Various jewels and gems are certainly embedded in the text of Dante’s Inferno. As much as I might begrudgingly admit this, given my overall dislike of the work, it is a fact. The problem is that the task of unearthing said jewels and gems requires Herculean feats of persistence. To my mind, this is owing largely to the fact that the work is cast in the form of an epic poem. This makes it inherently more difficult to comprehend; you don’t crack it open and drink it in with relative ease. Uncommon focus and reflection, even study, is required.
Naturally, there’s nothing wrong with a demanding text. Let us raise a drink to thoughtful and challenging prose! But the question that will always arise in the face of a difficult text is: Is it worth my time and effort?
The answer to that question depends almost wholly on the interests and tastes of the reader. Since I don’t enjoy the writing of Dante’s Inferno (more on that in a moment), then I’m going to feel far more inclined toward setting the book aside in favor of other works that beget larger jewels and gems, or which I enjoy more viscerally. Like the book of Revelation, Isaiah, Job, on the one hand, or Blood Meridian, Stoner, or Crime and Punishment, on the other hand.
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As I was saying, Dante’s Inferno rewards the persevering reader. But there’s something to be said about what I have come to view as the game of ivory towernessness. Yes, ivory towernessness. Intellectually gifted people can make just about anything sound profound- even boring, wildly mediocre things. With all the craft of a Greek rhetorician, they summon historical references to spice up the text, they draw out philosophical enigmas to baffle listeners, they weave in well-crafted stories, conjure names like Plato, Aquinas, and Kant, cite classics, and all manner of other sparkling tactics to dress up the tale.
In all candor, I think Dante’s Inferno provides a fertile context for just such a game. I find the text boring, and a real slog, but since it touches on a variety of truly important ideas and concepts (and all with a certain commendable high brow symbolism), it provides the intellectual with a veritable springboard- a glorious trampoline- whereby they can launch into an extended discussion about such things. To reiterate, there are absolutely jewels and gems to be found, but it is often the teacher who is doing the heavy lifting.
We know this instinctively. If someone says they had a bad experience with, say, The Iliad, sometimes the lover of such a work will ask, “Who was your teacher? Oh, well, you need to listen to so and so. He’s great!”
But here the truth peeks out. Scarcely no one needs a good teacher to enjoy and appreciate the Harry Potter series.
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Now about the actual writing. Bitter truth be told, I don’t find the Inferno compelling, let alone enjoyable. It’s cumbersome, inelegant, not beautiful. The metaphors and similes aren’t especially interesting, nor rich, and the prose doesn’t consistently awaken my inner imaginary eye (objectively so). It wearies me, causes the word dislike to swirl around in my mouth.
Now to be fair, I’m not a fan of epic poems. The form doesn’t do much for me. Call that a failure on my part, or not. It really doesn’t matter. I’m not a fan of country music, Superman comics, NASCAR, or Dr. Pepper. Nor epic poems. None of these things are especially compelling to me, which is just to say if I have to choose between something that inherently annoys me and that which doesn’t, I’m going to go with the thing that doesn’t.
Why is that?
Well, upbringing, culture, DNA, spiritual formation. That just about covers it.
Now this isn’t to say that the potential acquisition of jewels and gems doesn’t play into my calculation. They do. I’ve certainly pursued things that I don’t naturally enjoy for the sake of the jewels and gems. That being said, I just don’t think the ones found in Dante’s Inferno are worth the effort; not when I can get (perhaps bigger and better) gems elsewhere; or, (get ready to gasp) when I can read a delightful summary that hits the high points- and especially one that provides artful images depicting the horrors and vices of lower hell (see the Wikipedia entry).
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Let’s face it, personal taste is an indisputable fact of reality. I can be lashed or cajoled until the cows come home, but none of that will change my taste for epic poems, let alone Dante’s Inferno. Me and my brain simply aren’t fans. So why kick against the goads?
The idea that I should try to overcome such unsophisticated barbarism by somehow building up an appreciation, or perhaps, tolerance, for the “glories” of epic poetry strike me as strange. Epic poems are no doubt an interesting way of doing things. There’s a peculiar form to it that distinguishes it from other modes of communication. But from where I am standing, that form doesn’t grant me anything especially helpful or insightful, when compared to what I find in, say, literary fiction. McCarthy’s The Road gives me substance and literary beauty. As does Lewis’ Perelandra. Or Steinbeck’s East of Eden. Or John William’s Stoner.
