Creativity is the soul of art. With it we measure value, significance, and aesthetic appeal, and by it the success or failure of a particular piece is determined. It is imperative to note that creativity is quite unlike the quality of originality, stressing imagination over the creation of new and unique material; indeed, it embraces the integration and imitation of established ideas, encouraging synthesis in order to promote the forward development of art as a whole. The distinction between creativity and originality is of utmost importance, for the unfortunate folly of unrefined artistic criticism is to equate one with the other – an assessment that is decidedly forgivable, given the characteristic similarities between the two, but nonetheless erroneous and misleading.
Of all the artistic cultures that exist, this dichotomy of originality is most prevalent in literature. On the one hand, the limitations of vocabulary and grammatical construction invariably lead to problems of similarities between texts, which are compounded by the plebeian black art of plagiarism. Yet at the same time the dependence of new literature on previous accomplishments is undeniable; the literary tradition, and the individual works that comprise it, are the culmination of the contributions of millions of artists in dozens of civilizations over the course of thousands of years. What we must come to understand is that effective literature is not wholly original, and neither is it unintelligently replicated. It is, rather, the marriage of the old and the new, the creative addition of fresh ideas to the existing canon, an exemplification on a lesser scale of the evolution of the art of writing. And to this day, nowhere in the Western world is there a more creative integration of intertextual dependence than in the Inferno of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy.
Dante was, without doubt, aware of the value of established literature and the potential of its application in his work. He was at the forefront of a movement to produce literature in the vernacular languages, and the Inferno was to be part of his attempt at accomplishing this spectacular feat. Dante was already a great admirer of the great Latin poets, especially Virgil, and alluding to or even directly referencing their works would immensely bolster his reputability and the likelihood of its success. The additional advantage that the Inferno had was its heavily religious theme, which not only fit well with the world views of his contemporaries, but also allowed him to draw parallels with the Christian Bible, which was the most authoritative source he could have hoped to have at the time. In this manner Dante drew on both classical and biblical intertextuality, and both carried equal significance through the course of his work.
The very premise of the Inferno, which chronicles the journey of the Pilgrim through the circles of Hell, is its own most obvious example of intertextuality, drawing on both classical and biblical sources. We are, of course, reminded of Aeneas’ descent into the underworld in Virgil’s Aeneid, a reference made all the more relevant and significant by the fact that Virgil himself is the Pilgrim’s guide through Hell. The biblical allusion is two-fold: first, literally, of the incarnation of Christ, his redemption of mankind, and his conquest of Hell in the time between his death and resurrection; and second, symbolically, of the necessity of every Christian to overcome sin – Hell – in order to receive God’s grace and be united with him. By establishing these associations, Dante contributes to the overall authority and effect of his poem.
To support this overarching premise, Dante continues to insert specific references of a smaller scale at different points in his narrative. In exploring his use of these direct intertextual connections throughout the body of his work, we would do well to categorize them beyond their classical or biblical source of inspiration. For the purpose of our discussion, we will attend to the distinction between the allusions made by Dante as the Poet and those of Dante as the Pilgrim, in likeness to the unique narrative styles employed in the Inferno. The allusions of the Poet are the allusions of concept, encompassing the structural and stylistic devices that are inherent within the poem itself but are of no immediate consequence to the events of the narrative. The allusions of the Pilgrim, by comparison, are those direct references made through the inclusion of personalities and events from other texts during the journey itself.
Dante seems to have taken a keen interest in the relationship between the structure of his poem and the number three, and this recurring pattern is the first of the major allusions of the Poet. The poem is divided into three sections, each correlating to a different family of sin – incontinence, violence, and fraud – and their respective locations within the geography of Hell. Inferno itself belongs, within a larger context, to the trilogy of The Divine Comedy, wherein each volume now correlates to a different stage of the spiritual journey: Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. There are thirty-three cantos in the poem excluding the first, which is regarded as an introduction not to Inferno but to the entirety of the Comedy. His terza rima follows a scheme in which every other line rhymes three times in succession; these he further groups into tercets, which are short stanzas of three lines in length.
The prominence of triplets in the poetic structure of the Inferno is most likely intended to be interpreted as an appeal to religious authority. Indeed, within a traditional Christian context, three is an incredibly important and prevalent number. As a biblical allusion, it immediately brings to mind the theology of God as the Holy Trinity of Father, Son, and Spirit. The three days that Christ spent in the tomb before his resurrection, akin to the Pilgrim’s three day sojourn through Hell, are another possible reference.
