MTV Presents: Retributive Justice In Dante's Inferno

MTV Presents: My Big, Insane, Illogical Inferno
Dante Alighieri, author of the Divine Comedy, was born into a privileged Catholic family in Florence, 1265(Patrick 20). The details of his personal life had unique impacts on the contents of his work: his privilege and Catholicism played major roles in sculpting his worldview, his eventual exile from Florence made him bitter, and most relevantly his personal experiences influenced who he persecuted in the Inferno, and how. Each of the punishments within the Inferno are intended to be a kind of retributive justice, perfect punishments assigned by God. While Dante’s Divine Comedy is allegorical in nature, the author’s intent to convey his thoughts on the will of God remains. Therefore, to be righteous

For example, in the beginning levels of the inferno where the sins are mild, those of whom failed to make a choice between good and evil in life are subsequently forced to chase after an empty banner, naked and tormented by flies and wasps(Alighieri 399). These souls are considered so shameful that Dante’s guide instructs him “Let’s not discuss them: look and pass them by”(Alighieri 400), evidently considering these souls unworthy of consideration. This may suggest that Alighieri himself had a grave personal disdain for those of whom failed to pick one side, and rather straddled the middle line, because otherwise this condemning seems extreme and

These passages are particularly interesting, because they call to mind poetry written by both Alighieri as well as others within his literary circles, wherein the experience of love and lust are elaborated on. In Guido Cavalcanti’s poem “A lady asks me”, he writes “[love] doesn’t work so well in the one who tends toward vice. Its potency often brings death at its heels, Because when the mind’s power is impaired, this pushes the mind down the wrong road; But not because it is against Nature!”(357). Alighieri also wrote extensively on the experience of love, and seems to consider the line between love and lust crossed only when one acts on “misguided” desires, yet another one of many arbitrary judgments. In this second level of the inferno, the sinners are trapped in an “infernal storm, eternal in its rage” which “sweeps and drives the spirits with its blast: it whirls them, lashing them with punishment”(Alighieri 407). Dante the Pilgrim’s personal identification with the souls in this circle is evident, and he appears to greatly pity those of whom he speaks to -- so much so that his sense of pity for these punished souls causes him to faint(Alighieri 409). This begs the question: if the pilgrim Dante understood the plight of these sinners so personally, why is it that he is not settling in the second circle among them, but rather is on his way to heaven? Perhaps this can be explained as simply as Alighieri’s