The Presence of Pity: Course Paper on Dante’s Inferno

Hell: the final dwelling of life’s worst sinners, where punishment is persistent and particular. In Dante’s Inferno, Dante, a pilgrim and the protagonist, (unless otherwise specified, it is the character who will be referred to throughout this reflection, not the poet), finds himself right in the middle of all there is to see in the dark underworld, despite being alive. A journey Dante knows he must complete to better himself, he and his guide, Virgil, descend lower and lower into Hell, walking amongst the people who represent the evil of the world. Although surrounded by evil and sin everywhere he goes, Dante repeatedly feels pity for the men and women he meets down under. Dante’s physical journey through Hell doubles as a spiritual one as he faces his most difficult task — learning not to pity those that have sinned. Despite being forced to look at gruesome, foul sights, the part of the journey that Dante struggles with the most is attempting to control his emotions and increase his piety, or religious devotion, by limiting his pity.

It is true that there are times during Inferno when Dante expresses disdain and even mercilessness towards the sinners he encounters; however, these isolated examples are not overly common, and Dante’s reason for acting how he does in these situations is not religious correctness. This is evident when Dante meets Filippo Argenti in the Fifth Circle of Hell, the dwelling of the wrathful. When Filippo begins questioning Dante, Dante responds in a harsh manner, telling the shade that he hopes he “weep[s] and wail[s],/ stuck … in this place forever” (Inferno. VIII, 37–38). This exhibits the correct response to a sinner: being angry and shaming the shades are considered proper actions in Hell, because the sinners do not deserve pity and sympathy. However, Dante continues on to reveal that he recognizes Filippo from life. Virgil then “put his arms around [Dante’s] neck/ and kissed [his] face” (Inferno. VIII, 43–44), praising Dante for his lack of compassion. Dante’s insensitive action was not a small one: he went as far as to express that he wants to see Filippo “dunked deep in [the] slop” (Inferno. VIII, 53), and he even thanked God for letting him see Filippo get torn apart. Although Dante seems to do everything correctly in this situation, his motives for his actions are not what they should be. Virgil praises Dante’s actions because Filippo was an arrogant, wrathful sinner in life, and therefore onlookers should condemn him; however, Dante’s actions stem from the fact that he knew and disliked Filippo a great deal in life, making his motives personal rather than religious. Although there are times within Inferno when Dante abandons pity entirely and acts cruelly towards the sinners, it is evident that Dante has not learned that it is wrong in faith to pity sinners, but instead he is simply acting upon preexisting grudges.

Throughout Inferno, Dante the Poet presents a myriad of sinners and punishments to the reader. Some sinners, similar to their punishments, are disgusting, and they are deserving of the specially designed torture they receive. Others, though, are tragic people who faced tragic situations in life, and it causes the reader to pity the sinners just as Dante the Pilgrim does. No matter how pitiful and emotional the sinners’ stories are, Virgil scolds Dante for feeling pity, advising him to stop, but Dante struggles greatly with this time and time again, all the way from the beginning of his descent to his journey’s end. In the Second Circle of Hell, where the lustful are placed, Dante meets the famous lovers Francesca da Rimini and Paolo Malatesta. He learns of their touching love story: they fell in love while reading about Lancelot and Guinevere, making their story quite romantic indeed. Dante tells Francesca that the “torment” (Inferno. V, 116) that she suffered with Paolo brought “painful tears of pity to [his] eyes” (Inferno. V, 117), suggesting that Dante thinks it a shame that lovers should be “tormented” and punished simply for loving too much. Love is generally seen as a positive thing: it brings people happiness and is a common goal in life. However, since these people fell in love with the wrong person at the wrong time, in a large deviance from societal norms, they receive “sudden death together” (Inferno. V, 106) and get punished for loving. The fact that the lovers are punished by getting whipped around in a strong wind — a wind that Dante describes as blowing them “light[ly]” (Inferno. V, 75) around together — suggests that the pilgrim views their sin and their feelings for one another as light and nearly innocent in nature. Taking his compassion to an even further extreme, at the conclusion of this canto, Dante “swoon[s]” as “pity/ blur[s] [his] senses” (Inferno. V, 140–141). He is unable to control his emotions enough to stay conscious, emphasizing how deeply he truly feels for these sinners, even though it is wrong of him to do so. The pilgrim’s response proves how genuine his pity is for others, and it also illustrates a large contrast between the normal societal view of the lustful — or any other sinners — and Dante’s view of these people, a large shift from harsh condemnation to extreme pity.

