The Dante Curriculum: Introduction with Excerpts (The Dante Sampler)

Introduction with Excerpts

BY JOE CARLSON

Also in this series:

Inferno: Book One of the Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri, translated by Joe Carlson

Inferno: Reader’s Guide, by Joe Carlson

Purgatorio: Book Two of the Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri, translated by Joe Carlson

Purgatorio: Reader’s Guide, by Joe Carlson

Paradiso: Book Three of the Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri, translated by Joe Carlson

Paradiso: Reader’s Guide, by Joe Carlson

The Dante Curriculum: Introduction with Excerpts, by Joe Carlson

First Edition

Copyright © 2024 by Roman Roads Press

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The Dante Curriculum: Introduction with Excerpts, by Joe Carlson Roman Roads Press / Roman Roads Classics

ISBN: 978-1-963505-07-8

Version 1.0.0 May 2024

INTRODUCTION

Thank you for your interest in the Dante Curriculum! I am so excited for you to get a feel for the most comprehensive Dante curriculum to date. This curriculum contains:

1. A new blank verse translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy (available in paperback, hardback, kindle, and audiobook formats);

2. Three canto-by-canto Reader’s Guides (one each for Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso) which include summaries, textual notes, analyses, and discussion questions;

3. The Dante Lectures (in both video and print formats): nearly ten hours of lectures covering the whole Comedy with comprehensive introductions to each of the three canticles, and a further canto-by-canto explication of the whole poem;

4. The Dante Lectures: Teacher’s Edition, which includes the lecture notes, sample exams, answers keys (for both the exams and the discussion questions in the Reader’s Guides), scheduling options, a selection of essays, and a select bibliography for further study; and

5. The Interlinear Dante, in which each line of the original Italian is given with the English translation directly below it.

My name is Joe Carlson, and I am the translator/author of this curriculum. It has been a real delight putting this together for you. In what follows you will find all the available materials related to Canto 3 of Inferno : a couple sections from the preface to all three canticles, the text (both the blank verse and interlinear translations), the corresponding chapter from the Reader’s Guide, the relevant portions from the lectures, the answer key to the discussion questions, and two essays we hope you will find helpful.

The primary goal of this curriculum, whether you are a teacher, student, or a life-long learner, is to give you handles with which to get a better grip on one of the most important, beautiful, and difficult poems ever written. Like Dante, it is my greatest hope and prayer that you walk away from the pages of the Comedy knowing Jesus Christ that much better, and are that much more confirmed in your allegiance to His Lordship. To that end I bring my experience as a reformed evangelical pastor and teacher to these pages, explicating the underlying theological truths that give structure and meaning to the poem. While Dante was definitely a man of his time, holding to doctrines that we might not believe to have Scriptural precedent, there is far more to agree with than disagree with. For my money Dante is the greatest poet on the Trinity, the greatest poet on the preeminence of Christ, the greatest poet on the richness and allusiveness of Creation that has ever lived. The encyclopedic nature of his poem only serves to highlight the complete and exhaustive nature of Christ’s dominion over every aspect of the human experience. With the pilgrim we learn what it means to live faithfully, submissively, and worshipfully beneath that dominion, honoring God as God and giving Him thanks.

This is the great theme that I hope you will see highlighted in my translation as well as in all the supplementary material. In Canto 10 of Paradiso , Beatrice says:

“Give thanks, give thanks to the Sun of angels who to this sphere of perceiving, has raised you by His grace.”

(Paradiso, X.52–54)

Dante narrates his response:

Heart of mortal was never so disposed to devotion, to give itself to God so swiftly with all its grateful assent as I then made my own at her urging; indeed, all my love fixed itself on Him that Beatrice was eclipsed, and forgot.

(Paradiso, X.55–60)

I believe (and argue elsewhere) that this sits at the heart of Dante’s project. This is what he wants for you, as you read through the Comedy : a heart made so swift to give itself to the Lord in adoration and worship, that every means by which you arrive at that place is “eclipsed, and forgot.” The final goal is not the accomplishment of reading Dante, it is not a complete understanding of the poem, it is not the educational context in which this is probably being read. Your final goal, as was the pilgrim’s, is the beatific vision. It is to see and know God, revealed through the face of Jesus Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, and to live in a state of gratitude and worship before our Maker and Redeemer. Everything in this world, this curriculum included, is a tool in His hands to accomplish that end. It is my prayer for myself as I continue to enjoy this poem and what it points to; it is my prayer for you as well.

Joe Carlson April 2024

FROM THE PREFACE

to the blank verse translations of Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso

Another Translation?

To date there are over one hundred translations of the whole Comedy or of an individual canticle from the original Italian into English. So why another one? Obviously I can’t speak for every translator, but I am convinced that no one translates Dante first and foremost for the sake of others. Translating the Comedy is entirely a selfish affair. One translates Dante to know Dante that much better; to grapple with the medieval Italian; to be able to transform his mother tongue into one’s own; to try and rehearse the story with words and phrases that have more immediacy to a non-Italian speaker. At least that was why I wanted to take up this project. Since I first revisited him almost a decade ago, I have read the Comedy many times, in multiple translations (I have collected almost twenty different versions over the years) as well as the rest of Dante’s works. I have also had occasion to do some scholarly work on both the Comedy and his lesser known philosophical treatise, the Convivio . The time had come to stop writing about Dante, and to stop reading Dante as conceived by others, and to read him in his original tongue. Fortunately, modern Italian is virtually built on Dante’s own Tuscan dialect, as represented in his poetry. While there are quite a few Latinisms and medievalisms (he died 700 years ago after all), a reading knowledge of Italian, along with a couple of good commentaries on the Italian text (to be mentioned below) is sufficient to get one started in the original.

And so the translation project began. Initially, I was going to be content creating an interlinear version, where the English translation appears beneath each line in the Italian, maintaining the Italian word order. But then I decided to transpose that very literal, very wooden translation into a readable English prose. (That work can be found in a separate volume published by Roman Roads Press.) However, that is when things started getting out of control. My love for Dante’s work grew into a desire to share that work with others. I started creating a study guide for some unknown set of students, complete with legends, summaries, analyses, and discussion questions (also available as part of this series). And finally, having published a few volumes of original poetry myself, I couldn’t help but envision a poetic edition of my own creation. Thus the volume you are holding was born. It began as a desire to know Dante better, for my own pleasure. But there is such richness here, it will not stay contained. It must be shared.

Which is why there will always be room for more translations. Each translation is an opportunity to share in someone else’s delight in this poem, to catch a bit of the excitement from their own time with the Florentine. That delight will naturally focus on different aspects of the poem, based on the interests and leanings of the translator: theological, cosmological, political, anthropological, or what have you. But that delight is the key ingredient. You cannot get on in any kind of education or growth or self-improvement without delight. Delight is the only thing that takes the lesson being learned and drives it deep into the bones. This book is an invitation to you to share with me in my own delight in the richness of this poem.

Why Blank Verse?

Dante wrote his Comedy in what is known as terza rima , or, basically, rhyming tercets. They are eleven syllable lines (with a few exceptions), broken into three line stanzas, with a rhyme scheme of ABA BCB CDC, DED and so forth. To replicate this I chose the time-tested common meter of English blank verse. Blank verse is an unrhymed, ten syllable line, usually broken up into five iambic feet (iambic indicating the location of the stresses: da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM, daDUM). Other translators have used different schemes. Dorothy Sayers, memorably, tried to replicate Dante’s terza rima exactly; Clive James, more recently, chose rhyming quatrains to replicate each rhyming tercet; the Hollanders used something closer to free verse (meaning without rhyme or a consistent meter). And then others, like Durling, skip the poetry altogether, and simply replicate the meaning of the Italian in English prose. Each approach has its benefits and its challenges. I chose blank verse because a rhyming scheme constrains the English too much, in my opinion, often forcing a funky syntax; with so many inversions the text becomes difficult to read. Notice the difference between the following translations of the opening Italian tercet:

Sayers

Midway this way of life we’re bound upon, I woke to find myself in a dark wood, Where the right road was wholly lost and gone.

James

At the mid-point of the path through life, I found myself lost in a wood so dark, the way

ahead was blotted out. The keening sound I still make shows how hard it is to say…

Hollander

Midway in the journey of our life I came to myself in a dark wood, for the straight way was lost.

Durling

In the middle of the journey of our life, I came to myself in a dark wood, for the straight way was lost.

