Dante’s Inferno translated by the Reverend Henry Francis Cary, M.A. from the Original of Dante Alighieri and illustrated with the design of Gustave Doré. New edition with Critical and Explanatory Notes, Life of Dante, and Chronology. New York-London-Paris: Cassell and Company Limited, 1885.
Call number: PQ 4315.2 .C4 1885 (Special Collections)
Case 1: “The Divine Comedy Between Texts and Images”
Dante’s Inferno is a nineteenth-century edition of the first “cantica” of Dante’s Divine Comedy translated in English by Henry Francis Cary in 1814. This translation of Dante’s work had great success four years after its publication in the anglophone world and became the basis for multiple editions of the Divine Comedy.
The book’s cover features a medallion with Dante’s portrait and represents the obscure woods where the poet gets lost before starting his descent to hell. Alongside are Virgil with his laurel crown and Charon in the Styx, and on the side Lucifer or a demon. The upper border and the side of the cover are enriched with decorations featuring vines and grapes.
An 1860 illustration of Dante’s portrait by Gustave Doré introduces the book. The table of contents contains a brief description of the canto’s content, which is also reproduced at the beginning of each canto under the caption “Argument.” The text is contextualized with a few explanatory notes and each left page includes the telling heading, “The Vision.” A variety of complementary elements enriches the item: a detailed description of the Life of Dante, a Chronological View of the Age of Dante, and a list of all the illustrations appearing in the book. The Chronological View of the Age of Dante contains a list of dates and people relevant to Dante’s life, as well as of political, social, and cultural events mentioned in the Divine Comedy and occurring between 1265 and 1321.
The item includes seventy-five illustrations by Gustave Doré that represent all the thirty-four cantos in Inferno. These illustrations, along with those that Doré created for the other two canticles, are inspired by the nineteenth-century Romantic fascination for Dante.
Students’ Assignment: Jane, Devin, Cameron
For this assignment, we described three of Doré’s illustrations in Dante’s Inferno translated by the Reverend Henry Francis Cary. The captions at the beginning of each paragraph specify the lines in the canto that correspond to the illustration.
In the midway of this our mortal life,
I found me in a gloomy wood, astray.
– Dante, Inferno, Canto 1, lines 1-2
As the first visual representation in the text, this depiction of Dante in the woods sets the precedent for further illustrations. Doré continually uses high contrast and intricate backgrounds for his representations, often bathing the focal point of his works in a white light to draw the eye (p. 1).
The first two lines of the Inferno are very visual in their nature and Doré captures this visualisation of the “gloomy wood” by juxtaposing Dante’s figure with the dark of the wood. The twisted vines, dense trees, and gnarled roots covering the ground all help to portray Dante’s confusion throughout the first Canto as he comes to understand where he is. To convey his deep fear, Dante’s figure is hunched over in a protective stance and we can see him peering over his shoulder behind him. Dante’s eyes, which Doré makes disproportionately large, and his turned down mouth help to draw viewers into this moment of fear and confusion.
Now go, and with your ornamented speech and
whatever else is needed for his escape help him so
that I may be consoled.
I am Beatrice who cause you to go… love has moved me
and makes me speak…
– Dante, Inferno, Canto 2, lines 67-72
In life, Dante revered Beatrice as his one enduring love; in death, he worshipped her as the embodiment of divine perfection, the incarnation of exalted love. In the first canticle of the Divine Comedy, she descends from Paradise into Hell to ask the poet Virgil to guide Dante on his journey. Beatrice appears not only in the Divine Comedy, but also in Vita Nova, a book of courtly love that Dante published in 1294.
But did Beatrice really exist? If so, who was she? Scholars have widely (but not unequivocally) identified her as Beatrice Portinari, whom Dante is said to have met when they were both nine years old. Dante fell in love with her at first sight, but when he was twelve, as was the custom, he was promised in marriage to Gemma di Manetto Donati, daughter of a powerful family. Beatrice died in childbirth when she was twenty-five.
Gustave Doré depicts Beatrice as Dante saw her: the epitome of divine revelation, faith, contemplation, and grace (p. 9).
Not more furiously
On Menalippus’ (sic) temples Tydeus gnawed,
Than on that skull and on its garbage he.
– Dante, Inferno, Canto 32, lines 127-129
Dante’s Inferno is rife with multi-layered references to biblical and mythic stories as well as gruesome imagery. In this engraving, Doré illustrates a scene that is hinted at by the accompanying stanza, which compares the act of the souls depicted in the center of the image to the mythical Greek figures of Tydeus and the Theban defender Melanippus. Traditionally, Tydeus ate the brains of Melanippus after slaying him in single combat. But who are these tortured souls that Dante and his guide, the poet Virgil, are encountering? And more importantly, why are they in hell?
While the lines Doré chooses to reference here come from Canto 32, we hear more about these souls in Canto 33, where we find out that they are Count Ugolino, the gnawer, and Archbishop Ruggieri, the gnawed. Ruggieri does not speak, but Ugolino describes to Dante how he and his sons were starved to death in a tower by Ruggieri. Ugolino, seen as a traitor himself, is driven by a spiritual hunger that takes the form of a contrapasso, or a punishment that reflects the nature of the sin committed. Even though “inferno” has come to describe intense fire in English, it originally referred to the underworld; in fact, the deepest depths of hell in Dante’s poem are the coldest. Here, Ugolino and Ruggieri are up to their necks in ice. For the traitorous, extreme cold not only inflicts intense pain, it also represents the iciness of their hearts in life (p. 172).
It is important to note that this scene takes place in the ninth circle of hell, close to the very bottom, where the worst sinners, those guilty of treachery of various kinds, are eternally punished. Ugolino and Ruggieri mirror the punishment of the worst traitors of all in Dante’s estimation. Judas, Brutus, and Cassius are perpetually chewed by the Devil himself in the deepest part of hell.
