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Like Huxley after him, Dante made the first circle sound somewhat appealing. No doubt the food there could be much better, but the attraction would be the company, not the cuisine. (somewhat like Peter Wimsey visiting the Soviet Club, where his host tells him "...the cooking isn’t very good here, but the subscription’s so small, you see"?)
I've been reading Paradise Lost and Satan gives off major "sexy villain" vibes. The hosts of hell remain strong and defiant even while in their realm of eternal torment - "Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven" and all that. Meanwhile heaven is pretty bland and the angels come of as a bunch of milquetoasts.
I don't know enough about Milton to know if he intended to write a cautionary tale vs. an interesting tail, but I can imagine readers thinking "f** it, I'd rather hang out with the cool kids"
Just to stir the pot and throw C.S. Lewis into the mix [0]:
> To admire Satan, then, is to give one's vote not only for a world of misery, but also for a world of lies and propaganda, of wishful thinking, of incessant autobiography. Yet the choice is possible. Hardly a day passes without some slight movement towards it in each one of us. That is what makes Paradise Lost so serious a poem. The thing is possible, and the exposure of it is resented. Where Paradise Lost is not loved, it is deeply hated. As Keats said more rightly than he knew, 'there is death' in Milton.
> We have all skirted the Satanic island closely enough to have motives for wishing to evade the full impact of the poem. For, I repeat, the thing is possible ; and after a certain point it is prized. Sir Willoughby may be unhappy, but he wants to go on being Sir Willoughby. Satan wants to go on being Satan. That is the real meaning of his choice 'Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav'n.' Some, to the very end, will think this a fine thing to say ; others will think that it fails to be roaring farce only because it spells agony. On the level of literary criticism the matter cannot be argued further. Each to his taste.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Preface_to_Paradise_Lost
There's a quote from Zach Weinersmith (author, cartoonist) during a podcast a while back that stuck with me about Milton's depiction of Satan:
"I will say Milton is great and readable as long as Satan is talking. [...] the joke on Milton is that he was the greatest gift to Satan in history. He did everything short of giving him a two-headed guitar. It is just like, Satan is so cool." [0]
I highly recommend giving it a listen (and Econtalk more generally!) if this is something that interests you.
[0] https://www.econtalk.org/zach-weinersmith-on-beowulf-and-bea...
> The hosts of hell remain strong and defiant even while in their realm of eternal torment ... Meanwhile heaven is pretty bland and the angels come of as a bunch of milquetoasts.
That reminds me of the observation that happy lives make boring stories, so fiction tends towards showing dysfunctional characters, awful environments, or both.
> Meanwhile heaven is pretty bland and the angels come of as a bunch of milquetoasts.
You reminded me of that Simpsons bit about Protestant Heaven vs Catholic Heaven:
Our culture is saturated with this trope. Compare:
1. Health nut who lives on salad, low-fat yogurt/everything, jogs endlessly, frets about his body being a temple[1]
2. Sex, drugs, good food, rock & roll
Miserly wholesomeness vs. exciting, short-lived unwholesomeness.
[1] The point here is the self-denial. Some people intrinsically likes these things; however, they would then not fit the trope
I highly recommend you read some William Blake. He was Milton's greatest critic (but a great admirer too):
"The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devils party without knowing it." --The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
“You see, the thing about heaven is that heaven is for people who like the sort of things that go on in heaven. Like, well, singing, talking to God, watering pot plants.” — The Black Adder.
Or as Biggie put it https://genius.com/407104.
"God'll probably have me on some real strict sh*t
No sleepin' all day, no gettin' my d**k licked
Hangin' with the goodie-goodies, loungin' in paradise
F*k that shit, I wanna tote guns and shoot dice"
Just to stir the pot even further:
I recently picked up Dante and enrolled in an online course. Inferno and Purgatorio: no problem. I wouldn't say "couldn't put it down" but it was no problem to read. I also watched the Ken Burns special.
Paradiso: hate it. Beatrice is boring.
