Dante's Divine Comedy

In the Divine Comedy, Dante, the character, is taken on a journey, first through Hell and then through Heaven.

The journey through Hell is called Inferno. His guide is a pagan called Virgil. The journey through Heaven is called Paradiso. His guide for this is an angel called Beatrice.

Hell is conceived as a cone which tapers towards the centre of the Earth.

We posted the 9 circles of Hell here:
http://vassago-vassago.blogspot.com/2009/01/ten-circles-of-hell.html

This cone is basically broken up into 3 sections of circles. Souls are assigned to a setion according to their sins.

The upper levels are for those guilty of incontinence (no shit!), adultery, gluttony and wrath.

The middle section is for those guilty of violence.

The deepest levels are for those guilty of fraud, malice and is the place for thieves, hypocrites and traitors. Judas is one of the characters Dante meets there.

At the centre of the earth is The Devil, bound in a block of ice. The pit is actually cold, not hot, as is commonly believed. So the expression "as cold as Hell" can now be taken literally. It does make sense that the furthest place from the light and love of God should be the darkest and coldest.

From Hell Dante is led by Virgil up a "hidden road" to Purgatory. This is described as a mountain with many terraces. Souls perform penalties here to earn their salvation.

At the top of the mountain is Earthly Paradise. Virgil, a pagan, can't go any further, so Beatrice comes to collect Dante and lead him to Heaven.

Paradiso is a sustained vision of the world of light. Dante is guided through the nine spheres to the empyrean. Here he is granted a vision of God and achieves an instant of mystical union with Him.

Dante is regarded as ranked equally with Shakespeare and Homer due to this epic work.

It is called a "comedy" because it is written in the "middle" style rather than the higher "tragic" style.

Like Shakespeare or Blake, Dante has a deep and pitiless understanding of human nature. He had, as did his two contemporaries, have a knowledge of all the arts and sciences of his time.

Dali was inspired by Dante's poem and did many illustrations based on it.