Dante's Purgatory at Stansted Airport

Dante’s Purgatory at Stansted Airport

One of the illustrations that Botticelli made for Dante’s Divine Comedy (recently on show at the Courtauld Gallery) is of a cowed gaggle of naked souls arriving on the shores Purgatory. Why do I recall this drawing fresh (or rather stale) from a journey through Stansted Airport?

The image is apt for the scene in the airport’s vast new security shed.

Its dimensions (including unusual height), the big scanning machines with their long and complex conveyor belts, the regimented and regimenting personnel drilling the passengers into meek order by words and gestures, the divestment of coats, belts, shoes, exposure of laptops and liquids – one is immediately, more so than in other more chaotic airports, caught in the palpable process of reduction from ordinary human being into a creature fitted for “Departures”.

This is indeed a temporary afterlife, severed from the real world, pending release into, if not Paradise, the cabin of a Ryanair plane.

Purgatory is a place, in Dante’s imagining, where sins not meriting full damnation are atoned for. Sins are classified by the categories of the traditional Seven Deadly Sins: Pride, Envy, Anger, Sloth, Greed, Gluttony, Lust.

Stansted cannot provide for all of the sins (so I suppose) but manages to cover several.

Immediately after Security, there is the grim prospect of negotiating what the Stansted website boasts (sin of Pride?) as the “largest walk-through World Duty Free”. (It is not stated what “largest” means in this context – world?; Europe?– but presumably “largest” in the UK at least.)

On this walk, any lurking sins of Greed may be thoroughly expiated by an overwhelming excess of perfumes, electronic devices and alcohols, causing appetites to sicken and die.

The newly renovated Departure Lounge is claimed to have 70 per cent more seating. It still manages to feel crammed (perhaps that how they managed it). More seating means less space for people to move about in. Shuffling is what one has to do in most parts of the airport – penance for Lust after low cost air travel. If seated, keep your legs tucked well in.

Sloth is one sin which is thoroughly punished at Stansted, although not without collateral damage. We had boarded our flight. Departure time had come and slipped past. Then an announcement from the captain: some passengers had “missed the Gate” – that is, had arrived there too late to be allowed to board – O slothful ones.

But their hold luggage had been duly checked in and loaded. The bags had to be found and fished out. We all suffered the delay whilst the handlers rootled about.

Of course, it would have been simpler and quicker to allow the tardy passengers to join their bags rather than vice versa – but where would have been the punishment in that?

May 2016