Resumo de The Divine Comedy

Dante, describes a vision where he travels through all the levels of Hell, Purgatory, and finally Paradise, where he is allowed a glimpse of God.
He goes Good Friday eve, and finds himself in a dark wood. He encounters three beasts: leopard (lust), lion (pride) and she-wolf (covetousness). Fortunately, his lady, Beatrice, along with the Virgin Mary herself, sends the spirit of Virgil, the classical Latin poet, to guide Dante through his journey. As much as Dante admires Virgil, and though considers him to have prophesied the coming of Christ, Virgil isn't a Christian. To Dante he represents human reason, which cannot lead to God. He can't pass into the highest realms. Thus, Dante is finally led to Heaven by Beatrice, his personal incarnation of the Virgin, who represents faith.
Terrified, lost in the worldly darkness of error, Dante met Virgil, who offered himself as a guide. Together they passed through the gates of Hell. He found Hell to be a huge funnel-shaped pit divided into terraces each a standing-place for those who were guilty of a particular sin. After passing Limbo, reserved for the unbaptized, Dante observed and conversed with hundreds of Hell's souls, many of whom were being whirled about in the air or forced to lie deep in mud or snow, under the decrees of eternal damnation.

In pity, Dante frequently offered to write about those he met when he returned to mortality. These souls were either historical figures or Dante's personal acquaintances - and each represented an apt and horrible possibility of Hell. In the very depths of Hell was Satan - with three heads, each grasping a sinner in its mouth, and with three pairs of wings that continuously beat over the waters around him, freezing them into perpetual currents of ice.
Dante and Virgil cautiously climbed down the body of Satan. About midway, they turned and scrambled out through an opening (earth's center of gravity) where all things were the opposite of Hell: The sun was shining; it was Easter morning. Now hiking on in silence, they finally arrived on the shores of the Mount of Purgatory, located exactly opposite Jerusalem on the globe.
First and lowest on the mountain was Antepurgatory, a place reserved for spirits who were penitent in life, who died without achieving full repentance or without receiving the last sacrament of the church. They were required to spend time there before they could begin their arduous climb up the mountain. A group of those poor souls who had passed away suddenly, unable to receive extreme unction, pled with the mortal visitor to speak with their relatives and friends, urging them to pray that their stay in Ante-purgatory might be shortened.
As the pilgrims entered Purgatory, an angel inscribed the letter P on Dante's forehead seven times, to represent the seven deadly sins (pride, envy, anger, sloth, avarice, gluttony, and lust). As Dante made his way through the seven areas reserved for those who committed each of these sins, the letters were erased one by one, and the climb became less difficult.
Like Hell, Purgatory was arranged in terraces. However, the inhabitants here could, through confession, repentance, patience, and the prayers of the living, move on to higher realms after a time of proper purification. In the first terrace (pride), the occupants bowed down under huge stones they carried on their backs, reciting The Lord's Prayer. Each terrace in turn was designed to purge its dead souls of one particular deadly sin.
They finally move beyond the seventh terrace. An angel directed them through a huge wall of flames; on the other side they would find Beatrice. Dante did not hesitate. Emerging from the flames, he saw a mountain. At its summit, Virgil bade Dante farewell, for this was as far as Human Reason would allow a non-Christian to go.
Dante noticed a beautiful garden nearby, and began to explore it. A young woman appeared to inform him that this was the Garden of Eden - and there, across a river, awaeatrice. But the woman called out to Dante, demanding that, before entering the stream, he stop to acknowledge remorse for his sins and confess them. Hearing her, Dante was so overcome with remorse that he fainted and had to be carried across Lethe, the river of forgetfulness of past sins.
On the other side of the river, accompanied now at last by the beautiful Beatrice, Dante discovered that Paradise was divided into various spheres orbiting the earth. Each of the first seven (the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn) represented a virtue, and those who in life had exhibited this virtue became its inhabitants. Ascending through the spheres, Dante encountered various famous saints, martyrs, and crusaders, in addition to many of the just, the chaste and the meditative.
Dante next followed Beatrice past the Fixed Stars, where many of the Apostles dwelt. These men, in turn, questioned the poet, examining his opinions. Dante offered complicated treatises on the duality of Christ (that he is both human and divine) and earthly versus godly love, and explained then modern scientific theories to account, among other things, for moonspots.
At last Dante was conducted to the ninth heaven (outerspace), where he received grace. Then, in union with the divine, Dante was left alone to behold the glory of God.

Resumos Relacionados