Description of The Ninth Circle
Dante’s Hell is divided into nine circles, the ninth circle being divided further into four rings, their boundaries only marked by the depth of their sinners' immersion in the ice; Satan sits in the last ring, Judecca. It is in the ninth circle where the worst sinners, the betrayers to their benefactors, are punished. Here, these condemned souls, frozen into the ice, are completely unable to move or speak and contorted into all sorts of fantastical shapes as a part of their punishment.
Unlike many other circles of Dante’s Hell, these sinners remain unnamed. Even Dante is afraid to enter this last circle, as he nervously proclaimed, "I drew behind my leader’s back again.”
Uncharacteristically of Dante, he remains silent in Satan’s presence. Dante examines the sinners who are “covered wholly by ice/, showing like straw in glass- some lying prone/, and some erect, some with the head towards us/, the others with the bottoms of the feet; another like a bow bent feet to face.” This circle of Hell is a complete separation from any life and for Dante, “the deepest isolation is to suffer separation from the source of all light and life and warmth.” Satan's punishment is the opposite of what he was trying to achieve, power and a voice over God. Satan also is in many ways, “the antithesis of Virgil; for he conveys at its sharpest the ultimate and universal pain of Hell; isolation." It is Virgil, Dante's guide through hell, who tells Dante “that the inhabitants of the infernal region are those who have lost the good of intellect; the substance of evil, the loss of humanity, intelligence, good will, and the capacity to love." Satan stands at the center because he is the epitome of Dante’s Hell.
“He wept with all six eyes, and the tears fell over his three chins mingled with bloody foam. The teeth of each mouth held a sinner, kept as by a flax rake: thus he held three of them in agony."
Read more about this topic: Dante's Satan
Famous quotes containing the words description of the, description of, description, ninth and/or circle:
“The Sage of Toronto ... spent several decades marveling at the numerous freedoms created by a “global village” instantly and effortlessly accessible to all. Villages, unlike towns, have always been ruled by conformism, isolation, petty surveillance, boredom and repetitive malicious gossip about the same families. Which is a precise enough description of the global spectacle’s present vulgarity.”
—Guy Debord (b. 1931)
“Once a child has demonstrated his capacity for independent functioning in any area, his lapses into dependent behavior, even though temporary, make the mother feel that she is being taken advantage of....What only yesterday was a description of the child’s stage in life has become an indictment, a judgment.”
—Elaine Heffner (20th century)
“A sound mind in a sound body, is a short, but full description of a happy state in this World: he that has these two, has little more to wish for; and he that wants either of them, will be little the better for anything else.”
—John Locke (1632–1704)
““Blessed is the man who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed” was the ninth beatitude.”
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744)
“There is all the difference in the world between departure from recognised rules by one who has learned to obey them, and neglect of them through want of training or want of skill or want of understanding. Before you can be eccentric you must know where the circle is.”
—Ellen Terry (1847–1928)