Sayers captures Dante’s rhyme scheme. James, with his quatrains, gives himself room to communicate more of the meaning of the Italian. Hollander is more literal, a very close approximation of the Italian words, but with a poetic slant. Durling is the most literal, with an exact word-for-word replication in prose. However, Sayers has to modify normal English syntax, and add extra words to accomplish her goal, however admirable. This leads to communicating more than what Dante originally intended. James too, with his extra line, in unpacking the sense often adds more than what Dante put in, almost explaining too much, and not letting the original vision of the poet take precedence. Hollander’s translation, while quite literal, reads more like prose broken up into lines than poetry. And Durling’s is prose. What I wanted to do (and I don’t claim that I have done it perfectly) is to be as literal as Durling and Hollander are, while maintaining a true poetic feel. Here is my interlinear translation of these same lines, so you get a feel of the Italian:

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita In the middle of the course of our life

mi ritrovai per una selva oscura me I found in a wood dark

ché la diritta via era smarrita. for the right way was lost.

And here, as you will soon read, is my blank verse rendition:

In the middle of the course of our life, I came to myself in a darkened wood, because the right direction had been lost.

I bolded the stresses to show that I don’t use a consistent iambic pentameter (like in the third line), as that has the danger of becoming sing-songy. While appropriate for shorter poems, like sonnets, long-form poetry in straight iambs could become intolerable. For comparison’s sake, here is H. F. Cary’s 1805 translation of these lines, which maintains a consistent iambic pentameter:

In the midway of this our mortal life

I found me in a gloomy wood, astray Gone from the path direct; and e’en to tell…

To be clear, I don’t at all make these comparisons to claim superiority. They are very fine translations, and accomplish what the translators set out to do. I am merely explaining my own preference in order to give background to what you are about to read. And to that end, here are four tips for reading poetry in general, and this volume in particular:

1. Allow the natural stresses of the words to dictate the flow of the sentence. Different words have different stress lengths, depending on the placement of the vowels and the number of consonants. For example

the words “to” and “flinch” are both one syllable words, but you can tell one takes less time to say than the other. Furthermore, a short word like “to” naturally leads you into the next word (ending with a vowel as it does), whereas you want to land on “flinch” a little, taking just a moment before moving on. Read the following naturally, while paying attention to the space you give between the words: “to flinch means to make a quick movement in reaction to something.” Notice the lack of space following the three instances of “to,” and the space following the harder sounds of “flinch,” “make,” “quick,” and “movement.” This is how the English language works, and you shouldn’t fight it when reading, especially when reading poetry.

2. Read according to the punctuation, not the line break. The line breaks because the number of syllables allotted that line have been used up, not because a breath is required. Pay attention to the natural breaks in the syntax: the commas, the semi-colons, the periods. Also, like I mentioned above, pay attention to the flow of the words themselves, and let the natural stresses dictate your annunciation and your rests.

3. Read the poem aloud and slowly. Taste the words on your tongue. Let their sounds fill your eustachian tubes, bringing the words directly to your ears, as well as traveling around your cheeks and hitting them from the outside. This process will encourage and cultivate your ability to enter into the story, imaginatively accepting the imagery of the poem as the landscape you are inhabiting.

4. Lastly, for extra credit, you can listen for moments of alliteration (repetition of certain consonants), assonance (repetition of certain vowel sounds), parallelisms, and chiasmi. But these are the technical aspects of the poetry, more fitting as background than the

main show. Therefore, it is not necessary to pay strict attention to them, though they are there.

It can seem daunting, I know. And as many have said, once you have read the Comedy straight through, you are finally ready to read the Comedy . But as I said above, the goal of the first read through is simply to enjoy it, and gather what you can, without worrying about getting everything. No one can possibly gather every breadcrumb Dante puts down the first time through. But it is a poem that rewards multiple read throughs, our appreciation growing richer and deeper each time, as well as the harvest of blessing it offers to our own walks with the Lord. Dante is teaching us what it means to be human, to live before God and before one another. It is a lesson we need to learn many times over.

FROM THE DANTE LECTURES

LESSON 1

INTRODUCTION

Welcome! I am very excited for you as you begin this journey through what I believe is the greatest poem ever written: La Commedia , written by the thirteenth-century Florentine poet, Dante Alighieri. Boccaccio, another great Florentine author, coming a generation after Dante, used the adjective Divina (or divine) to describe the poem, and from that moment forward, the poem has been known as the Divine Comedy .

I love this poem. I have read it many times, in different translations as well as in the original Italian. I have also produced my own original translation, which I will be referencing in this series of lectures. Not that there was any great need for another translation. There are over one hundred English versions that exist, and many of them are very good. My translation was born out of the desire to know what Dante himself said in his own mother tongue. Also, I wanted to bring the richness of his poetry into an English that everyone could understand. Reading certain older translations can sometimes give the student the impression that Dante was somewhat stuffy and academic, as if he were writing for the upper classes only. But nothing could be further from the truth. In a letter to a friend and patron, Dante described his style as, “unstud-

ied and lowly, as being in the vulgar tongue, in which even women-folk hold their talk.” In an age when most great works were written in Latin and only the highly educated could read them, Dante composed his epic poem in the Tuscan dialect, so that even the peasants could understand what he was saying. In other words, this was a poem for everyone, and it still is.

In this series of lectures, there is no way to cover everything Dante packs into this magnificent poem. We could spend a whole year studying this great work and still only be scratching the surface. It is also one of those stories that rewards repeat readings at different stages of life. Reading the poem as a teenager is a different experience than reading it as a twenty-something. Same with picking it back up in your thirties or forties or later. Dante has so written and structured his poem as to force us to identify with the pilgrim in different ways at different stages of life. And the different seasons that still lay ahead of us will shape how we read the poem, as Dante’s own personal struggles become more and more relevant to our own.

To give you a brief outline of what you’re in for, after this opening and introductory lecture, there will be an introductory lecture for each canticle, one each for Inferno , Purgatorio , and Paradiso . These will address the larger themes of the poem as they are developed in each part. Following this a series of shorter lectures will work through the narrative itself, tackling about four to five cantos at a time. Then a final concluding lecture will hopefully tie everything together. While this lecture series will give you a working understanding of the poem, my three reader’s guides that accompany this new translation, allow you to go deeper into the historical, mythological, theological, and political contexts of the story. My hope for you, between this series and the guides, is that you gain an appreciation of the poem that will give you a desire to come back to

it time and again in different stages of life, and to be shaped by the rich truths it presents. So let’s get started!

Who was Dante Alighieri?

Dante Alighieri was born in 1265 into a noble Florentine family loyal to the Guelph party. On the surface, being a Guelph meant you preferred the authority of the pope to the authority of the emperor. But for most of the thirteenth century the autonomy of the self-governed Florence was threatened more by power hungry emperors than by power hungry popes. And so many of the Guelphs sided with the pope simply in order to get the emperor off their back. The Ghibellines were the opposing party that sided with the emperor. Five years before his birth, in 1260, the Guelphs suffered a major defeat at the battle of Monteperti, a battle that haunts the pages of the Comedy , especially Inferno . This is the tension Dante was born into. In 1289, at the battle of Campaldino, the Guelphs won a decisive victory, and established a Guelph state that would last for a number of decades. Dante, at the ripe age of twenty-four, fought in this battle, and fought well. Around six or seven years later, shortly after the publication of his Vita Nuova , his first book of poetry, he enrolled in the Guild of Physicians and Apothecaries, a first step in his political career. Over the next few years we have a couple of records of his civic contributions, showing how he acted as an ambassador or delegate to various meetings and councils, speaking successfully on behalf of Florence. During this time, he also attended the three religious schools in Florence, studying both religion and philosophy with the Augustinians, the Dominicans, and the Franciscans. Then, in the late

spring of 1300, he was elected to serve, for a two-month term, as one of the six Priors, the highest office in the independent republic of Florence.

