A Journey Through Hell: Dante’s influence on Art Spiegelman’s Maus

Abstract

In The Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri conceived of the Inferno as a physical landscape which could be mapped and navigated through. In so doing, he helped create the language and imagery which modern-day writers and artists often turn to when describing Hell. It also created a shared reference point for discussion of horrific events such as the Holocaust/ Shoah. For example, in Survival in Auschwitz [Se questo è un uomo], Primo Levi turned to Dante’s Inferno to make sense of his experiences in the concentration camps. In this paper we suggest that comic book artist Art Spiegelman utilised the imagery and lexicon of theInferno to create Maus, a two volume biography of his father Vladek Spiegelman, a former inmate of Auschwitz and Holocaust survivor. Art Spiegelman utilises structural and the- matic elements of Inferno to help explain the tortured relationship he had with his parents, especially the effects on him of his mother’s suicide, as well as the difficulties of recording history, particularly an event as immense and traumatic as the Holocaust.

Keywords

• Dante
• Divine Comedy
• Inferno
• Spiegelman
• Maus
• Holocaust