<story><title>It&apos;s Dante&apos;s hell – we&apos;re just living in it</title><url>https://www.neh.gov/article/its-dantes-hell-were-just-living-it</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nineplay</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve been reading Paradise Lost and Satan gives off major &amp;quot;sexy villain&amp;quot; vibes.  The hosts of hell remain strong and defiant even while in their realm of eternal torment - &amp;quot;Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven&amp;quot; and all that. Meanwhile heaven is pretty bland and the angels come of as a bunch of milquetoasts.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t know enough about Milton to know if he intended to write a cautionary tale vs. an interesting tail, but I can imagine readers thinking &amp;quot;f** it, I&amp;#x27;d rather hang out with the cool kids&amp;quot;</text></item><item><author>082349872349872</author><text>Like Huxley after him, Dante made the first circle sound somewhat appealing. No doubt the food there could be much better, but the attraction would be the company, not the cuisine. (somewhat like Peter Wimsey visiting the Soviet Club, where his host tells him &amp;quot;...the cooking isn’t very good here, but the subscription’s so small, you see&amp;quot;?)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Terr_</author><text>Just to stir the pot and throw C.S. Lewis into the mix [0]:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; To admire Satan, then, is to give one&amp;#x27;s vote not only for a world of misery, but also for a world of lies and propaganda, of wishful thinking, of incessant autobiography. Yet the choice is possible. Hardly a day passes without some slight movement towards it in each one of us. That is what makes Paradise Lost so serious a poem. The thing is possible, and the exposure of it is resented. Where Paradise Lost is not loved, it is deeply hated. As Keats said more rightly than he knew, &amp;#x27;there is death&amp;#x27; in
Milton.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; We have all skirted the Satanic island closely enough
to have motives for wishing to evade the full impact of the
poem. For, I repeat, the thing is possible ; and after a certain point it is prized. Sir Willoughby may be unhappy, but he wants to go on being Sir Willoughby. Satan wants to go on being Satan. That is the real meaning of his choice &amp;#x27;Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav&amp;#x27;n.&amp;#x27; Some, to the very end, will think this a fine thing to say ; others will think that it fails to be roaring farce only because it spells agony. On the level of literary criticism the matter cannot be argued further. Each to his taste.&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;A_Preface_to_Paradise_Lost&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;A_Preface_to_Paradise_Lost&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>It&apos;s Dante&apos;s hell – we&apos;re just living in it</title><url>https://www.neh.gov/article/its-dantes-hell-were-just-living-it</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nineplay</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve been reading Paradise Lost and Satan gives off major &amp;quot;sexy villain&amp;quot; vibes.  The hosts of hell remain strong and defiant even while in their realm of eternal torment - &amp;quot;Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven&amp;quot; and all that. Meanwhile heaven is pretty bland and the angels come of as a bunch of milquetoasts.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t know enough about Milton to know if he intended to write a cautionary tale vs. an interesting tail, but I can imagine readers thinking &amp;quot;f** it, I&amp;#x27;d rather hang out with the cool kids&amp;quot;</text></item><item><author>082349872349872</author><text>Like Huxley after him, Dante made the first circle sound somewhat appealing. No doubt the food there could be much better, but the attraction would be the company, not the cuisine. (somewhat like Peter Wimsey visiting the Soviet Club, where his host tells him &amp;quot;...the cooking isn’t very good here, but the subscription’s so small, you see&amp;quot;?)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tivert</author><text>&amp;gt; The hosts of hell remain strong and defiant even while in their realm of eternal torment ... Meanwhile heaven is pretty bland and the angels come of as a bunch of milquetoasts.&lt;p&gt;That reminds me of the observation that happy lives make boring stories, so fiction tends towards showing dysfunctional characters, awful environments, or both.</text></comment>