None of this, of course, is to at all argue that there isn’t value in Dante’s Inferno. There is. Of course there is. But by way of comparison, it pales, so far as I am concerned, with the quality of other works. Dante is a capable writer. But he isn’t Dickens… Or maybe he is, but is hamstrung by the genre.
Let me say it this way. There are plenty of movies that have a great premise but are poorly executed- perhaps they’re poorly directed, or have the wrong cast, have a weak musical score, etc. Dante’s Inferno is just such a movie. Good idea, so, so execution. And I blame this largely on the form inherent to epic poems. It limits far more than it gives in my view.
Think of it like this. Rap music is a legitimate form of lyricism. There’s some great stuff out there, but I just don’t care for it. And why? The form. The form doesn’t speak to me. I inevitably find myself wanting to listen to Peter Gabriel, or Mumford and Sons, or the soundtrack to The Last of the Mohicans.
Dante’s Inferno is the ancient equivalent of rap to me. Some people may like the beat and lyrics, but it grates on me.
In the end, one might argue that Dante’s Inferno is an objectively great work of literature by adopting a certain set of specific standards by which to judge it. I dare not cavil too loudly. There are people who seem to genuinely enjoy it. There’s beauty to be found in many things. So more power to them. But it doesn’t mean that I equally value the peculiar combination of attributes someone else might esteem when evaluating its worth. This is to say that I do not especially enjoy how the Inferno is expressed as a literary medium. Personal taste is standing at the door barring the Inferno from entering with its hat and coat.
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As we come to a close, I’d like to share a tangential, and admittedly inadequate idea. It’s a thought about the old debate over the objective nature of beauty.
If anything is obvious to me it is that (1) men value beauty differently, and (2) beauty is surely objective in some sense.
What if God, when designing the world and man, esteemed diversity as something inherently beautiful? Instead of creating a kind of homogeneity of tastes in mankind, it pleased Him to endow the individual with a variety of personal likes. Some men find clean, well-manicured lawns more beautiful than jungly ones. Some men more highly favor the harmony and complexity of classical music. Others more highly value the beauty of folk, or country. Some men more highly value the artistry of anime, others realism, others yet the ineffable beauty of the abstract. Some women prefer beards, some do not. Some men prefer brunettes, others do not.
It would seem that the world is saturated with beauty, and the personal tastes of men latch onto and more highly value certain conglomerations of traits, and by extension, they construct all kinds of standards by which to judge and evaluate said beauties. Here I wonder if the more classical model can’t be wed in some way with the so called hedonist model.
While defining the hedonist conception of beauty, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy cites the Italian historian Ludovico Antonio Muratori as saying, “By beautiful we generally understand whatever, when seen, heard, or understood, delights, pleases, and ravishes us by causing within us agreeable sensations.”
This strikes me as true, perspectivally so, to invoke John Frame.
Could it not be (and I am genuinely asking) that God’s glory is found all throughout creation, and that the personal tastes of men mine it out in all its diverse particularity? And that there is a distinct and even unique splendor to the diverse interests of men developing wildly different expressions of beauty? Taste, enjoyment, a sense of pleasure- these are all required for men to explore and develop the various forms of art. Beauty is being pursued. And the beauty is real and true, while yet, in a very real sense, located in the eye of the beholder.
We may have some needling sense that one song is objectively better than another, but when you get into the weeds of it, trying to locate exactly why it is better, concepts such as complexity and balance and harmony inevitably struggle to commend themselves in a universally binding manner. What kind of complexity? What kind of harmony? How much movement or repetition? These all surely have value and can be parsed out to some degree, but melodies and rhythms and “the feel” all play to individual tastes, whereby the person listening to it invariably comes away with a degree of beauty. They are tuned to a certain resonance of beauty, as it were, enjoying a particular truth it imparts in their minds, or the emotional mood it elicits, or a sense of strength and energy, or image, or simply the inscrutable sense of awe and wonder.
Therefore, it would seem that beauty is both uniquely objective and uniquely subjective; and both realities collide in an ordained diversity that produces something, on balance, that is more beautiful for humanity.
The Sound of Doctrine 