Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here: Adventures with Dante’s Inferno

“I want to read ‘Inferno’,” I blurted, thinking of that haunting cover we’d seen in the bookstore weeks before.

That is how it started. I wanted to read a classic this summer, but I knew that I would need someone to keep me accountable. My friend and I were on a walk around finals time and had wandered into a bookstore. As we talked about our long reading lists, I ran my hand over the cover of “Inferno” and sighed wistfully. Weeks later, when brainstorming what to read this summer, I remembered that moment. I called my friend and asked if she would be willing to meet with me once a week to discuss Dante’s classic. She agreed enthusiastically.

The first week, two days before our planned FaceTime meeting, she texted me:

“ok so i only just started reading dante’s inferno but i already need sparknotes.”

“Inferno” tells of Dante’s journey through Hell with Virgil (a Roman poet) as his guide. It is a descent into nine concentric circles where punishments grow harsher and more symbolic of the inner suffering the crime causes people. Reading it, I found myself fascinated by its majestic description of “the recognition and rejection of sin.” Yet this was not easy to understand from reading the original text alone. Abandoning hope was on the horizon. I was on page 50 at this point, and like her, I had barely understood what I had read. This was epic poetry steeped in political commentary about the conflict between the papal and imperial powers in 14th-century Italy. And I am interested in neither. Safe to say that I agreed with my friend’s next suggestion:

“Should we do this in a chavruta style (paired study method) where we read it together and try to make sense of it like that?”

For the next two months, we met once a week after reading three cantos (chapters). During our meetings, we each picked a paragraph or two and guided each other through some of our thoughts about it. If needed, we also researched secondary sources and brought their commentary into our discussions. It was invigorating to open up each other’s understanding of this great work through discussing our research. We would then do some research together and learn a bit more about the context of the story, the meaning of the words and the differences between translations (as it was originally written in Italian). Sometimes this process was exciting; other times, frustrating.

Learning something new without guidance requires more patience than a traditional learning process. Sometimes, even figuring out what the English words meant was a challenge; the translation tried its hardest to maintain the original Italian’s rhyme scheme, which made for many trips to the dictionary. I didn’t even know what a few of the crimes of those being punished in hell were, such as simony (paying for a position in the Church) and grafting (abusing a position of power to gain money or other advantages).

As “Inferno” is rife with allusions to other classic texts, we learned stories from Genesis, Daniel, the New Testament, Greek mythology, Roman poets and more to supplement our understanding. We talked about Rachel and her cries for the people, giants made from different metals like the one mentioned in Daniel and Homer’s “Ulysses.” One thing that we particularly liked discussing was whether punishment for crime should be an eye for an eye or whether it is more fitting for the perpetrator to suffer from the crime itself. For example, those who were treacherous were frozen in a lake. Why is this a fitting punishment? I thought that traitors might be punished with constant beheading; maybe a life without a head, without the use of the senses attached to the head. Once we discussed this punishment and did some research, the punishment made a lot more sense. The frozen lake symbolizes the warm human relationships that were coldly broken. This mirrors how treacherous people are shaped by their own betrayal, demonstrating that punishment in Dante’s Hell is less about like-for-like retribution, but symbolizes how crimes shape the sinner during their lifetime.

Our meetings were largely informal, with no specific goals holding back or directing the conversation. We talked for as long or as short as we wanted. Nothing was too small or too large to say. We could talk at our own pace, covering any topic that interested us. There was no such thing as a tangent, or, more accurately, everything was a tangent! Pausing essays, assignments, discussion posts and the endless circles that characterize school, we cultivated intelligence. We left behind structured learning, which gave us space to explore and dive into a text that we would have otherwise merely checked off a list. 

Now, reading a text like “Inferno” might seem daunting. You might even call it hellish. Believe me, epic poetry is. I struggled to get through it, and I chose to read it. It wasn’t just another novel I was reading so that I could write an essay on it. Yet, undergoing difficult projects is what causes us to grow intellectually and gives us the ability to do even more difficult things in the future. It helped that I wanted to finish “Inferno,” but now that I am done, I am proud of myself for more than merely finishing the book. Instead, I hold most dearly the new knowledge that I gained in the process of reading and discussion.

So find that one thing outside of school that you are going to learn at your own pace. Think outside of the box. Challenge yourself. Never abandon hope, even as you enter into something new and nerve-wracking. And maybe drag along a friend who will be your guide and hold you accountable. Because sometimes, the scariest doorways, even those opening up to Hell, lead to the most rewarding journeys.

Photo Caption: Depiction of The Circle of the Falsifiers

Photo Credit: Unsplash / Art Institute of Chicago