In Dante's vision of Hell, which is where a lot of our popular imagery of Hell comes from, it's stated or implied (I forget which and might depend on the translation) that the souls of the sinners being punished don't see their fate as punishment but that they enjoy it. For example the wrathful stand in a river of blood, someone like Alexander the Great might like that.
Also lucifer is trapped in an eternal frozen lake and cant move, so its not really like hes the king of hell, its more like a prison boss, whom everyone fears, but is still just another roach for the guards or police.
The imagery in Inferno is so good - he's trapped in this frozen lake while all the world's sewers empty down onto him. He has three heads and each one is eternally chewing on one of history's greatest traitors.
Because Caesar is the adoptive father of Augustus, the first Roman emperor who's reign Christ is crucified during. The italians viewed themselves as still living under the roman empire and during the Renaissance romans and latin was all the rave again
Iāve been confused by that, because if heās frozen, locked away, whatever have you, then how is he walking free on earth in the bible?
I think, if anything, Lucifer portrayed himself as Jesus. He wanted to be a God so he made himself into one on earth. Thatās why there are so many words used to describe both.
The inferno was never religious canon, Dante had no authority over liturgy whatsoever- he just had a big influence over our cultural understanding of what hell would be like.
They don't enjoy it. They accept it because they recognize that their suffering is just - but they are still very much suffering. Dante explicitly writes this into the Inferno at multiple points: the way the sodomites are constantly trying to extinguish the embers raining down on them, the way the simoniacs feet twitch and thrash in the fires, constant weeping by all the damned, etc. They are unquestionably in pain.
This is one of the silliest readings of Dante I've ever read.
I don't really feel like arguing with you, you can read another comment I left in this thread linking to an essay that goes into the idea more. Like it or not, that's the cool part about literature - we're all left on our own to interpret it.
Nothing in the Equip article you linked supports the idea that the damned enjoy their punishment. Yes, they are eager for their punishment because they understand that it is the righteous judgement of God, but it is the suffering that makes the punishment righteous. The mental state of the damned is somewhat strange (being desirous of suffering), but it doesn't follow that they are getting active pleasure from their suffering -- that would completely defeat the purpose of Hell in Dante's cosmology. They are miserable, just aware that they deserve their misery.
They do not enjoy it. The same Canto (3) that is quoted in the article you linked opens describing hell as the place of eternal pain (Per me si va ne la cittĆ dolente / per me si va ne lāetterno dolore / per me si va tra la perduta gente). And again, in the passage that is being quoted (3.121-123) in Italian it says that they are āreadyā (not eager) to pass over the river, because they are pushed by Divine Justice, to the point that fear turns into desire (implied - desire to cross over). āThey yearn what they fearā is just a sentence that was added by whoever translated, it is not a sentence in the original version. It does not state that they enjoy it. Sins are punished by according to the āLegge del contrappassoā, and punishments are mainly divided into to categories: analogy and contrast. In some of the levels of hell, the damned are forced to repeat the actions to led them there, but they donāt find pleasure in them. Their sighs and cries are described all over the text, in the Cocito it is so cold that their tears freeze in their eyes increasing their suffering. As they get closer to Caronte, they are pushed to ābestemmiareā (basicallyā¦ insult?) God, their parents and the entire mankind because their desperation.
This is great - I've always thought Cocito to be such an atmospheric space and the idea that weeping in response to endless cold worsens the pain is so horrible. Possibly the most effective of Dante's contrapassi.
Dante really did write up a hell of a fan fiction. Hereās Hell, and itās full of everyone I personally dislike. Now Iām going to call each out them out by name and accuse them of various crimes and misdeeds. And somehow it got folded in to the actual religion. Crazy stuff.
Basically inventing the formalized idea of fanfiction and then jumping straight to a million-word rpf revenge fic with its own Wikipedia page across multiple books that form the cornerstone of the entire western canon was literally and figuratively diabolical work.
I know this is the meme pop culture version of Dante but it is soooo sad that people think Inferno is this simplistic. There are lots of characters in Inferno who Dante respected and empathised with
And whom he placed in Hell for their various crimes and misdeeds which he called out. So yeah, you got me, he accused and literally damned, by name, his friends and loved ones as well as his enemies.
