It is true that Dante is "such a many-sided genius that he has a
message for almost every person." It is likewise true that an
allegorical interpretation may be adopted with no belief in the
Hereafter and it may open up many fruitful lessons for the reader. That
being granted, one may still ask whether one can ignore Dante's doctrine
of future rewards and punishment and so get full satisfaction from
treating the poet's conception of the Hereafter as a mere allegory.
The allegory presupposes that sin inevitably brings its own penalty.
But in this life virtue does not always bear its own reward nor is evil
always followed by retribution. Dante as the prophet and the preacher of
Christianity would have us understand, as Benvenuto da Imola points out,
that if the moral law is not vindicated in this life it will be in the
Hereafter, for our acts make our eternity. So the poet holds that while
this life according as it shows the soul in sin, in repentance or in
virtue may be considered allegorically Hell, Purgatory or Heaven, before
the Last Judgment a real Hell, a real Purgatory, a real Heaven is the
abode of disembodied spirits according to their demerits or merits and
after the Last Judgment, Purgatory no longer existing, souls will be in
eternal suffering in Hell or in unending joy in Heaven.
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