The life of saint Basil the New and Dante's Divine Comedy: the posthumous fate of suicides

The article compares the two most famous eschatological plots in the world culture related to the description of the posthumous state of the human soul. These plots are contained in the “The Life of St. Basil the New” (10th century) and the “Divine Comedy” by Dante. The subject of the study is an artistic presentation of the posthumous fate of suicides, and the goal is a comparative analysis of two versions of the punishment for suicide as the most radical human action. Comparison of the two texts required clarification of their place in the general range of eschatological literature, as well as clarification of hypotheses about the ancient and old Eastern sources of the “Divine Comedy”. The connection of “The Life of Basil the New” with the Old Testament and Christian (including apocryphal) traditions about the other world, as well as the connection of Dante's work with ancient Greek myths about the underworld (in particular, Plato) is traced. The hypothesis that Plato borrowed his eschatological myth from the ancient Armenian legend about Ara the Beautiful is critically considered. The author comes to the conclusion that, despite the common points of content and plot in the two named texts, it is necessary to recognize the difference in their key semantic accents: in the “Divine Comedy” the fate of suicides is depicted immediately after physical death, in the Life of St. Basil the New - their last fate during the Last Judgment. That is why Dante reveals a significant variability in the posthumous state of suicides, while in the Life their final fate is unambiguous. The huge popularity of these literary works indicates that the theme of retribution after death is the most important element of the religious worldview system, in which the universe itself appears as a morally oriented existential topic.