Stylistically, the poem is equally resourceful, drawing on both classical and biblical bases for inspiration. In Canto II, faced with the daunting task of recounting his entire Easter experience, Dante cries out for assistance, “O Muses! O high genius! Help me now!” (7) His words echo a similar invocation, “Tell me the causes now, O Muse”, made by Virgil in line 13 of the first book of the Aeneid; and by making a parallel appeal to the narrative guidance of the Muses in this manner, Dante participates in an ongoing epic tradition that he hopes both to pay tribute to and, more importantly, to establish himself within. We ought also to consider his narrative style as a whole, which he has modeled in the form of a linear continuation of multiple, concise allegories that contribute to a larger theme. The approach often resembles the narrative style of the Bible, especially in its ability to be read literally rather than symbolically; this, again, must be seen as a deliberate imitation, through which Dante seeks to draw a clear relation between his work and the source from which it derives.
The allusions of the Poet share a common thread in their compelling appeal to authority. In shaping his poem’s structure and style around the classical standard of epic poetry and the biblical standard of religious drama, Dante has established his work as authoritative in both traditions. By comparison, then, the allusions of the Pilgrim are significant to the art of the Inferno in a slightly different manner. Rather than to establish the authority of the poem, these allusions seek to authenticate it as a genuine contribution to the classical and Christian repertoires.
From the first Canto we are introduced to the first of the allusions of the Pilgrim: Virgil, the Pilgrim’s guide and the personification of the classical validity of the poem. As a figure who, in Dante’s esteem, was the pinnacle of the ancient school of literates – worthy enough to be addressed by the Pilgrim as “O light and honour of the other poets” (I. 82) – his selection for the primary supporting role in much of the journey was a necessity. Clearly Dante also intended to include the character in order to equate himself to Virgil, given the parallels that can be drawn between his tale and the voyage of Aeneas, and in some respects to even elevate himself above the standing of his predecessor; yet these subtleties are all but invisible when we consider the credibility that the poem receives simply by the inclusion of the great Roman.
Expanding the applicability of the character of Virgil in the context of the Inferno and the Comedy as a whole, Dante indulges in his most explicit act of self-validation in the entire work by introducing the train of poets in Canto IV. Here, in the Limbo of the sinless pagans, the Pilgrim and his guide are approached by the shades of Homer, Horace, Ovid and Lucan, in order of precedence. They first honour Virgil as the greatest of their members, an act that indirectly verifies Dante’s high opinion of the poet; then they welcome the Pilgrim into their company, such that he “numbered sixth among such minds” (IV. 102). The implications are obvious, and it is understandable that Dante could not resist including the encounter in his account of the events in Limbo. The audacity of the claim is rivaled only by his insolence in Canto XXV, when Dante declares his art of the metamorphoses of the snakes in Hell to be perfect, without rival, and boasts, “Let Lucan from this moment be silent” (94) “and Ovid, too, with his Cadmus and Arethusa” (97), making his claim of superiority over the two great poets who had dabbled extensively in the subject in the past. It is possible that the entire episode was conceived solely to reinforce the earlier assertion of Dante’s place with the poets and, if such is the case, that he intended not only to count himself in their number, but to promote himself to at least fourth of the six in prominence, overcoming Ovid and Lucan who were at the rear of the train.
While he chose on many occasions to allude to past artists of influence by incorporating them directly as characters in his poem, Dante also seemed keen on populating Hell, at least in its outer circles, with the characters that featured in the works of these individuals. Thus the fictitious Hector and Aeneas occupy the same circle as Homer and Virgil, and in Canto V, we see traces even of Germanic traditions in the shade of Tristan and the story of Lancelot and Guinevere. One might expect that the inclusion of real historical figures with those born out of legend and myth would blur the lines between the literal and the symbolic, dulling the overall effect of the narrative; yet, to the contrary, this juxtaposition powerfully conveys the breadth of the Divine Will across all cultures and civilizations, through all time.
Another of Dante’s accomplishments in the Inferno was to Christianize the pagan mythos of classic literature. The entire geography of Hell is derived from and is an extension of the Roman underworld described in the Aeneid, which itself is an evolution of the Greek realm of Hades. The demonic masters and many of the residents of the circles are also drawn from classical mythology, but are given a place in the context of the newer Christian reality and act accordingly; as such we encounter Plutus, a Greek god who originally was never a malicious spirit but in Canto VII is portrayed as the horrific wolf-guard of the Fourth Circle, since there is no distinction between pagan and evil in Christian theology. This served a double purpose of authenticating Dante’s work as incorporating classical elements in spite of its modern religious themes, and of reconciling past understandings of death and the spiritual world in an appropriately Christian way.
