In times of Christianity, Dante drew an imaginative and elegant picture of Hell, Purgatory and Paradise for the people in Middle Ages who really believed in their existence. But as nowadays lots of people don’t have faith in it any more, does the journey to the other world have any significance for modern people? My answer is that The Divine Comedy still keeps alive in our modern life for its literariness, enlightenment and potential creativity.
The literariness lies in the content and structure of the story from which readers can get joy and learn some writing skills. It’s all about a journey of a pilgrim led by Virgil and Beatrice through the Hell, Purgatory and Paradise where nobody has ever seen and been. Such great imaginary with detailed description makes the journey extremely attractive and fascinating. The word above the entrance of Hell, the scary Lucifer and the way upwards to the Purgatory, such things together build a real otherworld in our mind. It’s kind of like Journey to the West. Virgil escorted Dante to Paradise (or Purgatory, precisely) for his salvation while Sun wukong protected Tang seng all the way to the west for salvation of the world. We can get joy from The Divine Comedy and feed our satisfy and our own curiosity just like that Chinese are fond of Journey to the West, though both story are obviously unreal. What’s more, the rhetoric used, especially simile and metaphor, is appropriate and worth learning. ‘As in autumn when the leaves begin to fall/ one after the other …so did the evil seed of Adam’s Fall…like the falcon to its lure.’ Such sentence with both simile and metaphor vividly described the scene that ghosts jumped to the boat one after the other waiting for their lives in Hell. It’s also a outstanding poem with a clear structure and carefully arranged sentence. It can surely help us improve our writing skills.
The enlightenment for us is that we can learn to tell right from wrong. Though modern people don’t fear of being punished in Hell, we can still establish a simple value system. Those in Hell except pagans, like Lucifer, Judas, Brutus, are obviously negative examples. The seven sins, ‘SALIGIA’, are what we need to avoid. Virgil, whom Dante admired so much, standing for wisdom and persistence, escorted Dante through the Hell with great determination. His wisdom not only affected Dante’s writing, but also helped Dante the Pilgrim to be determined and get to know the Hell and finally salvaged himself. In those examples and other plots we can learn what is good and what is bad. And one special virtue in his work is humanism which is innovative and epochal.
The potential creativity makes The Divine Comedy has another way to be alive, as there are many works adapted from it or related to it. In China, it is called ‘IP’, which is popular and has lots of adaptions for films, music, games and so on. And actually detailed concept and appearance of Hell, Purgatory and Paradise in The Divine Comedy are very popular as time goes on. Dante’s The Divine Comedy has been a popular ‘IP’ for hundreds of years.
Thus, we don’t believe in Hell and such things indeed, but it’s doesn’t mean The Divine Comedy isn’t important any more, and nor are other works about Hell and Paradise. This work of Dante was, is and will be important and will keep alive forever.
