The World of Myth Magazine

… "May you weep and wail,
Stuck in this place forever, damned soul,
For filthy as you are - I recognize you"
Dante – Inferno VIII - lines 37-39

It has been a long, hard journey already. There is much further to go. Dante is walking through Hell with the ancient roman poet Virgil as his guide and protector. Dante has seen, and will see, almost endless brutality and heartbreak. It has not been easy.

As we go through this first part of The Divine Comedy we feel like we are walking with Dante along those dark roads, hearing the voices of people long dead. Some are telling their stories, which are some of the most memorable moments in Inferno. Francesca da Rimini who was killed for falling in love with the wrong person is now doomed to spend eternity in a hurricane with her true love by her side. The suicides, whose bodies are twisted into trees, and are forever frozen in place. Or Count Ugolino, near the end of the book, who has his revenge on the man who double-crossed and murdered him in a way that still is disturbing, 800 years after it was first written. Compared with other moments Inferno, Dante crossing the river Styx and fighting to keep the souls of the wrathful off his boat might not be the most memorable, but it was what French painter Eugene Delacroix depicted in 1822's The Barque of Dante.

When we first see this piece, one of the things our attention is drawn to is the light. Everything around the little boat is dark, and while we do not see the boat clearly because of how many people are trying to swarm it, we can see every detail of Dante and Virgil clearly. They are in the center of the scene, trying to steady themselves as their vessel is being thrown about. This scene is one of the first times Dante is in immediate danger in Hell, but it will not be the last. This alone makes it interesting material for an artist, but it is also a very important scene, and to understand why it is important to place it in a larger context of Dante's Divine Comedy, and the deeper themes of the trilogy.

So far in the story: Dante was lost in a dark wood somewhere on earth when a ghostly figure appears before him – it is the ancient Roman poet Virgil who tells Dante that he has been ordered by the now deceased love of his life to go on a journey through the afterlife. Starting this journey, Dante has entered a highly structured version of Hell, where condemned souls are punished ironically. At first, he sees the souls of virtuous pagans. These are represented by some of the famous figures from the classical age. Journeying further, Dante finds the souls of the lustful, the circle for people guilty of gluttony, and then the banks of the Styx where the souls of the wrathful are condemned to have an eternal fistfight under the water surface. On the banks of the Styx he finds a boat to take himself and Virgil over to the city of Dis, an eternally burning city where the souls of heretics are punished which we can see in the left side of this painting. While they are sailing across the Styx their boat is attacked from beneath by angry souls. This is the scene of The Barque of Dante. Dante himself, to the left of the center, is reaching out both to steady himself and to attack – sending someone back into the river with the quote at the top of this article.

This set up is important for understanding something of this painting because as The Divine Comedy goes on it becomes apparent that Dante is not just writing about sin and religion in a grand philosophical way, he is writing about other things including his own personal failings. The words in the above quote 'I recognize you' are symbolic of this, because Dante is attacking someone who he sees something of himself in. Dante is angry in the place where anger is punished, and this is very deliberate. This is perhaps a symbolic justification for the light in the painting that focuses on Dante and Virgil, a light which is not strong enough to illuminate all the darkness around them - it is a metaphorical dawning light of clarification and truth.

In the Divine Comedy, Virgil is also symbolic. In Canto 1, Dante admits that Virgil is his favourite writer and the model for his own poetry, 'You are my teacher, and first of all my authors' he says when they first meet. The use of 'teacher' is in this translation (Mark Musa's) is very apt, because Virgil's main symbolic role is as a stand-in for philosophy, and for knowledge more generally. He guides Dante through hell because he knows it, just as how, to Dante, an objective morality can be found through philosophy and knowledge. To Dante, failure to understand or abide by natural morality results in sin, and so being sent to Hell. Notice how in Virgil is in the dead center of this painting, while Dante himself is slightly to one side. It is like the light illuminating Virgil is just beginning to dawn on Dante. With this in mind, it is also interesting to note the people in the water too: those illuminated look sad and passive, a if resigned to their fate, while those who are not in the light are attacking each other or Dante's boat – wrathful.

The fact that Dante and Virgil are journeying on a boat is also (as insignificant as it might seem) an important symbol. Boats are objects of transition between one point and another. Dante uses two boats in Inferno, one is depicted in this painting – and once before, shortly after he first enters Hell. They are moments in Inferno of 'a point of no return' and mean Dante has no choice now but to go on, both with his story and with his investigation of the self. Their greater symbolic importance is actually hard to spot in Inferno, at first, but Dante emphases it throughout the rest of the Divine Comedy. In the opening lines of Purgatorio Dante writes:

For better waters, now, the little bark

Of my poetic powers hoists its sails

And in canto 2 of Paradiso:

All you who in your wish to hear my words

Have followed thus far in your little boat

Behind my ship

Here boats are used as metaphors for the mind while in Inferno they are things used in the narrative. With the above two quotes it is almost like Dante is pointing out that while the two boat journeys in Inferno are literal, they should also be taken metaphorically. The difference might be because in Inferno Dante does not understand needed to understand he is on a journey of self discovery, as well as on a literal journey, but this is an understanding that develops during Inferno.

With this theme of self discovery in mind, it is also appropriate that the destination Dante and Virgil are going toward in this scene is on fire – perhaps it is a hint of the fires of purgation to come in Purgatorio, but it is also a reflection of his emotions. His emotions are, borrowing a colloquialism, 'on fire'. But even in the light of his dawning knowledge (and the light in this painting does look like dawn-light) this destination is still obscured by the smoke and fog of flames – something Dante will have to go through before he press go on. This is, in a way, an excellent metaphor for the process of learning itself.

The light shining on Dante and Virgil may never shine again in this place. For the souls of the damned there is a sadness in their poses, one that is not seen in those not quite in the light who are not in it. The souls caught in the light look resigned or dejected, and this contrast is key to the emotion of this piece. All the images of anger and pain in darkness are trying to emphasise the light even more. This makes the painting very interesting to look at a number of times. You see more the longer you look at it, this is like reading Dante's Divine Comedy too. It is so rich that no one reading will be the same as the next one, and no careful viewing of this piece is the same as the last.