“In Grand Cayman, Dante’s Inferno comes to life in the form of jagged, black limestone formations that rise from dark, still waters. This creepy but artful landscape, which you cannot trek on but instead view from platforms, deserves its name: Many of the rocks, some resembling stalagmites, are sharp and menacing.” […]
“The more curmudgeonly among us might call the holidays, to (mis)quote David Foster Wallace, “a sneaky keyhole view of hell.” These days, hell is whatever we want it to be: other people (Sartre), ourselves (Oscar Wilde), a half-filled auditorium (Robert Frost). So much of our idea of hell comes from literature, rather than religion–Dante’s and Milton’s allegories, in particular–it’s hard to imagine a time when hell was more geological than metaphorical. Not so long ago, it was thought to be a real physical place beneath the earth’s crust with secret entrances in caves, volcanoes, underground rivers, and bubbling pools of boiling mud.” [. . .] –Megan Cytron, Salon, December 26, 2010
