Health and fulfillment in Dante's Inferno

Dante’s Inferno has long been an epic in the eyes of readers worldwide; Dante the pilgrim’s long journey through hell has been analyzed deeply for metaphorical references, allusions, and the writing style at the time. It may even have been analyzed for the aspects of health brought up in this paper. However, where this analysis takes a different turn is the subject in question. Dante, being such a prolific poet, captures Dante the pilgrim’s experiences in great detail, taking us through his emotions and thought processes as he experiences the frightening imagery that Inferno offers. He does this so well that The Divine Comedy remains Dante’s story despite being home to a plethora of popular intellectuals throughout the ages, such as Homer, Ovid, Plato, etc. But there are other characters in The Divine Comedy that warrant a deeper look, namely Virgil, owing to the fact that they are tied so deeply to the narrative of the text. Moreover, narrowing the discussion to health, defined here as a sense of fulfillment or completeness, Virgil’s views on Dante’s journey and his accompanying personal thoughts give us a deeper look at the lack of health of those that are - or perhaps feel like they are - confined to hell for eternity.

Virgil is tasked with guiding Dante the pilgrim through Inferno. We know already that Virgil is condemned to an afterlife in Limbo, the first circle of hell, because he was born before Christ but also believed in pagan gods. The correctness of placing him in Inferno versus Purgatorio is a matter left for a different analysis. However, unlike Virgil, Dante is still alive and, so, our contextualization of Inferno is limited to the emotion that Dante felt as a living being experiencing hell for the first and potentially only time. The important point to note is that both the reader and Dante are fully aware that Dante has not been condemned to an eternity in hell. Because Dante isn’t even dead, the exploration game being played here is low stakes - he is allowed to encounter all the sights of the three worlds of the afterlife and simply return to the realm of the living. Virgil, in contrast, must lead Dante through his pilgrimage with complete knowledge that he can only go so far on Dante’s journey before he must recede back into his circle of hell. This premise is what makes it possible for Virgil to be the focus of this discussion on fulfillment, purpose, and belonging. While Dante can explore Inferno with relative comfort, knowing that his place is that of among living beings, Virgil belongs to a circle of hell made for those who operated outside of the Christian faith before the birth of Christ - a circle for those who don’t belong. Virgil is inherently displaced in his afterlife, forced to feel like an unwitting outcast forever, for no real fault of his. In the dialogue below (Inferno, Canto IV, lines 37-42), Virgil tells Dante about those that reside in the first circle of hell:

And if they lived before Christianity, they did not worship God in fitting ways; and of such spirits I myself am one. For these defects, and for no other evil, we now are lost and punished just with this: we have no hope and yet we live in longing.

Virgil makes it clear that people confined to the first circle are void of hope. There are definite similarities between the punishments that souls in the first circle and souls in purgatory must face. However, the key distinguishing factor - and what makes the punishment of those in hell far more damning - is that, unlike those in purgatory, anyone sentenced to Inferno must endure their punishment for eternity, with no recourse. With penance, a soul in purgatory could ascend to paradise but souls in hell serve an eternal prison sentence. Specifically in Virgil’s case, those in the first circle of Inferno feel constant longing to ascend to heaven. These are souls that committed no sin apart from having lived before Christ and, thus, following the teachings of other gods. It’s also interesting to note how Dante, the poet, emphasizes this fact when he says, “and for no other evil”. It could perhaps be his devotion to Virgil or the respect he feels for the kind of people that reside in the first circle, but Dante is sympathetic to the plight of those that literally could not have embraced Christianity and seems to accept the Lord’s late arrival as an unfortunate error in the grand scheme of the universe and for those born before him. Soon after the book begins, Dante’s journey through the afterlife reintroduces Virgil with the rest of Inferno that he doesn’t usually interact with. Being a resident of the first circle of Inferno, he is allowed to venture deeper into the abyss without restraint and, thus, interact with those that have been sentenced to lower circles. In doing this, Virgil experiences emotions that coincide with someone facing a significant obstacle in their path ahead. We can see this when Dante writes (Inferno, Canto IV, lines 10-15),

That valley, dark and deep and filled with mist, is such that, though I gazed into its pit, I was unable to discern a thing. “Let us descend into the blind world now,” the poet, who was deathly pale, began; “I shall go first and you will follow me.”

