A Gay Ole Time in Daisy-Circle Hell
“Why does your vision linger there below
Among those lost and mutilated shades?”
He asked. I stared at him. Was he so slow?
“It’s obvious. None living in the glades
Of heaven or in Purgatory now
Is nearly so attractive as these men
Who’ve thrown themselves headlong into the Wow
Of Hell—and, yes, would gladly leap again.
The ones in harp-filled highest heaven above
Are filled with boring goodness; even worse,
They’re chock full of that peely-wally love
They call spirituality. Averse
To being tortured for eternity
With such, our men sought Hell’s fraternity.
“Why does your vision linger there below
among those lost and mutilated shadows?” Dante, Inferno, Canto XXIX, lines 5-6
Wow. This one is really really interesting. So much here! To revel in the physical is to embrace death (our mortality), hence the ascetic/dualistic tradition of denying the body and trying then to be “spiritual”/immortal. But just stating it that way is reductive, this is so deep in Western dualism, in Christian asceticism, etc. It’s there in any sort of sexuality (see Dante’s idealized/spiritualized love for Beatrice), but the condemnations have to be felt all the stronger with regard to homosexual impulses, yes? As if it’s a bit harder to claim the same sort of “spiritual” idealized romantic love for homosexual passion when religion has claimed it is necessarily evil and hence NOT of the spirit, but merely carnal/bodily/devilish. And so here the transgressive stance is to embrace that. (Of course in plenty of other poems PW does celebrate love of various sorts as being quite “spiritual” or [mindful], idealistic, poetic, and so on! And he is, after all, saying THIS in a poem! Having read DANTE!!)
Thanks for such a complicated and nuanced reply, Tom.