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By Christian Blauvelt “All hope abandon ye who enter here.” That’s the inscription on the gate to Hell in one of the first English translations of The Divine Comedy, by Henry Francis Cary, in 1814. You probably know it as the less tongue-twisting “Abandon hope all ye who enter here,” which is the epigraph for Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho, hangs as a warning above the entrance to the Disney theme park ride Pirates of the Caribbean, appears in the videogame World of Warcraft, and has been repurposed as a lyric by The Gaslight Anthem. You may have never read a single line of The Divine Comedy, and yet you’ve been influenced by it. But it’s just one line of the 14,233 that make up The Divine Comedy, the three-part epic poem published in 1320 by Florentine bureaucrat turned visionary storyteller Dante Alighieri. Literary ambition seems to have been with Dante, born in 1265, from early in life when he wished to become a pharmacist. In late 13th Century Florence, books were sold in apothecaries, a testament to the common notion that words on paper or parchment could affect minds with their ideas as much as any drug. - Every story has one of these six plots - The 100 stories that shaped the world - Is The Odyssey the greatest tale ever told? And what an addiction The Divine Comedy inspired: a literary work endlessly adapted, pinched from, referenced and remixed, inspiring painters and sculptors for centuries. More than the authors of the Bible itself, Dante provided us with the vision of Hell that remains with us and has been painted by Botticelli and Blake, Delacroix and Dalí, turned into sculpture by Rodin – whose The Kiss depicts Dante’s damned lovers Paolo and Francesca – and illustrated in the pages of X-Men comics by John Romita. Jorge Luis Borges said The Divine Comedy is “the best book literature has ever achieved”, while TS Eliot summed up its influence thus: “Dante and Shakespeare divide the world between them. There is no third.” Perhaps the epigraph to The Divine Comedy itself should be “Gather inspiration all ye who enter here.” 3 Infoteca’s E-Journal No. 450 august 2018 Sistema de Infotecas Centrales Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila Dante, rendered in a Signorelli fresco at Orvieto Cathedral, was a government official in Florence before he was accused of stealing city funds and exiled (Credit: Alamy) But it’s not just as a fountainhead of inspiration for writers and visual artists that The Divine Comedy reigns supreme – this is the work that enshrined what we think of as the Italian language and advanced the idea of the author as a singular creative voice with a vision powerful enough to stand alongside Holy Scripture, a notion that paved the way for the Renaissance, for the Reformation after that and finally for the secular humanism that dominates intellectual discourse today. You may have never read a single line of The Divine Comedy, and yet you’ve been influenced by it. To Hell and back Dante narrates The Divine Comedy in the first person as his own journey to Hell and Purgatory by way of his guide Virgil, the poet of Roman antiquity who wrote the Aeneid, and then to Heaven, led by his ideal woman Beatrice, a fellow Florentine for whom he felt romantic longing but who died at a very young age. Right there that suggests this view of the afterlife is coloured by authorial wish-fulfillment: Dante gets a personal tour from his father-figure of a literary hero and the woman on whom he had a crush. In the parlance of contemporary genre writing, Dante’s version of himself in The Divine Comedy is a Mary Sue, a character written to be who the author wishes he could be, having experiences he wishes he could have. Sandra Newman, author of How Not to Write a Novel, has said that “The Divine Comedy is really a typical science fiction trilogy. Book one, a classic. Book two, less exciting version of book one. Book three, totally bonkers, unwanted insights into author’s sexuality, Mary Sue’s mask slipping in every scene.” The entire history of Western literature and theology is Dante’s fodder to sample and mash up like some kind of 14th-Century hip-hop artist. 4 Infoteca’s E-Journal No. 450 august 2018 Sistema de Infotecas Centrales Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila Dante’s biases inform much about how we see Hell, Purgatory and Heaven. And he mixes Christian theology and pagan Greco-Roman myth as if both are simultaneously true – or rather, to use another term from contemporary sci-fi/fantasy writing, he “retcons” Greco-Roman myth so that its characters, including the gods, can co-exist with Christianity in a way that makes logical sense. Charon, the Greek mythological figure who ferries souls to the underworld, now ferries the damned to Hell. Satan himself is referred to as Dis, another name for Pluto, the god of the underworld. Dante’s vision of Hell has inspired countless artists – from Botticelli to the videogame designers behind a 2010 adaptation of the Inferno for Playstation and Xbox (Credit: Alamy) And real-world history is placed alongside divinity too: who is Satan eternally devouring? Judas, the betrayer of Christ, in one of his three mouths, yes. But Brutus and Cassius, the betrayers of Julius Caesar, are in his other two mouths. Dante is indeed suggesting that Julius Caesar may have been on the same level of importance as Jesus. The entire history of Western literature and theology is Dante’s fodder to sample and mash up like some kind of 14th-Century hip-hop artist. 5 Infoteca’s E-Journal No. 450 august 2018 Sistema de Infotecas Centrales Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila Poet and painter Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti changed his name to Dante Gabriel Rossetti in the poet’s honour – and he painted Beatrice, Dante’s ideal woman (Credit: Alamy) All these references to history, myth and scripture end up being rhetorical ammunition for Dante to comment on the politics of his day, the way some of us might invoke, say, instantly recognisable gifs from movies or TV shows to make sense of what’s happening in our world now. Suddenly, while in Heaven, the Byzantine Emperor Justinian appears and adds his two florins about the French king Charles of Valois, who was trying to undermine the Holy Roman Empire by lending military muscle to the papacy: “Let young Charles not think the Lord/Will change his eagle-bearing coat of arms/For sprays of lilies, nor that a toy sword/And putty shield will work like lucky charms”. That, via the 2013 translation of Clive James, was a personal score for Dante to settle as well, since the forces that had aligned with Charles had had him exiled from Florence – for almost the last 20 years of his life he was barred from his beloved city. 6 Infoteca’s E-Journal No. 450 august 2018 Sistema de Infotecas Centrales Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila The Divine Comedy wasn't popular in the English-speaking world until poet William Blake, who made many illustrations for it such as this, advocated strongly for it (Credit: Alamy) And my, there’s more score settling in The Divine Comedy than in every episode of every Real Housewives series combined.