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Dante's Satan

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Satan in Dante’s Inferno

In Dante’s Inferno Satan is portrayed as a giant beast, frozen mid-breast in ice at the center of Hell. Satan has three heads and affixed under each chin are pairs of bat-like wings. As Satan beats his wings, he creates a cold wind which continues to freeze the ice surrounding him, and the other sinners in the Ninth Circle. The winds he creates are felt throughout the other circles of Hell. Each of his three mouths chew on Judas, Brutus, and Cassius. Scholars consider Satan to be “a once splendid being (indeed the most perfect of God’s creatures) from whom all personality has now drained away.” [1] Satan, also known as Lucifer, was formerly the Angel of Light and once tried to usurp the power of God. As punishment, God banishes Satan out of Heaven to an eternity in Hell as the ultimate sinner. Dante illustrates a less powerful Satan than most standard depictions; he is slobbering, wordless, and receives the same punishments in Hell as the rest of the sinners. In the text, Dante vividly illustrates Satan’s grotesque physical attributes.

Satan is trapped in the frozen central zone in the Ninth Circle of Hell, Inferno, Canto 34.
The Emperor of the kingdom dolorous / From his mid-breast forth issued from the ice; /And better with a giant I compare / Than do the giants with those arms of his; / Consider now how great must be that whole, / Which unto such a part conforms itself. / Were he as fair once, as he now is foul, / And lifted up his brow against his Maker, / Well may proceed from him all tribulation. / O, what a marvel it appeared to me, / When I beheld three faces on his head! / The one in front, and that vermilion was;[2]

Description of the Ninth Circle

Dante’s Hell is divided into nine circles, the ninth circle being divided further into four rings; Satan sits in the last ring, Judecca. It is in the ninth circle where the worst sinners, the betrayers to their benefactors, are punished. Here, these condemned souls, frozen into the ice, are completely unable to move or speak. Dante describes this circle as “nothing like a palace hall; instead/ a kind of natural dungeon enveloped us/ with barely any light, the floor ill made.”


Unlike many other circles of Dante’s Hell, these sinners remain unnamed. Even Dante is afraid to enter this last circle, “as he nervously proclaimed, "I drew behind my leader’s back again.”

Uncharacteristically of Dante, he remains silent in Satan’s presence. Dante examines the sinners who are “covered wholly by ice/, showing like straw in glass- some lying prone/, and some erect, some with the head towards us/, the others with the bottoms of the feet; another like a bow bent feet to face.” This circle of Hell is a complete separation from any life and for Dante, “the deepest isolation is to suffer separation from the source of all light and life and warmth.” [1]

Contrapasso: The Poetic Justice of Satan

The reason for Satan’s eternal punishment was his desire to be as powerful as the Divine. When Satan was cast out of Heaven, he “excavated the underworld cosmos in which the damned are held."[3] Satan, who represents all the damned, is forever punished because of his betrayal of God. His fate is the opposite of what he desires most, power and control. Satan is stuck in ice for eternity with his body reduced to its ugliest form. The only power he has is the ability to further punish himself. In his pathetic attempt to escape from his fate, he only further freezes the ice. He is chewing three sinners in his mouth for eternity, yet never digesting. Although Satan is physically enormous, he is small, powerless, and forever silent. Satan's punishment is the opposite of what he was trying to achieve, power and a voice over God. Satan also is in many ways, “the antithesis of Virgil; for he conveys at its sharpest the ultimate and universal pain of Hell; isolation."[1] It is Virgil, Dante's guide through hell, who tells Dante “that the inhabitants of the infernal region are those who have lost the good of intellect; the substance of evil, the loss of humanity, intelligence, good will, and the capacity to love."[4] Satan stands at the center because he is the epitome of Dante’s Hell.

“He wept with all six eyes, and the tears fell over his three chins mingled with bloody foam. The teeth of each mouth held a sinner, kept as by a flax rake: thus he held three of them in agony."

