Different Meanings in Dante Alighieri’s “The Divine Comedy”

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Table of Contents

Introduction
The Essence of the Law of Symbolic Retribution
Meanings of Faith and Reason
The Divine Comedy and Numbers
Sins and Modern Society
References

Introduction

There is a reason why Dante accepted Virgil’s invitation to descend into Hell. At the beginning of The Divine Comedy, Dante finds himself lost in a dark forest because he lost his way before the book’s events (Puchner et al., 2018). It is a metaphor for Dante’s loss of faith in God. Moreover, he is surrounded and terrified by three beasts that symbolize sins (Puchner et al., 2018). In order to regain joy and be reborn in faith, Dante accepts Virgil’s invitation to travel to Hell to recognize and understand the nature of sins with human reason. It is worth noting that Hell is only the first step in the protagonist’s long journey.

The Essence of the Law of Symbolic Retribution

The protagonist and his guide find souls condemned for carnal sins on the second circle of Hell. There, they see “their hellish flight of storm and counter storm through time foregone, sweeps the souls of the damned before its charge” (Puchner et al., 2018, p. 949). This storm in absolute darkness symbolizes both the divine punishment for betrayal of reason in favor of appetites and the carnal passion of sinners itself that they preferred to God in worldly life. God, or more precisely the law of symbolic retribution, turned the power of their passion for carnal pleasure against them. Instead of physical pleasure, it brings them physical suffering. From a Christian perspective, the law of symbolic retribution is divine irony turned into punishment for sinners.

Meanings of Faith and Reason

It is obvious that the concepts of faith and reason and the interpretation of these terms had undergone significant changes since the times when The Divine Comedy was written. In my opinion, faith is an unshakable belief in something absolute and timeless, be it an idea, a principle, or a sentient creator of all things. On the other hand, reason is the opposite of faith since it is the ability to think logically, and therefore this is what makes a person think critically about all things. I believe that the modern world community is secular and values reason more than faith. Even religious communities sometimes put the reliability of scientific data above religious prescriptions, which was impossible in Dante’s time. I believe that people should not go to extremes and that faith and reason should be valued equally. Everyone believes in something; faith is a very personal aspect of each person’s life, while reason allows people to make correct and effective choices throughout their lives.

The Divine Comedy and Numbers

Numerology was popular during Dante’s time, so numbers have a special meaning in The Divine Comedy. In Canto I, three creatures symbolize the three categories of sins. In Canto XXXIV, Satan is described as having three faces; he is a grotesque parody of God’s triune nature. It is the punishment for his pride. Moreover, when Dante mentions God, it is itself a combination of the numbers 1 and 3 since he has three manifestations but is one. The very structure of The Divine Comedy, which consists of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, refers to the number 3 (Puchner et al., 2018). According to Puchner et al. (2018), terza rima that begins with “she was born with seven heads, and ten enormous and shining horns…” serves as a metaphor for a corrupt Church (p. 1012). In Canto XVIII, Malebolge is divided into ten concentrical ditches, the division based on different types of fraud and malevolence (Puchner et al., 2018). Experts believe that the seven walls surrounding the Citadel described in Canto IV represent the seven liberal arts.

Sins and Modern Society

It is no secret that modern society is significantly different from the one in which Dante Alighieri lived. Sins belonging to the category of incontinence have become the least serious. It can be said that they have ceased to be considered sins at all. Sins of violence and fraudulence are still regarded as serious and are punishable by law. What is different is that acts of violence today are more condemned and punishable than betrayal and fraud. The reason for it is the secularization of society, due to which the figures of Christ and Judas Iscariot began to play a lesser role in the post-Christian culture.

References

Puchner, M., Akbari, S. C., Denecke, W., Fuchs, B., Levine, C., Lewis, P., & Wilson, E. R. (Eds.). (2018). The Norton anthology of world literature. WW Norton.

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Different Meanings in Dante Alighieri’s “The Divine Comedy”

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