Dante Alighieri
Thirty-five years old at the beginning of the story, Dante—the
character as opposed to the poet—has lost his way on the “true path”
of life; in other words, sin has obstructed his path to God. The
Divine Comedy is the allegorical record of Dante’s quest
to overcome sin and find God’s love; in Inferno,
Dante explores the nature of sin by traveling through Hell, where
evil receives punishment according to God’s justice. Allegorically,
Dante’s story represents not only his own life but also what Dante
the poet perceived to be the universal Christian quest for God.
As a result, Dante the character is rooted in the Everyman allegorical
tradition: Dante’s situation is meant to represent that of the whole
human race.
For this reason, Dante the character does not emerge as
a particularly well-defined individual; although we know that he
has committed a never-specified sin and that he participates in
Florentine politics, we learn little about his life on Earth. His
traits are very broad and universal: often sympathetic toward others,
he nonetheless remains capable of anger; he weeps at the sight of
the suffering souls but reacts with pleasure when one of his political
enemies is torn to pieces. He demonstrates excessive pride but remains
unsatisfied in many respects: he feels that he ranks among the great
poets that he meets in Limbo but deeply desires to find Beatrice,
the woman he loves, and the love of God. Dante fears danger but
shows much courage: horrified by Hell, he nevertheless follows his
guide, Virgil, through its gates. He also proves extremely emotional,
as shown by his frequent fainting when he becomes overly frightened or
moved. As the story progresses, Dante must learn to reconcile his sympathy
for suffering with the harsh violence of God’s justice; the deeper
he proceeds into Hell, the less the agonies of the damned affect
him. Virgil encourages him to abhor sin and not pity the justice
meted out to sinners; Dante must achieve this level of stringent moral
standards before he may begin his journey to Heaven, played out
in Purgatorio and Paradiso.
Because Dante the character is a fictional creation of
Dante the poet, the reader should remember that the character’s
feelings do not always correspond to those of the poet. For instance,
when Dante sees Brunetto Latini among the Sodomites in Canto XV, Dante
the character feels deeply moved and treats his
patron kindly and with compassion. But outside the poem, Dante the poet has chosen
to condemn his former patron to damnation; by placing him among
the Sodomites, he implies that Latini was homosexual, a vicious
slur in fourteenth-century Italy. Indeed, on a general level, the
kindness and compassion of Dante the character often contrasts with
the feelings of Dante the poet, who, after all, has devised excruciating
torments with which to punish his characters, many of whom are historical
individuals with whom Dante was acquainted in life.
Virgil
The only character besides Dante to appear all the way
through Inferno, Virgil’s ghost is generally taken
by critics to represent human reason, which guides and protects
the individual (represented by Dante/Everyman) through the world
of sin. As befits a character who symbolizes reason, Virgil proves
sober, measured, resolute, and wise. He repeatedly protects Dante
from hostile demons and monsters, from Charon to the Centaurs; when
he appears powerless outside the gates of the city of Dis in Canto
VIII, his helplessness appears very ominous, signifying that Lower
Hell offers far darker dangers than Upper Hell. Virgil’s reliance
on the angelic messenger in this scene also symbolizes the fact
that reason is powerless without faith—an important tenet of Dante’s
moral philosophy and one that marks Inferno as
a Christian poem, distinct from the classical epics that preceded
it. In the fullest sense of the word, Virgil acts as Dante’s guide,
showing him not only the physical route through Hell but also reinforcing
its moral lessons. When Dante appears slow to learn these lessons—such
as when he sympathizes with sinners or attempts to remain too long
in one region of Hell—Virgil often grows impatient with him, a trait
that humanizes this otherwise impersonal shade.
Dante the character and Dante the poet seem to regard
Virgil differently. Dante the character regards Virgil as his master,
constantly swearing his admiration for, and trust in, him. Dante
the poet, however, often makes use of Inferno to prove his own poetic
greatness in comparison to the classical bards who preceded him—including Virgil,
who lived more than a thousand years before Dante. In Dante’s time,
Virgil, the author of the Aeneid, was considered the greatest of
the Roman poets. As with many of his other classical and mythological
appropriations, Dante’s inclusion of Virgil in his poem denotes
both an acknowledgment and appreciation of classical tradition and,
to some degree, a form of bragging on Dante’s part: for while he
respects Virgil enough to include him in his work, he also suggests
that his poem subsumes Virgil entirely.
