Gate of Hell

Virgil leads Dante to Hell’s door.

'ABANDON ALL HOPE, YOU WHO ENTER HERE'

reads the inscription carved into the gate.

There is no salvation here, only eternal suffering.

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Dante and Virgil before the gate of Hell. - Collection de cent figures, dessinées et gravées par Mme Giacomelli, Salmon, Paris, 1813. Bibliothèque des livres rares et collections spéciales, Collection générale, PQ4329 G53 1813.

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End of Inferno II and beginning of Inferno 3. - Le terze Rime di Dante, Manutius, Venice, 1502. Université de Montréal, Bibliothèque des livres rares et collections spéciales, Collection générale, PQ 4302 B02 1502.

The two poets cross the threshold into Hell, making their way into the bowels of the Earth and the shadowy prison of lost souls.

Vestibule of Hell

During the lightless descent, Dante hears nothing but screams and cries, lamentations and whisperings. He catches a glimpse of a crowd of suffering souls plagued by flies and wasps as they walk across an expanse of ground covered in worms and larvae. Virgil instructs Dante to pay these souls no heed: having lived according to no ideals, never once standing for anything, they are condemned to chase a white flag for eternity, and are not worth remembering.

'They have no hope of death,
and their blind life is so abject
that they are envious of every other lot.
The world does not permit report of them.
Mercy and justice hold them in contempt.
Let us not speak of them - look and pass by.'

EXCERPT OF THE COMEDY: Inf. 3, 46-51

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Representation of Hell, from the dark wood to the center of the Earth, and of its various sections. - Dante col sito et forma dell’inferno tratta dalla istessa descrittione del poeta, Venice, Manutius, 1515, p. 244v-245r. McGill Rare Books and Special Collections, PQ4302 B15 1515.

Lucifer, the most beautiful and eminent of the angels, turned against his Creator. God thus threw him  and all of his followers out of heaven, from which height they plummeted toward Earth. The Earth, however, disgusted by the traitorous angels, sought to move out of the way; the displacement simultaneously created, on one side of the Earth, the chasm of Hell, and on the other, the mountain of Purgatory. Lucifer’s free-falling momentum was arrested at the very center of the Earth, and ever since the chasm of Hell has hosted the rebel-angels-turned-devils as well as the souls of human sinners. Damned for all eternity, the sinners endure everlasting punishment in one of Hell’s nine concentric circles.

Acheron

Dante and Virgil reach the shore of the river Acheron, where the souls of the damned arrive upon death to be ferried to their designated place of punishment. The elderly Charon, bearded and ill-tempered, ensures their crossing.

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Charon and the souls of the damned on the bank of the Acheron. - Dante’s Inferno, London-New York-Paris, Cassel & Company, 1866. Université de Montréal, Bibliothèque des livres rares et collections spéciales, Collection Gilles-Rioux, RIOUX 2532.

And now, coming toward us in a boat,
an old man, his hair white with age, cried out:
'Woe unto you, you wicked souls,
give up all hope of ever seeing Heaven.
I come to take you to the other shore,
into eternal darkness, into heat and chill.
And you there, you living soul,
move aside from these now dead.'

EXCERPT OF THE COMEDY: Inf. 3. 82-89

Charon at first refuses passage to Dante: his boat is meant to carry the souls of the dead to the opposite shore, not living persons. Virgil steps in to make Charon reconsider: Dante’s journey is divinely ordained, and it is no more Charon’s place than Virgil’s to defy such a decree.

Ungraciously, Charon relents, but before the pair of poets can set foot on the boat, the deafening din of an earthquake resounds throughout the cavernous space.

Terrified, Dante faints.

First Circle
Cross the Acheron