Friday, April 24, 2015
Repentance In Hell
So far in the Cantos we have focused on, the punishments have seemed to have given a whole new meaning to the phrase "poetic justice." With the lovers being thrown about in the storm of their passions, and with the avaricious and the hoarders pushing at each other for all eternity...these people's punishment seems to me to be the state of their souls. You might add that hell is an exaggerated condition of these people's souls, but I'm not too sure Dante would agree; if you think back to the way in which Aristotle believes that wrongdoing warps the soul into a twisted shadow of its former self, it's plausible that maybe, if given a physical representation, an unrepentant sinner's soul might look like one in the circles of hell. That is also something Dante mentions a lot - those guilty of sins of the flesh refuse to repent. Dido herself said that the Love which condemned her to the Second Circle "has not left [her] yet" (I.105). If a sinner were to repent, would they be released from hell? Is the whole point of hell that these sinners will never repent? What do you guys rhink?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I agree that a key part of the poetic nature of Dante's is that the punishments are fitting to the sins that have sentenced the soul to hell, but I do not believe they would ever be able to leave. Part of the punishment of Hell in general is that there is no hope whatsoever, and this lack of hope means there is no chance of escape. The sinners would not repent, but repenting would do nothing for their state of affairs for if they were able to repent, they would have already been in purgatory.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Andrew's statement that the souls would not be allowed to leave Hell if they repented. As he stated, they would be in Purgatory already if they had repented during their lifetime. Another way to prove this is by pulling the inhabitants of the first circle of Hell into the argument. They are in Hell because they were never baptized or exposed to Christianity during their lifetimes, not because they sinned. Therefore, they would have no way to repent for their sins, so they could never leave Hell even if that were a possibility.
ReplyDeleteI agree that Dante is using the state of their souls against them, but he uses the sinners guilty conscience against them. He uses the opposite of their sin to punish them. Moreover, Dante will never let sinners repent because that is the meaning of a Hell.
ReplyDelete