The Body of Hell
We begin with a striking parallel of a general kind, which had escaped notice until the microcosmic structure of the first of the petrose had been pointed out: the fact that Dante's Hell is a giant projection of the human body.[65]
Dante and Virgil begin their descent through Hell at what corresponds to the head (Limbo, which represents at one level our knowledge of the ancient world—that is, our memory—and may well correspond to the rear ventricle of the brain, thought to be the seat of memory);[66] we pass the devouring gullet among the gluttons, the spleen with the sullen. Within the city of Dis we reach a river of blood, the forest of the heart, and what should be a fountain or reservoir of life but is instead an arid burning plain. Some years ago Charles Singleton pointed out the existence, in Inferno 12–13, of what he called a "semantic field" of references to the breast, which he connected with the theme of man's double nature. We first see Chiron when he is looking at his breast; a while later Virgil stands at Chiron's breast, "dove le due nature son consorti" (12.84; cf. 12.97).[67] The circles of violence, in other words, correspond to the human breast. The Malebolge, furthermore, where fraud is punished, are based on an elaborate parallel between the digestion of foods and the work of the mind, for truth is the food of the soul, fraud its poison, and their concentric circles have an obvious relation to the labyrinth of the intestines (see Durling 1981a). Hell is divided, and Dante requires transportation, at points roughly corresponding to the major divisions of the human body. Flegïàs carries Dante across what corresponds to the division between head and breast, Geryon across what corresponds to the diaphragm. Anteo and the other giants are in a location that corresponds to the genitals, and they are like grotesque rebellious penises. Cocito, finally, corresponds to the large intestine, and there we find the infernal Saturn immobile in the ice.
Dante's spiral through Hell is a reenactment—in much greater detail, with much greater complexity, and in a different register—of the solstitial and microcosmic sequence of "Io son venuto." There are many correspondences between the five stanzas of this first of the petrose and
the realms of Hell: a sky—the hemisphere of light in Limbo—as memory (Canto 4, stanza 1); wind and storm as erotic passion, related especially to mouth and eyes, cries and weeping—and to lyric poetry (Canto 5, stanza 2); the breast, especially the heart, as seat of fire (Cantos 12–16, stanza 3); the correlation of animal souls and plant souls with the vital powers of the human soul (Cantos 12–16, stanzas 3–4). Cocito and the descent thereto, finally, as we have said, have a clear correspondence with the last stanza of "Io son venuto."
Dante's Hell is, of course, an inverted parody of the body of Christ, the Church. It is Babylon, the body of Satan. In De genesi ad litteram, explaining Isaiah 14:12–14, Augustine wrote:
Quae in figura regis velut Babylonis in diabolum dicta intelliguntur, plura in eius corpus conveniunt, quod etiam de humano genere congregat. . . . Et sicut corpus Christi quod est Ecclesia, dicitur Christus sicut illud est . . . . "Sicut enim corpus meum unum est, et membra habet multa, omnia autem membra corporis cum sint multa unum est corpus; ita et Christus" (1 Cor. 12:12): eo modo etiam corpus diaboli, cui caput est diabolus, id est ipsa impiorum multitudo.[68]
What is said figuratively as if of the king of Babylon is to be understood of the devil, they apply to his body, which he too congregates out of the human race. . . . And just as the body of Christ, which is the Church, is called Christ, so that one. . . . "For just as my body is one but has many members, for although the members of the body are many, the body is one; so also Christ" (I Cor. 12:12): in the same way also the body of the devil, whose head is the devil, is the multitude of the damned.
Dante's other two realms, Purgatory and Paradise, are also microcosmic in form. We have anticipated some of the microcosmic aspects of the Purgatorio in the first section; we turn now to a more elaborate consideration of how the microcosmic poetics of the petrose inform the Paradiso. We depart from our contention that "Amor, tu vedi ben," the poem as crystal, also represents the "crystalline" eye, for the Paradiso, because it is Dante's itinerarium mentis, is in physical terms the journey of his highest sense, his vision; more concretely, it is the journey of his eye.