In order to understand what happens in the next few years of Dante’s life, years that would prove pivotal to the formation of the western canon of great literature, you need to understand the political tensions that were tearing Florence apart. After the Guelph victory in 1289, the Guelph party itself broke into two factions, the White Guelphs and the Black Guelphs. The Whites were the faction who sided with the pope only to get the emperor off their backs. Now that they did not fear intrusion from that quarter, they wanted the current pope, the notorious Boniface VIII, to keep his hands out of Florentine politics. The Blacks, as you might have guessed, were in favor of papal overlordship by means of a representative. The tension between the two factions had grown violent, and in the summer of 1300, while Dante was one of the Priors, the leadership decided to exile certain key members from both the White and the Black parties, with the hope of bringing peace to Florence. In the fall of 1301, with the White Guelphs still in relative control of Florence, Dante and others were sent as an embassy to Rome, in order to protest a certain papal policy aimed at bringing Florence under the control of the pope. While he and his fellow ambassadors were gone, the representative of Boniface VIII, Charles of Valois, forced his way into Florence, and, with the Black Guelphs, took control. Within two months (in January of 1302) they accused Dante and his fellow ambassadors of conspiracy against the pope and against Charles, confiscated and destroyed their property, and banished them from Florence for two years. However, just two months later in March of 1302, Dante and twelve others were condemned to death, should they at any time be captured by Florentine officials. This made his exile perma -

nent. All this happened while Dante was still in Rome. He was therefore never able to return home. His wife and children stayed in Florence, as they were provided for by her side of the family. Devastated and now destitute, Dante and his fellow exiles, appear to have joined with the Ghibellines near Siena, hoping to achieve a negotiated return to Florence. In 1304, however, it became clear that this would never happen. He wandered all over the Italian peninsula, taking patronage and hospitality where he could find it. There is some evidence he traveled outside of Italy as well, his earliest biographers mentioning Paris and even Oxford, though corroborating evidence of Dante studying at these locations is scant. During this time he began to write his philosophical treatise, the Convivio . This was abandoned however in favor of the Comedy , which he began to write somewhere around 1307. Over the next ten years, while continuing to compose the Comedy , he also began a work defending the vernacular as a valid literary language, which he ironically wrote in Latin, called Eloquentia De Vulgari . Additionally, he penned a political treatise on the necessity of imperial rule, called De Monarchia . After the betrayal at the hands of his fellow Guelphs and the treachery of Boniface VIII, his own political convictions leaned more toward the Ghibelline, though he was by this time disgusted with both parties, and he distanced himself from both. In 1316 he was granted permission to return to Florence, but only under certain degrading conditions, including fines and public penance. Assured of his complete innocence, Dante refused. Four years later, in 1320, Paradiso was complete. On September 14, 1321, the great poet died in Ravenna, where he had been living with his son and daughter. Because the main protagonist of the Comedy is Dante himself, his biography plays an important role in understand-

ing the narrative of the poem, and so I will be referencing certain events from his life from time to time.

What is the Comedy ?

The Divine Comedy , or just the Comedy as I will be referring to it, is an epic poem written in three parts, called canticles. Each canticle consists of a series of chapters, or cantos. Each canticle has thirty-three cantos, with an introductory canto tacked onto the front end of Inferno , giving the poem a total of one hundred. Each canto consists of a varying number of tercets, or three-lined stanzas. Each of the 14,233 lines, with a few exceptions, has eleven syllables, giving each stanza a total of thirty-three syllables. Furthermore, Dante invented a rhyme scheme for this poem called terza rima , which means, third rhyme. It is an interlocking of three rhyme words where, excepting the first stanza, the last word of the first and third line of each tercet rhyme with the last word of the second line of the previous tercet. Once the canto gets going, the triple rhyme is easy to pick out: ABA BCB CDC DED EFE GEG, and so forth. Taking this all together, you would be right to think that the number 3 plays an important role in the poem. But more on that later.

When considering the title of the poem, La Commedia , or the Comedy , our first instinct might be to think of sit-coms or slap-sticks, produced primarily with the intention to make people laugh. While there are a few moments of farce in Dante’s poem, that is not the primary meaning of the word as he understood it. In the same letter I quoted earlier, the poet says,

From this it is clear that the present work is to be described as a comedy. For if we consider the subject-matter, at the

beginning it is horrible and foul, as being Hell; but at the close it is happy, desirable, and pleasing, as being Paradise. As regards the style of language, the style is unstudied and lowly, as being in the vulgar tongue, in which even women-folk hold their talk. And hence it is evident why the work is called a comedy.1

In this sense, a comedy is a story which moves from darkness to light, from suffering to flourishing, from death to life, from Hell to Heaven. Dante’s Comedy is a poem of hope and maturation, as the pilgrim moves up and out of sin and death and into life and blessedness. At its core, it is a story of salvation and redemption, with repentance and faith in Jesus Christ at the very heart of the drama. But it is also a story for everyone, and about everyone, written in the common tongue, so that everyone could understand and enjoy it.

As much as modern secular commentators might try to ignore it, the Comedy is a deeply Christian poem. At the very heart of it is the magnification of the Triune God. This will be a theme explored in more detail at the end of Purgatorio , and almost everywhere in Paradiso , but it is an undercurrent throughout the entire poem. Even in Hell, though Christ is never named directly out of reverence for His holiness, His person and His actions give definition to the whole infernal realm.

The central plot of the Comedy follows the story of a man who wakes up in the wee hours of the morning on Good Friday, 1300, only to find himself lost in a dark wood. To help him escape, a guide is sent to lead the pilgrim down through Hell. Traveling all the way through the center of the Earth, the pair arrive on the other side of the globe, on the shores of Mount

1 Dante Alighieri, The Letters of Dante , trans. by Paget Toynbee (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966), 201.

Purgatory, on the morning of Easter Sunday. From there he is led up the mountain to the very top, where a second guide ushers him into the heavenly realm, through the nine spheres of the medieval cosmos, and into the very presence of God. There he sees the incalculable host of redeemed saints, from both before the birth of Christ and after. Finally he stands before the Triune God, standing face to face with Jesus. This final vision lasts only for a moment before the poem comes to an end. But not before his salvation is achieved and his perfection in the love of Christ is made complete.

To speak anachronistically, the Comedy as a whole is Dante’s personal testimony. It is the story of a lost man coming to faith in Jesus, and what that does to his soul. More broadly, it is the story of every man and woman; it is our story, and the two trajectories open to us: rebellion against the One who created all things, leading us to Hell, or faith in the atoning work of Jesus, leading us to Heaven. In this sense the poem is an allegory, a work containing many different meanings, operating on many different levels, all of which work together. On the literal level is the story of Dante the pilgrim waking up in a dark wood. On the allegorical level, it is the story detailing the consequences of man’s actions. Dante himself wanted us to read and understand both meanings within the text. It is this layered interpretation that makes the poem so eminently relevant to us. We too are pilgrims on a dangerous and transformative journey; with the pilgrim we must recognize the destructiveness of sin and the necessity of sanctification and the power of God’s love for us in Christ to make us whole once again.

In Hell, we are given a glimpse of the corrupting influence of sin over every aspect of human nature, turning every soul away from its Maker, taking from them the good of their rational powers. In Purgatory, we are given a picture of the

sanctification accomplished by the work of the Spirit in both individuals and communities, as the redeemed strive for holiness, to work out the salvation God has worked into them, to make their calling and election sure through the pursuit of virtue. In Paradise, we are given a Christ-centered, Christ-saturated perspective on all human activity, with particular attention given to how all of creation was formed to reflect the majesty of God.

The Comedy as a poem invites us into the experience of these realms in order to shape not only our minds but our affections as well. Through the different episodes in the pilgrim’s journey, the different things he sees and people he meets, we are being taught both how to think and how to feel—how to love what God loves and hate what He hates.

Two Dantes

Part of the brilliance of the Comedy is the difference that exists between Dante the poet and Dante the pilgrim, though this can be confusing to the beginning reader. How does this work? Dante wrote the poem, but Dante is also the main character of the poem. Dante the poet knows the whole trajectory of the story, whereas Dante the pilgrim is walking through the story, one episode at a time. Dante the poet speaks through the various characters, achieving a polyphony of voices and postures toward God (some right, some wrong), whereas Dante the pilgrim is interacting with each character on their own terms. Finally, and perhaps most confusingly, Dante the poet makes it clear that Dante the pilgrim is not always right in his understanding. In fact, he is often wrong or misguided. The pilgrim asks questions and reveals assumptions that his guides, and even many of the souls he encounters, have to cor-

rect. While this is not clearly stated anywhere, I think the main reason Dante the poet does this is to identify himself with us, identify with our own misunderstandings, our own false assumptions, and our own failures to see the correct answer, or to see in the correct way. It is part of Dante’s genius that he is able to do this in such a way that we often forget about the poet, because we are walking so closely with the pilgrim.

