How does it look like in hell?„The Converted” by Bolesław Prus

Abstract

The motifs of evil, Satan and hell have beenpresent in literature since its origin. Bolesław Prus’short story The Convertedshows hell and its inhabitants –both devils and the damned –through the eyes of the main character: Mr. Luke. In the old man’s dreamy vision, hell emerges as a „world turned upside-down”, a „world turned backwards”. It is not the look of hell orforms of damnation that are the most important here though, but theiressence. As for Prus, hell belongs to the spiritual realm, and its constitutive characteristics are: boredom, stagnation, stupidity, apathy, laziness, sluggishness. The inferno is a state characterized by constancy and motionlessness – „the fossilized world”, the reality devoid of mobility, development and progress. In Prus’ vision, hell frightens not so much with the presence of evil and forms of punishment experienced by the condemned but with the possibility of remaining in „the eternal monotony” -suspending in the space of hopelessness.