Dante's verses: The devil's chewing gum

The painful empire's emperor protruded

up to half its chest out of the ice

Lo 'mperador del doloroso regno

da mezzo' l petto uscia fuor de la ghiaccia

(Inferno XXXIV, 28-29, translated by Philalethes)

The ruler of hell stands up to his chest in the icy ground, with huge claws that grasp the souls of the worst sinners. A few terzines later we are introduced to Satan: as an enormous three-headed bat that kindles an icy wind with its six wings that sweeps over the frozen cocytus. Blood, drool and tears flow down the cheeks to the navel of the monster, refuge of gravity in the heart of the earth. Crunching jaws gleefully crush the passed out victims, while the claws tear their once smooth skin to shreds. The hacked and torn remains are preserved in the icy spittoon forever.

Dante reserves this highly personal treatment, which cannot be surpassed in contemptuous cruelty, to the traitors. We see Judas Iscariot, half entwined, his legs wriggling helplessly in front of the devil's jaw. The same thing happens to Brutus and Cassius, who stand for the betrayal of the - divinely willed - worldly order, in Dante's view the Holy Roman Empire. His personal fate, the unjust exile from his beloved hometown of Florence, may have awakened in Dante a particular sensitivity for the paramount value of a stable religious and secular order - in that order.

Seven hundred years after Dante's death in exile in Ravenna, the question of maintaining the spiritual and worldly order arises with equal, if not greater, urgency. On the best way to prepare a "hell on earth" on our small planet, we see betrayal everywhere of the least unreasonable order of our time, the "open society" in the sense of Karl Popper, one on the dignity and responsibility of all people community idea. For example, we saw an American president who swore his constitutional oath on two Bibles - only to end up not being held accountable in two impeachment proceedings.

In Dante's point of view, however, this is quite irrelevant.

The traitor's soul is already in the devil's moment the betrayal becomes manifest.

Despite all the glitz and glory, the traitors are just soulless, inhuman shells that continue to go about their business.

And even the devil has long since spat out these sinners like sucked chewing gum.

There is no shortage of supplies ...

Until recently,

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