The Divine Comedy 313love are inseparable, and every human action can be
categorized as performed either out of love or out
of a lack of love: “Thus you may understand that
love alone / is the true seed of every merit in you,
/ and all acts for which you must atone” (Purgatorio
17.103–105).
Dante’s journey through the afterlife begins in
hell with his guide, the poet Virgil. Together, they
travel from level to level until they ultimately reach
the core of hell, where Satan resides. The sinners
in hell have been completely deprived of God, so
there is little mention of love there. One of the
only instances is in canto 5, when Dante comes to
the Carnal, those who have followed their animal
instincts instead of reason and religion. There he
meets Paolo and Francesca Maletesta, and he swoons
with compassion when he hears their story. In 1275,
Francesca came to Rimini to make a political mar-
riage with Giovanni Malatesta, but she fell in love
with her new brother-in-law, Paolo, instead. When
Giovanni caught them both in the act, he killed
them. Their situation raises questions about the lines
between love and sin because, unfortunately, their
punishment is to be bound together forever in hell.
The idea may sound romantic, but it is not. Rather,
seeing each other is a constant reminder of their sin
and an added punishment or, as Francesca says, “The
double grief of a lost bliss / is to recall that happy
hour in pain” (Inferno 5.118–120).
As Dante rises through hell into purgatory,
heading toward the earthly paradise, he finds that
purgatory is composed of different levels of infrac-
tions involving love. There is the inappropriate love
that leads to self-love, covetousness, or anger with
the proud, the envious, and the wrathful. Then there
are the slothful, who are guilty of loving too little,
followed by the immoderate love of the avaricious
and the gluttons, who loved objects such as money
and food more than God. The group at the very
top of purgatory, closest to heaven, are the lustful.
Although their sin is an immoderate love, it is an
excessive love of other humans and is therefore clos-
est to what is asked of us by God, because “the soul,
being created prone to Love, / is drawn at once to
all that pleases it, / as soon as pleasure summons it
to move” (Purgatorio 18.19–21).
When Dante reaches the banks of the river
Lethe, he comes to the end of his time with Virgil,
who is bound to hell and cannot continue to para-
dise. The most important symbol of divine love in
the entire Comedy, Beatrice, enters at this moment.
For Dante, second only to his love of God is his
love of Beatrice, the girl with whom he was smitten
before she died at a young age. Through Beatrice’s
“power and excellence alone / [Dante] recognized
the goodness and grace” of God (Paradiso 31.82–83).
Beatrice descended into hell for her concern and
love of Dante in the same way that Jesus did for
Christians, and through the character of Beatrice,
Dante shows that the love between humans is
directly proportional to the love between humans
and God. Beatrice is also often compared to the
church because, at times, she loves Dante in the way
that a mother loves a child with a “mother’s stern-
ness,” and the church is considered the mother of all
Christians, guiding them to God (Purgatorio 30.80).
Dante enters paradise with the aid of Beatrice
and realizes that heaven itself, because it houses
God, is “the infinite and inexpressible Grace” which
“gives itself to Love / as a sunbeam gives itself to
a bright surface” (Purgatorio 15.67–69). Beatrice
explains to him that, since he is cleansed and has
seen God, “should some other thing seduce [his]
love,” it is not because Dante desires to sin, but
because he sees the light of God in other things and
is drawn to them (Paradiso 5.10). He is no longer
capable of experiencing any corrupt forms of love.
Finally, Dante meets the “hosts”—the angels and
the blessed beings—and experiences the “Light
of the intellect, which is love unending” when he
confronts the ultimate love of God (Paradiso 30.40).
Sara Tomedinature in The Divine Comedy
The Divine Comedy is a work absolutely overflow-
ing with symbols and motifs, but in the midst of
this attentively detailed poem, one theme is far
more prevalent than the others—Dante’s use of
nature. Nature is the setting of the poem itself,
which becomes more alive and beautiful as Dante
moves from the harsh rocks and boulders of hell
to the lush greenery of heaven. In the poem, nature
symbolizes human life and the way in which people