Dante’s tendency to pity the sinners he encounters continues as he descends further into Hell. In the Seventh Circle of Hell, where those who act violently towards themselves stay, Dante meets Pier Delle Vigne in the Wood of the Suicides. In a shocking scene, Virgil instructs Dante to break a branch off of a tree, and the trunk begins bleeding and crying in anguish: this is Pier Delle Vigne’s new form. The scene immediately turns somber as Dante realizes that Pier is not only in excruciating pain, but he has also entirely lost his identity. This is incredibly significant because this is the first time in Hell where the sinners lose their bodies and physical identities: what a horrendous punishment! Although it is morally appropriate that those who had no desire for their bodies during life do not get them after death, the situation still evokes pity in both the reader and in Dante. Immediately after ripping the branch, in an ironic situation, Pier, irritable in pain, asks Dante if he has “no sense of pity whatsoever” (Inferno. XIII, 36). This question seems ridiculous to the reader who has been following Dante’s fits of pity, but Dante eventually answers it anyway while speaking to Virgil; Dante requests that Virgil ask the questions for him, because Dante feels incapable of speaking to Vigne due to “such pity chok[ing] [his] heart” (Inferno. XIII, 84). Another extreme exhibition of pity, this exchange suggests that Dante, despite knowing that both violence and suicide are sins, wishes that some sinners could be excused from punishment due to their tragic circumstances. Excusing sinners is certainly not a pious thing to do, but the pilgrim does it repeatedly, failing at this aspect of his spiritual journey through Hell.

Descending even further yet, Dante reaches the last ring of the Seventh Circle of Hell, where the sodomites who committed violence against nature dwell. Here, in a melancholy scene, Dante is reunited with his former teacher, Brunetto Latini. It is sad to see someone that Dante so greatly respects and will voluntarily “[bend his head] low in reverence” (Inferno. XV, 45) for be punished so devastatingly in Hell, forced to walk ceaselessly on the Burning Sand or risk “one hundred years” of being “unable to brush off the wounding flames” (Inferno. XV, 38–39). In a heartfelt speech, Dante shares that “if all [he] wished for had been granted,/ … [Brunetto] certainly would not,/ not yet, be banished from … life on earth” (Inferno. XV, 79–81). This reaction provides another example of Dante wanting to spare a sinner. This time, though, Dante’s pity is based on the close relationship he shared with Brunetto. Dante mourns that “[his] heart is pierced” with Brunetto’s “kind image, loving and paternal,” and he appreciates Brunetto for “hour after hour/ … [teaching] [him] how man makes himself eternal” (Inferno. XV, 82–85), or teaching him about poetry. This situation demonstrates that Dante’s pity extends from random sinners facing horrible punishments to those he knew personally in life, as well; this difference shows another side of Dante’s actions towards his personal relations, varying greatly from when he lacked pity for those he hated during life, such as Filippo Argenti.

Finally, in a scene that is arguably the most poignant of all, Dante approaches the border between Antenora and Tolomea in the Ninth Circle of Hell, where the betrayers of country and the betrayers of guests are placed. Here, Dante learns the story of the heartbreakingly tragic Count Ugolino, who betrayed his country and was imprisoned by Archbishop Ruggieri. Ugolino and his children (they were locked up with him) were starved until one of Ugolino’s sons suggested their father eat them and another desperately begged his helpless father to help him; soon thereafter, all four of Ugolino’s children died. It is unclear whether Ugolino ate his children’s corpses or passed away himself once the “hunger proved more powerful than grief” (Inferno. XXXIII, 75), but either way, his experiences were “inhuman” (Inferno. XXXIII, 20) and horrendous. This story undeniably causes great pity in the reader, and it has the same effect on Dante. Dante exclaims, “shame upon the people/ of that fair land” (Inferno. XXXIII, 79–80) that would do this to a father and his children, declaring in no uncertain terms that Ruggieri “had no right to make [Ugolino’s] children suffer” and that “[t]heir newborn years… made them/ all innocents” (Inferno. XXXIII, 87–89). It is a concept contradictory to human nature that showing pity and compassion for a parent who had to watch his children suffer and die in front of him is wrong, but since Ugolino was a sinner himself, it is wrong to pity him. This interaction above all others exemplifies how the pious action of not pitying sinners directly contrasts with instinctive human nature, and it seems like no wonder that Dante falls to pitying the sinners each time.

In Dante’s Inferno, Dante journeys through Hell with Virgil as his guide, and he sees countless sinners being punished within the different levels of Hell. Each punishment morally corresponds to the sin committed, being chosen specially to emphasize what the sinner did wrong in life, but in many cases, Dante pities the sinner getting punished anyway, an impious response. Guiding the pilgrim through a spiritual journey as well as a physical one, Virgil advises Dante to not pity sinners because it is wrong, but he fails and does it repetitively. Virgil tells Dante that the only place where pity is acceptable in the underworld is in the First Circle of Hell, Limbo, where the virtuous non-Christians spend their days. Pity is allowed here because the sinners are not truly at fault, since they did not know about Christianity. This distinction between Limbo and the other Circles of Hell suggests that a lack of pity is the pious way of acting towards those that have truly sinned knowingly. Therefore, Dante should not express pity to any of the sinners in any other level of Hell. However, controlling his emotions proves to be Dante’s most intense struggle during his journey, despite being surrounded by so much evil and horror. Although he attempts to better himself spiritually on his journey through Hell, this is an aspect he fails at, succumbing to natural human instinct rather than exclusively expressing religious and spiritual strength.

Works Cited:

Alighieri, Dante. Inferno. Trans. Mark Musa. New York: Penguin Books, 2003. Print.

Alighieri, Dante. Inferno. Trans. Mark Musa. London: Indiana University Press, 1971. Print.