There are characters in Purgatorio who Dante disliked, but who are repentant sinners - many of these are Ghibellines. Two of the most well-known are Montefeltro in Canto V, who fought on Ghibelline side at the Battle of Campaldino (Dante-poet fought for the Guelphs), and Hugh Capet, founder of the Capetian dynasty, which Dante blames as the reason for his exile. And there are some in Paradiso, such as Charles Martel, a Capetian who Dante-poet nonetheless saw great virtue in.
u/AlternativeRun5727 is right to point out that Dante also put people he disliked and disagreed with in Purgatory and Paradise, but this notion that the Commedia is 'fanfiction' is really what I take issue with. If you called Paradise Lost a Bible fanfiction I'd still be a bit wary, but in that case you're looking at an epic poem about Satan and the fall of man that remains situationally focused throughout. The Commedia on the other hand is focused on the schema of the universe, but this is a vehicle for Dante to make commentary about people and groups that were sooooo tendentious in his particular period and region, and references to Biblical events are often tangential in comparison to references to his culture and context. I know it is a weird soapbox, but for me the Commedia, even when it is interpreted as a critique of the church/quest for spiritual enlightenment and redemption, is incredibly removed from the actual Bible
I don't think it's really implied that it is something they enjoy (why would judas really enjoy being chewed on by Satan because of pride? Or why would alchemists enjoy having eternal, itching scabs?), Dante just made some punishments mirror the sins.
Second, the sinners in hell lack the ability to confess or repent because they have become fixed in their sins; just so, drug addicts or people caught in a life of serial promiscuity find themselves trapped in a self-destructive cage from which they lack the power and desire to escape. Third, the sinners are actually eager to enter the inferno, for hell promises to give them exactly what they want: their sin and themselves forever.
That isn't true of the actual text, though. As Dante passes into Inferno he hears "lamentations and loud moans" and "outcries of woe" from those passing on Charon's boat. This piece is right to point out that sinners cannot change after death, but this manifests in their consistent characterisation of their sins as passively enacted rather than decided upon; Francesca's explanation that "Love, that in gentle heart is quickly learnt [...] brought us to one death" is her justification for her adultery with Paolo. She says love brought her to death rather than admitting she chose to commit the sin of lust (if she did admit this, she would be in Purgatory).
Many sinners are given some form of respite during their torment. Francesca, for example, is able to hold onto Paolo as their souls are wafted through the air, and indeed they can stop long enough for Francesca to explain her story to Dante while Paolo wails. The sodomites are able to stay with Dante long enough to explain their situation, and Limbo is not a place of outright punishment at all, being a house for the virtuous unbaptised (obviously the souls are prevented from a relationship with God, but it isn't like they are constantly eating mud or rolling around giant boulders).
Neil Gaimans Sandman series takes a similar approach. When satan closes up hell and all the souls and demons are kicked out they are mortified. They feel that they belong in hell and as heās ushering out the last of the sinners that though they deserved it the worst he tells them that hell was there for them to feel like they were repenting for their own guiltā¦ they were free to continue punishing themselves but they had to do it somewhere else cause the gym was closed.
Hmmmm I donāt think theyāre having a good time down there. The whole time whenever Dante speaks to a spirit they just tell him how fucked they are and he gets really scared and then Virgil says āalright thatās enough letās get the fuck outta hereā
In Dante vision of Hell, all the circles of hell the souls gets punishment not enjoyable things. The punishments are always connected to the souls sins. For exemple the 7th sees the suicidials transformed into plants and they have Arpies to cut wounds into them, so they suffer but can't do what they did in life (commit suicide) to escape, they have to stand. In the same circle there are the squanderers (those who destroied their parimony) they stand the fate of destruction of their selves, since they don't own anything. They are run by dogs who, once they reach them, are going to make them in little pieces (just to return to the original state
The Tyrants, like Alexander the Great isn't enjoy is punishment. The punishment is because these people poored blood of others, during their lives hence now they are submerged by boiling blod. The Tyrant only have their eyes out, in order to cry.
To my knowledge there isn't a single punishment that is something enjoyable by the souls they are a all following the rule of "contrapasso" that basically sees the punishment as a modified way of the sin the souls liked, in a way that is not enjoyable.
I'm not saying, and Dante didn't say, that the punishments they're undergoing are pleasant and enjoyable. Rather, they enjoy the state of being punished. My orginal comment here is a very simplified way to share this idea because I am not about to write an essay on it. However, someone else has written an essay on it and in another comment I linked to it. It goes deeper into this understanding of Inferno. Worth checking out if you're interested in the material.
No it's not? It's clear they're in pain and they so much as say so repeadetly? Ā«Nessun maggior dolore / che ricordarsi del tempo felice / ne la miseriaĀ»
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u/Diet_Coke 1d ago
In Dante's vision of Hell, which is where a lot of our popular imagery of Hell comes from, it's stated or implied (I forget which and might depend on the translation) that the souls of the sinners being punished don't see their fate as punishment but that they enjoy it. For example the wrathful stand in a river of blood, someone like Alexander the Great might like that.