When Dante notices Virgil’s complexion, he asks him how he can continue if his guide is so fearful. However, Virgil goes on to explain his morose and seemingly fearful reaction to facing the abyss of Inferno (Inferno, Canto IV, lines 16-22):

But I, who’d seen the change in his complexion, said: “How shall I go on if you are frightened, you who have always helped dispel my doubts?” And he to me: “The anguish of the people whose place is here below, has touched my face with the compassion you mistake for fear. Let us go on, the way that waits is long.”

He explains that it isn’t fear but compassion that makes his complexion pale; while this isn’t what Dante thought, it can still be identified as a personal obstacle that Virgil is facing and is forced to confront. Visiting the lower circles of Inferno is something Virgil agrees to with reluctance and hesitation, presumably because of his existing knowledge of its contents and the state of its residents. His explanation reflects his somber attitude going into the lower circles of hell. Although Virgil was placed in the first circle of hell and his sentence is an easier sentence to serve than any of the other circles, his punishment is subtler than others. His personal hell, alongside not being able to ever leave Inferno and ascend to Paradiso, is to feel the pain that others below him feel from their eternal torture. Now, because of Dante’s venture into the underworld, he not only feels the pain of sinners in lower circles, but he must also witness it firsthand. In the later cantos of Inferno, we see gruesome imagery of men severed in multiple places, each signifying the heinous sin they committed to justify their punishment. Some imagery is best left unseen, and Virgil doesn’t want to have to visualize the pain he hears and feels on a daily basis, perhaps because of the compassion he feels for the sinners God considers worse than him. In addition to this, his proximity to the other circles of hell is a constant reminder of the supposed sins he committed by being unbaptized.

Throughout The Divine Comedy, Virgil offers Dante wisdom and knowledge that placates him and helps him understand the ways in which the world, and the afterlife, works. This can almost be seen as medicinal: at many points, Dante is anxious of the upcoming experience, but Virgil’s guidance puts the situation in greater perspective. In contrast, Virgil, being all-knowing in matters of the afterlife, doesn’t seem to receive any sort of ‘medicine’. There’s no truth one can tell him to ease the sense of longing that comes from an eternal dwelling in the first circle of Inferno. There is some solace in the fact that Virgil cannot be misled or given false advice: there is nothing he doesn’t know about the functioning of the afterlife.

Dante the pilgrim’s journey allows him to understand and document the afterlife, essentially transforming his understanding of the world and what people need to do in order to find peace in the afterlife. The Divine Comedy can be considered as the story of the rebirth of Dante’s character: his new experiences have confirmed his Christian faith and he now knows what he has to do to avoid Inferno and Purgatorio completely and carry on to Paradiso when he dies. Not only does Dante have an undisputed sense of belonging in the realm of the living, but he now also knows how to belong where he wants to in the afterlife. Unfortunately for Virgil, Inferno offers no recourse for those that have committed mild sins and have been condemned to the first circle of hell. While Dante was reborn, Virgil has now experienced all of Inferno yet again and still feels no new sense of belonging. No transformation awaits him at the end of his journey. In fact, at the end of his journey with Dante, Virgil must face the fact that he cannot ascend to heaven, even to guide Dante, perhaps once again reminding him of his eternal damnation. While this assessment is bleak, one last thing must be considered: Dante’s reverence for Virgil. The poet’s devotion to Virgil immortalizes him in such a way that in Dante’s fictitious universe, even though Virgil will spend an eternity in hell, he will be remembered among mortals forever and, thus, find a sense of belonging even when his posthumous sentence is to remain incomplete. In a way, penning Virgil’s fate like this may be Dante the poet’s solution to his biggest dilemma concerning Virgil - the dilemma of choosing between the unflinching doctrine of the faith he follows and admiration for a personal hero.