Bosch, Dante, Michelangelo, Homer, and Shakespeare’s Views on the Afterlife

Bosch, Dante, Michelangelo, Homer, and Shakespeare’s Views on the Afterlife

  • Submitted By: cam029
  • Date Submitted: 02/25/2009 7:17 PM
  • Category: Philosophy
  • Words: 1521
  • Page: 7
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Bosch: “Hell is what we live in on this earth. If heaven and hell were to be put on a scale of humanity – hell would be the hands down winner of influence and presence, not heaven. If Satan and Christ were to be in a poll – Satan would come out as the more influential of the two. We as citizens of the world are under a more worldly influence of hell than heaven. We are constantly tormented and plagued by mocking humans and the denizens of the pits of hell. My painting, “The Tabletop of the Seven Deadly Sins” is my ultimate commentary on humanity – the existence of heaven and hell and rolls they play. You see, as my painting illustrates, God's open eye, once he ascended from the bowels of hell, is forever on each of us as we daily commit these sins of which I reference in my painting; sloth, envy, avarice, pride, gluttony, envy, and lechery. Every man commits these in one way or another daily, moreover, while we think these are hidden sins the omniscient eye of God is always aware and waiting to damn us to hell for the very thoughts. Hell is waist-deep in griffins, scarabs, metallic demons with forked tails, sinners whose shortened bodies are pierced by huge swords or impaled on giant musical instruments.
Dante: “Now my good friends and scholars, I would enlighten you on the existence and representatives of heaven and hell on earth and the flotilla known as purgatory. Where indeed is hell? The earth as a sphere floating in space, whose northern hemisphere consisted primarily of land extending from Gibraltar in the west to the Ganges in the east with the holy city of Jerusalem in its centre. Beneath this inhabited hemisphere is Hell, a vast pit in the shape of a funnel or inverted cone, having its apex at the center of the earth. There are nine circles in Hell, each corresponding to the seriousness of the sins of the damned souls, in the lowest of all of them Satan is known as Dis - frozen forever in ice. On the other side of the globe of the Earth, in the...

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