The Five Senses in Dante's Inferno

In the Inferno, Dante's description of the punishments in hell utilizes the human senses in order to adequately explain the events to his readership. Despite being faced with the divine, Dante attempts to recount his journey through a translation of the spiritual world into human terms. By using the senses, he avoids abstract concepts of spirituality by making the difficult to understand into material objects that affect the senses. Spiritual suffering would be difficult to explain if he could not view it through the lens of physical human suffering. Dante uses the senses to connect his readers to the punishments of hell.

Four of the five senses are discussed or used to experience the Inferno; the only one that is absent is taste. The different senses manifest themselves in a variety of ways throughout the text. The sense of smell is often noted by Dante through the stench that is associated with different areas of the inferno. Sound is characterized both through the sounds of punishment and also through his conversations with different shades. He is encouraged by Virgil to talk with those who are punished in order to experience what this place is like. One interesting form of the sense of touch deals with the weight of Dante's character in relation to the others. Before reaching the City of Dis, Dante and Virgil must cross the river Styx. When getting on the boat that would ferry them across the river, Dante notices that Virgil and the ferryman add no weight to the boat, but when he boarded the boat sunk into the water. Dante says when Virgil first boards the boat, the boat "bobbed without a sign / Of being laden until it carried my weight" (Canto VIII, 24-5). Dante's weight within the nether hell is noticed throughout by numerous characters, making him a distinct and unique feature in hell.

One sense in particular that is important is Dante's sight. What is so peculiar about its use in the poem is that Dante is meant to see the punishment, but Virgil covers his eyes to protect him while outside the City of Dis. Since Dante is still alive, his life is in danger when the furies threaten to call on Medusa to turn him to stone. Virgil plans to protect Dante from this threat, but succeeds only in hiding some of the vision he is meant to see. The threat of Medusa is empty because she never comes. What is noteworthy is that when Virgil instructs Dante on covering his eyes, Virgil does not trust him enough to do it alone; he adds his hands to Dante's hand to ensure he complies. Virgil states,

"Turn your back; close your eyes: should Gorgon arrive

And show herself, then if you looked at her-

There would be no returning back above."

He turned me around himself, and to make sure,

Not trusting mine alone he covered my face

With his hands too. (Canto IX, 49-54)

The issue, then, is not just of Virgil's protection of Dante, but also of his trust in him as a fellow poet. Is Virgil skeptical of the same plan that he uses to convince others of their passage through the circles? It seems that Virgil would trust in God to protect Dante from Medusa without the extra protection of Virgil. This seems to mimic the same distrust that was seen in Moses during the Exodus when he strikes the rock twice for water when he was told by God to do it only once. It seems that this lack of faith is the reason Virgil is stranded in the Limbo outside of hell.

By using these kinds of descriptions to mark the punishments and ideas of hell, Dante connects his audience to the how of punishment. If he were to describe punishment as something horrible, it would not be enough for a human reader. By placing an implied physicality on the suffering, by creating a human equivalent, Dante aids his readers in understanding the horrors of punishment.