POST 19: Exploring Dante's concept of Hell & the Appeal of punishment and suffering, especially in our modern age.

To better understand Dante's concept of hell and the appeal of punishment and suffering in our modern age, we have to first understand what life for him and society were like when he wrote The Divine Comedy: Inferno. Dante Alighieri made the switch from writing love lyrics to writing about spiritual love when Beatrice a woman he had loved from afar died of one of the plagues in Florence. She then becomes his muse in the Divine Comedy. In his journey to the afterlife, he meets to talks to the souls of the dead. From hell, to Purgatory, then paradise.Those that are wicked are punished in hell:
"There sighs, complaints, and ululations loud Resounded through the air without a star, Whence I, at the beginning, wept thereat. Languages diverse, horrible dialects, Accents of anger, words of agony, And voices high and hoarse, with sound of hands, Made up a tumult that goes whirling on For ever in that air for ever black, Even as the sand doth, when the whirlwind breathes."(68)
Those that are repentant purge their sins in purgatory, the blessed are in paradise where they enjoy the vision of God. This may all seem very strange, outlandish and stretched to someone reading it today because of the change in time period, especially those who do not share Dante’s Christian faith. When in Hell Dante meets some souls who make him feel pity and sorrow for them. For example in Hell he meets Francesca who tells him about how love sent her to hell saying ,
"One day we reading were for our delight Of Launcelot, how Love did him enthral. Alone we were and without any fear. Full many a time our eyes together drew That reading, and drove the colour from our faces; But one point only was it that o'ercame us. When as we read of the much-longed-for smile Being by such a noble lover kissed, This one, who ne'er from me shall be divided, Kissed me upon the mouth all palpitating... The other one did weep so, that, for pity, I swooned away as if I had been dying, And fell, even as a dead body falls."(78)
after this passage it becomes clear that Punishment and Suffering in Dante's concept of hell fits the sin committed while alive.Francesca has an affair with her husbands brother and when he caught them he killed them both.  Consequently, as Francesca loved Paolo in the human world, throughout eternity she will love him in Hell. But, the lovers are damned because they will always stick together constantly blown around in an 'infernal hurricane' but never able to touch because they were driven by passion and not by reason in life and as a result never repent and leave hell. You could say that in today's modern age people go through some of the same situations that damned most of the people in The Divine Comedy. Most of the sins committed are still viewed as sins today to some people.

Comments

  1. UnknownMarch 29, 2017 at 1:29 PM

    No matter the time period the sins are all the same. maybe if people understood the severity of it no matter how small it may seem they would learn live a certain way. In a way Dante wanted people to understand they need to change because death comes to everyone its what happens in the afterlife that really matters.

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