Dante's Limbo
Notes from the most infamous underground of all
“Do not be afraid; our fate
Cannot be taken from us; it is a gift.”
“Hope not ever to see Heaven. I have come to lead you to the
other shore; into eternal darkness; into fire and into ice.”
“The poets leave hell and again behold the stars.”
― All quotes from Dante Alighieri’s Inferno
Joel Bowman, pondering the nature of storytelling from Buenos Aires, Argentina…
What place does ancient mythology have in our modern day storytelling? What space have we, in the bustling modernity of the Digital Age, to contemplate those anchoring archetypes, which exist somewhere beyond the conscious mind, deep within our very souls? What are we, without our stories, except for beings without shadows, humans without history, in a cave without light?
From Homeric epics to children’s fairytales, coming of age confessions to world-building dystopias, stories help us make sense of the world around us, including our place in it. At their best, the stories we tell each other (and ourselves) can help us come to grips with the incomprehensible, to contemplate the sublime and to deal, in profound and meaningful ways, with the inescapable reality of our own mortality.
To that last point – there is nothing new or unique about death, of course. Quite the opposite. Its reality, its certainty, its commonality, to say nothing of our advanced knowledge that it waits for us all, is indeed an integral, undeniable facet of the human condition.
Throughout the ages, we have dealt with this inexorable reality through religion and ritual, metaphysics and scientific inquiry, through art and music and mythology. We have dealt with our fate, in one way or another, by telling ourselves stories, by drawing information from the universe around us and, with it, weaving narratives that help us grapple with the abyss of the unknown, hurtling as it is, relentlessly, towards us all. And through doing so, through contemplating our mortality thus, we are truly able to live.
Confronting the timeless themes of life and death, love and loss, light and darkness in my upcoming novel, I found, as so many have before, inspiration in the work of master Italian poet, Dante Alighieri.
In Canto IV of Dante’s Inferno, the poet is awakened by an enormous thunderclap. Led by the great Roman poet, Virgil, Dante descends into the First Circle, or “Limbo,” which is inhabited by those who were considered worthy of God’s love, but who were born before the time of Christianity and therefore unbaptized. Limbo, that “in-between” world, seemed the perfect metaphor to convey the pathos and imagery I desired for this particular scene.
Sometime soon I’ll write an essay on this specific section – why I chose to rewrite Dante’s passage after my own fashion, why I introduced additional characters from the ancient world into his epic scene, why I replaced Virgil with another “deathly pale” guide, from my own story, plus the significance of the thunderclap, the dream, the unconscious portal and much more…
… but not today.
For now, please sit back and enjoy this excerpt from my upcoming novel, Night Drew Her Sable Cloak, below…
From Night Drew Her Sable Cloak, Chapter XIII - Into the Abyss
By Joel Bowman
There are no clocks in eternity, no sundials to mark the time beyond Dante’s darkened wood. Still I descended, in my own hypnagogic limbo, toward that fated oblivion. There I found myself on the brink of an abyss, a melancholy valley leading down from the tear-drenched earth on which I stood. From that darkened lowland rose unending wailings and a mist such that, though I gazed into its depths, I could not make out top from bottom, side from side along the winding path.
From beside me rang her familiar voice, its timbre deathly pale. “Let us descend into the blind world now. I shall go first and you will follow me.”
My own reply, in unseen space, “But how shall I go on if you are frightened, you who have always helped dispel my doubts?”
Said she unto me: “The anguish of the people whose place is here below, has touched my soul with the compassion you mistake for fear. Let us go on, the way that waits is long.”
So she set out on our path, circling that first ring of the abyss. Here the deafening sighs filled our ears and caused the timeless air to tremble. From the multitudes, crowds of women and infants too, arose such quivering lamentations as to wrench the heart asunder. Theirs was a sorrow without torment, a yearning without hope.
“Do you not ask who are these spirits whom you see before you? I’d have you know, before you go ahead, they did not sin; and yet, though they have merits, that was not enough, because they lacked baptism, the portal of faith elsewhere embraced. And if they lived before Christianity, their worship was not deemed as fitting unto God.
“For these defects, and for no other evil, they now are lost and punished with just this: to have no hope and yet to suffer eternal longing.”
A harrowing sorrow seized my being on hearing her words, for we had known and studied together great minds, since seen suspended in that torturous limbo.
