With news of recent days being of the character it has been, I thought it prudent to remind myself that God's justice is never thwarted. True, in this life we see the activity of His justice, like all things, "through a glass darkly," but God remains sovereign and His purposes in allowing evil, suffering, and even spiritual confusion will one day be fully understood -- and appreciated.
As a believer in Jesus Christ, I know these truths. But, I need "refresher courses" to emphasize them and keep them a part of my daily experience. To that end, there is no substitute for careful Bible study and a diligence to obey what the Word teaches. However, there are other helps too and, for more years than I can remember, Dante Alighieri's The Inferno has been one of them for me, a strikingly memorable (if theologically flawed) classic of Latin verse which tells of the gradations of divine judgment in the hereafter. Now, because my knowledge of Latin is akin to my grasp of trigonometry, I read The Inferno in translation, my favorite being John Ciardi's from the mid-1950s.
A few excerpts of Dante's/Ciardi's creations:
After emerging from the Dark Wood of his own sinful past, the poet writes:
Just as a swimmer, who with his last breath
flounders ashore from perilous seas, might turn
to memorize the wide water of his death --
so did I turn, my soul still fugitive
from death's surviving image, to stare down
that pass that none had ever left alive.
Virgil, Dante's enlightened (though pagan) guide through hell, rebukes him for a lack of courage:
"your soul is sunken in that cowardice
that bears down many men, turning their course
and resolution by imagined perils,
as his own shadow turns the frightened horse.
Above the gate of hell is an inscription. Part of it reads:
Sacred Justice Moved My Architect.
I Was Raised Here By Divine Omnipotence,
Primordial Love And Ultimate Intellect.
A vivid description of Semiramis, a legendary queen of Assyria, is just too similar to persons in our own day:
Mad sensuality corrupted her so
that to hide the guilt of her debauchery
she licensed all depravity alike,
and lust and law were one in her decree.
The purpose of Dante's descriptions of hell's judgments? He gives this concise description in Canto 14 (Lines 13-15):
O endless wrath of God: how utterly
thou shouldst become a terror to all men
who read the frightful truths revealed to me.
And finally, though I could cite compelling passages for an hour, here's one of Dante's intense visualizations. It is a vivid, violent word picture of Geryon, replete with classical allusions (a Dante staple) and including a very effective moralism:
The filthy prototype of Fraud drew near
and settled his head and breast upon the edge
of the dark cliff, but let his tail hang clear.
His face was innocent of every guile,
benign and just in feature and expression;
and under it his body was half reptile.
His two great paws were hairy to the armpits;
all his back and breast and both his flanks
were figured with bright knots and subtle circlets:
never was such a tapestry of bloom
woven on earth by Tartar or by Turk,
nor by Arachne at her flowering loom.
When Claire and I first started the Notting Hill Napoleons Literary Society some 13 years ago, the second book we read was The Inferno. The reception the book received that night was so strongly negative from all members of the group (save Claire and I) that it is a wonder the book club went on to become the great success it has. I'd like to think that the years of reading experience would make for a different reaction were we to ever try it again, but I'm not sure. Indeed, I certainly don't have enough confidence in that opinion to ever dare suggest it! Nevertheless, The Inferno remains a minor classic to me and I continue to recommend it...especially as an antidote to worrying about wickedness somehow getting away with it.
