Trollheart

Title: Inferno (Part of the Divine Comedy (Divina Commedia))
Author(s): Dante Alighieri
Nationality: Italian
Year written/published: 1302 - 1320/ Unsure, but first print edition 1472
Format: Long form poem
Setting(s): Hell
Characterisation:* Negative
Have I read it? No
Impact: 10


The first author to really take on Satan, then, was the Italian Dante Alighieri, usually just known as Dante, when he - to quote Douglas Adams - used him as the central theme for his blockbusting three-volume epic, The Divine Comedy (Divine Commedia), or at least the first part, called Inferno. I have a vague memory of trying to read it when younger, and giving up. There’s no doubt it’s one of the most pre-eminent works, not only of Italian literature, but of world literature, but I found it hard going. Essentially it ruminates on the journey of the soul after death, focusing on evil and Hell in the first part, where Dante envisions himself guided by the Roman poet Virgil down into the very depths of Hell itself, which he imagines as being divided into nine sections, or circles.

The work was begun in 1308 and took almost twelve years to complete, literally his life’s work, as he died one year after completing it, in 1321. With no original manuscript surviving, it’s hard to tie down when it was first published, but the first printed copy came out in 1472, only thirty-two years after Gutenberg had invented his printing press, the first in the world. The narrative is more concerned with Hell than Satan, who only makes an appearance at the end, in the Ninth Circle, so much of what goes on in the poem doesn’t necessarily concern us, at least not for the purposes of this journal. However it is worth noting that from this work we get the famous slogan “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here”, which is on a sign over the entrance to Hell. Well, I suppose “Welcome” would be redundant, would it not? And as for “Arbeit macht frei”, well, that wouldn’t show its ugly face for another six hundred years.

Without going through all the Circles of Hell, it’s in the Ninth that we meet Satan, and Virgil has an odd idea of him, expressed through some of the paintings and works of that and the next century. First, he has three heads, or I should say, three faces, each one a different colour. One is red (duh), one is a kind of pale yellow and the other is black. The mouth in each head is munching on a traitor - Brutus, Cassius, and the man seen by Christianity as the arch-traitor, Judas Iscariot - but the Devil is not enjoying himself. He weeps tears of blood, and is trapped up to his waist in a lake of ice, while his huge bat wings beat the air above him and fan the wind to keep the water frozen, forever imprisoning him there. We've seen this painting earlier.

I suppose it’s no real surprise that Dante sees Satan as a pathetic, pitiable figure while still managing to maintain the innate evil and fear of the Devil. His Fall has been complete, and rather than, as Milton later observes, ruling in Hell, he is trapped there, almost as much a prisoner as the souls of the damned. He doesn’t sit on a throne, he doesn’t walk around inspecting the inhabitants or organising or overseeing inventive tortures - that’s all left to his lieutenants, as it were, who patrol and work in each Circle. He hasn’t got a plush red office with a picture of the wife on his desk and a sign on the wall declaring this to be Hell, Sweet Hell, nor has he, it would seem, the respect of or even fear of the other demons, who all seem to ignore him (though I do admit I’ve not managed to read it, so I could be wrong there).

In the end, Satan is seen as being punished as much as the damned, if not more so, and there’s actually no confirmation that I can see that he is the one pulling the strings here. As far as his own punishment is concerned, that has to be taken to be God who’s responsible, forever proving his superiority over his prideful angel, Lucifer, the one who dared stand up to and oppose him, and who paid the most awful price imaginable.


Title: King Edgar’s Privilege to New Minster
Author(s): King Edgar
Nationality: English (Saxon)
Year written/published: Tenth century
Format: Charter
Setting(s): n/a
Characterisation:* Negative
Have I read it? Duh
Impact: n/a

As David Frame Johnson says in his treatise, Studies in the Careers of the Fallen Angels: The Devil and his Body in Old English Literature, a royal charter written by one of the early Saxon kings of England is not really the sort of place you would expect to be looking for mentions of the Devil, but given that this was, and is, so far as I can make out, a royal charter allowing the building of a new cathedral (or minster), the language is pretty flowery and takes plenty of diversions along Biblical and religious paths, and one of those it moseys on down for a looksee is, yes you guessed it, the Fall of Satan. It also agrees with (or filches from) the contention of Genesis A that Man was created as a sort of replacement for Satan and his angels.

What all three manuscripts (another charter included, but not really worthy of investigating separately, as it more or less regurgitates what Edgar says above) make clear, and which is quite new to me, is that God’s original plan, once Satan had been shown the door - mind that step! - was for Man to replace him, basically be angels, which is I guess why he made Adam and Eve immortal. Now that raises some pertinent questions, such as, how would immortals beings multiply (no account ever speaks of angel babies) and more importantly, why? If the real purpose of procreation is to ensure your line is carried on after you die, and you don’t die, then why bother? Carry the line on yourself. So why God expected or intended these, if you will, Angels v2.0 to do so is beyond me, however it’s also beyond the remit of this journal, as we’re principally here concerned with the Devil.

But still, the idea that God did intend humans to be angels and “fill the empty thrones in Heaven” makes Satan’s successful corruption of man (yeah yeah woman, but who believes that?) even the more frustrating for God, as he basically ballsed up his plans bigtime. Now humans would die - procreate yes, but what would come forth would be nothing like his angels - and have to work to attain a place in Heaven. Even if or when they did, they weren’t going to be accorded the status of angels. So the plan went totally tits-up, and Satan no doubt was one very happy boy. God fumed impotently, maybe, since his perhaps rash gift of free will to humanity meant he couldn’t order them not to sin, and once they had sinned, he had to start casting worrying sidelong glances at his son, who for some reason began hearing the sound of nails and hammers.

__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018