else. However, contradictions to this idea crop up in as basic forms as the language he chooses. Terms such as “usurers” are made up by human beings and made for them as well. Dante has no scruples projecting those terms onto his hellscape, because he does not try to stay true to nature. Rather, he tries to stay true to earth, putting his own words and values in the mouth of the spiritual realm he tries to explain. As a poet, he has the power to give voice to the perspectives of the inhabitants of hell or their judges, but he chooses not to. Narrating from a different perspective would have allowed not only Dante to engage in conversation with nature and portray it more accurately, but would have allowed his readership to do the same. In no way is this to say that the poet can (or should) render an objective telling of reality. However, by the logic of following God’s nature, they should render the world, not the poet, something that is not achieved. Because of this, his narrative comes across very self-affirming and non-inclusive of its divine subject. Further that not positively affirming divinity, Dante seems to do injustice against it. He defines violence against a deity as “One can use force against the Deity by denying it / and cursing it in one’s heart or by scorning Nature / and its goodness;” (Dante 11.46-48, 173). Clearly, Dante does not directly deny or curse god. However, he does incorrectly portray nature, which whether by purposeful act or sad accident breaches on indirect violence against god.
Dante’s prioritization of human cares over godly concerns results in misrepresentation of the spiritual world which could generate misunderstanding of that realm in readers. While his art as a ‘grandchild of god’ logic implies a stream of thought always beginning with god, often his strain of logic broadens from humans to god, rather than the opposite. For instance, in Canto 11 he states, “But because fraud is an evil proper to man, it is / more displeasing to god…” (Dante 11.25-26). Broadening from a first clause involving man (and a purely human issue) to a second clause involving god (a divine and much larger perspective), Dante fails to specify why god cares about the human issue of fraud at all, and implies a hierarchy of understanding for the reader that prioritizes human understanding over divine understanding. Similar terms painted as divinely punishable are similarly worldly: “hypocrisy, flattery, casters of spells, impersonators, / thievery and simony, panders, embezzlers, and / similar filth” (Dante 11.58-60). Outside of mortal legal circles, many of these carry little meaning and are not clearly connected to god’s idea of law or even personal law. Dante thus misrepresents the spiritual realm by imposing worldly terms upon it. On a personal scale, this is only a simple sin of misunderstanding, but in misrepresenting hell to a greater readership, Dante’s violation of god’s nature transforms from a passive act of ignorance to a publicly active act of spreading such ignorance.
By losing respect for his poetic subject, Dante loses respect for nature and, according to his own logic, affronts God by disrespecting his creation. Further, his (mis)representation of hell has the larger ramification of actively leading others into the unintentional sin of misunderstanding nature through his overly material portrayal of hell. This occurs because Dante elevates the poet to such a divine status, a voyeur of punishment relaying all the victims’ judgements and punishments that he loses respect for the actual subjects for the poem. The poet begins as an interpreter, an ambassador between the spiritual and material worlds, but Dante turns him into a kind of Platonic philosopher king, he is so elevated from the world around him and superior. Since he argued that intellectual corruption was worse than its violent counterparts, Dante himself commits perhaps one of the greatest sins of the whole narrative because he corrupts not only his own poetic understanding of hell through elevating the poetic perspective, but that of all his readers. This is not to say that a poet is always a fraud if they cannot be objective – a poet’s job is not to show objective truth, either. But it is not to preach, it is a process of learning, both for the poet who learns from their subject, and the reader who learns by engaging indirectly with the subject and directly in a sort of conversation with the poet. Dante’s removal of the voice of the oppressed in hell is not unlike current power narratives upheld by structures not dissimilar from the thirteenth century organized religious circles. He glorifies his own role as a poet through a mouthpiece (Virgil) and promotes the values of organized religion. A more powerful poem might give a voice to the silenced voices of hell rather than projecting a narrative over them. But in this way, Dante does injustice against God and nature, and in this way, many continue to create hell for silenced peoples today.
Works Cited
Alighieri, Dante, et al. The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: Volume 1: Inferno. Illustrated, Oxford University Press, 1997.
“Quote by Salman Rushdie.” Goodreads, 2013, https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/13945-a-poet-s-work-to-name-the-unnamable.
