Inferno Dante Quotes

Finally, in the fifth circle of the wrathful, Dante comes to condemn a sinner, taking pleasure in his pain. However, Dante’s reasoning still does not ring true. Instead of condemning Argenti for his rage, Dante makes it personal by raging at Argenti for refusing to identify himself. However, Virgil sees the slow development of Dante’s judgment and rejoices at his harsh words to the sinner. Dante is learning.

In hearing Pier della Vigna’s story, Dante is so moved by pity (indeed, suicide is always pitiable) that he cannot speak. Instead, he requests that Virgil speak for him to the sinner. Instead of channeling his sympathy into words, Dante falls into silence – just as he did by passing out when talking to Francesca. Here is one place where language fails to capture the depth of human experience; Dante’s grief is simply too deep for words.

For one of the only times in the Inferno, a sinner shows shame for his behavior. Venedico Caccianemico feels so mortified by his sin (pandering) that he tries to hide his face from Dante, to keep from being recognized. However, Dante – now more mature in his judgment – not only identifies Caccianemico, but mocks him for being submerged in "sauces so piquant," or a pool of excrement. His words demonstrate no sympathy for the sinner.

Upon witnessing the grotesque punishment of the magicians, Dante is again moved to tears. He clearly values compassion for fellow human beings, but his apparently piteous tone reveals hints of scorn. His description of the sinners’ tears – initially designed to elicit pity – becomes ridiculous when he mentions them "running down the cleft" of the sinners’ buttocks.

Although Dante exhibits the same distaste for all the guardians of Hell, none of them is depicted so comedically as the demons. In this passage, the action concentrates completely on the demons and their pursuit of the escaping sinner, not at all on Dante or his emotional reactions. The action here is almost cartoonish in tone, complete with dastardly villains, a cunning escape, and the scoundrels’ useless fighting amongst themselves when finding their quarry gone. Such slapstick comedy requires an emotional distance, especially when dealing with such serious topics as sin and punishment, and this burlesque suggests that Dante feels no pity for either the demons or their victims, the barrators.

At the unexpected information that one of his own kin inhabits Hell, Dante predictably reacts with pity. In fact, it’s his relative – Geri del Bello – for whom Dante had wept a few lines ago, not for the sowers of scandal at large. When Virgil tells Dante to ignore del Bello, Dante shows a surprising amount of resolve. Unlike the sycophantically obedient Dante seen in the early cantos, the more mature Dante stands up for his opinions – even against his master. He sides with Geri del Bello, allowing for his obscene gestures and claiming that del Bello wants only a just revenge for his violent death. Although Dante may err against God in showing mercy to his kinsman, he endears himself to readers by defending his family and showing some backbone against his taskmaster Virgil.

Although Dante condemns Ugolino for his traitorous crime, he shows pity for Ugolino’s sons and considers them "innocent and young" victims. This could be read as an extension of Dante’s steadfast sympathy for Geri del Bello, because here Dante carries on the theme of well-intentioned family members. Here, however, he seems more in the right than he did with del Bello.

Lucifer, the most severely punished sinner and potentially the greatest pity-inducer, instead elicits little heartfelt emotion in Dante. Unlike the vast majority of the sinners interviewed in the Inferno, Lucifer never gets the opportunity to speak to Dante and tell his side of the story. But Dante’s lack of pity stems from an even deeper source. Lucifer, despite his tears, seems like a giant automaton; his teeth gnash mechanically "like a grinder" and his wings flap rhythmically. Lucifer seems to have lost the ability to feel and emote, leaving readers with the sense that he is simply the engine which powers Hell, an enormous generator, and nothing more. To Dante and his readers alike, Lucifer seems soulless, inhuman, and mechanical. Thus is the nature of evil; it is a lack of heart and will, a void, rather than anything actively degenerate.

Appropriately, Dante’s description of the coming dawn coincides with his reference to Creation. The "Divine Love" alludes to God’s supreme tenderness and devotion in fashioning all the creatures of the earth. And the "things of beauty" refer to the celestial bodies – the sun and stars – that bring light to the universe. With the Genesis comes the dawn of mankind. To further illustrate the birth metaphor, Dante begins his story in the "gentle season," the springtime. Of course, with the sunlight, crafted from God’s all-encompassing love, Dante feels a resurgence of hope, even before the fearsome maw of the lion.

Although it seems counterintuitive, Hell is created out of "the primal love" (or, in other words, God). That a place of such suffering, a realm which urges all souls to "abandon every hope" upon entering, can have a function that stems from love seems absurd. Indeed, Dante’s depiction of the sinners often challenges this assumption. He does not easily accept that an all-loving God would create such excruciating punishments for his favored children.

In the circle of sodomy, Dante indirectly addresses this type of sin by showing the inappropriate love that exists between himself and Brunetto Latini, his former teacher. In an unnecessarily intimate manner, Dante considers Latini a "kind, paternal image." But because Dante already has a father figure – namely Virgil – this is inappropriate. Some scholars have also suggested that in writing together or greeting each other, Dante and Latini come into physical contact, which means that Dante puts his hands on his teacher’s aging, naked body.

When Dante has a moment to reflect on his hasty decision to take a tour of Hell with Virgil, his anxiety paralyzes him so that he is unable to move forward. This immobilization is shown linguistically in the oscillating back and forth between "unwills" and "wills" and his mental tangents that "draw [him] from what he had begun." Dante is rendered wholly indecisive.

In ending a canto with the protagonist fainting away "like a man whom sleep has seized," the author Dante effectively stops the action and freezes time from the reader’s perspective. From the moment the character Dante passes out right up until his awakening, readers are left unaware about whatever action takes place.

Heretics, for denying the immortality of the soul, are denied a linear, straightforward understanding of time. Having lived their lives only in the present moment (like the Epicureans), heretics are punished by being imprisoned in the future. They can see only in front of them, but not around them; they remain ignorant of their present state and must spend eternity without knowledge of their own time.

Deep within the circles of fraud, Dante learns to manipulate the sinners’ desire for fame to his advantage. Here, he lures men into telling their stories by promising to bring word of them back to the living world. Whether or not he is sincere in his promises is another matter.

Bocca is the only sinner unimpressed by Dante’s offer to keep his memory alive in the mortal world. Here is a sinner so corrupt that he cares little what happens to his good name simply because he has none; it has already been irreparably besmirched by his well-known betrayal to his country. However, his indifference brings out a different and frightening side of Dante, proving – to some extent – that our poet has never had any intention of bringing glory to the sinners. Indeed, when provoked by Bocca, Dante threatens to do quite the opposite: to "carry / true news of you, and…bring you shame."