When I was a wee lad, I used to spend a lot of time with my cousin. We'd get up to all kinds of trouble and his parents, on the occasions when they found out what we did, were rather liberal with the emotional abuse. They'd tell him that there was this entity known as 'The Liar Man' who went around in a white transit van and would come after anyone who told lies as he always knew the truth. This was obviously meant to scare him shitless, because his parents wanted him to think that if he did anything bad, or anything they didn't like, he wouldn't go unpunished/unsodomised.
This leads me nicely the subject of this review: Hell.
Hell is The Church's greatest weapon. The Church indoctrinates its adherents with the idea that if you do something the church disagrees with, you're destined for an eternity in Satan's kinky sin bin. An eternity of endless pain and suffering? Better think twice about touching yourself.
Inferno, the first part of The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, is an epic poem that is largely responsible for how we picture Hell. Well, it's not how I picture Hell. I get my ideas of that from DOOM, i.e. space marines ripping-and-tearing demons to midi Megadeth soundtracks. Alighieri's Hell is depicted as a place of ironic torture, an epic labyrinth ordered by a gradual increase of wickedness. It's a home to "those who have rejected spiritual values by yielding to bestial appetites or violence, or by perverting their human intellect to fraud or malice against their fellowmen".
The other two parts of The Divine Comedy are Purgatorio and Paradiso. I'll let the brainboxes amongst you work out where those two are set.
I'm going to give you some advice that I wish someone had given me before I decided to read Inferno. Get a good translation. The poem is seven centuries old and you can tell. My Granddad's only 80, after all, and I can never understand what any of his stories are about. What we have here is a 3-point buggery: 1) It was written in a now, obviously, archaic form of the Tuscan language; 2) Alighieri was liberal in his use of metaphysics; 3) Alighieri makes constant reference to just about every minor local figure of his time, so it's almost impossible to know what he is on about when he does this. Again, just like my 80-year-old Granddad.
Dante also likes to go off on tangents about the human condition, politics, the nature of god, good and evil, and the classics. This poem is a Who's Who of literary, historical, and mythological figures. In every single canto, Dante will come across another person and demand to know who they are and why they are here. In full detail. He's like a jealous boyfriend going through his girlfriend's phone.
Fortunately, my copy of The Divine Comedy, the Clive James translation, goes some considerable way into remedying the above issues.
Stick with it, however, and the Inferno provides one of the most vivid depictions of Hell this side of working in retail on Black Friday. Set in 1300 on the eve of Good Friday, Dante is "halfway along our life's path" (35) and lost in a ominous forest. He's in a dark place in his life, sinking lower and unable to find salvation. And then a Hell beast tries to eat him. Three of them specifically. Fortunately, the Roman poet Virgil comes to Dante's rescue.
Most men in a midlife crisis buy a sports car or shag their wife's sister. But not Dante. He wants Virgil to take him to God. Virgil agrees, but first they must venture through that most heinous of places - Rochdale. The duo travel through the ten layers of Hell (9 circles + the Satan Pit), heading deeper into the centre of Earth so that they can scale the mountain leading to Purgatory.
Dante's Hell is certainly an interesting place. Unlike contemporary depictions, it's not one giant fire surrounded by walls made up of sluiced off nipples and knobs. It's more classically depicted than that, appearing more like something from Greek myth. The Hell in Inferno is a cavern with man-made(?)/demon-made(?) super-structures. The layout of Hell itself largely consists of 9 maze-like concentric circles. Hell also has massive lakes, and supercities such a Dis (aka E3M8).
Each circle of Hell is devoted to a specific sin: Limbo, Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Wrath, Heresy, Violence, Fraud, and Treachery. The sinners on each circle are forced to endure contrapasso punishments. This means to 'suffer the opposite'. Let's be honest: anyone reading Inferno in 2018 is probably doing so because of its reputation for depicting brutal cosmic justice. I doubt there is anyone alive who cares about central Italy's political struggle between the Guelphs and Ghibellines in the Middle Ages.
In the former case, Inferno does not disappoint. There're gluttonous individuals forever destined to exist in a fetid lake of shit and putrid slush, assailed by a stinking icy rain and torn to shreds by the ravenous 3-headed demon dog, Cerberus. In one circle war-makers are forced into a lake of boiling blood, and savagely attacked by demons if they attempt to leave. Victims of suicide are transformed into trees which are torn at and eaten by Harpies; thieves are forced into some The Thing style body horror situation with snakes; and the sowers of discord (including Muhammad, founder of Islam) are hacked up by a massive sword wielding demon - cursed to drag their ruined bodies through the feculent pit, only to be sliced up again once they heal.
There are a few duff punishments, however. I think the biggest disappointment is the whole lust circle. The victims here are forced to be perpetually blown (heh) around in a tempestuous wind. An obvious allegory for uncontrollable passion, sure. But Dante should have just gone the full hog. He was already in exile after all, and spent the rest of his poem slating his political enemies. What did he have to lose? Just plonk in a few demons with megacocks and let them go all Sodom and Gomorrah on the Pope. Hieronymus Bosch style.
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