The Hell of Our Imaginings

(From infernodotblog)

There are as many--perhaps more--visions of hell as there are of heaven. They range from the elaborately constructed nine circles of Dante's Inferno to an infinitely large room of emptiness.

Is the eternal fire a metaphor? If so, what does it mean? Is hell a physical place or a state of mind? Is there such a thing as eternal life—and if God’s verdict goes against you, does that mean a life of everlasting torment? Is it possible to believe in hell if you don’t believe in God, or is hell the terrible solitude of living without God?

Pope Francis himself has defined hell as “eternal solitude.” By contrast, Jean-Paul Sartre, the pontiff of existentialism, wrote that “hell is other people.” Which is it?

Evelyn Waugh proposed a darkly witty version of hell in his novel “A Handful of Dust.” It ends with the hero, an English gentleman lost in the Amazonian rain forest, held prisoner by an illiterate mixed-race Guianan who happens to own a complete set of Dickens and forces his captive to read it aloud, over and over again, without hope of release.

Hell expanded centuries ago from theology into literature. Great writers have had a crack at it. Dante set the standard. Milton’s “Paradise Lost” is magnificent, although, as Samuel Johnson remarked, “no one wished it longer.” Milton’s fallen Lucifer sounds unexpectedly modern when he cries, “Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell.” Is it the case that we make our own hell?

Whatever our visions of hell, it does seem that we are much less concerned with the afterlife than were our ancestors. The rewards of heaven and the miseries of hell don't seem to motivate people's behavior. As for me, as I enter the winter of my life, the reasoning of Pascal's Wager appeals, so I may as well try to be good and do good.