Church and State

One important aspect of the Comedy we need to address before diving in is the relationship between the Church and the State. In his political treatise, De Monarchia , Dante argues that man has two ends, two ways to answer the question, what is man for—one temporal, one eternal. The first consists of man’s happiness in this life only—man was made to be happy in this life—whereas the second, as Dante says, “consists in the enjoyment of the countenance of God, to which man’s natural powers may not attain unless aided by divine light.” He goes on to argue that there are different “means” of approaching these two ends, and it’s worth quoting him at length:

To the former [that is, temporal happiness] we come by the teachings of philosophy, obeying them by acting in conformity with the moral and intellectual virtues; to the latter through spiritual teachings which transcend human reason, and which we obey by acting in conformity with the theological virtues, Faith, Hope, and Charity. Now the former end and means are made known to us by human reason, which the philosophers have wholly explained to us; and the latter by the Holy Spirit, which has revealed to us supernatural but essential truth through the Prophets and Sacred Writers, through Jesus Christ, the coeternal Son of God, and through His disciples.

Nevertheless, human passion would cast all these behind, were not men, like horses astray in their brutishness, held to the road by bit and rein.2

He goes on to explain that the “bit and rein” are the twin authorities of the State and the Church, equally and separately authorized by God to perform their different functions in this world: the authority of the State was established by God to aid in man’s first end, that is happiness in this life; and the Church to aid in his second, that is, eternal security in Christ. By the State, Dante means an idealized form of world government based on the Roman Empire, led by a benevolent and Christian emperor, living in submission to the teachings of the Church, which at that point in time was led by the pope. Both heads answered directly to Christ, who reigns supreme over both realms. However, since even temporal, earthly happiness is only possible when the Gospel is understood and lived out, the Church holds ultimate authority over the principles by which the state governs. Therefore, as Dante concludes his treatise, “Let Caesar therefore show that reverence towards Peter which a firstborn son should show his father, so that, illumined by the light of paternal grace, he may the more effectively light up the world, over which he has been placed by Him alone who is ruler over all things spiritual and temporal.” This separation of temporal and eternal things into two realms is seen throughout the Comedy . It is the difference between Dante’s two guides, Virgil and Beatrice, the difference between natural law and divine law, classical sources and biblical sources. It would be easy for us to read that and see a divide between what we might call the secular and the sacred, physical things over here, spiritual things over there; but that

2 Dante Alighieri, De Monarchia , trans. Prue Shaw (Princeton Dante Project, August 1, 2022), III.xvi.5, dante.princeton.edu.

is not how Dante would see it. Both halves of Dante’s world are beneath Him “who is ruler over all things spiritual and temporal.” Natural law, the laws we can deduce from how the world works, are just as much an expression of God’s nature and character as divine law, the laws we find in Scripture, though they are not as comprehensive or articulate. Dante knew that unbelievers, like the Greek philosopher Aristotle or the Roman poet Virgil, had access to the truth that God’s creation revealed. And, it turns out, that is quite a lot of truth. Creation cannot reveal how man is to be reconciled to God, but it does reveal that there is a God, that certain things are right and certain things are wrong. There is much in Aristotle that Christians can agree with, and be edified by. His understanding of virtue and vice, for instance, is largely true, though as Christians we might tinker with it here and there. This is an expression of the law of God that has been written on our hearts as His image bearers.

Within the poem, Dante’s Virgil becomes the representative of natural reason by common grace, and is therefore able to know a great deal about vice, about virtue, and about the nature of man. He is not always right, but neither is he always wrong. Most of the time, his knowledge is simply incomplete. He can only bring Dante part of the way; only Beatrice, the representative of perfected reason, reason renewed by the Holy Spirit, reason shaped by Scripture, only she can take the pilgrim all the way to his ultimate end. Only she can lead him to Christ.

In populating his different realms, the poet brings in characters both from the pages of Scripture and from classical and mythological sources. His point is simple: that which is true in the world is true, whether or not it is revealed in the Bible. The Bible carries an authority that classical sources do not, but wherever truth is found, it is still God’s truth. As

Augustine famously said, “let every good and true Christian understand that wherever truth may be found, it belongs to his Master.” Dante felt this principle deep in his bones. He saw the vast sum of human experience, recorded in history and myth, as a storehouse of truth; not that there actually was a god named Jupiter, for example, but that the legends and myths surrounding Jupiter could actually communicate something true about our experiences as human beings in this world. Therefore, those legends and myths exist as helpful stories to form the imagination, as long as that formation happened under the authority of Scripture. In other words, as Christians we do not need to fear these ancient stories. They are part of an integrated whole already governed by Christ. Using temporal things to point to eternal things is central to Dante’s project, and it is part of what makes the Comedy relevant to our own time and place.

How to Read the Comedy

For the rest of this opening lecture, I want to dive into the first canto of Inferno with you, because it functions as a prologue to the rest of the story. As such, it gives us a key to interpret everything else we are about to encounter. If you haven’t read it yet, go ahead and read the first canto now, and then come back. It won’t take you more than eight minutes or so. Ready? Here we go. As with anything we read, first lines matter. They set the trajectory for the whole journey. “In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth.” That opening verse sets the stage for everything that comes after, from Genesis 1:2 to Revelation 22:21. The same is true here. Dante opens his poem with the famous words, Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita . Even if you don’t know any Ital-

ian, there is a chance you have heard that line before: “In the middle of the course of our life.” The next two lines go on to say, “I came to myself in a darkened wood / because the right direction had been lost.” This opening sentence is significant for two reasons: first, it situates the poem in a very particular and unique experience, the experience of the first person narrator. Right away we are introduced to a real and particular character who wakes up all of a sudden in a dark wood, having lost the right way. We are the audience, watching the actions of the character presented to us in the text. And yet, at the same time, this is the journey di nostra vita , of our life. In this way Dante the poet identifies that particular individual with us, with the universal experience of all people everywhere. Therefore, this is the journey of every pilgrim in every age. It is the journey of every soul in this life, moving either toward God or away from Him, either oriented around the Supreme Good, or distracted and deceived by false images of that good.

The Comedy is of course high art—in my opinion, the highest art that has been conceived by the mind of man. And yet unlike a painting or a sculpture that is meant to be admired from a distance, the Comedy is more like a roller coaster, for which Dante has just taken your ticket. And here at these opening lines, you might be looking ahead at the twists and turns of the ride, having second thoughts about whether to go or stay behind. However, as you begin to read, Dante is standing there, demanding that you get in, sit down, and shut up. Buckle up and enjoy the ride.

And so as we enter into this poem, taking our first steps on the path, accompanying the pilgrim on this journey that is our life, a journey which will culminate before the face of Christ, either as Judge or Redeemer, we need to understand how Dante wants us to read this poem. There are several

things we could talk about but, to my mind, the most important aspect of this opening tercet is how Dante the poet has situated his pilgrim in a particular moment in history. Moses writes in Psalm 90 that the years of our life are three score and ten, that is seventy years. Half of seventy is thirty-five. Dante is placing his pilgrim at the midpoint of the years of our life, meaning at the age of thirty-five. Remembering that Dante was born in 1265, this gives us the year 1300 AD. And this is confirmed by other indications later in the poem. The question becomes, why this date? It is likely that Dante started composing his poem somewhere between 1307 and 1310. So why did he choose this moment in time for the pilgrim’s journey of redemption and hope? What was going on in Dante’s life during this time that would justify it being likened to a darkened wood, in which he just woke up having lost the right direction?

It is common to point to Dante’s exile, the most traumatic event he ever suffered, an event that would define his own trajectory as an author and poet, an event that produced the work we are about to read together. The problem is, Dante Alighieri, you will remember, was not exiled until January of 1302. If we are to take seriously the fictional date of this poem as the spring of 1300, then the exile cannot be a direct reason for him coming to himself in a darkened wood, for that event had not yet happened within the chronology of the story. The real reason, as I see it, is far more interesting. Think back to his biography. Between the years 1289 and 1300, Dante’s star is on the rise. He is already a moderately well known and popular poet, who then performs well in the great battle that restored Guelph dominance in Florence; he becomes an even more well known poet through the publication of his Vita Nuova ; he enters into public service with diplomatic success; and then is elected to the highest

office of Florence—all of this culminating in the summer of 1300. Does this sound like a darkened wood to you? Does this sound like someone for whom the right direction has been lost? Not at all, right? This is Dante at the top of his game. He has made it, socially and politically speaking. He has the acclaim of the city, he has literary popularity and political power. He has arrived.

Now we know that in under two years this will all come crashing down around him, and he will, on pain of death, never set foot in Florence again. But in the spring of 1300, Dante has no clue any of that is going to happen. So what in the world is Dante the poet saying here, at the beginning of the Comedy ? Why does he choose 1300 for his narrative, and not, say, 1302, after his exile had begun?

