The Inhabitants of Dante's Hell

Extract

It is said that Dante took his revenge upon his enemies by putting them in his Inferno and thus pilloried them for all time. According to Alphonse de Lamartine, for example, ‘le poème exclusivement toscan du Dante était une espèce de satire vengeresse du poète et de l’homme d’Etat contre les hommes et le partis auxquels il avait voué sa haine.’ Lamartine's shallow Voltairian view is still vaguely held, for a modern writer has recently referred to Dante’s ‘vindictiveness which mars and prevaricates the truth.’ Carlyle, on the other hand, exclaimed, ‘What a paltry notion is that of his Divine Comedy’s being a poor, splenetic, impotent, terrestrial libel; putting those into hell whom he could not be avenged upon on earth! ’ But the general impression among casual readers of the Commedia is that this was what he actually did.