Dante

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I've picked up Dante's Divine Comedy (Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradise) to study for my WIP.

(Side note: thank you, Kindle, for making this selection available to me for free. We love you, Kindle, oh yes, we do.)

A couple of interesting observations from my study of the poem and the little I've read on it (mostly in order to understand the references):

1. The Roman Catholic concept of purgatory originated with this work, which is allegorical. Most likely, Dante intended Purgatorio to represent the Christian life. Some things never change when we take allegory too literally.
2. The arrangement of sins--which is worse, in other words--differs from how the evangelical church would today arrange sins. While Dante's work isn't divinely inspired (and therefore not the biblical standard for arrangement of sin), it provides an interesting anthropological study in how our cultures affect our view of sin. To clarify: this doesn't imply that lust, for example, is a sin in one culture and not in another, or that the culture itself defines lust. It shows how we as human beings attempting to grapple with sin, its effects, and transformation from sin into life, do so differently in different ages. Dante's culture, and the problems therein, affected which sins (while all worthy of punishment and separation from God) seem more harmful. It brought to light the sins we prefer to gloss over because of our situation.
3. Dante struggled with God's justice and mercy. He reiterates that those in hell reside there because they denied Christ. And, above all, separation from God is a horrible thing. But you also see in Dante this hesitation to see good people in the hands of an angry God. So men like Virgil, Homer, Julius Caesar, Plato, and other great philosophers and thinkers, while apart from God (and quite upset to be so, to Dante's credit) are not actively tortured as others are. These men reside in a meadow in hell, which wouldn't seem so bad except for the complete lack of presence from God. Dante asks, "Is this eternal? Or will there be reprieve?"
   
   This subject continues to bother us. What is hell? What is the gnashing of teeth? What about those who seemed so close to baptism?
4. Dante incorporated Greek and Roman mythology (popular during his day as mythology saw a resurgence in the Renaissance). He uses it almost sacramentally: everyday items infused with God's grace to draw the unknowing to God.
5. Finally, an amusement: Dante had no quelms about putting real people in hell, men he admired, and men he blamed for the downfall of Florentine society. This is the writer's ultimate retribution, is it not? Cross me, and I'll put you in my novel. We may change the names (Dante didn't bother to do even that!), but we carry out our ideas of justice and revenge in our own ways.