Inferno Dante Quotes

Dante’s response on spying Virgil’s ghost in the wilderness is one of instinctive fear. His actual plea, "have pity on me," in the original text forms the words "miserere di me." "Miserere" is actually Latin, not Italian, and comes from a famous psalm often sung on Ash Wednesday. In speaking Latin, Dante the pilgrim identifies himself as a steadfast Christian and, appropriately, sets himself up for recognition by Virgil, a Roman poet who was, of course, fluent in Latin. It is interesting that Dante the writer would use a liturgical Latin phrase to address a speaker of pagan Latin.

Dante recognizes Virgil as his artistic idol, "the only one from whom my writing drew [a] noble style." Thus, Dante acknowledges that all the epic similes, epithets, and larger-than-life characters stem from the epic tradition -- one that Virgil solidified in his epic poem, the Aeneid. Note that Dante calls Virgil "my author," as though Virgil’s poetry, or his writing style, directly informed Dante’s. Indeed, Dante acknowledges this creative debt by making constant allusions to the Aeneid.

In a nod to the Virgilian epic, Dante invokes the muses to lend credence to his words. This invocation, along with frequent apostrophes to God, reveals that Dante draws as much from the Classical tradition as from the Christian one.

With this passage, Dante demonstrates that Hell is a realm in which language breaks down. All the human sounds that greet Dante on entering Hell are unintelligible expressions of pain and anger. This depicts Hell as a place of irrationality, where reason cannot be adequately expressed and where articulate words are hard to come by.

Dante points out a number of inadequacies in language. At the first sight of Geryon, Dante is struck dumb. For one of the first times in the Inferno, his vocabulary lacks words to describe what he beholds. In trying to describe Geryon, Dante says his best option is to "close his lips as long as he can." Later, in comparing Geryon to a diver, Dante commits a linguistic sin. He tries to affirm the veracity of his statement by swearing on his own work. As a process, swearing or taking an oath cannot function properly if one swears on one’s own words; this demonstrates circular reasoning. By doing this, Dante shows either his arrogance or a breakdown of reasoning at beholding a sight as wondrous as Geryon.

In witnessing the horrendous pain of the Sowers of Schism, Dante laments the inability of words to do justice to their suffering. There is a suggestion here that words simply do not have the capacity to capture such agony: "untrammeled," "tongue[s]…fall[ing] short," and "shallowness of…our speech" convey the message that physical and moral pain sometimes penetrate to a deeper depth than language can reach, and that at that point language becomes ineffective.

In the final circle of Hell, Dante finds words inadequate to express the terror located there. By describing language as a "tongue that cries out ‘mama’ [and] ‘papa,’ Dante suggests that language in general is too infantile to accurately describe the happenings in Hell. To describe language as infantile is to portray humanity in the same way because – in Dante’s eyes – language is what makes a creature human.

In response to Fra Alberigo’s plea, Dante makes a promise to relieve his suffering in exchange for a favor. This is a serious promise, for Dante damns himself to Hell if he does not follow through.

Language fails Dante in the last circle of Hell; the experience of witnessing Lucifer suffering is so indescribable that Dante simply cannot articulate it. Indeed, his words illustrate their inadequacy by losing their coherence and by becoming contradictory: "I did not die, and I was not alive." All of this incoherence works to create an aura of alienation and the impression that Lucifer is something so far beyond human comprehension that language cannot hope to capture his condition. He is utterly alien.

Dante’s invocation of the muses suggests that he considers his poem a serious intellectual pursuit, much like Homer’s Odyssey or Virgil’s Aeneid. Like these ancient poets, he entrusts his memory and resulting words to a higher, divine power – much as his prayers to the Christian God will do later.

Having denied "the good of the intellect" by abusing their relationship to money, the avaricious and prodigal have not only forfeited their places in Heaven, but have also lost their identities, since their faces have been "render[ed]…unrecognizable." An intellectual sin can thus lead to compromising one’s identity, appropriate since – in Dante’s eyes – one’s mind and the way one uses it are the only things that distinguish man from animals.

