Tuesday
Since my Representative Masterpieces class has been immersed in Dante’s Inferno recently, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to how people end up in hell. I’ve never liked condemning people to the nether regions, partly because I’ve always taken to heart Jesus’s admonition to “judge not lest ye be judged.” If I were to start assigning people to Dante’s nine circles, I might start with those who gleefully condemn their enemies to hell. In short, it’s an exercise I don’t find all that useful.
Therefore, when I noted in a recent post that Donald Trump was eligible for seven of the nine Dante’s circles, I didn’t like how I was assuming the position of righteous judge.
Dante, however, is doing more than engaging in revenge fantasies. Scholars point out that the punishments endured by his sinners are metaphorical expressions of the torments their sins put them through. In other words, Dante just gives us graphic depictions of the hellish lives they are already living. The punishments are eternal because the individuals have lost the ability to imagine anything else. As William Franke puts it
Through persistent sin, free will is eventually lost…Free indulgence becomes habit and eventually results in loss of the ability not to sin. What we once chose freely becomes addiction, compulsion, necessity: we become it. Eventually we no longer know how to understand ourselves otherwise than in terms of the sin–or more precisely, of the self-interpretation that a certain sin entails. We die morally, and at that point it is too late to change.
As I look at Trump, I find myself wondering whether he is capable of reforming. Or is he, like Dante’s sinners, permanently trapped within a hellish state.
Contrition, prayer, and repentance (to quote Dr. Faustus’s Good Angel) are what separate those who go to Dante’s Purgatory from those who go to his Hell. In other words, the former are capable of seeing themselves through the lens of divine goodness and, horrified by what they witness, they desire to atone. Does Trump ever look within and have second thoughts?
Consider how Dante would handle someone who has boasted of grabbing women “by the pussy,” who has been accused by multiple women of sexual harassment and/or sexual assault, and who has been unfaithful in all three of his wives. Could such a man ever understand that a committed relationship with a soulmate is far more fulfilling than perpetual promiscuity? Or does his internal world look something like Dante’s second circle of hell:
I came to a place stripped bare of every light
and roaring on the naked dark like seas
wracked by a war of winds. Their hellish flight
of storm and counterstorm through time foregone,
sweeps the souls of the damned before its charge
Whirling and battering it drives them on…
God hasn’t condemned the lustful to this world. They have chosen it themselves.
A mere glimpse of a soulful relationship, however, would be enough to land them in Dante’s Purgatory, and this glimpse can even occur on one’s deathbed. In Canto III Dante depicts people who repented at the last minute and were so appalled at how they saw themselves that they wanted to change. To cite a literary example, the narcissistic and destructive King Lear, who experiences real love only in the last hours of his life, would be placed in this level, where he would devote all his energies to spending eternity with Cordelia. If Lear had not had this glimpse, he would probably end up in the fifth circle of Inferno, where those enmired in wrath find a home.
So while cautioning against judgment that should be in the hands of a higher power, here are the levels of Inferno that Trump appears to be headed for if he doesn’t look inward and strive for change:
—Lust (Circle 2)—See above
—Gluttony (Circle 3) – The gluttonous are stuck in muck and are battered constantly by cold and dirty hail, rain, and snow, which is not a bad account of what bad eating does to our bodies.
—Waste and Hoarding (Circle 4) – I’ve applied this level to those who exacerbate income inequality (here). Trump, who prefers to use “other people’s money,” steals from his charity and stiffs contractors while spending lavishly on himself, is both a hoarder and a waster. In Inferno, these figures spend all their energy pushing large boulders against each other, a powerful articulation of the meaningless time and effort people commit to such activities.
—Wrath (Circle 5)—The president, like Dante’s sinners, appears perpetually stuck in wrathful slime, continually seeking enemies to attack:
Beyond its rocky race and wild descent
the river floods and forms a marsh called Styx,
a dreary swampland, vaporous and malignant.
And I, intent on all our passage touched,
made out a swarm of spirits in that bog
savage with anger, naked, slime-besmutched.
They thumped at one another in that slime
with hands and feet, and they butted, and they bit
as if each would tear the other limb from limb.
—Sloth (Circle 5)—The slothful are in the same swampland only they are below the surface so that Dante can only see bubbles emanating from their speech. His guide Virgil translates their words for him. Think of them as the president rage tweeting as he watches hours and hours of television:
And my kind Sage [Virgil]: “My son, behold the souls of those who lived in wrath. And do you see the broken surfaces on those water-holes on every hand, boiling as if in pain? There are souls beneath that water. Fixed in slime they speak their piece, end it, and start again: ‘Sullen were we in the air made sweet by the Sun; in the glory of his shining our hearts poured a bitter smoke. Sullen were we gegun; sullen we lie forever in this ditch.’ This litany they gargle in their throats as if they sang, but lacked the words and pitch.'"
—Heresy (Circle 6) – Trump appears to be heretical because, other than a belief in Norman Vincent Peale’s prosperity theology, he is a materialist. Dante captures how the heretics are cut off from any vision of transcendence by enclosing them in iron boxes that no light can penetrate.
The seventh circle of Inferno is where the violent and the bestial reside. This circle is divided into descending rounds:
—Violence against Neighbors (Circle 7, Round 1)—It is to Trump’s credit that, as commander in chief, he has not entered further into this realm. Other than targeted assassinations here and support of autocrats committing atrocities there, he may not deserve to join Alexander, Attila, and others who are engulfed in a river of boiling blood.
—Blasphemy (Circle 7, Round 3)—There’s no doubt that Dante would see Trump as blasphemous, especially in his campaign assertion that “he does not regret never asking God for forgiveness, partially because he says he doesn’t have much to apologize for.”
Not even God, in Trump’s mind, can judge him. In Inferno, violence against God is captured by Capaneus, who lies supine upon hot sands while fiery rain descends from above. As Virgil describes the condition,
O Capaneus, by your insolence
you are made to suffer as much fire inside
as falls upon you. Only your own rage
could be fit torment for your sullen pride.
As well as this seems to capture Trump’s perpetual rage, the last two circles (Fraudulence and Malice) may be even a better fit. I’ll save those for tomorrow.