The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1928-04-07

(NI. bernard ndQ preached CIlG It.
~ ality Of hell fire with sadistic
severity; St Thomas Aquinas had
written, The blessed in glory will
have no compassion on the damned,
for that would inpugn Gods justice"
Is it any wonder that that blood
thirsty god is dead, and that man
kind today is struggling to recon
ceive deity in a nobler image?
There is something a little full
some, then, in Ruskin's praise f
Dante's character: The central
man of all the world. as representing
in perfect balance the imaginative,
moral and intellectual faculties. all
at their highest, is Dante" Let us
not deceive ourselves: no man was
ever more revengeful and bitter; in
the inferno" is the Bible of Dantes
vengeance, a pamphlet in the war of
Guelph and Ghibelline; Dante in
vents hell, as man invented 1t, that
his enemies might have last rest
ing place; it is a repository prOvid-
entially designed for those who have
opposed or differed from him Ill this
world.
We can understand why Voltaire,
with his brilliant eXaggeration, wrote
to Father Bottinelli; I estimate
highly the courage with which you
dare to say that Dante was a mad
man and his work a mOnStrOSlty"
and why, he could add, in the
philosophical dictionary" THE
italians call him divine; but it is
a hidden divinity; few people under
stand his oracles. He has cOmmen-
tatorS. which, perhaps, is another
reason for his not being understood.
His reputation will go on increasing,
because scarcely anybody reads
him"
But Voltaire was here as sympa-
thetic as Dante himself; He forgot
that Divine Comedy" was written
not as a narrative merely but as an
allegory. The Middle Ages loved al
legory, because they thought OF
spirit, and had to speak and picture
in terms of matter.
II ITERALLY," says Dante of his
l. terrible Comedy, the subject
is the state of souls after death,
taken simply. If, however, the work
is accepted allegorically, the subject
is man. according as by merit or de-
merit through freedom of choice he
is subject to juStics, rewardlng or
punitive"
And in the "onvivio' he writes OF
one of his poems; since the literal
sense is sufficiently explained, it is
time toproceed to the allegorical and
true explanation"
What then is the allegorical land
true" explanation of the Inferno?
Essentially it is a description of the
actual states of man on earth. Hell
is the ruin and dispair that come OF
sin and crime; purgatory is the
recognition of error, 1t is seif-diS-
cipline and self-reformation, it is
the painful effort to acquire and
practice wisdom; paradise is the
possession and enjoyment of knowl-
edge and beauty of love: these are
stages in the Pilgrims Progress of
the human soul. Had not Dante
known all the sufferings of hell in
his outcast life? Had he not sought
through a thousand torment5 the
guidance of wisdom (VirgiD to the
blessedness of love (Beatrice)? BY
knowledge, he thinks. we can make
our way out of hell; but only by
wisdom and love can we enter into
happiness.
So. after Virgil has taken him
through purgatory, whose inhabit-
ants are in pain, and yet joyful with
the sense of their movement to-
wards liberation. the Roman poet
leaves him at the gates of heaven;
he, knowledge, can take him only to
the gates; now wisdom and love
must lead him. eve are reminded
of Dostoievski's definition of hell as
the condition of one who is unable
to love0
Beatrice comes, and ushers him
into paradise; the ending is happy
and so wins the name of Comedy,
according to the usage of the time,
for this humorless epic of human
suffering.
Sad to say, the Paradise IS the
least interesting of the places which
Dante describes; virtue seems al
ways less interesting and multiple
than fiction; and besides, Dante had
gone to hell and purgatory with his
actual flesh, but could only dream