I am belaboring this point because I really think the answer to that question is the lens through which Dante wants us to read the entire Comedy . A few lines down from our opening tercet, the poet says this:

No words can tell how I entered that place, I was so full of sleep at the moment I abandoned the true way.

(I.10–12)

Hear the poet’s words: I entered that place, I was so full of sleep, I abandoned the true way. He is not blaming others for his situation. He is not looking beyond his own actions for a reason why the world seems so against him. He is not playing the victim. He understands that he has no one to blame but himself for his dark and terrifying surroundings.

I believe this is the key to understanding why the year 1300 is so central, and why the pilgrim is placed in this exact moment. Based on things the poet says throughout the

Comedy , and in his other works, it is easy to imagine how Dante, full of ambition and self-satisfaction, full of the acclaim of his peers and townsmen, puffed with the pride of poetic and political success, could have been “so full of sleep” he did not notice he was abandoning the true way.

Could it be that these public, poetic, and political successes are the very false images of the good he had foolishly oriented his life around? That these are the distractions that led him astray and lulled him to sleep, numbing him to his true purpose, and landing him in the darkened wood? I believe they are. Taking the Comedy as a whole, then, the poet is looking back on his life at this moment in the spring of 1300, when he is flushed with popularity and worldly attainment, and realizing that his most materially successful season was also his most spiritually bankrupt one. Assessing his life from the other side of suffering and privation, he realizes how absorbed in temporal things he had become, resulting in a complacency toward the eternal ends which ought to have been the primary considerations directing his life.

This means that his beloved city of Florence, not exile, is the darkened wood. Florence, not exile, is the wood he calls overwhelming, savage, and severe. Florence, not exile, was so bitter, death is hardly more. But, to be clear, it is not the Florence out there. It is not the Florence of other people. He will have plenty to say about them later on. But here, at the beginning of the poem, the darkened wood is a forest entirely of his own making. It is the corrupt Florence inside the poet, if you will, that has brought him to this desperate state. Again, Dante is not playing the victim card. He is not looking outside of himself for a reason for why he is here. Which is another reason why the darkened wood does not represent exile. In that situation, he truly was a victim of injustice. But here, in the middle of the journey of our life, he himself is

on the edge of damnation. And it is his own fault. The poet fully recognizes that he is to blame, he is what is wrong, he is the one who is so far gone only a vision of Hell will wake him up to reality.

In a letter quoted by one of his earliest biographers, Dante, looking back at his own career, says this: “All my woes and all my misfortunes had their origin and commencement with my unlucky election to the priorate.” That is the voice of hard-won experience. That is the voice of one who has lived through tremendous success only to find out later that it was all a facade, and the truth was something far darker; the truth buried underneath the power and prestige was a darkened wood on the very edge of the abyss. This is why the poem starts in the spring of 1300, and not in 1302. Dante’s woes did not begin externally in exile, but rather with an internal orientation that centered on and was satisfied with the wrong thing. Put simply, outward success or material power is not an indication of a rightly ordered life. The difficult and arduous journey that lies before the pilgrim is what corrects that way of thinking. The pilgrim had run after false images of the good, or as he confesses to Beatrice at the end of Purgatorio , “The things of the present with their false pleasures turned away my steps…” ( Purgatorio XXXI.34–35). That is how the right direction was lost. Having come to himself, having recognized how close to eternal destruction he was, he must now relearn what it means to keep the Supreme Good supreme in his understanding and in his love, regardless of material success or prosperity.

It is interesting that avarice, also referred to as cupidity or greed, is the vice Dante is constantly railing against. Avarice has completely destroyed Florence, and is the fountain of all the corruption in the Church. But it has also become a significant problem for Dante personally. As you will soon

read, the pilgrim tries to escape the darkened wood by climbing a nearby mountain. But three beasts block his path: first a leopard, next a lion, and finally a she-wolf. And while the first two are certainly terrifying, it is the third that ultimately causes the pilgrim to turn tail and run. As Canto 20 of Purgatorio makes clear, the she-wolf symbolizes avarice. It is avarice that the pilgrim can do nothing against, that blocks him most successfully as he tries to escape the darkened wood. As the poet narrates his experience on the hillside, he says this:

But then a she-wolf, charged in her leanness from a continuous craving, by which many have been made to live wretchedly, engendered in me such a heaviness with the fear that rose at the sight of her, I lost all hope of attaining the height.

(I.49–54)

This is the beast that finally stops the pilgrim and forces him to return to the wood, to where, as he says, the sun is silent. The leopard and the lion are fierce, but it is the she-wolf that drains him of any hope. It is against this beast in particular that the pilgrim desperately needs help. At this point, the Roman poet Virgil shows up, and the salvation he offers is specifically framed in terms of helping him get past the she-wolf, or outside of the metaphor, to get past avarice. The Roman poet asks the pilgrim why he is running back to the wood. Dante replies:

“See the beast for which I turned myself back; deliver me from her, O famous sage, she that makes my veins and pulse to tremble.”

(I.88–90)

To which Virgil says:

“You will need to keep to another way… if you wish to escape this savage place; for this beast, because of which you cry out, does not allow any to pass her way, but so encumbers one that she kills him. Her nature is so wicked and malign, her craving lusts are never satisfied. She eats, and she hungers more than before. She weds herself to many beasts, and still there will be more…”

(I.91–101)

As the rest of the Comedy makes clear, this is the fundamental vice that has overrun Dante’s home city, and Italy as a whole. And certainly, with the poet we can look back and condemn those Florentines, over there, the ones who would eventually exile him and say untrue things about him. They truly are guilty, and their sin needs to be condemned. But here at the very beginning of the poem, it is not their vice that traps the pilgrim in the wood, blocking him from ascending the mountain. It is his own. It is his own all-consuming desire for the things of the present that have turned his feet from the right path. It is his veins and pulse that tremble before the craving lusts of avarice and greed. It is his soul that has shriveled almost to the point of being lost. The remainder of the poem, then, is the story of his salvation, the story of the pilgrim “escaping this savage place.”

But I go back to that opening line: nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita . In the middle of the course of our life. Remember, this is not just the pilgrim’s journey. This is our journey as well. What he says of himself is true of us. We also were too full of sleep to notice the moment when we went astray, when

we abandoned the true way. With the poet we need to turn the accusing finger at ourselves, and refuse to play the victim card, refuse to blame anyone but ourselves for our own darkened woods, and learn, like Dante, to take responsibility for our own fallenness. We need to own our need for a guide to help us “escape this savage place,” to escape the avarice and pride that keep us slaves to our own fallen desires.

Of course the pilgrim doesn’t fully realize any of this until just before his own come-to-Jesus moment later in the poem, as his heart of ice melts in repentance and true faith on top of Mount Purgatory. But the poet is setting the stage even here, at the front end of the whole poem. He is saying, I am what is wrong with this world. My avarice, my greed, my cupidity is on me, and no one else is to blame. I am the one who fell asleep, I am the one who lost sight of the right direction, I am the one turned back at the base of the mountain of delight and joy on account of my own vicious nature. I am the one in need of grace and mercy, in need of guidance and strength that must come from outside of myself.

In this opening line, I believe Dante is calling on us to see ourselves, with the pilgrim, on the edge of the darkness of Hell, to identify our sin and all the distortions of God’s image that we have brought upon ourselves. This descent through the pit of Hell, however disgusting and dark it may be, is necessary—but it is not the whole journey. This is the story of the pilgrim’s ultimate salvation and redemption. It is a journey that is constantly equipping him, preparing him, and strengthening him to stand before the face of Jesus and not be utterly undone by His majesty. In short, this is the story of a sinner made wholly new, wholly redeemed, wholly captured by the love of God.

And in light of this divine love we can see, even here at the beginning of the poem, a glimmer of hope. Yes, we still

have the terror of Hell before us, but here in the opening words we also have a foreshadow of grace:

In the middle of the course of our life, I came to myself…

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita … mi ritrovai . Literally, I found myself here. I met myself here. In other words, I woke up. Now, how it is that I woke up, I don’t yet know at this point of the journey. But chances are good it wasn’t me that woke myself up. If I was too asleep to know how I got here, I have zero confidence in myself to suddenly become aware of my surroundings. No, this is mercy. This is grace. Something or Someone woke me up when I was least expecting it, let alone deserving it. This is the first movement in the poem, at the beginning of the second line, of that Love that moves the sun and other stars. And so it is in hope of encountering that Love that I can take the steps set before me, follow the guides that are given me, allow myself to be drawn away from the Florence of my own avarice and greed, and brought back by grace, through faith, to my true home in the light and love of the face of Jesus Christ.

