The Divine Comedy: A Vision of the Afterlife

Finally, after years of having the book on my “to-read” list, I finished Dante’s Divine Comedy. I’d only been intending to go back and finish the book since college, when we read part of Inferno for one of my classes, and that was… Well, on second thought, let’s not talk about how many years ago that was ><.
           
The point is that I finally did it!  I have officially read the entire work. For those of you unfamiliar with this classic, Dante’s Divine Comedy (written in the early 1300s) follows the journey of Dante himself as he traverses through hell, purgatory, and finally heaven in a quest for revelation and salvation of his own soul, guided first by the poet Virgil and later by Beatrice (named after a character in another of Dante’s works). Along the way Dante learns much about the inhabitants of each realm, as well as great detail on the various sins and virtues extolled within each dominion. (I won’t get into a debate on all of Dante’s perceptions of Christianity or his specific portrayals of the afterlife itself. Although written over 700 years ago, some of his points are still relevant today. For instance, the argument that accomplishments do not equal or guarantee salvation; we see this reinforced when Virgil and the other great Greek poets are portrayed as clearly situated in the outer rings of hell, and remain unsaved.)

What strikes me most about this epic is simply that his descriptions of heaven and hell are so very different from what we often imagine today. I’ve long been fascinated by Dante’s picture of hell, ever since my first reading of it. The greatest surprise was that instead of blazing fires and brimstone like I had always imagined, Dante’s hell gets colder and colder the deeper you go, symbolizing a lack of God’s grace and “warmth.” Appropriately, this serves to emphasize that hell itself is not the true punishment – it is the absence from God that is so painful. Likewise, heaven is not filled with winged angels playing harps, but is built like its own solar system: each ring of souls is like a constellation of stars, growing brighter and brighter as one ascends closer to the throne of God.

Although not nearly on the same scale, I, too, attempt to create my own unique perception of realms beyond this one. In my version of hell (as seen in The Heart of Everything and Beyond the Soul), time operates differently, there are illusions and visual tricks, along with an intense heat (or intense cold, the further in you go!) and sulfuric smell – all designed to assault the senses and confuse those who are trapped. Mine is a very physical and literal hell.  It may not be symbolically deep like Dante’s, but it’s still not a place I’d like to go!

What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments section!
Until the next time, keep reading!

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