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Through out The Inferno, we see two Dantes: Dante the poet is a harsh, morally superior, unforgiving catholic, proving no more humane than Minos. This Dante is unswerving in his judgments and cares little about whatever extenuating circumstances, and condemns a sinner in the strictest fashion. Dante the pilgrim, on the other hand, is “lost in a dark wood,”* and, at least initially, is sympathetic to the sinners, understanding how easy it might be to commit a sin having lost sight of God’s way. However, from the outset of the poem, we know this: the Dante about whom the story is written will someday be transformed into the Dante who commits this epic poem to our collective memory by setting it down for all of us to see. That is what this paper will discuss: how Dante’s “religious experience” transforms him from a sympathetic pilgrim to a hard, unyielding Catholic, kind of like Pat Robertson.
The difference between our two Dante’s is illustrated brilliantly as soon as he and his guide enter hell, where the main action of the narrative, the pilgrimage, begins. In Limbo, upon seeing the six great figures of Western literature, Dante the pilgrim is beyond flattered to be invited to join his idols:
And then they [Homer, Horace, Ovid, Lucan, and Virgil]showed me greater honor still,
For they made me one of their company,
So that I became the sixth amidst such wisdom (Inferno, Canto IV 100-102)
At a superficial first reading, this illustrates to us how humble Dante the pilgrim is.
Approximate Word count = 1079
Approximate Pages = 4.3
(250 words per page double spaced)
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