“Tell me, Dearest, did any ever go – by his own merit or others’ – from this place toward blessedness?”
She who understood the meaning between my words replied: “It is told by one who came before me here that, when he was himself new-entered, he beheld a Great Lord enter here; the crown he wore, a sign of victory.
“He carried off the shade of the first father, of his son Abel, and the shade of Noah, of Moses, the obedient legislator, of father Abraham, David the King of Israel, his father, and his sons, and Rachel, she for whom he worked so long, and many others – and He made them blessed; and I should have you know that, before them, there were no human souls that had been saved.”
Onward we continued, these words passing between us as we pressed on into the wood, thronged by many spirits. Our path came by the room where I had slept, the chair now vacant, the clean white sheets empty. There I beheld a mighty fire, beating back a hemisphere of shadows. Though it burned at a distance, I could still make out, in that clearing of light, the faces of nobler persons.
Said I: “O you who honor art and science both, who are these souls whose dignity has kept their way of being, separate from the rest?”
And she to me: “The honor of their name and deeds, which echoes in the realm of the living, wins for them heavenly grace, and holds them in its timeless embrace.”
Then another voice, unknown to me: “Pay honor to the estimable poetess; her shadow, which had left us, now returns.”
When the strange voice subsided, I saw approaching a group of six, two in front, flanked by four. In aspect, they were neither sad nor joyous, but contemplative just the same.
“Look well on the pair who hold the sword in hand,” she said to me, “for they move before the others as lords. Those shades are of Homer and of Sappho, the consummate poets; the others are Horace, satirist; next Ovid; then Lucan and, the last among them, Virgil.”
Exalted so in such high company, we moved together toward the light, where we came upon a splendorous castle, encircled by a tranquil stream and seven towering walls. With these sages I passed through the seven portals into a flowering meadow of green. Those personages gathered there carried in their grave and solemn features a great authority. Moving toward the lustrous path, I beheld all those assembled, there on the enameled green. Those great-hearted souls were shown to me, so that I yearn again to dream of such a place.
Flanked by Hector and cunning Aeneas stood Penelope, bright faced and fair. Among them too was falcon-eyed Caesar, standing ready in his armor, and too many more to name. Raising my eyes a little higher, I espied the man who claimed nothing he didn’t know, seated in the philosophic family. To his right side stood Plato, to his left the Father of Logic, Aristotle. Behind them Democritus, who put the world to chance, and Lucretius, who would set it back to order. Then Epictetus, Zeno and Seneca did follow. Next Thales, Pythagoras and Anaxagoras. Then Hippocrates, he of medicine, and Euclid the geometer, alongside Hypatia, mother of mathematics. And watching over them all, that clever old Ephesian, Heraclitus.
Many more did gather, in that vast and timeless assembly, too many, in fact, to recount here. For though my eternal quest impelled me on, the heavy sleep upon my head was of a sudden smashed by an enormous thunderclap, so that I awakened with a force, transported through the unconscious portal, to my dying guide’s whitened side.
As usual, please feel free to share our work with anyone you think deserves a break from the humdrum of post-post modern modernity. In a world driven mad by Tok Tik and mainstream olds, it’s worth looking at things from a different perspective once in a while.
So go ahead, rescue a friend’s flickering attention span today and share with them something longer than 140 characters that doesn’t involve a cat. Their resuscitated brain will thank you later.
Until next time…
Cheers,
Joel Bowman
Buenos Aires, Argentina ~ March, 2023
Great writing. Curious about the developments in your novel and your stories as you share them. Thanks!
Off topic, Joel, but I’ve often wondered how many readers of Dante’s 𝐼𝑛𝑓𝑒𝑟𝑛𝑜 were driven away from their faith rather than reinforced in it. Without even needing to go with Dante into his lower levels of Hell, I early on questioned how he could rationalize God’s relegating to Limbo those unfortunates who, through no fault of their own, happened to have lived their lives before the advent of Christ. To my mind, the best arguments against Christianity turn on points of morality, not on sometimes labored refutations of St. Anselm’s or Thomas Aquinas’s “proofs” of God’s existence. As more than one philosopher has put it, what would we think of a person suddenly endowed with God’s supposed benevolence and omnipotence who maintained or even remotely justified eternal punishments for such weak creatures as are we human beings?