As I was looking around on the internet, I happened to find an excerpt from a comic book depiction of Dante’s Inferno by Hunt Emerson. The excerpt includes the first four an a half cantos of Dante’s poem in crude, comic book style. Though the comic itself is not terribly profound, perhaps even losing the true depth of Dante’s original piece, it did provoke me to think a lot about two things: the concept of the term ‘translation’ (as has been a constant theme discussed in class) and the meaning of the word ‘comedy.’
The comic begins with a cartoon Dante in the woods experiencing a mid-life crisis. He gives a brief overview of Dante’s life prior to this point, and then proceeds (fairly accurately, in terms of plot) with the Inferno as Dante did in his poem. I won’t analyze every scene depicted, as the actual piece is pretty blatant in its message; however, on image I would like to draw attention to is the image of the gates of hell on page 10.
True to the poem, the gates feature a prominent inscription above it which uses verbatim (at least, in English) the warnings of Hell. Below, Vergil is depicted as opening the door and Dante make the comment, “Hmm...charming...”, an obviously sarcastic comment. The inscription above is encircled in flames, the door has a mail slot filled with tax envelopes, and there is a “Wipe Your Feet” mat in front of the door. This is a particularly interesting image, in my opinion, as I happened to be particularly intrigued with Dante’s own description of these doors. Dante gave the gates of Hell a fairly austere presence; he really only focused on the inscription above the door. This surprised me, because it feels like in this day and age, one cannot depict Hell in any fashion without showing it to be prominently ostentatious, like fire everywhere, skulls and crossbones, etc. The modern image of Hell seems to be much more scary than it is a place absent of hope, which seemed to be Dante’s view of it. As we have seen throughout the Inferno thus far, fear does play a major role for Dante, but not so much in fear of monsters or death, but of lack of clarity and the fear that comes along with it. This comic’s image of the gates of Hell seems to validate the current view of Hell as a place to fear, not a place of hopelessness.
After going through the entirety of the comic, I noticed that I was thinking a lot about this particular cartoonist’s take on the Inferno. As we discussed in depth with regards to Sandow Birk’s film, translation is much more than taking words in Italian and writing them in English. It is about moving every aspect of a concept from the original text and presenting them in a coherent and relatable fashion. One of the reasons why the Divine Comedy is such a difficult piece to read is that the average modern-day reader of it is unfamiliar with the political context at the time of its writing, which makes up a large portion of Dante’s emphasis. What this comic achieves is bringing this sense of ignorance, and almost eliminates it, attempting to be a bit more ‘user friendly’ to the average reader.
The last comments I have is the concept of ‘comedy.’ The most often use of the word ‘comedy’ seems to revolve around humor and being funny. However, traditionally, ‘comedy’ is used for a story or play that generally begins melancholy or dark, and has a happy ending. Though we haven’t yet finished the Inferno (and I have no idea how it ends and then transitions into Purgatorio), I would suspect the piece is named Divine Comedy to reference the low point of the Inferno and the eventual transition into the ‘light’ of Paradiso. Lately, however, I’ve been thinking about what the story would be like if Dante had decided to write a tragedy, beginning in Paradiso and then descending into Inferno. It’s particularly interesting that the piece is called a Comedy, when it seems like Inferno itself continues to go downhill, both as the pair descend further into Hell and in tone as the punishments get more severe. It’s almost as if Inferno itself is a tragedy, but the entire trilogy is treated as a comedy.
This is interesting to ponder while reading someone’s comedic take on what is called a comedy. Emerson plays up modern themes of gender stereotypes and takes the punishments of the souls in Hell to an almost ridiculous level. In this sense, the cartoonist isolates the story of Dante’s Inferno from the original text, and modifies the entirety of the tone of the piece. Altogether, I didn’t ‘enjoy’ the comic in the way that I enjoy other comic books or graphic novel pieces, but it did present an interesting interpretation on the Divine Comedy.
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