狄斯之门——《地狱篇》8—9歌绎读

The Gate of Dis: An Interpretation of Cantos 8-9, Inferno

在但丁研究中,如何理解《神曲·地狱篇》8—9歌中的狄斯城入口处的堕落天使和复仇女神,是一个重要问题,对于理解地狱深层的含义非常关键。根据一种传统的地狱结构两分法,狄斯城众鬼使的寓意被看作深层地狱之罪——"恶意"的代表,未出现的美杜莎则意味着绝望。采用但丁地狱结构三分法,才能正确理解狄斯之门的伦理意义。整个狄斯城入口发生的戏剧里,众角色表现出的激情实为暴力罪的象征,同时,这些激情都是三圣德之一的"希望"缺席的结果。但丁在天使的帮助下走进地狱深处,这一情节不仅是但丁对维吉尔《埃涅阿斯纪》"冥府之行"的改写,也是对"基督劫掠地狱"传说的重构。

In the scholarship of Dante Alighieri(但丁), the significance of the Gate of Dis(狄斯之城) at Cantos 8-9, Inferno(《地狱篇》), in his La Divina Commedia(The Divine Comedy,《神曲》) is a very debatable issue. According to a traditional division of the Hell, the devils at Dis represented the evils in the lower Hell: malice, while Medusa(美杜莎) who never showed up represented despair. In this paper, however, the author points out that, according to Dante’s tripartition, the passion of all the figures at the gate of Dis represented violence, which was due to the lack of Hope, one of the three theological virtues. The epilogue that Dante finally went to the lower Hell aided by an angel was a rewriting of"the trip to the underworld"in Virgil’s(维吉尔) Aeneid(《埃涅阿斯纪》), and also a reconstruction of the legend that "Christ went down to the Hell".