Conclusion

One of my chief hopes is that you discover for yourself just how deeply Christian the Comedy is. It sees everything in light of the Lordship of Christ. Of course there are many other aspects to the poem. We could spend a whole series of lectures talking about Dante’s politics, his poetic contributions, his philosophy, and so on. However, I am choosing to focus more on his theology, and even more specifically, on his personal

devotion to Christ, because I think that rests at the very heart of the poem. It is somewhat anachronistic to call Dante an evangelical, but that is exactly what he is. In his own brilliant way, he is declaring the good news of the Gospel and how it contrasts with other false and worldly systems of morality and thought. Many years of scholarship have obscured this glaring truth: Jesus is the main character of the Comedy . I am excited for you to discover this for yourselves.

Over the course of the whole poem we will see how every aspect of human life only flourishes when submitted to the purpose and design of God. Dante’s goal is to lead his audience into a right understanding of the world, from which springs both love and worship. As we will see, this understanding can only be received by grace, by the gift of the Spirit, as we come to Jesus in faith. The Comedy is the story of one pilgrim doing just that, and all the roads that lead him to that place of ultimate surrender, ultimate freedom, and ultimate rest. And again, it is written in such a way that we are forced to join him on that quest.

Lastly, as we dive into the text itself, know that there is no way we can cover everything Dante is saying. My goal, both in these lectures and in the accompanying reader’s guides, is twofold. First I want you to walk away from this great poem with just enough understanding and just enough affection to come back to it later in life. Like I said earlier, this is a work that greatly rewards future readings. I read it for the first time in college, and then again in my early thirties. Since then I’ve read it many times, and have been greatly blessed each time by Dante’s rich imagination and love for Christ. Which is my second goal, that you would come away from this work and these lectures with a greater understanding of and affection for the Lord Jesus Christ, the One by Whom, for Whom, and through Whom all things were made. As I said, if there is a

central theme in the Comedy , it is the growing awareness in the pilgrim of the majesty and centrality of Christ, culminating in the Beatific Vision, where both his will and his affections are turned by the love of the Triune God, the Love that moves the sun and other stars.

FROM THE BLANK VERSE TRANSLATION

CANTO III

s ummary

Having submitted to Virgil, our pilgrim is guided through the gates of Hell. An inscription over the gates tells of their creation and their purpose, and he is again terrified. Virgil encourages him, reminding him of what they are there to accomplish. This is the realm of those who have “lost the good of the intellect,” that is, the good of knowing and seeing God. Immediately the pilgrim is confronted with the sound of weeping and wailing coming across the dark air. The sound is coming from the neutrals, scorned by both Heaven and Hell, having lived neither “with infamy nor with praise.” They are eternally blown about like grains of sand in a whirlwind, tormented by flies and wasps. Discovering who these are, the pilgrim spies one he thinks he knows. Though unnamed, it is likely Pope Celestine V, whose abdication after only five months allowed the mantle to pass to Boniface VIII, whose actions, regarding Florence in particular, led to Dante the poet’s exile. Further on, the pilgrim sees the great river Acheron, where Charon the ferryman leads the damned into Hell proper. Crowds gather at the shore, waiting to be taken across; they are full of hatred for everything, eager to cross over to the

land of eternal pain. Virgil explains that divine justice spurs them on, their fear turning into desire. Despite the waiting torments, they are where they want to be. Overcome by the sights and sounds, Dante falls in a dead swoon.

NEUTRALS AND THE ACHERON

Through me one enters the woeful city; Through me one enters everlasting pain;

3 Through me one enters mid a lost people.

Justice moved my High, Exalted Maker, Divine Might, Supreme Wisdom, Primal Love

6 made me, before all other things I was,

saving that which was and is and will be, and for eternity I will endure.

9 Abandon all hope, you who enter here.

These darkly colored words I saw written on the top of the gate; therefore I said,

12 “Master, these words are hard to understand.”

He answered me, as one who is aware, “Here, one must abandon all suspicion,

15 all cowardice needs to be put to death.

We have come to the place of which I said you would see the miserable people,

18 who have lost the good of the intellect.”

Then he placed his hand on mine, and led me with a cheerful countenance, whence I was

21 comforted, to the secret things inside.

There sighs and weeping and deep agony resounded through that dark and starless air,

24 for which, there at the beginning, I wept.

Confused tongues, and horrible languages, words of anguish, and accents of anger,

27 cries high and weak, the sound of hands beating, all made such a tumult, turning itself always in that darkened, timeless ether,

30 as sand, when blown about by the whirlwind.

My head encircled by horror and wrongs, I said, “Master, what is this that I hear?

33 What are these, so defeated in their pain?”

And he said, “This miserable manner holds captive the unhappy souls of those

36 who lived neither in infamy nor praise.

They mix with that base chorus of angels that rebelled not nor were faithful to God,

39 but only always acted for themselves.

Banned from Heaven, lest they mar its beauty, Hell will not receive them, lest the guilty

42 find some reason to glory over them.”

And I said, “Master, what is so heavy to them, that makes their lamenting so strong?”

45 He said, “I will very briefly tell you.

These do not have the hope of final death, and their purblind life is so very low,

48 they envy every other allotment.

The world lets no report of them exist; rejected both by mercy and justice,

51 think of them no more, but look and move on.”

And I, looking again, saw a banner whip around and hurry by so swiftly

54 it seemed to be ashamed of any rest;

behind it came such a very long train of people, I could not have imagined

57 that death there had defeated so many.

And looking around, I recognized some— especially one, the shade of him who,

60 from cowardice, made the great refusal.1

Instantly I understood and was sure, that this was that sect of contemptibles,

63 hateful both to God and His enemies.

These wretches, having never really lived, were naked and deeply irritated

66 by the wasps and blowflies that were present, and these lined their faces with tracks of blood, blood which, having mixed with tears at their feet,

69 was gathered together by gruesome worms.

1 Pope Celestine V.

I looked beyond them, and saw a great host, people on the shore of a great river;

72 therefore I said, “Master, grant me to know, now, who these are and by what convention they appear so eager to cross over,

75 as far as I can tell in this faint light.”

And he answered, “These things will be made known to you when we bring our steps to a halt

78 upon the wretched shore of Acheron.”

After this, with eyes ashamed and downcast, fearing my speech was burdensome to him,

81 I refrained from speaking till the river.

Behold, coming across to us by boat was an old man, his hair shock-white with age;

84 he shouted out, “Woe to you depraved souls!

Hope nevermore to catch sight of the sky. I come to bring you to the other shore,

87 into eternal darkness, heat and ice.

And you, living soul, who are standing there, separate yourself from those that are dead!”

90 But after seeing I did not leave, he said,

“By another way, and by other ports you will come down to cross this shore, not here;

93 a lighter bark must ferry you across.”

Behold, coming across to us by boat was an old man, his hair shock-white with age; he shouted out, “Woe to you depraved souls!”

~ Lines 82–84

My leader: “Charon, do not fret yourself; this has been willed in that place where one wills

96 what one is able to do; ask no more.”

That quieted the ancient, woolly cheeks of the ferryman of the fuming swamp,

99 whose eyes were encircled by wheels of flame.

But those souls, miserable and naked, changed cheek-color and chattered with their teeth

102 as soon as they understood the cruel word.

They were blaspheming God and their parents, the whole human race, and the place and time

105 and seed of their conception, and their birth.

Afterwards, they gathered all together, weeping loudly, on the rancorous shore

108 that waits for each man who does not fear God.

The demon Charon, eyes of living fire, beckons them all to him, harvests them all,

111 and beats with his oar those that take their ease.

As in Autumn, when the leaves turn and fall, one at a time, until the empty branch

114 sees all its golden spoil upon the ground,

similarly the foul seed of Adam, one by one, throw themselves from that shoreline

117 at the signal, as a bird to its call.

So they go over, across the dark waves; and before they disembark over there,

120 again, another crowd brings itself here.

“Now my son,” said the courteous master, “these that die in the holy wrath of God

123 come together here from every nation; they are eager to pass over the stream, because divine justice so spurs them on

126 that fear has turned itself into desire.

Thus, no good soul ever passes over. Therefore, if Charon complains about you,

129 you now can understand his grumbled sounds.”

