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Ricardo J. Quinones, Dante Alighieri. Boston: G.K. Hall,
1979.
Subject of the Commedia:
Dante's motif is one of the oldest in literature: a voyage through
the world beyond the world. The subconscious is endless and as deep
as Dante's hell.
Dante's journey to Hell represents the elementary spiritual act of
dying to the world, and hence it coincides with the season of
Christ's own death. The purpose of Hell is to explain the causes of
his own inability to ascend the mountain. Hell is where many false
commitments must be unlearned. He experiences separation from what
had been false gods, and falsely based attachments. Dante leaves
behind the love doctrines of his young manhood, so beautifully
represented by Francesca; the values of his fellow Florentines,
Farinata, Guido Cavalcante, and Brunetto Latini; and the higher
commitments to energy and experience found in Ulysses. Hell begins
with an anti-Romance and it ends with an anticlimax. The lack of
dramatic or emotional power in the final encounter is appropriate;
since the Inferno signifies primarily a process of separation,
it cannot end on an upbeat, or produce a grand finale, but must
terminate rather with distinct feeling of being let down. Virgil and
Beatrice, the classical and Christian bases to Dante's
undertaking.
Begins Good Friday in the year 1300, in the thiry-fifth year of his
life. He finds himself in a dark wood; he is alienated, estranged
from the order of the world. Reminescent of the fall of man in
Genesis and the chosen people's intermittent separations from
God.
Leopard represents sensuality, incontinence
She-wolf represents greed or violence
Lion represents pride or treachery
Virgil, died nineteen years before the birth of Christ and therefore
stands at the end of the old world and the beinning of the new. The
descent into hell will demand self-discipline. And the spectacles
will not only be exterior. Dante will also have to tame the various
beasts that are within him. Commedia implies the struggle of
free will against forces that attempt to nullify it.
Principal Signs and Symbols
1 Dante: the poet who is also the Christian sinner
2 Virgil: the poet who is also human wisdom, the best that man can
become without belief in Christ.
3 The wood: the error that hardens the heart or blinds the eye
4 The three beasts:
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