Religious Significance

An interesting irony throughout Dante’s Inferno, but especially prevalent in his description of Satan, is the fact that he strays so far from classic and widely accepted descriptions of Satan in the Bible. It is a common mistake, however, to assume Dante’s version of the Devil is the same as the Christian one, even though the Inferno is, in essence, a Christian story. The qualities Satan possesses in the ninth circle do not represent the traditional beliefs of Christianity. The Bible describes Satan thus: “Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour…”[5] The Bible also refers to Satan as a “serpent,"[6] and a “dragon”[7] among other physical descriptions. Contrary to these depictions, though, Dante creates a large, lumbering Devil who is immobile and doomed to a frozen pit and to have a bad taste in his mouth for eternity. Before Dante, Christian doctrine viewed Satan as a frightening, quick, intelligent beast that will attack the moment one lets his guard down, and Dante chooses to elect a different depiction of Satan.[citation needed] Despite all the Biblical disagreements, Dante’s Satan remains a more common image in popular portrayals. The answer to the question of how Satan wound up in the bottom of the pit in Dante’s Inferno, lies in Christian theological history. The Bible explains that Lucifer was cast from Heaven, and fell to earth. Lucifer, the angel, was caught up in his own beauty, power, and pride, and attempted to usurp God’s divine throne…

“I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit on the mount of assembly on the heights of Zaphon; I will ascend to the tops of the clouds, I will make myself like the Most High.”[8]

This immediately backfired on Lucifer for he was no match for God. God sentenced him as a betrayer and banished him from Heaven. Dante uses this idea to create a physical place Satan created after his impact with the earth. According to Dante, the pit the Pilgrim climbs down to reach the center of Hell is literally the hole that Lucifer made when he fell to earth. As in his descriptions of Satan, Dante draws from the Bible, but adds much of his imagination to the text. He creates a fantastic story that is often construed as Christian doctrine, but differs in several fundamental ways.


Effects of Dante’s Satan on the Renaissance

File:Giotto's Satan in the Last Judgment.jpg
1. Giotto di Bondone's Satan in the Last Judgment
2. William Blake depicting Dante's Satan

When looking at the way Dante portrays Satan in comparison with early Renaissance depictions, it can be seen how unique his idea was and how much of an effect it had during the time. As opposed to the popular conception of the era, which viewed Satan as an all dominating beast of Hell, Dante gives the portrayal of Satan as just another victim of Hell's tortures. He places Satan trapped within the ice, stripped of voice and power and thus sets forth a new conception of who and what Satan is. With the understanding that during the time of the Renaissance many messages of the society were depicted through the art work (the art work reflected the society and the society reflected the art work) it can easily be seen how much of an effect Dante’s literary image of Satan had on the Society. The demonstration of this effect can be seen in the comparison of these three paintings done during the Renaissance era. The first one is the work of Giotto di Bondone (1267-1337), the Last Judgment found in the Arena Chapel in Padua, and the others, the works of William Blake (1757-1827) and Nardo di Cione (1350-1357)[1]. As it can be seen, Giotto gives Satan a very dominant role in Hell and portrays him to be most violent and gruesome. His depiction of Satan is representative of the popular conception before Dante and is in great contrast with the other two images of Satan. In both Blake and Cione's work it can be seen that Satan is given three heads, each of which are consuming a body, just as Dante expressed in the Inferno. The other characteristics that these two artists draw from Dante's Satan is that Satan’s lower body portion is strictly confined and he is given less power than he is in Giotto’s Last Judgment. Also found in Cione's work, which is represented in the Cappella Strozzi of the Santa Maria Novella in Florence, is the clear depiction of Dante's nine circles of Hell. Through this art work and others of the Renaissance period, one can discover how much of an influence Dante had in the understanding of Satan and Christian theology.

Footnotes

  1. ^ a b c Jacoff, pg. 143
  2. ^ Dante canto XXXIV in the translation by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow..
  3. ^ Cunningham, pg. 2
  4. ^ Cunningham, pg 2
  5. ^ The Holy Bible Revised Standard Edition, 1 Peter 5:8.
  6. ^ The Holy Bible Revised Standard Edition, Genesis 3:4.
  7. ^ The Holy Bible Revised Standard Edition, Revelation 20:2
  8. ^ The Holy Bible Revised Standard Edition, Isaiah 14:13-14

Works cited

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