Having finished this word, that dark country shook so fiercely, the very memory

132 of the terror soaks me again with sweat.

That tearful ground gave forth a gust of wind, which flared up in a bright vermillion light that overwhelmed each one of my senses.

136 I fell like one who is taken by sleep.

FROM THE INFERNO READER’S GUIDE

CANTO III

NEUTRALS AND THE ACHERON

Characters

⸭ Dante and Virgil

⸭ The base neutrals, Pope Celestine V, Charon, the damned

Location

⸭ The Gates of Hell to the River Acheron Summary

Having submitted to Virgil, our pilgrim is guided through the gates of Hell. An inscription over the gates tells of their creation and their purpose, and he is again terrified. Virgil encourages him, reminding him of what they are there to accomplish. This is the realm of those who have “lost the good of the intellect,” that is, the good of knowing and seeing God. Immediately the pilgrim is confronted with the sound of weeping and wailing coming across the dark air. The sound

is coming from the neutrals, scorned by both Heaven and Hell, having lived neither “with infamy nor with praise.” They are eternally blown about like grains of sand in a whirlwind, tormented by flies and wasps. Discovering who these are, the pilgrim spies one he thinks he knows. Though unnamed, it is likely Pope Celestine V, whose abdication after only five months allowed the mantle to pass to Boniface VIII, whose actions, regarding Florence in particular, led to Dante the poet’s exile. Further on, the pilgrim sees the great river Acheron, where Charon the ferryman leads the damned into Hell proper. Crowds gather at the shore, waiting to be taken across; they are full of hatred for everything, eager to cross over to the land of eternal pain. Virgil explains that divine justice spurs them on, their fear turning into desire. Despite the waiting torments, they are where they want to be. Overcome by the sights and sounds, Dante falls in a dead swoon.

Notes

⸭ 9: Abandon all hope, you who enter here

Famous words from over the gate of Hell. This is the place where there is no hope of escape, no hope of relief, no hope of change, no hope of redemption. It is a place made by Divine Might, Supreme Wisdom, Primal Love (notice the trinitarian formulation pointing to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). Power orders creation according to the eternal law; Wisdom determines fair and just consequences to actions; Love for goodness necessarily means the full rejection and hatred of the distortion of that goodness. Thus eternal justice is a vindication of righteousness.

⸭ 18: “who have lost the good of the intellect”

The “good” of the intellect is truth, but specifically the Supreme Truth, that is, God Himself. It is the knowledge of God that is denied the damned in Hell. For the identification of truth as the “good of the intellect,” see the Convivio , where Dante says, by the habit of [the sciences] we can speculate concerning the truth, which is our distinguishing perfection, as saith the Philosopher in the sixth of the Ethics [see Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics VI, 2, 1139a], when he says that truth is the good of the intellect.1

⸭ 66: by the wasps and blowflies that were present

Wasps and blowflies indicate how menial the sinners suffering here are.

⸭ 109: The demon Charon, eyes of living fire

Charon is the first of a litany of classical and mythological figures, most of which are taken either from Virgil’s Aeneid , Ovid’s Metamorphoses , or Lucan’s Pharsalia . For Virgil’s account, see the Aeneid VI.298–304.

⸭ 134: which flared up in a bright vermillion light

Take note of the uses of the word vermillion (vermiglio ) that pop up throughout the Inferno . It is a distinct shade of red that is used in specific places. Here it is the color of the mournful flash of Hell, at which Dante swoons.

1 Dante, Convivio , trans. by Philip Wicksteed (London: J. M. Dent and Co, 1903), 115.

Analysis

Hell is that dark country where the wicked and unrepentant sons of Adam are condemned to suffer fitting punishments. This is an idea that will be fleshed out soon enough, but Dante envisions each torment, each punishment in Hell not as the random whim of demons, or worse, a capricious God; but rather as the precise and just consequence of any given lifestyle. This means that Dante’s descriptions in this first part of the Comedy have more to do with his understanding of what sin is (and what particular sins are) than any actual commentary on the afterlife. What we will see moving forward is the perfected nature of sin—meaning, sin completely cut off from this world full of the tempering common grace of God that disguises it. The consequences we see, in other words, reveal precisely what it means to sin in a particular way, with a particular part of the soul. For instance, the neutrals, whom Dante describes as “These wretches, [who had] never really lived” (line 64), and as those who were only ever “for themselves” (line 39), are continuously blown about in a windstorm, tormented by flies and wasps, envious of every other fate, and without hope of death. Before we assume the poet is simply wanting us to believe that there is this part in Hell (technically ante-Hell) and move on, we need to consider what he might be telling us about the nature of timid, self-serving neutrality. What does it mean to be one that is neither overtly rebellious nor in any sense faithful to God, but lives entirely for oneself? Can you picture this kind of person? He is the decent neighbor who doesn’t steal things out of your shed, but neither does he live for the glory of God. He is not vicious, but neither is he interested in pursuing virtue. What kind of man is he? Dante would have us picture the reality of

that kind of inoffensive (in any direction) lifestyle as base and hateful to God, but also too small and mean and insignificant to be allowed entrance to lower Hell. Here, rejected by both Heaven and Hell, they are punished for their unwillingness to live. In fact, the punishment itself identifies the listless nature of their life on Earth, as they are blown about like grains of sand. More of course could be said, but this gives us an introduction to the guiding principle of the Inferno . Virgil leads the pilgrim to the shores of the Acheron, the first river of Hades from classical mythology. Charon, the classical figure ferries the souls across, souls that have become ravenous in their desire to enter the dark country, despite the tears and pain. This is because their souls have become the perfected version of their sinful state—divorced from the tempering grace of God in the world of the living. They are gnarled to the point of taking contemptible pleasure in their own agonizing pain, because they know they are home in an ultimate sense. This is Hell. They are “eager to pass over the stream” (line 124) because God has given them over to their own passions and lusts (Romans 1). Every bit of restraining grace has been removed. This is divine justice—the damned are what and where they want to be.

Discussion Questions

1. The gates of Hell were made by the justice of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit (Divine Might, Highest Wisdom, and Primal Love respectively). How is Hell a creation of power, wisdom, and, perhaps most strangely to our ears, love?

2. Dante says that Hell existed before the creation of man (line 6). What are the implications of such a statement?

3. Why is Hell described as the place where go the souls who “have lost the good of the intellect” (line 18)?

4. Why does Dante create the class of neutrals, scorned by both Heaven and Hell?

5. Of the damned, Virgil says that divine justice spurs them, with the result that “fear turns itself into desire” (lines 125–126). Discuss.

FROM THE DANTE LECTURES

LESSON 3

INFERNO 1–5

Canto 3

Through me one enters the woeful city; Through me one enters everlasting pain; Through me one enters mid a lost people. Justice moved my High, Exalted Maker, Divine Might, Supreme Wisdom, Primal Love made me, before all other things I was, saving that which was and is and will be, and for eternity I will endure. Abandon all hope, you who enter here. (lines 1–9)

Virgil and the pilgrim come to the gates of Hell and read these striking words, which are inscribed above them. What do they mean? The first three lines are straightforward enough, but what is going on in lines 4–6? Wisdom and Love created Hell? How does that make sense? Isn’t Hell the opposite of love? However confused we might be, the poet Dante knows exactly what he is doing. First off, the High Exalted Maker is not just a generic god, it is the Triune God of Scripture, as the following line makes clear: Divine Might is the Father, Supreme Wisdom is the Son, and Primal Love is the Spirit. With

regard to the formation of Hell, we can perhaps more easily understand the power or might of the Father. God has both the power and authority to enact judgment against sin. Satan, the fallen angels, and all the company of the damned, are no match for the mighty arm of God in the service of eternal, ultimate, and final justice.

But what about wisdom? What is wise about Hell? There are probably a couple different ways to answer that, but what I think the poet is alluding to is both the structure of Hell, in all its philosophic (love of wisdom) ordering, and the contrapasso , the punishments that fit the sin in accordance with perfect justice. Both the structure of Hell and the punishments themselves demonstrate an understanding of sin and the corruption sin wrecks on human nature. In this sense it is wise, and makes us wise who come to understand what it is.

