Art, Symbol & Imagination
Harpies Nest in the Thorn Wood
Bird-bodied creatures with human faces perch among twisted trunks and tangled branches, surrounding two small travellers on the ground below. The second round of the seventh circle is a wood whose distorted growth replaces ordinary leaves and fruit. Doré crowds the foreground with hybrid bodies and extends their shapes into the branching trees, making it difficult to separate creature from setting. The caption identifies the nesting Harpies. The poem connects their feeding to the pain and speech of the souls transformed into trees. The Gallery describes this troubling literary landscape without presenting its punishment as a factual consequence of suicide or endorsing the narrator’s judgement.
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Citation
Gustave Doré (design). "Harpies Nest in the Thorn Wood" [editorial title]. In Dante's Inferno, Dante Alighieri. New Edition, undated supplied scan, undated edition, Thompson & Thomas. Source scan leaf 99. Lumitheca. /gallery/image/inferno-dore-92
Source details
Editorial title and description. Source details from the Library catalogue.
Full original plate and caption visually inspected. Editorial title; original scan tone and intrinsic damage retained. Sideways plates rotated in the Gallery derivative only.
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Gustave Doré (design). Harpies Nest in the Thorn Wood. Dante's Inferno. Scan leaf 99. Lumitheca. https://lumitheca.com/gallery/image/inferno-dore-92