Inferno (Italian: (I'm 'ferno); Italian for"Hell") is the first part of Italian writer Dante Alighieri's 14th - century epic poem, "Divine Comedy". The "Inferno" describes Dante"s journey through Hell, guided by the ancient Roman poet Virgil. In the poem, Hell is the "realm...of those who have rejected spiritual values by yielding to bestial appetites or violence, or by perverting their human intellect to fraud or malice against their fellowmen".