This is one of the best articles of yours I’ve read! It was truly eye opening for you to break down each cardinal sin from a psychological perspective.
many thanks. even more beautiful is the ascent through pergatory, the sins reverse starting with envy and malice, with sexual peccadilloes considered sad but not irredeemable. i don't recall traitors there. i guess they're stuck in hell.
muslims are shy about the inferno, considering dante places the prophet among the heretics. but he couldn't have written otherwise. in fact dante had muslim acquaintances/ friends. as a great poet, he couldn't help but know that the conventional wisdom of the times was faulty.
Reading Purgatory at the moment! The wonderful thing about reading is that you’re not required to agree or endorse the person, you can simply reflect and engage with and contemplate the words.
i like how dante deals with homosexuals. again, like muslims, he had friends who suffered from this. but they can atone through remorse and celibacy. he injects a bit of humour too.
Thanks for this. I was also struck by how the sins grew more deliberate, considered, and more coldly calculated during the descent as you have nicely elaborated. Reading the footnotes in the version I read, also clarifies how he was responding to the politics and many deliberate corruptions, religious and otherwise, in those restless worldly turnings. And then he universalized it while also highlighting many specific personalities he explicitly or by allusion placed therein in a kind of literary vengeance or conviction about the damage of their actions. His generalities or universalism are fascinating, while some of the specific personalities he binds to these universal condemnations shows how, for all his wisdom, he was a man bound to and unable to escape the prejudices and misinformation of his times. He succeeds in the universal truths, but often shows the limitations (by his own human tendency to error) that can influence even the strongest most brilliant literary minds.
This is probably way more than you want to know but here’s some background, a lot paraphrased from footnoted translations.
To look at the most obvious bias, Dante lived in medieval Christian Europe where Islam was framed almost exclusively through an overwhelming polemical lenses, and I mean so overarching and powerful that it was almost impossible to resist mentally. So Muhammad (s.a.) was cast as a false religious founder, like Arius or other Christian heretics and Ali as his closest truest supporter a partner in discord. Dante’s methodology aligned with a tradition of anti-Islamic polemics such as the Song of Roland, Peter (the Venerable’s) Contra Sectam Sarracenorum, and so many others.
But interestingly, the Kitab al-Miraj had been translated into Latin (called Liber Scale Machometi) and Dante for sure knew of it. That text describes layered heavens and hells, punishments matched to sins, and an ascent guided by an angel, extremely similar to Dante’s structure. So even while Dante condemns Muhammad and Ali, his very vision of hell and paradise was shaped by Islamic models.
Asin Palacios, Miguel Cruz Hernandez and others have argued that without the Miraj narratives, the Divine Comedy might not exist. So he likely borrowed but felt obliged by the polemics of his era to condemn the ones he borrowed from. So while Dante’s writings can be metaphysically deep, much of that is owed to borrowing from Muslim source material, while at the same time the atmosphere of his age required him to condemn those he borrowed from.
This is one of the best articles of yours I’ve read! It was truly eye opening for you to break down each cardinal sin from a psychological perspective.
Thank you! So glad to hear that
many thanks. even more beautiful is the ascent through pergatory, the sins reverse starting with envy and malice, with sexual peccadilloes considered sad but not irredeemable. i don't recall traitors there. i guess they're stuck in hell.
muslims are shy about the inferno, considering dante places the prophet among the heretics. but he couldn't have written otherwise. in fact dante had muslim acquaintances/ friends. as a great poet, he couldn't help but know that the conventional wisdom of the times was faulty.
Reading Purgatory at the moment! The wonderful thing about reading is that you’re not required to agree or endorse the person, you can simply reflect and engage with and contemplate the words.
read the dorothy sayers translation if you can. it's beautiful. she was a fine writer and this was her great achievement though it is not welll known.
i like how dante deals with homosexuals. again, like muslims, he had friends who suffered from this. but they can atone through remorse and celibacy. he injects a bit of humour too.
Thanks for this. I was also struck by how the sins grew more deliberate, considered, and more coldly calculated during the descent as you have nicely elaborated. Reading the footnotes in the version I read, also clarifies how he was responding to the politics and many deliberate corruptions, religious and otherwise, in those restless worldly turnings. And then he universalized it while also highlighting many specific personalities he explicitly or by allusion placed therein in a kind of literary vengeance or conviction about the damage of their actions. His generalities or universalism are fascinating, while some of the specific personalities he binds to these universal condemnations shows how, for all his wisdom, he was a man bound to and unable to escape the prejudices and misinformation of his times. He succeeds in the universal truths, but often shows the limitations (by his own human tendency to error) that can influence even the strongest most brilliant literary minds.
Fascinating! I most definitely don’t know enough about Dante himself - would be interested to find out what informs such a remarkable allegory
This is probably way more than you want to know but here’s some background, a lot paraphrased from footnoted translations.
To look at the most obvious bias, Dante lived in medieval Christian Europe where Islam was framed almost exclusively through an overwhelming polemical lenses, and I mean so overarching and powerful that it was almost impossible to resist mentally. So Muhammad (s.a.) was cast as a false religious founder, like Arius or other Christian heretics and Ali as his closest truest supporter a partner in discord. Dante’s methodology aligned with a tradition of anti-Islamic polemics such as the Song of Roland, Peter (the Venerable’s) Contra Sectam Sarracenorum, and so many others.
But interestingly, the Kitab al-Miraj had been translated into Latin (called Liber Scale Machometi) and Dante for sure knew of it. That text describes layered heavens and hells, punishments matched to sins, and an ascent guided by an angel, extremely similar to Dante’s structure. So even while Dante condemns Muhammad and Ali, his very vision of hell and paradise was shaped by Islamic models.
Asin Palacios, Miguel Cruz Hernandez and others have argued that without the Miraj narratives, the Divine Comedy might not exist. So he likely borrowed but felt obliged by the polemics of his era to condemn the ones he borrowed from. So while Dante’s writings can be metaphysically deep, much of that is owed to borrowing from Muslim source material, while at the same time the atmosphere of his age required him to condemn those he borrowed from.
Amazing breakdown Zahra! I enjoyed every bit of it!
Thank you! Glad to hear it 🙏🏻
Neatly analysed...