Dante in Guantánamo

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Image: Ann Noël

A few months ago, U.S. President Barack Obama took the con­tro­ver­sial deci­sion to release doc­u­ments con­cern­ing inter­ro­ga­tion prac­tices in Guan­tánamo, Afghanistan and Abu Ghraib. At the same time, he decided not to order the inves­ti­ga­tion of the men and women involved in car­ry­ing out those prac­tices. The issue seemed to me seri­ous enough to draw loud and intel­li­gent world­wide protest, but after a few voices were raised here and there against his deci­sion (and also for it), the ques­tion seems to have faded away. I believe it needs to be raised again. 

In the past few decades, after the French war against Algerian inde­pen­dence and the mil­i­tary dic­ta­tor­ship in Argentina, for instance, I’ve heard the prac­tice of tor­ture being jus­ti­fied “under cer­tain cir­cum­stances” or crit­i­cized so mildly that the ques­tion remained ignored and unan­swered, and I believe the deci­sion to forgo the trial of the Guantánamo, Afghanistan and Abu Ghraib tor­tur­ers con­sti­tutes a seri­ous and trou­bling prece­dent that will be invoked in future cases. Discussing the mat­ter with a friend, I was reminded of a much ear­lier instance in which, as occurred in the States, a legal sys­tem was used to jus­tify tor­ture and the tor­turer was not con­demned for his actions. It occurs almost at the end of Dante’s descent into hell, in Canto xxxii of his Commedia.

After fol­low­ing Virgil down through the var­i­ous infer­nal cir­cles, Dante reaches the frozen lake where the souls of trai­tors are trapped up to their necks in ice. Among the dread­ful heads that shout and curse, Dante thinks he rec­og­nizes one, a cer­tain Bocca degli Abati, who had betrayed his party and taken up arms on the side of the enemy. Dante asks the bowed head to tell him his name and, as has been his cus­tom through­out the mag­i­cal jour­ney, promises to bring the sin­ner posthu­mous fame by writ­ing about him when he returns to Earth. Bocca answers that he wishes for the exact oppo­site, and tells Dante to get lost. Furious at the insult, Dante grabs Bocca by the scruff of the neck, threat­en­ing to tear out every hair on his head if he doesn’t give his name. “So snatch me bald,” Bocca taunts (in Deborah Digges’s trans­la­tion). “Go on. I swear/ I will not tell you my name, nor show you/ my face. Go on. Pound my head a thou­sand times.” Dante then pulls “yet another fist­ful,” mak­ing the sin­ner howl in pain. All the while, ­Virgil, Dante’s heav­enly appointed guide, remains silent.

Virgil’s silence can be read as approval. Several cir­cles ear­lier, in Canto viii, as both poets are fer­ried across the River Styx, one of the souls con­demned for the sin of wrath rises from the filthy waters, and as usual Dante asks him who he is. The soul doesn’t give his name and says that he is merely one who weeps, for which Dante, unmoved, curses him hor­ri­bly. Delighted, Virgil takes Dante in his arms and ful­somely praises his ward with words used by Saint Luke to praise Christ. Dante, tak­ing advan­tage of Virgil’s encour­age­ment, says that noth­ing would give him greater plea­sure than to see the sin­ner plunged back into the ghastly swill. Virgil agrees, and the episode ends with Dante giv­ing thanks to God for grant­ing his wish.

Over the cen­turies, com­men­ta­tors have tried to jus­tify Dante’s actions as instances of “noble indig­na­tion” or “just anger,” not a sin like wrath (as one of Dante’s intel­lec­tual mas­ters, St. Thomas Aquinas, main­tained) but the virtue of being roused by the right cause. The prob­lem resides in the read­ing of “right.” In the case of Dante, “right” refers to his under­stand­ing of the unques­tion­able jus­tice of God: to feel com­pas­sion for the damned is “wrong” because it means set­ting one­self against God’s impon­der­able will. Only three can­tos ear­lier, Dante was able to faint with pity when the soul of Francesca, con­demned to whirl for­ever in the wind that pun­ishes the lust­ful, tells him her sad story. But now, advanced in his progress through hell, he is less of a sen­ti­men­tal­ist and more of a believer in the higher author­ity. According to Dante’s faith, the legal sys­tem decreed by God can­not be mis­taken or wicked; there­fore, what­ever it deter­mines must be just, even if the human mind can­not com­pre­hend its valid­ity. Dante’s delib­er­ate act of inflict­ing pain on the pris­oner tor­tured in the ice, and his pruri­ent desire to see the other pris­oner tor­tured in the mire, must be under­stood (these crit­ics say) as hum­ble obe­di­ence to God’s law and accep­tance of supe­rior judgement. 

A sim­i­lar argu­ment is put for­ward today by those argu­ing against the inves­ti­ga­tion and pros­e­cu­tion of the tor­tur­ers. And yet, as almost any reader of Dante will admit, how­ever cogent the the­o­log­i­cal argu­ments may be, these infer­nal pas­sages leave a very bad taste in the mouth. Perhaps the rea­son is that if Dante’s jus­ti­fi­ca­tion lies in the nature of divine will, then instead of Dante’s actions being redeemed by faith, faith is under­mined by Dante’s actions. In much the same way, the implicit con­don­ing of tor­tur­ers, merely because their abu­sive acts took place in the unchange­able past and under the supe­rior judge­ment and law of another admin­is­tra­tion, instead of encoura­ging faith in the present administration’s pol­i­tics, under­mines that faith and those pol­i­tics. Worse still: left unchal­lenged, the old excuse “I merely obeyed orders,” tac­itly accepted by the Obama admin­is­tra­tion, will acquire new pres­tige and serve as prece­dent for future exculpations.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton once observed that “clearly, there could be no safety for a soci­ety in which the remark by the Chief Justice that mur­der was wrong was regarded as an orig­i­nal and daz­zling epi­gram.” The same can be said for a soci­ety that refuses, under any cir­cum­stances what­so­ever, to inves­ti­gate and con­demn the bru­tal­ity of torturers.