Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri Review

Book Report: Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
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Book Report: The Divine Comedy (La Commedia) by Dante Alighieri
Introduction
Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), a renowned Italian writer and poet, makes for one of the individuals who found himself on the wrong side of the powerful religious system that influenced even the polities of medieval times in Europe. Dante's poem, The Divine Comedy or La Commedia, documents a journey into the afterlife divided into three parts: Inferno or Hell, Purgatorio or Purgatory, and Paradiso or Heaven. Dante showcases his faith, mastery of reason and stretches his imagination of the afterlife for an allegorical representation of his enlightened understanding of the misleading influence of the religious system and authority of his time on matters of faith and politics.
Hell (Inferno)
Inferno or Hell makes for a daunting encounter for Dante and his guide Virgil who promises to see him through and out of the treacherous journey. Together they come to the gates of Hell with a sign, "Give up hope you who enter," but they do not go in, and instead, they embark on a journey through the nine circles of Inferno. The first circle, Limbo, has the unbaptized souls where pagans and non-believers of Christ remain for eternity. Among the souls Dante meets include Socrates, Horace, Aristotle, Ovid, and Homer CITATION Ali16 \l 1033 (Alighieri, 2016). There was no suffering in this circle, but the souls desired God's mercy to befall them. Under the guard of a half man and half beast named Minos, the second circle held the souls of the lustful sinners or who loved out of the context of the allowed conventions. It included the likes of Paris, Cleopatra, and other sinful lovers who were under the torment of an endless wind. The third circle of Inferno is filled with alcoholic and greedy souls spending their eternity in mire and mud under the watchful eyes of a dog with three heads. Spendthrifts and misers were going in circles in the fourth circle that was previously manned by Plato but standing guard now was a beast CITATION Ali16 \l 1033 (Alighieri, 2016). The lazy and angry souls were in the fifth circle of Hell, with the former suffocating in the swampy river's depth while the latter fighting in the mud of the same. The sixth circle of Inferno took angelic intervention for Virgil and Dante to enter due to the guards' adamant refusal to let Dante into the part that held, in open graves, the souls of those who did not believe in immortality. Minotaur, a half-man-half-bull, guarded the seventh circle that held the souls of the violent and included three different parts. Those who were violent against their loved ones or those close to them languished Phlegethon, the river of boiling blood CITATION Ali16 \l 1033 (Alighieri, 2016). Suicide victims made up the second part of the seventh circle as trees and bushes with human feelings and emotions under harpies' constant torment. Violators of nature were in the third part with the rain of snowflakes as their verdict. The eighth circle of Hell had ten parts, with the first having the seducers and panders being whipped while the second had the souls of flatters being dipped into feces. The other parts harbored simonists with their feet on fire, diviners, and fortune-tellers whose heads were backward, fraudsters being slashed and tortured by demons, hypocrites on robes of lead, thieves whose hands were chopped off, evil counselors in flames, and the souls of those who brought chaos among people of the same blood and religion being hurt by the devil. The last part of the eighth circle of Hell included souls of falsifiers who suffered horrible diseases. Dante's political nemesis, Pope Boniface VIII, was in the eighth circle of Inferno. The ninth and last circle of Hell harbored the greatest of all sins, according to Dante, betrayal. The souls of traitors, including the three-faced Lucifer, Judas, Brutus, and Cassius, were stuck in the frozen river's ice, Cocytus with Lucifer chewing on each of the three other traitors in his three mouths. Virgil and Dante climb up Lucifer's body and exit Inferno into the island mountain of Purgatorio.
Purgatory (Purgatorio)
The second part of the poem, Purgatory, is divided into three parts where repentant sinners are purged of their sins. Virgil and Dante clean themselves up and go into the first part of Purgatory, the pre-purgatory. They are in a state of sleep upon entering the first part, and Dante dreams of an angel cutting the letter P into his head seven times, signifying the seven sins that one must be purged of before gaining entry into Heaven. The sins are pride, envy, wrath or vengefulness, slothfulness, greed, gluttony, and lust CITATION Ali16 \l 1033 (Alighieri, 2016). Dante is afraid to go through the entire process of cleansing, but Virgil convinces him to go through the terraces and find themselves at the gates of Heaven where Dante falls asleep upon completing the process.
Heaven (Paradiso)
Upon purification, in the second part of the journey, Dante wakes up in a lovely garden where the beautiful Beatrice appears. Virgil is limited by his representation of human knowledge and understanding or reason from entering into Heaven, and in his place, the divine symbol of God's voice in the form of Beatrice takes charge of the rest of Dante's journey CITATION Ali16 \l 1033 (Alighieri, 2016). Beatrice and Dante begin their rise towards God through nine heavenly bodies revolving around Earth, with each of the spherical bodies representing significant revelations to Dante about the past and even his purpose to the City of Florence and its inhabitants. The journey through the celestial spheres culminates in Dante having the Beatific Vision of God on the Empyrean, where he catches a glimpse of the divine and glorious love of God.
Philosophical Concepts
Dante Alighieri presents an excellent combination of literature in poetry and philosophy in the depiction of the inadequacies of human reasoning and understanding towards gaining salvation or audience with the glorious love of God in the afterlife. The poem takes Christian spiritual patterns as it alludes to the biblical path of death to the body, with the soul going into the afterlife for judgment. Dante's three-part journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven reveals a conflict of principles and beliefs between proponents of faith in life after death through belief in Christ and the worldly reasoning built on reasoning based on knowledge and understanding of influential social dimensions such as religion, politics, and scholastic endeavors CITATION Bla181 \l 1033 (Blauvelt, 2018).
For instance, Dante's journey to Inferno is a representation of the Christian belief of spiritual death to the world as a gateway into the afterlife. Death allows for the evaluation of one's time in the world to determine whether or not they are worthy of proceeding on to the other stages of the afterlife towards being enjoined to the glorious love of God. At this juncture, Dante meets with those deemed neutral or souls for those who led righteous lives but did not k...