"Everything about man is deception and falsehood."

I like Dali and I bought print "C" (shown on the upper right) on ebay years ago, but the seller knew nothing about the subject material or title, which I only discovered today.

As to the book which inspired Dali, while the original is alleged to be heavily censored, Quevedo's "Visions" has been described as "a brilliant and bitterly satiric account, after Dante and Lucan, of the inhabitants of hell."

In writing "The Vision of Judgment" (considered his "finest finished poem"), Lord Byron used the name of "QUEVEDO REDIVIVUS." (Byron offers a reminder that Hell is paved with good intentions. Catch 22?)

Historically, artists -- especially those from censored or uptight times or backgrounds -- have loved Hell. That's because in Hell all conventional boundaries disappear, and artistic license is virtually unlimited. Relativism is evil, and of course evil is relative. Yet because evil is presumed to be everywhere in Hell, there are no limits. Even presumably "good" men can be placed in Hell and properly belong there. Because religious scolds threaten all of us with Hell, and we are all sinners, no one is immune. Therefore, people can generally be placed in Hell with impunity -- especially in artistic "visions."

Sending people to Hell cloaks an unsafe political attack with the safer mantle of religion.

It's easy to understand why a 16th Century satirist would see Hell as the best possible value. For a satirist like Quevedo (with innumerable powerful enemies in the middle of the Spanish Inquisition) there was no bigger bang for the buck than this kind of Hell:

A parade of the famous, the infamous, and commoners -- whole professional groupings, from innkeepers to poets -- get judged, each approaching it in their own fashion (what a sight the philosophers made, "chopping logic to fashion their syllogisms about salvation"). It's a quick roll-call, but almost each line delivers the targets: "There followed three or four rich Genoese, seeking salvation along with banking concessions." And their fates are also all appropriate -- so the whole gaggle of poets that is sent along with Orpheus back down into the Underworld, "to try whether, as an experiment, they could all emerge again." A nice scene has Judas, Mahommed, and Martin Luther together, each claiming to be the true Christ-betrayer Judas, much to the real one's chagrin.

I'm so glad to own my own private part.

But this is a public blog, and considering the times in which we live, I think Quevedo's quotation of Mohammad "defending his faith" might be of interest to modern readers:

Let it simply be said that I wished my disciples sufficient ill to deprive them of glory in the life hereafter, and pork and wine skins while on Earth. And in the end I decreed that my doctrines should not be defended by reason (for there is none to be found in either obeying or advocating them) so committing them instead into the hands of armed night I set my followers off upon lives of unending din and clamour.

No wonder I'm looking for loopholes.