I have heard Milton's work described as an expression of a spirit of Protestant satanism. That is, Milton, by virtue of the rebelliousness of Protestantism, to which he subscribed, is accused of being satanic.
God's Word says Satan is permitted to run this world, encouraging us to think his way, until judgement comes later. He does it by appealing to their sinful desires. Our own selfishness does the rest.
"in whom the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving, that the light of the Good News of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should not dawn on them" (2 Cor. 4:4)
So, let's contrast the truth. In my other comment, I mentioned what the sinful kids and Satan are destined for. It's not pretty.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39973866
What about heaven? In Genesis 2, before the Fall, man had fellowship with God, hung out with each other, did work, and rested. God said all good things are a gift from Him. If it's not sinful, it might exist in heaven. For its nature, fruit of the Spirit is "love, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control." So, imagine all human activities that are fun and embodied with those virtues. That's Heaven.
We have a taste of it here on Earth in the Church. We mostly go about our day, do our jobs, spend time with our families, and enjoy our hobbies. In church service, we worship God together and serve others in love. In spare time, we hang out, enjoy good food, go on vacation together, play games, share stories, etc. The problems in churches come from our sinful natures which God will eliminate (called glorification) once our time here is up.
So, one place has us separated from everyone, in a lake of fire, and burning non-stop. Satan will be there, too. The other is every good thing you can imagine on Earth done in a better way, other things you can't imagine, your friends there, and the very presence of God giving you fullness of joy. Christ and His Heaven are the obvious choice. Anyone suffering here on Earth are also told to keep their eye on the prize which is our future inheritance.
Such a Christian portrayal of hell and heaven.
> Like Huxley after him
I don't know about this. Can you explain? Very curious.
I'd like to try and read a modern English & prose (i.e. highly non-poetic, non stilted, if necessary non-direct) translation of Dante's Inferno sometime. (Poetry is incompatible with my brain, unless it's funny. I can't be the only one? Yes, school was hell sometimes. (No pun intended.)) Does anyone have any recommendations?
I think it’s fine to not be into poetry, but at its core the Divine Comedy is a long poem, and I’m not sure what’s left after you remove any and all “poetic” elements. The Wikipedia page I’m sure could give you the basic characteristics of the circles of hell, if that’s all you really want to know.
By the way, the book is a chore in many ways, despite the many nuggets of gold you’ll find within it. It’s long, and the number of references is overwhelming. Basically, what I’m trying to say is that it will never be light reading, no matter how you cut it. Why not look at it as more of a personal project or challenge (poetry and all)?
Try Alasdair Gray's translation.
I did like the version of Larry Niven - Inferno. Only the part in hell is used as a story. It was quite readable.
You’re not the only one, I read several books a month and I could never for the life of me stick with poetry — it’s just painful.
I was also forced to read poetry in school but I’m not sure that’s really the cause.
I was just watching a Nirvana thing somewhere else and I was hearing some of the sonnets in Cobain's voice and... IDK, it kind of works.
As it nears
Its goal of longing in the realms above
The pilgrim spirit sees a vision
"As it nears / Its goal of longing in the realms above / The pilgrim spirit sees a vision"
Dante 'borrowed' heavily from mystic traditions, sometimes without fully understanding the material. This much is clear given his sectarian tendencies in the choices of his assignments in his work, that his vision, in fact, was incomplete and partly in error. Regrettably his occluded vision deeply impressed itself upon the Western soul with the consequences that we see today: a rather 'mixed' record ..
"One of President Kennedy's favorite quotations was based upon an interpretation of Dante's Inferno.
As Robert Kennedy explained in 1964, "President Kennedy's favorite quote was really from Dante:
'The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in time of moral crisis preserve their neutrality"
[1] https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/life-of-john-f-ke...
I can imagine George Bush Jr. saying something similar.
Amusing as a big part of his platform when running for president was “no nation building”. Things change quickly.
> The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in time of moral crisis preserve their neutrality
This is not true. The 'neutrals' were not even granted the honor of a place in one of the circles of hell.
