Dante's Inferno

It is only deep in Malebolge, when the schismatic Bertrand de Born appears carrying his own severed head before him like a lantern, that Dante gives the reader a word for the shape of the torments observed in Hell. “Thus you observe in me the counter-suffering,” Bertrand announces (28.142). Under the law of the “counter-suffering” (contrapasso in Italian), the damned suffer punishments mirroring their besetting sins in life. Thus, Bertrand de Born, who incited murderous hatred among fathers and sons, has his head severed (the father being the “head” of his children); Paolo and Francesca, swept away by their lust, are whirled endlessly in a restless (and unpleasantly moist) storm; Pier della Vigna, who rejected his own human body and life, becomes a bleeding tree—unable to speak unless he is wounded. Even more grimly, the traitors are frozen in ice, their faces bestial: Their treachery is inhuman and paralyses them in their own eternal hatreds.

This is all very grim. However, despite its horrors, the contrapasso is not sadistic. Rather, by definition, it is just. The damned receive exactly what they most highly valued. The revelation of the true nature of their desires is its own punishment.