Seven Deadly Sins: Envy

“Envy is more implacable than hatred.”
- de La Rochefoucauld

Seeing as I'm on this Dante kick, I thought I'd post about Envy (also know as indivia in Italian)from that perspective, with perhaps a few other random things thrown in. We'll see where this goes.

According to Dante Alighieri's tour in The Divine Comedy's Inferno installment, there are nine concentric circles of Hell. Each circle representing a gradual increase in wickedness. Each circle's sinners are punished in a manner fitting to their crime.

Dante defined Envy as "love of one's own good perverted to a desire to deprive other men of theirs."

The envious end up in the second tier. Their punishment is severe: they have their eyes sewn shut with wire, because they have gained pleasure from seeing those they envy brought down.

photo by Pagan Sphinx

Marcel Jean Specter of the Gardenia
MoMA

(The choice of this sculpture is purely my own connection, as I have not been able to find any information about it and its title certainly does not give any indication of its meaning.)

Gustave Doré

Envious Penitents

And no discussion of Dante's Divine Comedy is complete without a mention of William Blake, whose illustrations for the work he is well known for

Dante and Statius Sleeping,Virgil-Watching


Lastly, I came upon this photograph of a sculpture of Blake by James. S. Deville, after uploading the photograph above, that reminded me of the punishment for Envy, in Dante's Inferno.

Join Kay for The Seven Deadly Sins Meme.

Thanks, Kay, this has been very interesting and fun for me; now smitten with both Blake and Dante. Yeah, I know. Once a nerd, always a nerd! ;-)