the astronomer Ptolemy, who taught that the earth is the center
of the universe and that the following nine levels surround and
rotate around the earth:
1. Moon
2. Mercury
3. Venus
4. Sun
5. Mars
6. Jupiter
7. Saturn
8. Starry Heaven
9. Crystalline Heaven (prime mobile)
Surrounding all and immobile is the Empyrean, home of God.
On the spiritual level, Dante's universe is set up so that
the more God-like you are, the closer your eternal resting place
will be to Him. Hell, then, is in the center of the earth, the
farthest point from God. Purgatory is a mountain on the earth
and Heaven is close to God.
Dante called his work simply the Comedy; later readers added
the word divine because the work deals with God and Satan, sin
and the afterlife. The Inferno is Dante-the-pilgrim's journey
through Hell. The scenes he encounters there are as bizarre as
anything we might see in a horror film or science fiction
fantasy. There's a huge cast of characters, drawn from the
Bible, from Greek mythology, and from the Italian politics of
Dante's own day.
The poem is more than a supernatural travelogue, however. As
you will see, it is also a journey through the human spirit,
from the depths of evil to the heights of enlightenment.
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DIVINE COMEDY: THE INFERNO: THE PLOT
The story line of the Inferno, quite simply, is Dante's
journey through Hell. He starts at the top and walks through to
the bottom. The specifics, who he meets and what he sees, are
discussed in the section of this guide called The Story.
