The second is
when, resuscitated at the judgment day, they shall be finally condemned,
soul and body together.... It may otherwise be understood as
annihilation." Imola says, "Each would wish to die again, if he could, to
put an end to his pain. Do not hold with some who think that Dante calls
the second death the day of judgment," and then quotes a passage from St.
Augustine which favors that view. Pietro di Dante gives us four
interpretations among which to choose, the first being that,
"allegorically, depraved and vicious men are in a certain sense dead in
reputation, and this is the first death; the second is that of the body."
This we believe to be the true meaning. Dante himself, in a letter to the
"most rascally (_scelestissimis_) dwellers in Florence," gives us the
key: "but you, transgressors of the laws of God and man, whom the direful
maw of cupidity hath enticed not unwilling to every crime, does not the
terror of the _second death_ torment you?" Their first death was in their
sins, the second is what they may expect from the just vengeance of the
Emperor Henry VII. The world Dante leads us through is that of his own
thought, and it need not surprise us therefore if we meet in it purely
imaginary beings like Tristrem[195] and Renoard of the club.[196] His
personality is so strongly marked that it is nothing more than natural
that his poem should be interpreted as if only he and his opinions,
prejudices, or passions were concerned.
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