Contrapasso is one of the rules by which Dante chose to design his version of Hell in his Divine Comedy. Accordingly, each sinner in each circle of Hell is tormented by a punishment that mirrors the sin he or she committed when alive on earth.
The sin of lust is by definition a strong or passionate (usually sexual) desire for something or someone. The connotations thereof are typically that the person ("sinner") in question is swept off his or her feet by, or simply overcome by depth of feeling and/or desire for, the object in question, so much so that rationality and common sense have been all but abandoned or ignored in the single-minded pursuit of the object of his or her lust.
Therefore, in Canto V of Dante's rendition of Hell in Inferno, the spirits of the lustful, "who reason subjugate[d] to appetite," are violently thrown about by ceaseless winds, indeed described as an "infernal hurricane that never rests" and "hither, thither, downward, upward, drives them." They who in life allowed themselves to be overwhelmed by their emotions and desires for the objects of their lust will be forever tormented by being endlessly whipped and whirled through the air, at the mercy of powerful winds against which they have neither recourse nor respite. There is the idea of contrapasso illustrated: the punishment in death mirrors or closely resembles the crime committed in life.
https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/lust
Monday, January 30, 2012
How does Dante use contrapasso in Canto V of Inferno to address the sin of lust?
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