Enjoying the view from Limbo
Enduring fame is either an emblem of vulgar vanity or an indication of past virtue. In either case, vanity or virtue, the remnant is generic, in that it can in no way reveal what is personal or individual in the doer, but rather, if anything, obscures it even more completely than the mists of time can obscure the person who remains “unaccomplished” and...
Among the many remarkable insights of Dante’s Inferno is his assignment of the suicides (successful or merely attempted) to the Seventh Circle, that of The Violent, and one level lower than the murderers. At first glance, a modern reader might wonder how suicide could be judged worse than murder. How could taking one’s own life be more sinful than taking another’s? How, more...
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