The Divine Comedy and The Tempest

One of the fun things about having several books going at once is that it makes it easier for you see connections between them.

This morning I was reading Dorothy Sayers’ commentary on her translation of Purgatory. She describes the difference between the retributive punishment the characters undergo in Inferno as being very similar to the remedial punishments suffered by those on Mount Purgatory. The difference, she says, lies not in the nature of the suffering, but in the character of the sufferer. In Inferno, the people there have chosen their sin to the very end and so have no remorse – they do not accept the justice of their punishment, so the punishment can do them no good. On the contrary, those in Purgatory are there because they sincerely want to do the will of God and to be with him. They accept justice and “welcome the torment, as a sick man welcomes the pain of surgery” (p. 16). And they don’t just accept the suffering – they “count it all joy.”

Now, I’m a Protestant and don’t believe in Purgatory as a real state after death, but that doesn’t stop us from appreciating the story and from seeing what this means as an allegory of the soul. If we love and seek God, then the suffering we encounter in life is part of the refiner’s fire, and is for our good.

Then, this afternoon, I was rereading The Tempest to prepare for a co-op class I’ll begin teaching soon. In Act 2, a group of shipwrecked men are wandering around trying to find the rest of their companions. To one of these four men, Gonzalo, the island they find themselves on is a Paradise, or can easily be made one, but to the other three it’s “Uninhabitable and almost inaccessible,” with air that stinks of a swamp. The main difference between these men? Gonzalo is a faithful friend and counsellor, where his companions are all traitors and usurpers, “three men of sin,” as they’re called later in the play.

Not a perfect parallel, but it helped me make sense of what’s going on in that scene and another one that follows later, when the three men have a horrific vision, where Gonzalo sees and enjoys a banquet. The last time I read The Tempest I thought Gonzalo must be a lunatic.