Meta: Dean & Dante's Inferno
Nov. 25th, 2008 03:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
raloriaThey uh...they sliced and...carved....and tore at me in ways you....until there was nothin' left.
And then suddenly I would be whole again. Like magic.
Just so they could start in again all over. ~~~ Dean in "Heaven And Hell"
This part of Dean's account of his time in Hell instantly set off a lightbulb in my brain. I recognized that depiction of punishment in the pit. It was within Dante's Inferno, a favorite book of mine since reading it in a Humanities class in college. So I decided to do a little research to see if my hunch was correct and sure enough I found it.
In Canto XXVIII (The Sowers Of Discord), we have this selected description from SparkNotes:
Virgil and Dante continue on to the Ninth Pouch, where they see a line of souls circling perpetually. Dante sees they bear wounds worse than those suffered at the battles at Troy and Ceparano. A devil stands at one point of the circle with a sword, splitting open each sinner who walks by. These are the Sowers of Scandal and Schism, and for their sins of division they themselves are split apart. Worse, as they follow the circle around, their wounds close up so that they are whole by the time they come back to the sword, only to be struck again.
A second description, from Infernodante.com:
The sowers of scandal and schism are divided into three categories: sowers of religious discord, political discord, and discord between kinsmen. All are appropriately hacked to pieces by a demon with a bloody sword, reconstituted, then hacked to pieces again and again for eternity.
And this one, from my own copy of Dante's Inferno, translated by John Ciardi:
The Poets come to the edge of the NINTH BOLGIA and look down at a parade of hideously mutilated souls. These are the SOWERS OF DISCORD, and just as their sin was to rend asunder what God had meant to be united, so are they hacked and torn through all eternity by a great demon with a bloody sword. After each mutilation the souls are compelled to drag their broken bodies around the pit and to return to the demon, for in the course of their circuit their wounds knit in time to be inflicted anew. Thus is the law of retribution observed, each sinner suffering according to his degree.
Illustrations of Canto XXVIII
Clickable thumbnails
Sources: Dante's Inferno & DivineComedy.org
The main difference here, of course, is that Dean describes being on a rack when all this happened over the course of 30 years. There was no walking around and who knows what they used to cut him. But the essence of the idea is there, in The Inferno, so I suspect that Kripke used that as a reference point.
~~~ Another SPN tie to The Inferno ~~~
This isn't the first time this season that Dante's depiction of Hell has been used on the show. When I was watching 4x07 "It's The Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester", I noticed images & text from the work.
It's within the scene where Sam is telling Dean that he's tracked down the blood sacrifices to being traced to Samhain and proceeds to go into the lore of Halloween. He passes Dean a book and when the camera shows the pages, it's not talking about Samhain at all....it's Dante's Inferno. Even the illustration on the second page is one of Gustave Dore's classic engravings. But there are a few inconsistencies besides this.
Remember to click on the thumbnails to see the full-sized image.
As I stated, The Inferno is one of my favorite books, and I'm thrilled that Kripke & Co. are using elements of it in the episodes. In working on my own fanfic sequels, I am also using the book as a reference to Hell. Though I'm not going to be nearly as easy on Dean as Kripke and the writers were. But I am using The Inferno as my guide, so to speak, much as they appear to be. I highly recommend reading the work, if you haven't. If you believe in Hell, it will certainly have you terrified of the place.
And just for fun and artistic reasons, I thought I'd share this very cool, yet creepy video I found on YouTube of Dante's Inferno. It's done in clay animation and is really spectacular.
Video by alexgwaller.
And then suddenly I would be whole again. Like magic.
Just so they could start in again all over. ~~~ Dean in "Heaven And Hell"
 |
 |
This part of Dean's account of his time in Hell instantly set off a lightbulb in my brain. I recognized that depiction of punishment in the pit. It was within Dante's Inferno, a favorite book of mine since reading it in a Humanities class in college. So I decided to do a little research to see if my hunch was correct and sure enough I found it.
In Canto XXVIII (The Sowers Of Discord), we have this selected description from SparkNotes:
Virgil and Dante continue on to the Ninth Pouch, where they see a line of souls circling perpetually. Dante sees they bear wounds worse than those suffered at the battles at Troy and Ceparano. A devil stands at one point of the circle with a sword, splitting open each sinner who walks by. These are the Sowers of Scandal and Schism, and for their sins of division they themselves are split apart. Worse, as they follow the circle around, their wounds close up so that they are whole by the time they come back to the sword, only to be struck again.
A second description, from Infernodante.com:
The sowers of scandal and schism are divided into three categories: sowers of religious discord, political discord, and discord between kinsmen. All are appropriately hacked to pieces by a demon with a bloody sword, reconstituted, then hacked to pieces again and again for eternity.
And this one, from my own copy of Dante's Inferno, translated by John Ciardi:
The Poets come to the edge of the NINTH BOLGIA and look down at a parade of hideously mutilated souls. These are the SOWERS OF DISCORD, and just as their sin was to rend asunder what God had meant to be united, so are they hacked and torn through all eternity by a great demon with a bloody sword. After each mutilation the souls are compelled to drag their broken bodies around the pit and to return to the demon, for in the course of their circuit their wounds knit in time to be inflicted anew. Thus is the law of retribution observed, each sinner suffering according to his degree.
Clickable thumbnails
 |
 |
Sources: Dante's Inferno & DivineComedy.org
The main difference here, of course, is that Dean describes being on a rack when all this happened over the course of 30 years. There was no walking around and who knows what they used to cut him. But the essence of the idea is there, in The Inferno, so I suspect that Kripke used that as a reference point.
This isn't the first time this season that Dante's depiction of Hell has been used on the show. When I was watching 4x07 "It's The Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester", I noticed images & text from the work.
It's within the scene where Sam is telling Dean that he's tracked down the blood sacrifices to being traced to Samhain and proceeds to go into the lore of Halloween. He passes Dean a book and when the camera shows the pages, it's not talking about Samhain at all....it's Dante's Inferno. Even the illustration on the second page is one of Gustave Dore's classic engravings. But there are a few inconsistencies besides this.
Remember to click on the thumbnails to see the full-sized image.
| First, we have the text on the first page, which describes Canto VII (The Hoarders & The Wasters - The Wrathful & The Sullen), mentioning Plutus. |  |
| However, on the next page, the illustration is not of Canto VII, but of Canto IX (The Heretics). You can see proof of this HERE. |
 |
| As for the second illustration in the book, supposedly showing Samhain? It's more like a Photoshopped mix of images, again, from Gustave Dore. I couldn't find any one image to match this one, but it does have elements from several of Dore's engravings. |  |
As I stated, The Inferno is one of my favorite books, and I'm thrilled that Kripke & Co. are using elements of it in the episodes. In working on my own fanfic sequels, I am also using the book as a reference to Hell. Though I'm not going to be nearly as easy on Dean as Kripke and the writers were. But I am using The Inferno as my guide, so to speak, much as they appear to be. I highly recommend reading the work, if you haven't. If you believe in Hell, it will certainly have you terrified of the place.
And just for fun and artistic reasons, I thought I'd share this very cool, yet creepy video I found on YouTube of Dante's Inferno. It's done in clay animation and is really spectacular.
Video by alexgwaller.