'These souls are forever unclassified; they are neither in Hell nor out of it, but reside on the shores of the Acheron. Naked and futile, they race around through the mist in eternal pursuit of an elusive, wavering banner (symbolic of their pursuit of ever-shifting self-interest) while relentlessly chased by swarms of wasps and hornets, who continually sting them'
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferno_(Dante)
And they certainly weren't anywhere near the hottest places in hell. If we are to assume the lowest circles to be the hottest then it would be the lowest part of the 8th circle which housed the falsiers and counterfeiters. The 9th circle, which housed satan, was actually a frozen lake. While we think satan is burning in hell, he's actually freezing in hell according to dante.
> 'The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in time of moral crisis preserve their neutrality"
I think with a hindsight of history, my view is different:
'The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who push people into active enmity claiming a moral crisis'
The Thirty Years War was a result of this and never needed to have happened.
More recently, and dealing with Kennedy, the Vietnam War was result of this kind of thinking. (Domino theory and that unless we opposed every single advance of communism the entire world would fall and be plunged into darkness).
The Cultural Revolution was another manifestation of this kind of thinking.
Someone, much wiser than both Dante and Kennedy once said: "Blessed are the peacemakers".
EDIT:
And even prior to Dante's time, there were the Crusades, where in the name of a "moral crisis", people were mobilized, and great atrocities were committed and much death and destruction resulted.
The sheer irony of you citing the vietnam war, which for the americans, was literally defending a nation against an unprovoked invasion, hurts my brain.
The US parties love this: “vote for us or the country as you know it won’t exist anymore”. Much easier than actually solving real problems.
I think on one extreme you have the failures of neutrality that contributed to WW2, and on the other you have trumped up "moral crises" that characterized much of the Cold War.
Arguably, the reason the Nazis came to power was that a great many right-leaning German voters looked at their options and thought "this Hitler guy seems pretty crazy, but that'll probably cook off, so long as he helps us beat the communists", which is a special kind of neutrality that people can never seem to shake free of.
I get what Kennedy was responding to, his sin was in failing to understand (just like the German right) that "leftist" != Stalinist/Maoist, and that a communist takeover need not look like the October Revolution, and the regime need not look like Russia ca. 1935, nor China ca. 1960.
Charitably, one could also read the quote as saying people should be actively opposing these atrocities, instead of staying neutral during them.
> The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who push people into active enmity claiming a moral crisis
This statement usually implies that people who act according to a moral framework that isn’t “Live with the minimum amount of intrusion to other people’s lives” are doing wrong. I personally don’t buy that.
When they are told, “Do not spread corruption in the land,” they reply, “We are only peace-makers!”
Indeed, it is they who are the corruptors, but they fail to perceive it.
- The Holy Qur’an (2:11)
How will the war in Ukraine be viewed from this perspective in the far future?
Ironic, considering the last circle of Hell in Dante's Inferno is actually a frozen wasteland with Satan encased in ice in the middle up to his waist.
You forgot the best part. Satan has 3 faces and each face has a mouth. One mouth is continuously chewing judas, another mouth is chewing brutus and the third is chewing cassius. For eternity.
It's a great book, but it really shows how christianity ( or religion in general ) is glorified fan fiction.
Frankly after reading Inferno, I am failing to see the hype about it. It is a descriptive poem where he describes various chambers in the netherworld, but there is no narrative, nothing lyrical, nothing elegiac.
It is like reading tour guide for a place one does not intend to visit.
I don't blame you if you aren't entertained. But this analysis is like thinking Moby dick is about hunting whales.
How is there no narrative? There are consistent characters with a backstory and a story that connects each scene?
Hell is other people.
Literally so, for Dante. I don't believe there are any cats or dogs or horses or ferrets in Inferno; in the various rings are there any animals at all?
About to watch some Netflix while reading this
She was dressed in “a decorous and delicate crimson.” (Virgil) 'Were you listening to me, Alighieri? Or were you looking at the woman in the red dress?'