DANTE’S LIMBO
BY KYLAN MLANAO
The song is under the resources tab, it is called Limbo.
For my project, I decided to make a short “song” (it doesn’t have any lyrics), meant to represent layer 1 of Dante’s Inferno, Limbo. I started this project first thinking about various depictions with how Limbo is described in the divine comedy and also other academic works. In the following passage Virgil is describing layer limbo:
“The sighs arose from sorrow without torments,
out of the crowds-the many multitudes-
of infants and of women and of men.
The kindly master said: "Do you not ask
who are these spirits whom you see before you?
I'd have you know, before you go ahead,
they did not sin; and yet, though they have merits,
that's not enough, because they lacked baptism,
the portal of the faith that you embrace.
And if they lived before Christianity,
they did not worship God in fitting ways;
and of such spirits I myself am one.
For these defects, and for no other evil,
we now are lost and punished just with this:
we have no hope and yet we live in longing." (Mandelbaum 4.28 - 4.42)
According to this passage, Limbo is a layer without hope, where the only sin is that no one was baptized. It exists in a gray zone, where no one sinned enough to be condemned to eternal physical pain and punishment like we see in lower layers in Dante’s Inferno, but not moral enough to gain access to Dante’s Paradiso or even Purgatorio.
In an article where the connections between Dante and Primo Levi Vizio di forma are analyzed, another interpretation of Dante’s Limbo can be seen here “Dante’s Limbo, where the souls might not suffer physically but do indeed have a lesser kind of existence". (Kumar and Francesco). The lack of physical punishment is exemplary of the fact that this is a quieter area of hell, the punishment not being physical is because of the fact they are separate from the rest of hell. This emphasizes the fact that limbo is a hopeless “gray zone” as I stated earlier.
A contemporary of Dante, Thomas Aquinas had a similar idea of what Limbo is. In the analysis by Chistopher Beiting, he paraphrases Aquinas’ beliefs regarding what he calls the “Limbo of Children”.
“Unbaptized infants may still maintain the sum total of their human goods (he expands upon this idea below). The only pain they suffer is the pain of loss. Original sin is the least sin, and because it is not voluntary it is not punished greatly; the pain of loss is enough”
He is expanding on what the lack of baptism means, it does not only mean not having faith. It means not being forgiven for the original sin, and as he says above, the original sin is the least sin. This is why the only torture in Limbo is the pain of loss, and nothing else. It is a hopeless realm, because there is no “faith”.
I wanted to incorporate these themes of Limbo being a hopeless gray zone, that is full of loss. So I tried to create a melody that sounded dark and desperate, but without making it seem as though this was a violent area.
Above is one of the first melodies I made, but it had too much energy and it did not sound dark enough, for the kind of song I wanted to make. So I eventually ended up scrapping it for the one below.
Below is the melody I ended up going for, it sounded dark enough for the kind of cold, lifeless and hopeless atmosphere, which I believed was best at conveying the themes of Limbo.
At the very end is the final track I came up with, it isn’t that long but I tried to make it moderately interesting and not too repetitive so it doesn’t overstay its welcome. I believe it really exemplifies the kind mood and emotions an area like Limbo as described in Inferno really embodies.
WORKS CITED
Alighieri, Dante, and Allen Mandelbaum. The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri Purgatorio: A Verse Translation, with an Introduction. Knopf, 1995.
Beiting, Christopher. “The Idea of Limbo in Thomas Aquinas.” The Thomist, vol. 62, no. 2, 1998, pp. 217–44, https://doi.org/10.1353/tho.1998.0029.
Kumar, Akash, and Francesco Samarini. “Levi’s Limbo: Dante in Primo Levi’s Vizio Di Forma.” Italianist, vol. 42, no. 1, 2022, pp. 84–103, https://doi.org/10.1080/02614340.2022.2062942.