An Epic: The Divine Comedy

I did not like this book.

Kixbait, as it is called, is something unrelated to the material at hand, but is injected to the forefront of the blog to get views.

Let me think up of a colorful analogy to explain my experience with The Divine Comedy . . . you ever had Kix? It's a cereal with no artificial flavors, no colors, no preservatives, and nothing to celebrate.

The first bite is not bad, it's no Captain Crunch, but it has a certain taste that you appreciate. That was the first book for me, the best known book in The Divine Comedy, The Inferno.  It was entertaining to see what the author of the book, Dante Alighieri, would create as we plunged into the depths of hell. The catch was that every canto (think of it as a chapter) often there would be a lengthy discourse that took away from the engagement the journey brought.

Second Bite: Oh regrets, why did you decide to have Kix, when you could have had Captain Crunch. The second book, The Purgatorio, I still found myself engaged with, but the journey seems to be taking a back seat to discourses and Dante wanting to espouse his personal beliefs more directly instead of through the medium of a story. Again some of the concepts are still entertaining though.

Third bite: It's cardboard, you are eating cardboard, but you have to finish it because your mom won't allow you to throw soggy cereal away. The third book, The Paradisio, was a struggle. The imagery was so much that I just had to read it and give up trying to envision it. For example, what am I supposed to imagine when there are hymns raised in harmonies that are unknown except to heaven itself? There was none of the original fun the last two books had as I could barely imagine what was going on even with a synopsis at the start of each canto. But I was the mom in that scenario and I said to myself I would finish it and write a focused non-review blog post on the book, so, here I am.

Due to my ambivalence on the book, I figured it would be best to relate The Divine Comedy to what we learned of in class as well as walk you through the journey taken in the book, as the book is widely referenced in culture and it'll probably serve as good background knowledge if any of you haven't read it. As a note, I will be primarily focused on the Inferno because it works better in terms of an epic and you probably don't want to read a blog post that will take you twenty minutes to finish.

Dante led by Charon crossing the river Styx with Virgil (an ancient Roman poet who Dante likes), his guide, by his side. Get used to the elaborate allusions that will be impossible to recognize without notes when reading the Divine Comedy.

Inferno begins with Dante (the author portrays himself as the protagonist) finding himself in a dark wood of error. It is the Easter season, a season of rebirth and Dante encounters Virgil, who explains that he is to lead Dante away from his errors. Dante will begin his descent through hell, then trek up Mount Purgatory,leave Virgil , and then ascend through the heavens. (The book does seem pretty cool at first glance.)

Unlike most epics, the hero is not an outstanding or legendary individual, there is nothing special about Dante at the time he was just a 35-year-old man who wrote a couple books prior. Nothing too remarkable except that he wrote in the Italian vernacular, which as we've learned in class was unconventional in the middle ages where people typically wrote in Latin, by no means does that make him a distinguished character however. 

The book does follow the wide expanse that epics are typified by though, the setting is of monumental proportions. Dante's depiction of hell is much more grander than it had to be. His depiction of hell is separated into nine circles with each circle progressing into more and more egregious acts. This is where you might have some experience with The Divine Comedy. Dante's portrayal of what hell has influenced how it is

typically depicted in culture and religion, and begins with something that is easy to understand for readers like me.

So Dante, the character, begins his journey through the gates of hell and in that vestibule he meets the first class of people: the opportunists. It's here where the book displays why it is recognized as one of the greatest books of the Middle Ages: the punishments. Woo, are they  fun and well done, it's a shame that there was really no such thing as that in The Paradisio because then there would have been something redeemable with that bowl of metaphorical Kix. With this in mind, let's look at who the opportunists are. They are the souls in life who never pursued evil, but also never pursued good, instead they only lived for themselves. Because of this, they are essentially in the foyer to hell. There the opportunists' punishment is, quoting Canto III's synopsis here because it does a much better job than I can describe it, "They race round and round, pursuing a wavering banner that runs forever before them through the through the dirty air; and as they run they are pursued by swarm of wasp and hornets who sting them and produce a constant flow of blood and putrid matter which trickles down the bodies of the sinners and is feasted upon by loathsome worms and maggots who coat the ground."  Isn't it gruesome!

Each punishment is a symbolic retribution for the past sinner's actions, eye-for-an-eye style. Following typical traits of an epic, it starts with themes that will stay prominent throughout the work. Here we see Dante's theme displaying God's perfect justice. As the opportunists took no sides, they are given no place in hell or heaven. As they constantly pursued whatever proved to be to their advantage for the current time, they are now pursuing an ever-shifting banner in the afterlife. As their own guilty conscience pursued them, they are pursued by pestilent swarms of wasps and hornets. According to a sign in this canto, hell exists to punish sin, and the punishments testify to the perfect justice that is given.

Just a cool illustration, not much relevance

While this made my experience with the epic better, another trait characteristic of epics made it worse. Long formal discourses, speeches, and diatribes are given almost every single canto. It can be done by Dante's guide, a guardian of a circle of hell, or one of the participants of hell. Let me take you to the third round of the seventh circle. It's at a "great plain of burning sand" where there are "flames raining from the sky to fall still unextinguished." Enough said there, that's awesome. But then Dante visits the inhabitants and they explain their lineage to Dante. Begging him to keep themselves in his memory, distracting from the amazing environment. It adds to the themes in most cases, but, as originally mentioned, it is done ad nauseam where it quickly becomes an annoyance even in the middle of the first book.   

Lastly, one of the most prominent traits is an epic elucidating the social and cultural conventions. In Beowulf, it was, uh, well people's love of wine and glory, and passion. In The Inferno especially, you can see the morals and the ethics of the time reflected through how it is organized. For example, why is murder viewed as belonging in the seventh circle, while accepting a bribe belongs to the more abhorrent eight circle. Well in the middle ages, people's ethics were based on strict church doctrine. Dante views harmony here on Earth as less important than God's will in heaven. Fraud therefore is viewed as the greater evil.

Given these points, I hope I did what I kind of originally intended to do reinforce what we learned in the class as well as maybe let you learn of The Divine Comedy so that way you will never have to slog through it. Or maybe this will encourage you to make the attempt as if you are prospectively looking at anything related to middle ages literature you will probably read this.

*NEW* Meta-Blog™: I worked myself in a hole with this blog. My angle restricted me to a point where I began writing it like an essay, unfortunate tidings for me, I may come back to rework this because I am left unsatisfied with how I wrote it. (Although right now it's pretty late . . . fun tip, you can modify the time to make it look better for when you published your blog, I'm setting this to 4:40 p.m) There was so much to cover that I didn't know how to surmount it all. Learning experience, I guess. It's decent, full of content, but it doesn't satiate that blog criteria with how I want to write it. It was fun, sure, but I just wanted to vent my grievances and struggles with this book so much.  While at the same time, I had to attempt to at least keep my blog concise. I'll welcome your comments and criticisms although what's left unsaid is often more powerful than the latter . . . .