Like most of us, you’ve probably felt lost in the journey of life.
If so, then you can’t miss the Divine Comedy. It’s an epic poem about one person who realizes how lost he is, and the trip he takes to fix that.
Together, Dante and Virgil take a transformative journey through Hell and Purgatory. Finally, Dante reaches Heaven.
This epic poem teaches us how we can develop ourselves, work through suffering, and reach the place that we want to be.
The only problem? Dante’s Divine Comedy has so much richness that it’s overwhelming at first.
But don’t worry. Just like classical art and classical music, all you need is a little guidance to figure out how to dive in.
Let’s start by digging into one of the most important relationships in the Divine Comedy: Dante’s friendship with his mentor and guide, Virgil.
Are Dante and Virgil Real People?
Yes, both Dante and Virgil were real people.
Here’s where it gets confusing, though: Dante and Virgil lived in different historical eras. They never met in real life.
Dante, the author of the Divine Comedy, included himself and Virgil as characters in his epic poem.
When you’re reading Inferno, you have to remember that there is a difference between Dante the author and Dante the character. You also have to distinguish between Virgil the historical figure and Virgil the fictional character who shows up in the Inferno.
In case it wasn't already clear, Dante’s and Virgil’s friendship in the Divine Comedy was entirely fictionalized.
What Was Virgil’s Relationship to Dante?
In real life, Virgil was an inspiration to Dante. In the Divine Comedy, Dante depicts Virgil as his guide and friend.
That’s because Virgil was everything that Dante wanted to be.
Although Virgil lived in Roman times, he was a fellow Italian with Dante. Virgil faced political turmoil. He addressed that turmoil in The Aeneid, one of the greatest epic poems of all time.
(Get to know more of the best epic poems of all time here!)
Dante lived in the thirteenth century, almost fourteen hundred years after Virgil. But Italy was still torn apart by political struggles.
Dante’s beloved city, Florence, was divided by a brutal political feud. Dante’s political activism got him banished from Florence, and he spent the rest of his life in exile, mourning the loss of his home.
As an epic poet, loyal Italian, and passionate political commentator, Virgil was Dante’s hero.
That’s why he imagined a friendship with Virgil and placed it at the center of his own epic work.
Who is Virgil in Dante’s Divine Comedy?
In the Divine Comedy, the character Virgil is Dante’s guide and friend who leads him through Hell (in Inferno) and Purgatory (in Purgatorio).
However, the Divine Comedy is an allegory: a story in which every element represents something else. The character of Virgil represents human wisdom and reason.
As Dante journeys through Hell and Purgatory, his character represents every person who tries to face the suffering of life and make themselves better.
However, Dante gets constantly distracted in his journey. Virgil keeps putting him back on track, showing how we need wisdom and reason to keep us moving on the journey of self-development.
Intellectual Guidance
Dante paints such a vivid picture of Hell in Inferno that it could make a Stephen King fan shudder.
Unsurprisingly, the character Dante can’t process all the horror that he witnesses in Hell. He gets distracted and overstimulated — and reading the gory descriptions, so do we.
Virgil, as the representation of reason, doesn’t let us get bogged down in the horror of what we’re reading.
As Dante’s intellectual guide, he makes the suffering intelligible. He names the people who are suffering in Hell and explains how they got there.
He gives Dante perspective on the chaos of Hell and helps him comprehend what he’s seeing.
As readers, Virgil pushes us to draw insights from what we see in Hell.
Without applying reason, Dante suggests, we’re helpless to make sense of suffering. We’re too prone to gawk at it in morbid curiosity instead of learning from it.
Moral Guidance
Seeing souls suffering in Hell, Dante has an understandable reaction: he feels sorry for the people he sees in agony.
However, Virgil keeps rebuking Dante for pitying the damned souls.
On first reading, this seems like a harsh reaction. After all, what’s wrong with having compassion for people who are in pain?
Dante’s depiction of Hell makes it clear that damned souls are in Hell because they have chosen to be there. They reject every opportunity to help themselves, and even do everything they can to make those around them suffer too.
Allegorically, that’s what it means to be in Hell: to choose vengeance and destruction until you can’t choose anything else.
Dante is saying that you can’t help someone in that state. Although our hearts should be moved when we see suffering, we have to recognize that we can only help those who want to be helped.
When someone chooses a self-destructive path, we can’t force them to make another choice. We should have compassion when their choices lead to suffering, but ultimately we have to let them choose their own path.
Why Can’t Virgil Continue to Be Dante’s Guide when Beatrice Arrives?
Virgil guides Dante through Hell and Purgatory, in the Inferno and Purgatorio.
However, when Dante arrives at the very top of Purgatory (where the Garden of Eden is), Virgil disappears.
Instead, Beatrice, Dante’s lost love, appears. She becomes his new guide.
Why does Dante get a new guide for his voyage into Heaven?
Remember that in the allegory of the Divine Comedy, Virgil represents human reason. Beatrice was Dante’s lost love who died young, so she represents love.
Dante could make it through Hell and Purgatory — the regions of suffering and self-development — with the help of human reason.
But Heaven is the region of transcendence, love, meaning, and fulfillment. Reason can lead us right to the gate of transcendence, but it can’t comprehend everything that we experience there.
