Dante's Satan
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Contents |
[edit] 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 dumb, 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.
“The emperor of the great real of grief protruded/ from mid breast above the surrounding ice/ a giant’s height and mine, would have provided/ closer comparison than would the size/ of his arm and a giant, envision the whole/ that is proportionate to parts like these/ if he was truly once as beautiful/ as he is ugly now, and raised his brows/- Against his maker then all sorrow may well come out of him.”
'Che I gigantic non fan con le sue braccia:/ vedi oggimai quant’ esser dee quell tutto/ ch’a cosi fatta parte si confaccia./ s’el fu si bel com’ elli e ora brutto,/ e contra ‘l suo fattore alzo le ciglia/ ben dee da lui procedere ogne lutto/ oh quanto parve a me gran maraviglia/ quand’ io vidi tre facce a la sua testa!/ l’una dinanzi, e quella era vermiglia;/ l’altr’ eran due, che s’aggiugnieno a questa.' 2
[edit] Description of the Ninth Circle
Dante’s Hell is divided into nine circles; 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.” Levati su, disse ‘l maestro, in piede:/la via e lunga e ‘l cammino e malvagio/ e gia il sole a mezza terza riede. 3
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.” La dove l’ombre tutte eran coperte 4
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.” Quella col capo e quella con le piante:/ altra, com’ arco, il volto a’ pie rinverta./ quando noi fummo fatti tanto avante,/ ch’al mio mestro piacque di mostrarmi/ la creatura ch’ebbe il bel sembiante 5 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.” 6
[edit] 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."7 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. Dante makes Lucifer's punishment the complete opposite of this. 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 excape 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." 8 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."9 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."
Goxxiava 'l pianto e sanguinosa bava/ da ogne bocca dirompea co' denti/ un peccatore, a guisa di maciulla/ si che tre ne facea cosi dolenti/ a quel dinanzi il mordere era nulla.10
[edit] 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…”11 The Bible also refers to Satan as a “serpent,"12 and a “dragon”13 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 fails to capture this in his depiction of Satan. 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.”14
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.
[edit] Effects of Dante’s Satan on the Renaissance
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 hells 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 Florence, 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 cirlces 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.
[edit] Footnotes
1. Jacoff, pg. 143
2. Dante, canto XXXIV, ln 31-40.
3. Dante, canto XXXIV, ln 94-96.
4. Dante, canto XXXIV, ln 11.
5. Dante, canto XXXIV, ln 14-18.
6. Jacoff, pg. 143
7. Cunningham, pg. 2
8. Jacoff, pg. 143
9. Cunningham, pg 2
10. Dante, cn XXXIV, ln 54-58.
11. The Holy Bible Revised Standard Edition, 1 Peter 5:8.
12. The Holy Bible Revised Standard Edition, Genesis 3:4.
13. The Holy Bible Revised Standard Edition, Revelation 20:2.
14. The Holy Bible Revised Standard Edition, Isaiah 14:12.
[edit] Works Cited
Alighieri, Dante. The Inferno of Dante. Trans. Robert Pinsky. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1994.
Cassell, Anthony K. "The Tomb, the Tower, and the Pit: Dante's Satan." Italica 56.4 (1979): 331-351. JSTOR. 27 Jan. 2007 <http://www.jstor.org>.
"Circle 9, Cantos 31-34." Dante's Worlds. University of Texas at Austin. 27 Jan. 2007 <http://danteworlds.laits.utexas.edu/circle9.html#lucifer>.
Cunningham, Mawrence S. "Satan: a Theological Meditation." Theology Today 51 (1994). 27 Jan. 2007.
Foster, Micheal, comp. Sandro Botticelli, the Drawings for the Divine Comedy. London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2000.
Freccero, John. "The Sign of Satan." MLN 80 (1965): 11-26. JSTOR. 27 Jan. 2007.
Gilbert, Allan. Dante and His Comedy. New York, NY: New York Univerity P, 1963.
Jacoff, Rachel, ed. Dante. Cambridge UP, 1963.
Klonsky, Milton, comp. Blake's Dante, the Complete Illustrations to the Divine Comdey. New York, NY: Harmony Books, 1980.
Korchak, Michael. "Portrayal of Heaven and Hell Through Art." Boston College. 27 Jan. 2007 <http://www2.bc.edu/~korchakm/Artwork.html>.
Paolucci, Anne. "Dante's Satan and Milton's "Byronic Hero"" Italica 41 (1965): 139-149. JSTOR. 27 Jan. 2007.
"Satan: an Instrument for Dante and Milton." 27 Jan. 2007 <http://personal.monm.edu/disrud_rebecca/milton.htm>.
Scott, John A. Understanding Dante. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame P, 2004.
The Holy Bible Revised Standard Edition. 1962. World Publishing Company. Cleveland.
Vittorini, Domenico. The Age of Dante. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse UP, 1957.
