The Gates of Hell

[Cramulus]

I was just at the Musee d'Orsey in Paris... there's some really incredible art there. One image has been stuck in my head since I saw it.

Rodin, the sculptor, loved Dante's Divine Comedy. Obsessed with it. He set himself to sculpt the door which leads Dante and Virgil into hell.

In the original text, there's an inscription above the door, which usually gets truncated to its last line. Here's the full passage, because it's cool:

Through me the way into the suffering city,
Through me the way to the eternal pain,
Through me the way that runs among the lost.
Justice urged on my high artificer;
My Maker was Divine authority,
The highest Wisdom, and the primal Love.
Before me nothing but eternal things
Were made, and I endure eternally.
Abandon every hope, who enter here.

But if you look above the door in Rodin's sculpture, do you see that inscription?

No... do you know what you do see?

















Take a guess before you scroll down. What would you put above the door to hell?


















Ready for it?













The fucking THINKER.





Why is the Thinker poised above the gate to Hell?



I have my own thoughts on this -- but in the spirit of The Soldier and the Hunchback, maybe it's better to just share that image and not "explain" any further.

[Cramulus]

Okay, so here's what it brings to mind for me...

Reason is something we have to be a little skeptical of. Because reason and intellect is not an end, it's a means. Reason is usually in the service to the emotions. It's like Wilson says - the thinker is slow.

It's very rare to use reason to actually decide something - usually, we make a decision based on emotional factors, and then build a chain of reason as a scaffold underneath it.

And because of this--the fact that most reason is slave to the emotions--you can justify anything. All the horrors of the 20th century had strong, well argued philosophical underpinnings. The thinker, sitting atop the gate to hell, is a warning - that by merely listening to "reason", you can justify hellish and terrible things.





Rodin originally called the figure "The Poet", not the Thinker. So you could imagine that it's Dante contemplating hell. But the musclebound and naked Thinker doesn't match how Dante describes himself in the poem (he's slim and ... fully clothed). I also like to think that the Thinker poised above the gates to hell might be someone lost in indecision, contemplating the suffering he could create through his plans. This positions hell as an internal state, something that's inside of us, emergent from our human sins.

Dante's vision of the afterlife is a place of justice, a place where people get what they sowed in life. Maybe the thinker is guilty, and what we see depicted on the gate is his internal experience of it, his intense experience of his own sins.


there are a few other ways to cut it, but those are some of the things that struck me about that curious image

[Cain]

Some people have suggested The Thinker is Rodin himself.

The curious allure of hell for some thinkers may itself be the first step on the road to it. Having some kind of enarmount and fascination with evil, which inevitably ends up glorifying it no matter how you try to portray it and that goes for Dante as well as Rodin. He cannot critique Dante without being himself guilty of his same sins.

[Faust]

Okay, so here's what it brings to mind for me...

Reason is something we have to be a little skeptical of. Because reason and intellect is not an end, it's a means. Reason is usually in the service to the emotions. It's like Wilson says - the thinker is slow.

It's very rare to use reason to actually decide something - usually, we make a decision based on emotional factors, and then build a chain of reason as a scaffold underneath it.

And because of this--the fact that most reason is slave to the emotions--you can justify anything. All the horrors of the 20th century had strong, well argued philosophical underpinnings. The thinker, sitting atop the gate to hell, is a warning - that by merely listening to "reason", you can justify hellish and terrible things.





Rodin originally called the figure "The Poet", not the Thinker. So you could imagine that it's Dante contemplating hell. But the musclebound and naked Thinker doesn't match how Dante describes himself in the poem (he's slim and ... fully clothed). I also like to think that the Thinker poised above the gates to hell might be someone lost in indecision, contemplating the suffering he could create through his plans. This positions hell as an internal state, something that's inside of us, emergent from our human sins.

Dante's vision of the afterlife is a place of justice, a place where people get what they sowed in life. Maybe the thinker is guilty, and what we see depicted on the gate is his internal experience of it, his intense experience of his own sins.


there are a few other ways to cut it, but those are some of the things that struck me about that curious image

It also has the literal biblical metaphor, the Original Sin was to eat from the tree of knowledge and get the ability to choose.

[Cramulus]

Some people have suggested The Thinker is Rodin himself.

on that note, here's a self portrait I drew

The curious allure of hell for some thinkers may itself be the first step on the road to it. Having some kind of enarmount and fascination with evil, which inevitably ends up glorifying it no matter how you try to portray it and that goes for Dante as well as Rodin. He cannot critique Dante without being himself guilty of his same sins.

it's true - Dante was terrified of hell, but also saw it as a place of divine wisdom, a site for justice

as he takes potshots at his enemies in italy, he seeks to participate in divine justice

It also has the literal biblical metaphor, the Original Sin was to eat from the tree of knowledge and get the ability to choose.

That's a good observation - its knowledge of good and evil that allows sin to happen. That knowledge is also what makes Adam and Eve ashamed of their nudity - so it's interesting that the Thinker is naked.



I also wonder about the three figures above the thinker - the shades



It resonates with Dante's vision, which envisioned Lucifer as a three-headed monster - which is also symmetrical to the holy trinity.

But "shades" are how Dante describes the dead you see in the afterlife - so who are these three?

[Fujikoma]

Larry, Curly, and Moe? Or perhaps Shemp. Anyway, never mind that. I'll be checking back up on this thread from time to time to read.

[Faust]

They don't look especially malevolent, and look put upon enough to be shades, if it is Lucifer it makes him sympathetic looking, I assume this was this sculpted before before Paradise Lost?
I'm at a loss, 3 headed beast guarding the gates of the underworld, Cerberus (the sculptor was was furry, what they are doing with their hands is known as "Yiffing")

[Bruno]

I would have gone with Kilroy.

Rodin was a bit early for that, though.

[minuspace]

[size=78%]- so who are these three?[/size]

Records indicate that they have previously been identified as Guido Guerra, Tegghiaio Aldobrandi and Jacobo Rusticucci[/size].[size=78%]

It's very rare to use reason to actually decide something - usually, we make a decision based on emotional factors, and then build a chain of reason as a scaffold underneath it.

the story I keep on telling myself is that as long as people are going to hell, free will works for me.

[rong]

i was thinking "shades" was alluding to "hades" with makes me think cerberus, too.

i also think the thinker<=> tree of knowledge analogy is a good one.

you might say that without knowledge of good and evil, there is no thinking - so it is thinking that opens the door to hell. . . ignorance really is bliss?? or something like that