Dante needs a new guide to show him the territory of Heaven. That’s why Virgil disappears and Beatrice becomes his new mystagogue for the entirety of the Divine Comedy's final third, Paradiso.
What Happens to Virgil in the Divine Comedy?
Virgil first comes to help Dante when the latter has lost his way in life and is on the verge of perishing.
This happens because Beatrice sees Dante’s plight from Heaven and prays for him. Her prayers result in Virgil coming to help Dante and guide him in the journey of life.
Virgil successfully guides Dante through Hell and Purgatory. However, as a pagan soul, Virgil can’t enter Heaven with Dante.
When Dante exits Purgatory and enters Heaven, Virgil disappears.
Virgil returns to the place in Hell where he spends eternity: the Limbo of Virtuous Pagans.
Along with Socrates, Plato, Homer, and other famous thinkers, Virgil lived a good life, but he never knew the love of Christ. Therefore, he can’t enter Heaven.
Again, this seems like a harsh punishment, but there’s an allegorical meaning behind it.
On its own, knowledge can do a lot for us. It can help us navigate out of our personal hell and set us on the path of self-development.
However, knowledge alone can’t bring us into Heaven — the place of transcendence, love, and meaning.
Dante uses more than just knowledge to guide him on his journey. His love for Beatrice motivates and makes use of his rational mind.
But Virgil represents knowledge without the motivating factor of love. He ends up in Limbo, which isn’t terrible, but it certainly lacks the fulfilling joy of Heaven.
Now Dante surely isn’t denigrating human reason here. In fact, he celebrates Virgil’s accomplishments and presents him as an admirable character.
However, he is saying that human knowledge has its limits, and without transcendent love, it can’t take us where we want to go.
Dante and Virgil Painting
Dante and Virgil’s relationship is captured in a painting by French artist William-Adolphe Bouguereau in 1850. Sometimes known as Dante and Virgil in Hell, it’s more commonly called simply Dante and Virgil.
The painting shows two damned souls locked in a vicious fight with one soul sinking his teeth into another’s neck. Dante and Virgil watch from the background.
The fight happens in Canto 30 of the Inferno between Capocchio, an alchemist, and Gianni Schicchi, an impersonator.
If you see this painting and wonder, “Why did Dante bite Virgil?” You’re making a common mistake — Dante and Virgil are off to the side watching the fight, not the ones fighting.
Dante and Virgil observe the fight from the left side of the painting. On the right, more souls undergo torture while a grinning demon swoops through the red sky.
This painting comes from the neoclassical tradition: a movement in the art world to reject the fussy, ornate Baroque and Rococo art styles. Neoclassical painters imitated the stark simplicity of classical (e.g., Greek and Roman) art.
Sure enough, the first thing that strikes you in this painting is the magnificent musculature.
It harkens back to the pristine, idealized human forms of Greek and Roman art. In fact, the two figures look almost like marble statues.
(Want to learn more about understanding classical art? Check out our ultimate guide to classical painters and paintings.)
What is the Meaning of the Dante and Virgil Painting?
The Dante and Virgil painting captures many of the lessons of the Inferno and of Dante and Virgil’s relationship.
Virgil (wearing the red cap) is shown pushing Dante (wearing the laurel crown) away from the scene. As Dante’s guide, Virgil won’t let Dante linger to indulge his morbid curiosity.
Meanwhile, Dante is covering his mouth in shock, staring at something that we can’t see.
We don’t know what Dante could be looking at, but we know that it’s even more horrific than what’s on the canvas. The lesson is clear: Hell can always be worse.
In the foreground, the two fighting figures are illuminated as if by a spotlight. Even though the painting is titled Dante and Virgil, the painter makes sure we don’t see the title characters first.
Instead, he grabs our attention with the same spectacle that has transfixed Dante and Virgil: the suffering of Hell.
What makes this painting especially horrifying is how beautiful the technique is, especially in contrast to the grotesque subject matter.
The painting is similar to the Inferno itself in that way: Dante writes incredible poetry, but its beauty contrasts with its subject matter, which is the visceral agony of Hell.
That same contrast is a theme in the Dante and Virgil painting.
The fight between the two damned souls shows off the splendor of their bodies. However, they are choosing to use those bodies to savagely tear at one another.
It’s a portrait of what it means to be in Hell: to take all the incredible abilities that make us human and use them to make others and ourselves suffer.
The Dante and Virgil painting doesn’t just tell us about the relationship between the characters of Dante and Virgil.
Instead, it puts us right there beside them as we gaze into Hell. It forces us to listen to our reason, the guide we all have on the journey of life, to learn from the misery of Hell so that we don’t repeat it in our own lives.
Read the Classics to Embrace Meaning
Classic books aren’t supposed to sit on a dusty bookshelf and intimidate you.
Like the Dante and Virgil painting, they’re rich, vivid, and full of meaning. They’ll open up new ways of seeing the world and yourself.
As T. S. Eliot said, “Dante and Shakespeare divide the world between them; there is no third.”
When you’re ready to embrace the riches of the classics, there’s no better place to start than with Shakespeare.
That’s why I wrote a book to help you discover how Shakespeare can enrich and transform your life.
Click the link above to download your free copy of The Bard and the Bees: What Shakespeare taught me about sex, evil, and life in the modern world.
Until next time,
Evan