Sneak Peek of Dan Brown's Inferno

"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis." - Dan Brown 

 L'inferno di Dante

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 Dante's vision of hell rendered here in the living color.

Exalted as one of the preeminent works of world literature,  the Inferno was the first of the three books that made up Dante Alighiere's Divine Comedy - a 14,233-line epic poem describing Dante's brutal descent into the underworld, journey through purgatory, and eventual arrival into paradise. of the Comedy's three sections - Inferno, Purgatorio,  and Paradiso - Inferno  was by far the most widely read and memorable. 

Composed by Dante Alighieri in the early 1300s, Inferno had quite literally redefined medieval perceptions of damnation. Never before had the concept of hell captivated the masses in such an entertaining way. Overnight, Dante's work solidified the abstract concept of hell into a clear and terrifying vision - visceral, palpable, and unforgettable.  Not surprisingly, following the poem's release, the Catholic Church enjoyed an uptick in attendance from terrified sinners looking to avoid Dante's updated version of the "underworld". 

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As depicted by Botticelli, Dante's horrific version of hell was constructed as a subterranean funnel of suffering - a wrenched underground landscape of fire, brimstone, sewage, monsters, and Satan himself waiting at it's core. The pit was constructed in nine distinct levels, the Nine Rings of Hell, into which sinners were cast in accordance with the depth of their sin. Near the top, the lustful or "carnal malefactors"  were blown about by eternal windstorm, a symbol of their inability to control their desire. Beneath them the gluttons were forced to lie facedown in a vile slush of sewage, their mouths filled with the product of their excess. Deeper still, the heretics were trapped in flaming coffins, damned to eternal life. And so it went . . . getting worse and worse deeper one descended.

In the seven centuries since its publication, Dante's enduring vision of hell had inspired tribute, translations, and variations by some of history's greatest creative mind. Longfellow, Chaucer, Marx, Milton, Balzac, Borges, and even several popes had all written pieces based on Dante's Inferno. Monteverdi, Liszt, Wagner, Tchaikovsky, and Puccini composed pieces based on Dante's works, as Loreena McKennitt. Even the modern world of video games and iPad apps had no shortage of Dante-related offerings.