<Allow me to digress briefly upon what I take to be the principle of the choice for Hell. I think that according to Dante's presentation the principle of that choice is, above all, the unwillingness to be moved by another, to have the source of one's motion outside of oneself. That is why the extreme of Hell is sheer frigid immobility: those who were unwilling to be moved by another are ultimately unable themselves to move; at the furthest point from the unmoved mover Who draws all beings to Himself, we encounter the unmoved movers whose only power-an irresistible power, it seems-is to repel.> William O'Grady, "About Dante's Purgatory."
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...William O'Grady has pointed out that those frozen in the ice perversely imitate God in the sense of being unmoved movers, but rather than moving by attracting us towards them, they move us by repelling us away from them, as evil was understood to do in scholastic philosophy. Thus, since they wanted to be God, Dante makes them godlike but at the farthest distance removed from God.> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dante%27s_Satan#cite_note-Jacoff,_pg._143-1
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<Contrapasso: the poetic justice of Satan
The reason for Satan's eternal punishment was his desire to be as powerful as the Divine. When Satan was cast out of Heaven, he "excavated the underworld cosmos in which the damned are held".[3] Satan's punishment is the opposite of what he was trying to achieve: power and a voice over God. Satan also is, in many ways, "the antithesis of Virgil; for he conveys at its sharpest the ultimate and universal pain of Hell: isolation."[1] It is Virgil, Dante's guide through Hell, who tells Dante "that the inhabitants of the infernal region are those who have lost the good of intellect; the substance of evil, the loss of humanity, intelligence, good will, and the capacity to love."[4] Satan stands at the center because he is the epitome of Dante's Hell....William O'Grady has pointed out that those frozen in the ice perversely imitate God in the sense of being unmoved movers, but rather than moving by attracting us towards them, they move us by repelling us away from them, as evil was understood to do in scholastic philosophy. Thus, since they wanted to be God, Dante makes them godlike but at the farthest distance removed from God.> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dante%27s_Satan#cite_note-Jacoff,_pg._143-1
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