Although much has so far been discussed of the intertextuality of Dante’s work with regard to the classical tradition, the biblical allusions of the Pilgrim are no less significant. A recurring motif is the number three and its manifestation throughout Hell. Each of the three sections of Hell contains three geographical circles, each of which punishes a different and more specific division of sin. Many demons and demonic features encountered by the Pilgrim involve sets of three: the Cerberus, guard-dog of the gluttons in Canto VI who reared “three filthy heads” (31); the three Furies that appeared at the top of the tower of Dis in Canto IX; Geryon, the three-bodied giant who provided transportation to the Eighth Circle in Canto XVII; and finally Lucifer himself, who with three faces and three mouths gnaws on the heads of sinners in Canto XXXIV. As these triplets pertain to the structure of Hell, it is plausible to assume that each is a deliberate perversion and mockery of the Holy Trinity, used by Dante to depict the harsh reality of the repulsiveness of evil.
The entirety of the Inferno is laced with countless references to biblical stories and figures. There are, of course, the many mentions of God, and of his Christ, whose grace and love direct the movement of the Pilgrim through Hell in spite of the opposition he faces. The sins that are punished are all sins as defined by Christianity, with their roots being found in biblical texts. Some of Dante’s writing mirrors actual excerpts of scripture; most notably, when Virgil commends the Pilgrim for his wrathful outburst against Phlegyas, saying, “[B]lessed is she in whose womb you were conceived” (VII. 45). A parallel passage concerning Christ and the Virgin Mary, in which a similar phrasing exists, can be found in the Gospel of St. Luke, 1:28, and also happens to be the foundation of the Catholic Hail-Mary prayer. The constant, consistent biblical grounding that Dante strives for in this manner helps to maintain his focus on the religious aspect of the journey, which is its core.
Theology, although not directly biblical and rather derived from a summative interpretation of biblical precepts, nonetheless plays an integral role in the intertextuality of Dante and his Inferno. St. Bernard and his proposition of the Three Advents of Christ – the first, when Christ was incarnated as a man; the third when he is to return for the Last Judgment; and the second, his continual, daily salvation of Christians – were of particular interest to Dante, who applied the concept repeatedly in both a figurative and a literal manner. The events of Canto IX, before the gates of the city of Dis, when a heavenly being descends to force a way through Hell for the Pilgrim and his guide, can be seen as a parallel to the First Advent, while numerous references are made to the coming of the Third, and the judgment and resurrection of bodies that are to accompany it. The entire voyage, through Hell and eventually into Paradise, is symbolic of Christ’s Second Advent.
Perhaps the most prevalent of the theological influences of the poem, however, is the concept of contrapasso, first set out by St. Thomas Aquinas. It is, after all, this idea of condign punishment for the committal of sins which drives all of the imagery and symbolism seen in the Inferno. According to its law, which Dante has masterfully lifted from the Summa Theologica and applied to his vision of Hell, sinners must suffer a punishment that either closely resembles or starkly contrasts with their own evil act. The concept is most exemplified in Canto XXVIII, when the Pilgrim meets Bertran de Born in the Ninth Bolgia. Bertran holds his head, severed from his neck, in his hand, a punishment for sowing dissention within a family and severing the bond between father and son: of the irony of his resulting decapitation, he had only to proclaim, “In me you see the perfect contrapasso!” (XXVII. 142) The use of the ideas of these theologies gives the Inferno an authenticity and credibility that it would otherwise have lacked, especially to a Christian audience; and, as with his integration of any other allusive forms in his work, brings to fruition Dante’s ultimate goal – the progression of writing as an art form.
The idea that progress can only be found in the appeal to the literary tradition of the past is not as counterintuitive as it might initially seem. Without the knowledge of where one has been, after all, how can one know where to proceed? And how can artistic endeavour be progressive when every new piece is entirely original, bearing no connection to the last?
Literature, like all art, is dependent on former accomplishment; it builds on the successes and avoids the failures of its vast experience. Intertextuality, as Dante realized, is thus a necessary practice for artistic achievement. It embodies the passage of knowledge within the tradition. When executed properly it is a discipline in itself, demanding by virtue of its unoriginality an incomparable amount of creativity on the part of the artist. It is an honest admission of the fact that we stand on the shoulders of giants who have preceded us, and a humble recognition of the contributions they have made to our art.