For the first time since the Hellgate, Virgil insists that Divine proceedings can exceed the grasp of human intellect. Fortune, or the seemingly random shift of wealth and fame from one nation to another, can "stand against [the] force" of man’s reason because she is God’s minister. His "wisdom," of course, "transcends everything" – even human intellect. Thus, the fact that man cannot understand or predict Fortune’s vicissitudes is natural.

Here, Dante shows one of his naïve intellectual fallacies. Brunetto Latini, as Dante’s tutor, "taught [him] how man makes himself eternal"; namely, that man’s name can continue into eternity only through the quality of the works he creates during his lifetime. Thus, as the only way man can gain mortality, this philosophy denies the existence of the immortal soul. It seems that this sin – not sodomy – is the sole reason Latini resides in Hell. Dante, too, by adoring and even continuing to record Latini’s words, runs the peril of falling into the same trap as Latini.

For the second time, Dante asserts himself as a brilliant poet. In telling Lucan and Ovid – both of whom superbly described attacks by serpents and transformations (like Dante is doing here) – to "be silent," Dante obviously considers himself superior to them. His reasoning is based on the fact that neither Roman poet ever wrote of an instance in which "two natures….were ready to exchange their matter." And nobody, up to Dante’s time, had done it as well as he does…or so he asserts.

After witnessing the thieves’ punishment, Dante warns his readers not to misuse their intellect as the thieves have. His assertion, "I curb my talent," in describing the thieves’ painful transformations, Dante indirectly points out his superiority to other poets (described in the previous canto). But by "curb[ing his] talent," Dante claims he is adhering to virtue and not trying to surpass his human limits, nor to "run where virtue does not guide." This hails back to Virgil’s description in the third canto of "the good of the intellect."

By implying that "Nature acted well indeed" in refusing to give further birth to giants, Dante implies that the giants are sinners. They fall into the category between the eighth and ninth circles, between the realms of ordinary and treacherous fraud, both considered purely an intellectual sin and a denial of "the good of the intellect." Like Lucifer, the giants challenge God’s supremacy by connecting "the mind’s acutest reasoning" to "evil will and evil power." Thus, it comes as no surprise that their punishment – being immobilized deep in Hell – echoes and anticipates Lucifer’s penalty.

Dante’s response to Beatrice’s pity spurs him to bloom "as little flowers…grow straight and open fully on their stems" when "the white sun strikes." Thus, Beatrice’s compassion is related to the light of God. And because he can ‘see’ again with her illumination, Dante feels "warm daring rush into [his] heart" to offset the "exhausted force" of doubts that were plaguing him before. Thus, compassion seems to have a life-giving force that Dante will later use to enliven sinners to recount their stories to him.

Here, Dante’s soul is too naïve to recognize the crime of these sinners. That he sees "some estimable men" in limbo – poets like himself – biases him in their favor and incites his sympathy. Indeed, the crime of being born before the coming of Christ and being punished for it – something over which the "sinners" have no control – seems cruel and unfair. The implication of seeing fellow poets in Hell is that Dante, too, may end up there. By commiserating with these souls in limbo, Dante questions the validity of God’s judgment and His supposedly infinite love.

Dante’s reaction to Francesca’s and Paolo’s pitiable story brings such sympathy to his heart that he has an overwhelming physical reaction: he faints from compassion. Indeed, readers might suspect that his sympathy kills him since Dante is described as a "dead body fall[ing]." Dante has not yet learned to condemn sinners for their crimes, to define exactly what their sin is, or to weigh their seemingly noble qualities against their sins.

Even though Ciacco does not tell a pathetic story or even attempt to gain Dante’s mercy, our poet is "forced to weep" for Ciacco’s horrible punishment. Ciacco – because of his terseness – is not considered a likeable character, so it is strange that Dante feels so deeply for him. On second thought, perhaps Dante does not. Instead of asking Ciacco to tell his story, to elicit greater sympathy, Dante does not ask any personal questions, but instead focuses on the fate of their shared city, Florence.