A review by sidharthvardhan
Inferno by Dante Alighieri

4.0

“Through me the way is to the city dolent;
Through me the way is to eternal dole;
Through me the way among the people lost.
Justice incited my sublime Creator;
Created me divine Omnipotence,
The highest Wisdom and the primal Love.
Before me there were no created things,
Only eterne, and I eternal last.
“All hope abandon, ye who enter in!”

One of the death rites among Hindus is performance of a reading of ‘Garuda Purana’ during the mourning period- a book that like Inferno lists punishments given to sinners. The thing has its moments – my favorite, without exception, is this Vetarni river in which the soul is left to suffer for a while before being permitted to enter the Hell. Now you can bunk this punishment by, you know, gifting away a cow to a Brahmin or, if you missed the offer, your son can do it for you after your death. If that was done, you could just cross the river by holding on to that cow’s tail.

Yeah, don’t laugh, it is supposed to be religious!

Whatever else you may say about these religious people, they did have their imagination when it comes to coming up with sadist punishments.

Now, Dante is not a very likable fellow. And he probably won't like us either. If ever he was to meet us, the chances are he would be guessing which circles we will make it to ... I mean, I don't like that kind of talk, Dante may as well go to hell with it.... okay, I heard you.

Actually I later joined the game - guessing which circle I shall be in because, let us face it, we are all sinners here. Your very own pious friend here made it to at least three circles.

You can also make guesses about people you don't like, which is basically what Dante is doing most of the time - often going ‘Tch! Tch! You sinners!’ in his religious revenge on his enemies from Florentine, from where he was exiled for political reasons.

“Rejoice , O Florence, since thou art so great,
That over sea and land thou beatest thy wings,
And throughout Hell thy name is spread abroad!”

I guess the city had something in it which inspired this sort of crooked genius. About two centuries later, Machiavelli will write another great work to get even with Florentine government.

Back to Dante, what is still most dis-likable about him is his Devil-will-take-care attitude towards non-Christians. Prophet Mohammad is punished in last circle as Schismatic. It is worst still as at least some of this Comedy might have been inspired indirectly by Mohammad’s and early Islamic ideas.

In First circle are punished although only mildly, people who weren't Christian or before Christ Jew, including some of Dante’s favorites. The punishment is ‘without hope we live on in desire’ – Sounds like Monday morning, right? There are a number of beautiful quotes in there.

Another set of sinners who get Dante’s sympathy are those who had committed sins of sensuality. Herein are the only pairs of sinners who are not alone in hell – lovers, holding on to each-other even in hell - Not surprisingly, since it is Dante’s crush, Beatrice who sent his idol, Vigil’s soul over to guide him on divine ways and to act as his holy cow ticket.

I don’t know why people don’t mention her in their reviews – except for his poetry, his crush is about the only good thing you can say about him and it was for some time as famous as his poetry. He wrote odes to her (and not to his wife). His daughter took her name when she became nun. In fact, if you open the page on ‘Unrequited Love’on Wikipedia, you shall find a painting, one of my favorites, of him (no kidding) looking longingly at her while she walks on oblivious, conversing with her friends.

Spoiler

And oh! if you have read Brown's inferior namesake, you will notice that each of three - Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso end with same word 'stars'.