Why Not His Brother Keith?

"All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse, and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was."
- Ernest Hemingway

Above all else, Dante's Inferno has stood the test of time because it is a literary masterpiece. He uses stunning imagery and purposeful detail hand in hand with unmatched creativity and brilliance. Just as Hemingway asserts above, when you finish Dante's Inferno you truly feel as if you have been through Hell, seen its gruesome horror, reacted emotionally to its sinners, and felt how dank the weather was. This great piece of literature allows us as readers to live vicariously through Dante and in fact go on a concrete as well as metaphorical journey ourselves.

To survive as a literary classic, Dante's inferno had to first pass the test of its own time. It did so in several ways. First, it was written in Italian (most of the other works of the time were in fact written in Latin), which was accessible to everyone. In this sense Dante is like Shakespeare, who also wrote all his plays in the common tongue of his people. Furthermore, elements of The Inferno had (and still have) a broad appeal as literary themes. The violence and disturbingly gruesome events and images have a broad if somewhat crude appeal, and the controversial topic(s) (Hell, the afterlife, and in a broader sense, the corruption of the church) attracted great attention. Therefore even back in the 13th and 14th centuries The Inferno was widely read.

Dante's Inferno of course lasted well beyond his time, to become one of the greatest works of literature in any time. This is of course also due to the factors explained above, namely its accessibility, its gruesomeness, and the controversy it creates. However, what truly places it in a rare pantheon of literary excellence is its sheer complexity and literary greatness. The work is as detailed and organized as an ant colony, which allows the reader to easily follow a storyline and plot. It is furthermore loaded with complex layers of stories and influences from Greek and Roman mythology, the Christian and other religions, which all relate to each other in a beautifully spun web of connections and allusions.

Finally, as any great piece of literature is, The Inferno is a direct reflection of Dante's time, and the world that he lived in. In his time the church was corrupt and sin was rampant throughout the land. Also, without the same jail and prison systems we have today, punishment of these sinners was strictly related to the crimes they committed. Finally, in Dante's personal case he had been exiled from Florence and was obviously not thrilled about it. In his Hell he showed clearly that true faith was rare, and that the world was absolutely teeming with sin. He also deliberately and meticulously described every sinner's punishment as one that fits the crime they committed. Through our vicarious journey through Hell we are given a metaphorical glimpse at what Dante's world was truly like.