"
Virgil (Reason called by Conscience) comes to the rescue of the
entranced poet and reveals the Siren in all her foul ugliness. At that
Dante awakes from his dream more than ever convinced of the evil of sin
and its hideousness. (Purg., XIX, 9.)
Our poet, as we said, is firmly convinced that sin will be punished in
Hell. But where is Hell? Popular tradition attributing an infernal
connection with volcanic phenomena and moved by those passages in Holy
Scripture which describe Hell as a place to which the reprobate descend,
locates Hell in the interior of the earth. Dante not only follows this
tradition for his Hell, but he does what no other writer before or after
him ever did--he constructs a Hell with such rare architectural skill
that the awful structure stands forth in startling reality, visualized
easily as to form an atmosphere, and with a finish of detail that is
amazing. Covered by a crust of earth it is situated under Jerusalem and
extends in funnel shape to the very center of the earth.
How it got this shape is told by the poet. When Lucifer was hurled from
Heaven by the justice of God, he kept falling until he reached the
center of earth, whence further motion downward was impossible. At the
approach of Lucifer the earth is represented as recoiling and so making
the cavity of Hell.
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