Canto XX

Previously: Canto I | Canto IX

“There is no place for pity here. Who is more arrogant within his soul, who is more impious than one who dares to sorrow at God’s judgement?”

No pity in Hell. This is giving me an appreciation for the well known but poorly understood concept of Holy Horror.

I have wrestled with Holy Horror before, I generally err on the side of…benign pity, shall we say? for earthly sinners. In Hell, I get it–God’s judgement has been made, and everyone has what they want. The sinner has the eternity they chose, and while it is perhaps pitiable that one of God’s creation would choose such a fate, God’s justice is perfect and God permits them their choice while simultaneously exacting His wrath. Nothing remains to be done–the cycle is complete.

On Earth, no soul is finished. To the unrepentant, we can heap this similar scorn because they are choosing sin and MAYBE if we are in a position to guide them away from sin we should capitalize on it, certainly this responsibility is greater with family than with strangers. But if the offer is rebuffed, are we wrong to shake the sand from our shoes? I see no circle of hell for those who didn’t try hard enough to save their neighbor.

For the preservation of our own souls we should heap scorn on sin, and for the preservation of other souls we should heap scorn on their sin and try to show them their ways are repugnant. Our own fallibility does not vitiate the truth that sin ought to be scorned. It is, after all, so easily avoided. Nothing in Hell is…challenging, really. And all the people with their various ironic punishment seem kind of like fools to us here on earth. Until we consider the ways we exempt ourselves from such and such sin, because we have a good reason. Not even addiction to sin offers an excuse for why we shouldn’t get clean of it. We ought, with both hands and with all our vigor, purge ourselves of sin. And when we think we are done, we ought to examine ourselves again and see what new sins grow where they are not crowded out by our dominant and worse sins.

Going back now through my notes in previous cantos:

• That Usury is considered a sin against Nature (sensible) and against Art (!!!) is fascinating to me. I believe the logic is that Art means something a little broader here than we are used to, there’s a note that it means the means by which man draws from nature, i.e. industry (like the Art of Blacksmithing). The usurer is Industrious for that which is violent against his fellow mans nature, or something to that effect. Working hard to undermine his neighbor.
• That Gambling and Suicide are classified together was also a surprise–the one flippantly dispenses his provision while the other flippantly dispenses his life. There’s a connection here between bodily life and the means of providing that life that rhymes between the gamblers and userers. A man who is sinfully wasteful with the means by which he supports his life (i.e. through gambling) is killing himself by killing his ability to keep himself alive. A userer is a man who is sinfully industrious in killing his neighbor by destroying the means by which his neighbors supports his life. In that analogic sense, a mans livelihood is treated with the same gravity as a mans life. This is interesting in the context of modern economic thought which intentionally bifurcates these ideas.
• “The first below are the violent. but as violence / sins in three persons, so is that circle formed / of three descending rounds of crueler torments.// Against God, self, and neighbor is violence shown. / Against their persons and their goods, I say,/ as you shall hear set forth with open reason.” Fascinating. Contemplating the violence against God in the Crucifixion, I can’t help but imagine the orders of magnitude worse that violence is. Which, I suppose, all sin is violence against God and the Inferno shows the closeness to the actual violence, until we arrive at Judas Himself, and I think I saw that Pontius Pilate gets a cameo too.
• “so did I tremble at each frightful word./ But his scolding filled me with that shame that makes / the servant brave in the presence of his lord.” Excellent, excellent imagery. This is 50% of how I relate to Mary, I would say.

We press ever onward, deeper into the abyss.

AMDG