felix hominum: lenten series: Dante's Divine Comedy pt 12: descending to the center of Hell

lenten series: Dante's Divine Comedy pt 12: descending to the center of Hell

While I had not planned it to be so, I find myself blogging of Dante's final descent into the center of Hell on Holy Saturday. There is a timeline in the poem: Dante's journey with Virgil in the underworld takes place over several days in holy week. In the story of the poem, it is on Holy Saturday that he makes the final descent to the very presence of Satan at the center of Hades. And so, fittingly, here we are.

In Canto XXXI Dante and Virgil make their descent from the malbowges of Circle VIII into the depths of the Well (Circle IX) with the aid of the Giants. These are the great primordial figures of ancient myth. These are the ones who rebelled against the gods, and by showing such uprising against the divine, are now at the entrance to the final geography of Hell. Virgil points out one of the giants to Dante:

"So proud a spirit was this", my leader said
"He dared to match his strength against high Jove
And in this fashion his reward is paid."

XXXI, 91-93

The giant is compelled to lower them to the Xth and final Circle of Hell - the frozen lake of Cocytus. Here Dante and Virgil encounter the Treacherous: those who were traitors to their family, their country, their guests, and finally, those who were traitors to their lords. At the center of Hell is Satan, who was the first Traitor to his Lord.

Both Sayers' and Charles Williams' notes capture the essence of the frozen center of Hell:

Beneath the clamour, beneath the monotonous circlings, beneath the fires of Hell, here at the centre of the lost soul and the lost city, lie the silence and the rigidity and the eternal frozen cold. It is perhaps the greatest image in the whole Inferno. "Dante", says Charles Williams, "scatters phrases on the difference of the place. It is treachery, but it is also... cruelty; the traitor is cruel." (The Figure of Beatrice, 143). A cold and cruel egocism, gradually striking inward till even the lingering passions of hatred and destruction are frozen into immobility - that is the final state of sin. (Sayers, 275)

In Canto XXXiii we see that even the traitors' tears are frozen. They cannot even express that most basic of human expressions. All that is human has died - frozen forever.

At the very center of Hell we find Dis (the classical name for Satan), the Devil, devouring the shades of three traitors to their Lords - Judas, Brutus and Cassius. Perhaps we will better understand the placement of traitors to their Lords at the bottom is we understand that the whole medieval society was based upon some form of allegiance to one's lord.

To understand more fully the placement of Satan at the bottom of Hell, we need also remember that Dante knew that the earth is a sphere. In constructing his vision of Hell, he places Satan at the center of the earth - a place where there would be no gravity. And here we might understand Hell more fully if we consider the famous lines from Augustine's Confessions - "my love is my weight". At the center of the earth, at the bottom of hell, there is no weight, hence there is no love. It is a masterful image, drawing on Augustine's well known text to inform the reader.

At another level, while we might think we have escaped the condemnation of the upper regions of Hell, we have all been Traitor to our Lord. For every sin is a treachery against Christ. And so each one of us must, like Dante, descend to that place: we must see what it is to betray (like Judas) our Lord. It is to be devoured by Satan.

(We have just returned from celebrating the Great Vigil of Easter)

As they climb over the huge body of Satan at the center of the earth, a marvellous thing happens: Virgil instructs Dante that as they finish climbing down, there will come a point where they must (at the center of the earth) turn themselves wholly upside down, at which point they will begin to ascend out the other side of Hell. It is an image of the repentance of the soul - that point of descent and then wholly turning its orientation.