A political inferno

By Alex P. Vidal 

“There is no dignity in wickedness, whether in purple or rags; and hell is a democracy of devils, where all are equals.” – Herman Melville 

MANY Filipino politicians and public works contractors may also become candidates for slots in Dante’s Inferno if they continue to allow themselves to be swallowed by the prevailing system: graft and corruption.

Hell is the state of the soul after death, but it is also the state of the world as seen by an exile whose experience has taught him no longer to trust the world’s values.

I’m referring to the would-be thieves and the thieves—those involved in multi-million scams like, among others, the defective Ungka flyover and the almost forgotten Pavia housing lot for local politicians, the rice smuggling, junkets, vaccine overpricing, bids and awards of projects manipulation, etcetera.

The “pork barrel” plunder for national politicians like Bong Revilla, Jinggoy Estrada, Juan Ponce Enrile–who apparently were excited to enrich themselves while in public office (some of them tried to recover their election campaign expenses once they were in power).

They thought reelection or being elected into public office anew was enough for their trespasses or crimes to be forgotten and forgiven.

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Dante’s Inferno is a vision of the City of Man in the afterlife, which is why it contains no glimmer of forgiveness.

At the same time, it may also be thought of a radical representation of the world in which we live, stripped of all temporizing and all hope.

There is no sign of Christian forgiveness for thieves in Dante’s Inferno.

The dominant theme is not mercy but justice, dispensed with severity of the ancient law of retribution.

Every reader was amazed by Dante’s Inferno, by the frights, the obscenities, the filth and effluvia of a vision in which execration was often the central act of perception, and suffering the central spectacle of desire.

The sinners–the lustful, gluttonous, treacherous–are caught forever. Politicians had remind themselves of that. In the passage set in the Eight Circle, serpents surround and tear at thieves, who catch fire, burn, and are then reconstituted, like the phoenix.

But when they are reborn out of their own ashes, they only suffer again.

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In Robert Pinsky’s bilingual edition, The Inferno of Dante’s new verse translation, this was how the thieves are punished in Canto XXIV, 91-120: Among this cruel and depressing swarm, ran people who were naked, terrified, with no hope of a hole or heliotrope.

Their hands were tied behind by serpents; these had thrust their head and tail right through the loins, And then were knotted on the other side. And–there!–a serpent sprang with force at one who stood upon our shore, transfixing him just where the neck and shoulders form a knot. No o or i has ever been transcribed So quickly as that soul caught fire and burned and, as he fell, completely turned to ashes; and when he lay, undone, upon the ground, the dust of him collected by itself and instantly returned to what it was: just so, it is asserted by great sages, that, when it reaches its five-hundredth year, the phoenix dies and is reborn again; lifelong it never feeds on grass or grain, only on drops of incense or amomum; its final winding sheets are nard and myrrh.

And just as he who falls, and knows not how–by demon’s force that drags him to the ground or by some other hindrance that binds man–who, when he rises, stares about him, all bewildered by the heavy anguish he has suffered, sighing as he looks around; so did this sinner stare when he arose.

Oh, how severe it is, the power of God that, as its vengeance, showers down such blows!

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local newspapers in Iloilo. —Ed)