Inferno is one of the most influential works concerning world perception. During his “voyage,” the author specifically illustrated the worst phenomena of society: the people who deserve to pass their future in Hell. In Canto V, Dante described his moral shock when observing the middle-level sinners accused in adult connections with married people,
When we read how the longed-for smile
was kissed by so renowned a lover, this man,
who never shall be parted from me,
‘all trembling, kissed me on my mouth.
A Galeotto was the book and he that wrote it.
That day we read in it no further.’
While the one spirit said this
the other wept, so that for pity
I swooned as if in death (Dante 36).
However, when he came to those sinners who deserved being dipped in boiled resin in Canto XXII, the “second” Dante was not frightened by the whole process. On the contrary, he literally described his observes on this circle of Hell,
I saw, and still my heart doth shudder at it,
One waiting thus, even as it comes to pass
One frog remains, and down another dives;
And Graffiacan, who most confronted him,
Grappled him by his tresses smeared with pitch,
And drew him up, so that he seemed an otter (Dante 144).
As a result, there is a significant difference observed in Dante’s attitude to the notion of voyage compared with actual interpretation. More specifically, Dante settled and achieved the goal to describe society’s main issues of that time. On the contrary, the author uses voyage to observe the particular case, where only one individual is analyzed from the voyager’s perspective.
Work Cited
Dante, H.W. Longfellow, M. Pearl. Inferno: The Longfellow Translation. Modern Library, 2003.