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: "Doing a paper on Contrapo in Dante's hell does anyone know any good sites or have any useful information. Thanks." : : "Cosė s'osserva in me lo contrapo." : --- INFERNO Canto 28 Line 142 --- : "Contrapo: : A contrapo is "punishment that fits the crime." : In Dante's Hell, sinners are punished in a way that somehow reflects what they did wrong on earth while they were living. Sometimes the contrapo is extremely similar in nature, but sometimes it is the opposite--a mirror image." : For the above information, I am indebted to the following website: : http://www.angelfire.com/ak/Nyquil/contrapo.html : And here is an intriguing paragraph from <http://www.uvm.edu/~wstephan/dante/infessay.htm> : "Before turning ourselves to a more specific consideration of the "plot" of Inferno, we need to consider one last generalization. Dorothy Sayers says that the Comedy is "the drama of the soul's choice," a point that had been made before, but perhaps not so concisely. The fiction Dante insists upon is that no one has been consigned to a position in the otherworld either through the generosity or through the hostility of God's justice; all the souls Dante meets are where they have chosen to be. Those who have chosen to do the will of God, to discipline and humble themselves and reunite themselves in this life with the Ground of all Being, spend eternity in perpetual celebration in His presence. Those who have made this same choice but need a bit more schooling before actually entering His presence spend some time first on Mt. Purgatory. Those who chose sin, however, spend their eternity confronting an externalization of their peculiar mode of sinfulness. Contrapo is the awkward-to-translate and hence usually adopted-into-English word for this phenomenon. By an ingenious series of externalized metaphors, Dante reerts the idea that makes its way into the medieval consciousness via St. Augustine, St. Gregory, and other early Christian thinkers that the true punishment for sin is sin itself. If one accepts as axiomatic that the human spirit can only find ease and comfort in union with God, and if sin separates the soul from God, then God's worst punishment is simply to let sinners continue unchecked to make themselves miserable. Hell is the logical extension of this misery through eternity, with the soul now deprived both of the value of human remorse and of divine mercy. The sin is externalized in all of its ugliness, brutishness, and evil, stripped bare of the veneer with which we all are wont to plate our peccadillos. Any time we feel inclined to feel pity for one of the souls Dante encounters, we would do well to remember that the poem's fiction is that the soul is exactly where (according to the poet) it ought to be and where it has chosen to be (even if the pilgrim--as opposed to the poet--sometimes expresses the pity we are likely to share). The souls often present revisionist autobiographies, but we would do well to be suious readers of them since Dante's fictional world is based on a moral geography: where the souls are is our starting point in evaluating who they are." : Virgil here, again ... : Contrapo is, of course, "eye for eye" justice, which is the very translation given the term in John Ciardi's edition of INFERNO. "Eye for eye" justice stems from the Bible. You'll find several references, one in Leviticus: : Leviticus 24:20 Leviticus 24 Leviticus 24:19-21 "Breach for breach, eye for eye, tooth for tooth: as he hath caused a blemish in a man, so shall it be done to him again." : And similar references in : Deuteronomy 19:21 Deuteronomy 19 Deuteronomy 19:20-22 "And thine eye shall not pity; but life shall go for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot." : and : Exodus 21:24 Exodus 21 Exodus 21:23-25 "Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot," : I would also call your attention to the Prometheus myth. Recall that Prometheus had stolen fire from Zeus to give to Mankind, Prometheus's creations. Zeus punished the Titan by chaining him to a mountain-side (confinement) and having him have his liver plucked out daily by an eagle (pain and suffering). This punishment is actually a metaphor for what it feels like to be a man. Prometheus, perched halfway on the mountain, halfway between Zeus above and man below, is very much in the same position Christ will attain on the cross. Though the example of Christ is perhaps not an instance of contrapo, both figures become symbols of human heroism, joining the gods to men. Which is why Romantics, I think, like Prometheus. (Remember the subtitle of Mary Shelley's FRANKENSTEIN!) : Well ... I've been long-winded, but I hope that helps. : --Virgil (whose contrapo will be carpal tunnel syndrome)--

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