There's
no place like Hell
wherein Lucifer
(whose name means "light bearer")
or Satan
( a Hebrew word meaning "adversary")
calls home. And what of this place known as Hell that is the
resident home of this fallen angel and his legions?
". . . . . . Hail horrours, hail
Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell
Receive thy new Possessor; One who brings
A mind not to be chang'd by Place or Time.
The mind is its own place, and in it self
Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n
What matter where, if I be still the same,
And what should I be, all but less than he
Whom thunder hath made greater? Here at least
We shall be free; th' Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure, and in my choyce
To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav'n."
...John Milton, Paradise Lost (Book 1)
Hell as
described in Dante's Inferno
(from the
Divine Comedy).
Illustrations
by Doré from the Dover Publication of
"The Doré
Illustrations for Dante's Divine Comedy, Gustave Doré"
To me, the most complete, ingenious and
detailed
description of Hell to date belongs to Dante
Alighieri (1265 - 1321) and comes at the beginning of "The Divine
Comedy".
(Note that
each of the links within the following text will take you to one of
Gustave Doré's Illustrations for Dante's Divine Comedy.
These illustrations are fairly large, as they were taken from
"woodcuts", so that the details of the works can be seen.
Please be patient while they load into a separate window from this
text. Just close the window to return here).
At this point, Dante finds himself lost in a dark wood and
threatened by wild animals that block his path. The shade, of the poet Virgil,
appears to him and tells him the only way out is through Hell itself,
and Dante (the Pilgrim) reluctantly agrees to make this journey.
Hell,
according to Dante, is like a great inverted cone, a dagger that pierces
to the centre of the Earth. At the top of the cone it is the widest --
this is where Lucifer and his angels hit the Earth, like a colossal meteorite,
when they were cast from Heaven. Over the gates to the underworld
are inscribed the words "All
hope abandon, ye who enter in!".
Dante begins to shiver and Virgil takes his hand as down
they go . . .
The vestibule of Hell is a great dark plain where the
souls of those who never really lived, even in life, who took no decisive
course, who lived without blame and without praise, flee endlessly from
hordes of angry hornets. Dante and Virgil continue on and stop at the bank
of the river Acheron, which flows all around the perimeter of
Hell. Charon, the infernal boatman, ferries them across.
Stepping off the boat, they arrive in the first ring
of Hell -- Limbo. Things here are not all that bad. There is a
meadow, a stream, a seven-walled castle. This is the place where Virtuous,
but Unbaptized" souls reside among the great pagans. Virgil himself
hangs his hat here.
However, things rapidly get worse. The second ring of
Hell is reserved for the Lustful, who are blown about forever in pitch
blackness by the fierce winds of unquenchable desire.
The third ring is set aside for the Gluttonous,
who lie on the ground beneath a pelting storm of rain and hail. Cerberus,
the three-headed dog, barks incessantly and rips the inhabitants limb from
limb.
Arriving in the fourth level,
the Avaricious and the
Prodigal are divided into two camps and spend eternity rolling heavy
weights against each other.
Passing on quickly, Dante and Virgil reach a rushing
current of dark water -- they continue on by following its course downward
and into a dismal swamp known as the Styx.
Dark and dank as it is, even the Styx is home to
some. This is the fifth ring wherein live the Wrathful and the
Gloomy. They spend their time here either tearing at each other in
anger or gurgling in the black mud below.
Carefully watching their steps, Dante and Virgil take
the long way round the marsh, board another ferryboat to cross the moat like
Styx and pass from the "upper Hell" into the lower
regions.
It is now that things go from bad to worse . . . They
enter the city Dante calls "the City of Dis" (Dis being
Satan). The closest analogy to this city would make it the Ottawa
Canada of Hell . . . a place for the fallen to kick back and relax.
They are now in the sixth ring, a wide plain dotted
with burning tombs. And inside the tombs? Heretics
burn.
Another river to cross -- the Phlegethon -- a
river broad and filled with boiling blood. Within its turbulence Dante
sees the souls of those who have committed Violence -- assassins,
tyrants, war-mongers. The shore of this river is not much
better. It is here that Dante and Virgil must enter the dismal
seventh ring -- the Wood of the Suicides. It is here that the
souls of those who have taken their own lives take root and grow, becoming
stunted trees with gnarled branches and poisoned fruit. Beyond this
area is a scorching expanse of sand where those who have committed
violence against God and nature are showered with eternal fire.
Still Dante has not reached the bottom. For the eighth
ring, home to Fraudulence and Malice, is known as the Malebolge.
Shaped like an enormous amphitheatre, it descents for ten more levels.
On each of these levels a different class of sinner is tortured. Horned
demons whip the seducers and pimps, hypocrites struggle to walk in
lead-lined cloaks, simonists
are wedged into stone holes, the soles of
their feet licked with fire. Barraters
those who bartered their
public office for private gain, are ducked in boiling pitch by a
particularly frolicsome band of demons known as the Malebranche
(Evil Claws). (now tell me... why can we not do this to
politicians??)
Continuing further down still to the base of the
Malebolge, Dante finds a well guarded by fifty-foot giants whom he calls
the Titans of Tartarus. Virgil commands one of them,
Antaeus, to
help them on their way by picking them up and placing them further down.
Dante and Virgil are now in the
ninth and final
circle of Hell, Cocytus -- the frozen marsh where the Arch Traitor
himself, is forever immersed up to his breastbone. His giant wings flap
uselessly as he attempts to free himself, producing nothing more than cold
winds that freeze the ice even harder. Dante writes "If he
was once as beautiful as he is ugly now, well may all affliction come from
him".
Satan has three faces: one black, one red, one yellow,
with mouths gushing bloody foam and six eyes weeping. While he
weeps, he relentlessly chews the bodies of three traitors -- Judas,
Brutus, and Cassius -- whose terrible crimes were still less heinous than
his own -- for Lucifer betrayed the greatest Lord of all. So now he
suffers here, in the cold and dark at the farthest possible removal from
the source of all light and warmth.
It is from here that Dante and Virgil escape from Hell
by climbing down Lucifer's shaggy side, for he is too distraught to notice
them, and then crawling through an opening in the rocks into the clean air
and starlit night.
