Opinion | Hong Kong risks being condemned to its own circle of hell
- After 20 years of grappling with questions set by the frozen world of Lucifer in Dante’s Inferno, hatred in Hong Kong today has provided Chow Chung-yan with some answers
The most unforgettable scene in Dante Alighieri’s Inferno, which is also its biggest mystery, revolves around the frozen Lucifer.
In the deepest circle of hell, the prince of darkness is perpetually stuck in a lake of ice. The most powerful agent of evil desperately flaps his wings trying to break free, creating a colossal polar vortex around him.
The ironic thing is that the more he struggles, the colder hell becomes, entrapping the three-faced devil in a pillar of ice for eternity.
When I first studied the Italian poet’s Divine Comedy at the University of Hong Kong some 20 years ago, I was an undernourished bookworm who knew next to nothing about real life outside.
The scene involving the frozen Lucifer is both fascinating and intriguing. Why did Dante, the most learned man of his age, depict the ninth circle of hell as a frozen world, when all his contemporaries painted it as a place of fire and smoke? Why was punishment for Lucifer permanent entombment in a pillar of ice? These were the questions I tried to answer back then.
