Obscure Limbo (Cricle one) and The Library of Babel

01/03/2014

Blog entry 59:

"In Limbo reside the unbaptized and the virtuous pagans, who, though not sinful, did not accept Christ. Limbo shares many characteristics with the Asphodel Meadows; thus the guiltless damned are punished by living in a deficient form of Heaven. Without baptism ("the portal of the faith that you embrace") they lacked the hope for something greater than rational minds can conceive. Limbo includes green fields and a castle with seven gates to represent the seven virtues. The castle is the dwelling place of the wisest men of antiquity, including Virgil himself, as well as the Persian polymath Avicenna. In the castle Dante meets the poets Homer, Horace, Ovid, and Lucan; the Amazon queen Penthesilea; the mathematician Euclid; the scientist Pedanius Dioscorides; the statesman Cicero; the first doctorHippocrates; the philosophers Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Averroes; the historical figures Lucretia, Lucius Junius Brutus, and Julius Caesar in his role as Roman general ("in his armor, falcon-eyed"); mythological characters Hector, Electra, Camilla, Latinus, andOrpheus; and many others. Interestingly, he also sees Saladin in Limbo (Canto IV). Dante implies that all virtuous non-Christians find themselves here, although he later encounters two (Cato of Utica and Statius) in Purgatory and two (Trajan and Ripheus) in Heaven."
(Wikimedia foundation, 2014)

To read this full text follow the link below:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferno_(Dante)
(Wikimedia foundation, 2014)

Limbo is the circle of Hell described in Dante's Inferno, which I find is most closely linked to The Library of Babel due to the lack of physical pain, but the mental suffering described by the Narrator in The Library of Babel seemingly relates to that of Limbo. The feeling of wistful longing for the divine or Heaven, but this being only just further than arms reach or only slightly tangible is seemingly a prominent factor in both of these fictitious situations: In Limbo the inhabitants are aware that heaven exists and they are closest to it, but they are fully aware that they have no chance of reaching there; In The Library of Babel the inhabitants (at least the Narrator) can only speculate that the divine exists and constantly search for this in a futile attempt. The correlation between the feeling of hopelessness is strong with the longing for the divine.

Another similarity between Limbo and the Borges story is that the characters that reside in Limbo consist of Philosophers, Scientists, Theorists, and many more including intelligent men who are similar to those I imagine to inhabit the Library. When a number of those who reside in Limbo are listed very few are women, which is similar to how in Borges' story only men are mentioned (although the term "man" could possibly refer to mankind rather than male).