Dante Alighieri. A Book About Myself Called Hell. PenguinClassics
Reviewed by Jared Joseph
At the age of 35 on the night of Good Friday in the year 1300 Dante decides to go glamping in a state park and to have a vision quest. He can’t find the makeshift sweat lodge the fusion band Soul Jazz is playing and gets lost. Having recently watched Holy Mountain, a cult classic, he sees a last light sun-dappled mountain in the distance and he closes that distance and assays to climb the mountain but the pass is guarded by three imperious beasts: a leopard, a lion, and a wolf that is a girl. Oh my. Dejected and terrified, he turns around and meets the dead ghost Virgil, who offers to take him to Hell instead. This is a fine idea, Dante thinks. Although Virgil’s voice is hoarse, Dante decides it isn’t a viral thing and pulls his mask down.
The two poets enter the gates of Hell where indecisive souls are chased by biting bugs and forced themselves to chase a low-flying Goodyear blimp forever. The two pass on and come to the shore of the river Acheron where ticket-carrying souls await their ferry into Hell itself. Charon, the gondolier, says “No ticket,” to Virgil, quoting Indiana Jones, a hero quest, or quoting Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, a hero quest, which itself quotes Indiana Jones, and whose title references Star Wars, a hero quest, and which at times references a previous movie the same Silent Bob writer and director Kevin Smith created, Dogma, a hero quest, based in large part on Milton’s epic Paradise Lost and Dante’s epic The Inferno. Surely you must be joking, says Virgil, and Charon says “Don’t call me Shirley,” quoting Airplane. This exchange works as a password, and Charon fords the poets to Limbo, Hell’s first circle, which also happens to be Virgil’s permanent residence. Once in Limbo the poets tarry and chat with Homer, Ovid, Horace, etc., about The Matrix, a hero quest, where the character Neo, the promised one, in one scene dodges a number of bullets by bending his torso backwards to such an extent he breaks the laws of vertebrates, convincing our heroes that on the day of Keanu Reeves’ death a new limbo champion cometh.
Dante and Virgil enter the second circle where the monster Minos sits and administers place of punishment to all the new arrivals. His tail is his gavel. Dante meets Francesca and Paolo, two adulterous lovers who are sentenced to an outdoor buffet bar for eternity, where every time they reach to ladle food onto their plates, a lusty wind blows the ladles away.
Our heroes enter the third circle, that of the Gluttons, guarded by the three-headed dog Air Bud. The sinners here are told to play basketball on a court of mud and muck without a hoop or discernible teammates, as everyone is naked and thereby ought be thought “skins,” and yet caked dirt is their “shirts.” A fellow Florentine named Ciacco cast to hell for his sins wearing a “Cleveland Rocks!” tee shirt (made of mud) tells Dante “Italy Sucks!”
In the fourth circle Dante and Virgil find the Hoarders and the Spendthrifts. They’re all trying to read The Myth of Sisyphus and Das Kapital in Braille raised on boulders they are always rolling.
The fifth circle is in a marsh area of the River Styx. Another fucking Florentine, Filippo Argentine, says SAY MY NAME BITCH to Dante. Dante whispers “Giorgio Armani.”
Circle six begins the city of Dis, where the violent roam. D and V enter the realm of the Heretics, whose homes are all graves on fire. The property value is low. Dante’s friend Guido’s dad is in Hell.
Dante and Virgil descend through a valley thicc as the night is narrow. They meet the Minotaur and see Phlegethon, a river of blood boiling. Those who didn’t give their neighbors sugar donate plasma to the river every minute.
Virgil talks Nessus the centaur into fording them across the river into the second circle of the seventh circle, where the Suicides are punished with...death?
In the final circle of circle seven is a desert fed with snowflakes of fire. Dante meets again with his beloved graduate thesis committee chair Brunetto Latini in a gay bar.
My good friend dies.
In circle eight I learn a new word! Bowge. It’s a chasm or a ditch, and in Hell there are ten of them. The first bowge is for the Panderers and Seducers who’ve become subs castigated by their angry doms. The second bowge is for the flatterers who live in a septic tank. The third is for the Simoniacs who’ve become toilet plungers in baptismal fountains with their feet aflame sighing “Simon said.” Dante talks to some popes who think he is his least favorite pope. In the fifth chasm the far and forward-seeing Fortune Teller’s broken necks cause their heads to swing backwards like night owls.
The fifth bowge is a Ninja Turtle’s episode. Trust me.
The sixth bowge is for the Hypocrites, religious men who’ve lost God but found David Bowie, parading around in face glitter and glam rock robes. It is a very cool open-air T. Rex festival. To leave you have to step on Caiphas, who is crucified into the earth’s floor. This ensures the molly wears off almost instantly.
The seventh bowge is filled with thieves whose hands have been cut off and they are sort of snakes that bite each other and turn into each other when they bite each other.
In the eighth bowge a hologram of Ulysses says Obi Wan, you’re much too late.
In the ninth bowge the poets meet Muhammad. It doesn’t seem like Muhammad. It seems like a painting of Muhammad that has been completed by Charlie Hebdo, or George Bush, Jr., or a racist elephant.
My mom contracts Covid-19. She is very immunocompromised.
Dante and Virgil arrive at the ninth circle fucking finally, so I can stop writing soon. This has been boring as hell for me. Circle nine is built upon the giant frozen lake of Cocytus, which sinners are encrusted in. Dante thinks he sees towers in the distance, but they are giants, idiot. He makes an appointment with the eye doctor.
After the giant Anteus gently deposits Dante and Virgil at the bottom of the well of circle nine, well, they are at the bottom of circle nine. Dante listens to the stories of the talking heads frozen to their necks. “This is not my beautiful wife,” one says to and of Dante. Dante kicks his head. It’s an accident, though it might as well not be. With each successive round the prisoners are buried closer and closer to their heads in the ice. They are all traitors here, and God hates traitors the most, because God has abandonment issues.
In the third circle of circle nine, the Traitors to Guests, the traitors wear Covid visors made of snow. One frontline worker asks Dante to remove his visor, its crystalline ice structure stabs shards into his eyes. Dante swears to God he will, if the essential worker will tell Dante his story. He does. Dante doesn’t.
The fourth circle of circle nine is the final circle of the final circle of Hell, named Judecca after Judas, the superlative traitor of the Traitors to their Masters. Satan’s at the center of the ice, he’s a three-headed animatronic giant installed by Chuck E. Cheese eating Judas, Brutus, and Cassius like they’re pizza. He eats Judas crust first.
Virgil and Dante climb down Satan’s torso, pass the center of gravity of the world, and travel along the river Lethe to arrive at the other side of the upper world. They’re back in Life on Easter Sunday, just before Dawn. They watch the credits of Weekend at Bernie’s 2 roll over a backdrop of sky still filled with stars.
