Congratulations! You’re dead and you’re not in Hell, but that probably means you’re in Purgatory where your wounds of sin will be cleansed. With punishment.
Dante’s Mt. Purgatory is arranged in an awesomely symbolic way, especially once through St. Peter’s Gate. The two terraces at the bottom of the mountain are your most likely way into Purgatory: being an excommunicate or one of three types of late-repentants (indolent, unshriven, or pre-occupied). If you’re not a Christian (like me) or didn’t repent at all…then you are in Hell. Rowan Atkinson will greet you at the welcome barbeque held here.
Once you do your time on the terraces (or if you repented earlier and were able to skip the line), you can hope to be allowed access through St. Peter’s gate with a twist from both the silver and the gold key. You get 7 P’s stamped on your forehead that you will have to work off during your purgative punishment for the Seven Roots of Sin. On each cornice, souls are faced with a punishment (or “penance”) while meditating on both a “whip” (examples of a virtue to counter the vice) and “bridle” (stories of the vice itself so you can learn from the mistakes of others). If you overcome the vice, you have a P removed by an angel, and you can move on to the next level. (Dante was the first dungeon-crawler video game designer).
The three cornices of Lower Purgatory are devoted to Love Perverted: the love of harming one’s neighbours.
Cornice 1 – The Proud
Punishment: Carrying a giant rock on your back to humble your cocksure arrogance and wipe that douchebag grin off your face. (I’d be stuck here a while, were the whole Christian requirement thing to be dropped).
Whip: Humility
Bridle: Pride
Cornice 2 – The Envious
Punishment: Your peeping-tom eyes are wired shut so you can’t desire anything your neighbour has because you can’t see it.
Whip: Generosity
Bridle: Envy
Cornice 3 – The Wrathful
Punishment: The smoke monster from Lost. No, really. I wouldn’t want to hang out here for long.
Whip: Meekness
Bridle: Wrath
Then on to Middle and Upper Purgatory for your Disordered Love of Good. Sloth is all alone in Middle Purgatory for Love Defective. The last three are Love of Secondary Goods.
Cornice 4 – The Slothful
Punishment: Running. The lazy bastards. I punish myself with this almost every day!
Whip: Zeal
Bridle: Sloth
Cornice 5 – The Covetous
Punishment: Prostration. You’re laid on your belly without your possessions. And forced to watch episodes of Hoarders.
Whip: Liberality
Bridle: Avarice
Cornice 6 – The Gluttonous
Punishment: Starvation and learning what calories are and how to count them (for future reference once you move on to the next cornice).
Whip: Temperance
Bridle: Greed
Cornice 7 – The Lustful
Punishment: Fire, and everyone has to go through it. If you were given a free “Get Out of One Sin” card back at the gate, it’s not working for this punishment. You either jump through the wall of fire, or you sit around listening to erotic stories for all eternity. Wait… why am I leaving?
Whip: Chastity
Bridle: Lust
There! You made it! Earthly Paradise is your reward where you get to watch…a bunch of boring pageants. On second thought, send me back to Lust. They told some pretty raunchy stories there.
(I was using the Penguin Edition of The Divine Comedy translated by Dorothy Leigh Sayers)
write with lightning 
April 22nd, 2010 at 17:08
In one of my classes, we were discussing the ethics of placing the cover to the Dante’s Inferno game on copies of the reprinting of the actual literary work, ie whether it was right to trick kids into reading literature. I think that those who didn’t realize that that two were extremely different would be too confused to read past the first few pages so it’s a moot point.
April 24th, 2010 at 07:45
You’d have to convince them that it was a walkthrough to find every secret in the game. Then they’d memorise the entire poem!
April 22nd, 2010 at 17:50
cracked.com mentions dante as composing “the divine comedy” party as an act of vengeance:
http://www.cracked.com/article_18430_6-historic-acts-revenge-that-put-kill-bill-to-shame.html (at the bottom of the page)
nothing like adding some of your enemies into your literary magnum opus.
i’m partial to mark musa’s translations, myself. 🙂
the video game “dante’s inferno” feels too much like “god of war”, so if you’ve played one then the other will just feel repetitive. although encountering damned souls and having the option of saving them or punishing them is refreshing.
April 26th, 2010 at 22:20
Good cracked.com article!
I admit to using whatever copy of Dante I had lying around, but her notes WERE excellent.
I have not played either game, but I saw an interview with some of the developers of Dante’s Inferno and they apparently tried to include details from the poem in the levels they created. I am tempted to play it to evaluate their literary competence.
In other Dante related news, Yann Martel (author of “Life of Pi”) has a new book out called “Beatrice & Virgil”…the names of a stuffed donkey and a howler monkey.
http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/Beatrice-Virgil-Yann-Martel/9780307398772-item.html?ref=Home%3aSection%3aTopselling+Products+at+chapters.indigo.ca%3a3
April 23rd, 2010 at 07:05
WONDERFUL pictures. 😀 Is that one from the Ducktales movie with the magic lamp???
April 26th, 2010 at 22:11
Or at least inspired by 🙂 That was such a good movie (my childhood self – whom I keep imprisoned in my mind – tells me). I should watch it again sometime.