Did Dante spoke about the hottest corners in hell for observing neutrality?

“The hottest corners in hell are left for those who, during the greatest moral fractures, have kept neutrality” - this quote is attributed to Dante Aligieri since the beginning of the twentieth century. We checked whether Dante really wrote this and where exactly he “determined” the soul preserving neutrality in the “Divine Comedy”.

Dante's words of neutrality in the days of moral fractures were also quoted by the US President John Kennedy, and the director Andrey Konchalovsky, And Patriarch Cyril. In social networks, this quote begins especially actively diverge During the war, political unrest and other “moral fractures” that put people before the choice of a particular side.

Dante Aligieri Accept Active participation in the political life of Florence. In 1302, during political repression, the poet-political poet was first Expelled From the hometown, and later sentenced to burn in the fabricated case of corruption. Dante no longer returned to Florence and his "divine comedy" wrote In exile. Many researchers of his work They sayThat it was precisely the experiences obtained in exile that served the poet with the material for “comedy”.

The work clearly spells out where a person went for one or another sin and what punishment he deserved. As for the indecisive and insignificant people who lived their lives, “not knowing either the glory or the shame of mortal affairs,” according to Dante, they did not deserve neither paradise nor hell. Their “overthrew the sky”, and the “abyss of hell” did not accept them, so Dante sentenced them to the eternal stay in the symbolic intermary - the vestibule of hell.

Such "non -disclosure" fluently Described At the beginning of the third song "Hell":

And the leader in response: “That woeful inheritance
Those miserable souls who lived without knowing
Neither fame, nor a shame of mortal affairs.
 
And with them angels is a bad flock,
That, not rebuilding, was not true
The Almighty, observing the middle.
 
The sky overthrew them, did not tolerate stains;
And the gap of hell does not accept them,
Otherwise, the fault would have become proud. ”
 
And I: “Teacher, that they are so tormented
And he forces the complaints like that? "
And he: “The answer is short -lived.
 
And the death hour is unattainable for them,
And this life is so unbearable
That everything else would be easier for them.
 
Their memory on Earth is an irresimim;
Both the court and mercy moved away from them.
They do not stand words: take a look - and by! "

(Translation by M. Lozinsky)

This is all that Dante tells about neutrality and indecision. By the way, the most “hot” circle of hell, ninth, - this is the icy lake of cockerel, in which Satan himself is frozen and those who committed the worst of the sins: the deception of those who trusted him.

Pseudocytte about "hot corners", apparently, Entered In world everyday life from English -speaking sources. The quoted phrase “The Hottest Places in Hell are Reserved for Those Who in Moral Crisis Preserv their Neutrality” was not born immediately, but crystallized after several inaccurate retells or conscious alterations of the “Divine Comedy” lines. To understand how Dante's idea about neutrality has undergone such a radical transformation, you need to look at the first years of the First World War, when neutrality has acquired special importance for American society.

In 1915, American writer Henry Sedzhvik Published The essay about Italy’s participation in the First World War, where he mistakenly stated that Dante's indecision meant precisely the neutrality in the struggle of good with evil. At the same time, Sedzhvik did not specify where the souls of indecisive live specifically. In the same year, in the book “America and World War”, former US President Theodor Roosevelt still "Determined" They are in hell, but without specifying a specific circle of hell or its “corners”: “Dante took a special shameful place in hell to those low angels who did not dare to stand either to the side of good or to the side of evil.” In 1917, the American religious speaker William Vines Clarifiedthat, according to Dante, it was “in the very depths of hell” that the souls of those who adhere to neutrality in the eternal struggle between good and evil are stuck. So he used Dante's figure to give the persuasiveness of his sermon in support of the US participation in the First World War.

The Second World War caused a new surge in popularity pseudocitates, when Dante's words turned into a rhetorical instrument for political calls for action. In 1944, the preacher Henry Powell Spring is finally Fixed The phrase in the form in which it has survived to this day: "The hottest corners in hell are left for those who retain neutrality during the moral crisis." The wording of the "greatest moral fractures" apparently appeared as a result of translation into Russian.

The popularity of the phrase grew exposed to geometric progression thanks to the former US President John Kennedy, who is tactically Used This pseudocytte is at least 25 times during its political career. His brother Robert even notedthat these words were a favorite quote of politics.

Thus, Dante's original lines about neutrality changed almost beyond recognition and migrated from the predominantly spiritual plane to the political, so that throughout the 20th and XXI centuries, to serve as a call to action in the context of political confrontations, wars and rights and freedom movements.

Distorted quote

What do our verdicts mean?

Read on the topic:

1. John F. Kennedy's Favorite Quotations: Dante's Inferno
2. Guide to the "hell" Dante
3. Hell Dante in the "Divine Comedy"
4. "Divine comedy" through the eyes of artists