Through me you pass into the city of woe:
Through me you pass into eternal pain:
Through me, among the people lost for e’re
So begins the inscription above the gateway to Hell, at least according to the Florentine poet Dante Alighieri. In his 14thC masterpiece, The Divine Comedy, Dante describes his journey through Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso. While travelling through Hell, Purgatory and finally into Heaven itself Dante describes the people and places he witnesses, many fantastical but even more based firmly in fact.
In this talk Daniel Pietersen will act as Virgil, the poet’s companion through Hell, and guide us across boiling rivers, through screaming forests and across frozen plains, down through the Nine Circles of Dante’s ‘Inferno’. Here we will meet sinners of all stripes – gluttons, murderers and traitors – but also those who defied late medieval Christian orthodoxy and even a few unfortunates who Dante simply did not like. Hell, for Dante as well as Sartre, is other people. And let us not forget the many beings for whom Hell is a home: resentful Charon, who ferries souls from Limbo into Hell itself; Medusa, glaring out from the walls of Dis as she guards the descent into Lower Hell; gibbering Nimrod, now fallen from the Tower of Babel. We will gaze into the Abyss and the Abyss, with countless glittering eyes, will gaze back.
The Inferno is a beautiful piece of writing and a deeply moving act of soul-searching, which reveals Dante’s flaws as much as his perfections, but it also explores how society approaches crime and punishment in a way that still resonates today. Why do we punish rather than rehabilitate? Should suicide be considered a crime and, if so, against whom? Why, throughout human history, has fraud been considered a worse crime than murder?
So come, step over the threshold and into the shadows. It may be dark but it’s warm. At least for now. But remember the final line of that opening, cautionary stanza: Abandon hope, all ye who enter here…
Bio
Daniel Pietersen is a writer, critic and the editor of I Am Stone: The Gothic Weird Tales of R Murray Gilchrist, part of the Tales of the Weird series from the British Library. As well as being an invited speaker on weird and genre fiction for organisations like The Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies, the Lincoln Book Festival and Sheffield Gothic, Dan is also a regular contributor to the Romancing The Gothic programme, talking about subjects like Haunted Houses in various media, Dungeons & Dragons, and the Gothic heritage of Madonna. His criticism has appeared in Dead Reckonings, Extrapolations and the journal of the British Fantasy Society, amongst others. Daniel lives in Edinburgh, with a necromancer and hellhound.
Don’t worry if you miss it – we will send you a recording valid for two weeks the next day.