Love as a foundational pillar of Hell is a harder pill to swallow for us because we have been trained to think of love in terms of tolerance, acceptance, and perhaps most of all, as warm, fuzzy feelings. But that is not the classical definition of love. Love, as we will see when we get to Purgatorio , is the movement of the soul toward an object. In this sense you can have good loves, when the soul moves toward good things, or bad loves, when the soul moves toward bad things. Primal Love is the primal movement of the Holy Spirit toward the Father and the Son. Primal Love thus represents the love of holiness, the love of goodness, the love of truth and beauty, of justice and righteousness. What is Love doing building Hell then? Well, Hell is the place where you put the corruption of holiness, goodness, truth, beauty, justice, and righteousness. Hell is where all their opposites must go. For to love something necessarily means to hate its corruption. It is therefore an act of love to separate good from evil, sheep from wolves, wheat from tares.

Finally, as line 9 famously declares, those who enter Hell enter a place without hope. There is no return from these halls, no alteration in the eternal decrees. Here the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.

The pilgrim is understandably terrified. But this is a special case. He has not yet died, he has been granted permission to pass through as a visitor and not as a resident. As they walk beneath the heavy words on the heavy stone, Virgil reminds them of who they are there to see. In line 18 he describes them as those who have lost the good of the intellect. It is a curious phrase, but essentially it means the damned have forever lost the ability to use the intellect in its proper capacity, which is to know and see God. This is the good of the intellect, what the intellect is for. And that capacity is now forever taken away. While they were alive, there was opportunity for them to regain the good of the intellect through repentance and faith, but that opportunity is now forever lost. They are only a few steps in and right away the pilgrim hears sighs, weeping, sounds of deep agony, anguish, anger, shrieks, and a confusion of tongues. These are the neutrals, the timid and cowardly. Unable to commit to one side or the other in life, they must forever follow a banner as it whips around and around in a giant circle. Virgil says in line 50 that they have been rejected by both mercy and justice, which of course is not exactly accurate as they are here within the gates of Hell, suffering eternal wretchedness for the way they lived their cowardly and ignoble lives. We have to remember that Virgil is speaking as an Aristotelean within a Christian world. There will be much overlap, but also plenty of times where he must be taken with a grain of salt. The pilgrim sees several people that he knows, but one especially, known only by his description as the one who made the great refusal (line 60). Though it is not certain, it is likely the soul of Pope Celestine

V, who was pope only for five months in 1294. He is famous for establishing a law that popes could resign, and then resigning. Importantly, his resignation paved the way for Boniface VIII to be elected in his place. Boniface, you will remember, was instrumental in Dante’s exile. We will hear his name again soon enough.

The travelers keep going and come to the Acheron, where Charon, the ferryman of Hell from Greek Mythology, is transporting sinners across the river. The pilgrim sees the souls scrambling out of the boat, and rushing to their punishments, for it is a function of Divine justice that in Hell, fear turns into desire (line 126). As we saw earlier, this is where the damned want to be. Even if given the opportunity, they would never leave. At the terrible sights and sounds and flashes of an eerie red light, the pilgrim falls down as if dead. This is after all the place of the dead.

FROM THE READER’S GUIDE ANSWER KEY

CANTO 3

Answers to Discussion Questions

1. Divine Might represents the power of God over man to execute just judgment. Supreme Wisdom represents the discernment of sin’s true nature and what it does to the human soul, and therefore what it deserves as punishment. Primal Love represents God’s love for all that is true and good and beautiful, the corruption of which is being punished. To truly love something is to hate its corruption, to desire to separate the parasite from the host. Sin is the parasite, and is dealt with here in Hell, as an expression of God’s Love for His own nature and for the creation He is redeeming.

2. A suggested line of discussion concerning this question would be the fall of the angels, and the necessity of punishing their rebellion. Another would be the idea that Hell represents the Justice of God, which is an eternal characteristic of the divine nature, and as such, predates creation.

3. The good of the intellect, among other things, is the desire to know and love God. That is what our minds were made for. Hell is the place where that privilege is lost forever. This does not mean the inhabitants of Hell are without a mind or the ability to hold a rational conversation. It is the good of the intellect, the final purpose, the created end of the intellect that is lost, not the intellect itself.

4. Dante is using an Aristotelian structure to explain a Christian doctrine. Dante’s use of Aristotle means a sliding scale of worse and worse sins, the neutrals marking one end of the spectrum, Judas and Satan marking the other. They weren’t vile sinners, but unlike the inhabitants of Limbo, they didn’t pursue any recognizable form of virtue either. They are nothing because they did nothing. They are small, cowardly souls, placed outside of the Acheron, lost forever in an eternal state that matches their pusillanimous lives.

5. As C. S. Lewis says in The Great Divorce , Heaven is when we say to God, “Thy will be done” and Hell is when God says to us “thy will be done.” Behind this is Romans 1 where Paul says three times “God gave them up” to their passions and lusts. God’s judgment, in other words, is simply giving man what in his fallennes he craves. This line from Virgil is an expression of that truth.

FROM THE INTERLINEAR TRANSLATION

‘Per me si va ne la città dolente, Through me one goes into the city woeful, per me si va ne l’etterno dolore, through me one goes into the eternal pain, per me si va tra la perduta gente. through me one goes amongst the lost people.

Giustizia mosse il mio alto fattore; Justice moved my high Maker,

fecemi la divina podestate, made me the divine power, la somma sapïenza e ’l primo amore. the highest wisdom and the primal love.

Dinanzi a me non fuor cose create Before me not were things created se non etterne, e io etterno duro. if not eternal, and I eternal endure.

you who enter.

Queste parole di colore oscuro

These words of color dark

vid’ ïo scritte al sommo d’una porta; saw I written on the top of a door; per ch’io: «Maestro, il senso lor m’è duro». for this, I: “Master, the sense of these to me is hard.”

Ed elli a me, come persona accorta: And he to me, as a person watchful:

«Qui si convien lasciare ogne sospetto; “Here one needs to abandon all suspicion;

ogne viltà convien che qui sia morta. all cowardice it is necessary that here be killed.

Noi siam venuti al loco ov’ i’ t’ho detto We have come to the place where I to you said

che tu vedrai le genti dolorose that you will see the people anguished c’hanno perduto il ben de l’intelletto». who have lost the good of the intellect.”

E poi che la sua mano a la mia puose

And then that his hand to mine he put

con lieto volto, ond’ io mi confortai, with cheerful countenance, whence I myself comforted, mi mise dentro a le segrete cose. me he led inside to the secret things.

Quivi sospiri, pianti e alti guai

There sighs, weeping and high troubles

risonavan per l’aere sanza stelle, were resounding through the air without stars,

per ch’io al cominciar ne lagrimai. on account of which I at the beginning did weep.

Diverse lingue, orribili favelle, Different tongues, horrible ways of speech,

parole di dolore, accenti d’ira, words of pain, accents of wrath, voci alte e fioche, e suon di man con elle voices high and feeble, and the sound of hands with them

facevano un tumulto, il qual s’aggira these made a tumult, which itself roamed sempre in quell’ aura sanza tempo tinta, always in that air without time stained, come la rena quando turbo spira. as the sand when whirlwind blows.

E io ch’avea d’error la testa cinta, And I who had by error the head encircled dissi: «Maestro, che è quel ch’i’ odo? said: “Master, what is this that I hear?

e che gent’ è che par nel duol sì vinta?». and what people is it that seem in the pain so defeated?”

Ed elli a me: «Questo misero modo And he to me: “This miserable manner

tegnon l’anime triste di coloro holds the souls wretched of those che visser sanza ’nfamia e sanza lodo. who lived without infamy and without praise.

Mischiate sono a quel cattivo coro Mixed they are to that base chorus

de li angeli che non furon ribelli of the angels that not were rebellious né fur fedeli a Dio, ma per sé fuoro. nor were they faithful to God, but for themselves were.

Caccianli i ciel per non esser men belli, Banish them the heavens for not to be less beautiful

né lo profondo inferno li riceve, nor the deep hell them does receive,

ch’alcuna gloria i rei avrebber d’elli». that some glory the guilty might have of them.”

E io: «Maestro, che è tanto greve And I: “Master, what is so heavy a lor che lamentar li fa sì forte?». to them that to lament them makes so strong?”

Rispuose: «Dicerolti molto breve. He answered: “I will tell it to you very briefly.

Questi non hanno speranza di morte, These do not have hope of death

e la lor cieca vita è tanto bassa, and their purblind life is so very low, che ’nvidïosi son d’ogne altra sorte. that envious they are of every other allotment.

Fama di loro il mondo esser non lassa; Report of them the world to be does not allow;

misericordia e giustizia li sdegna: mercy and justice them reject:

non ragioniam di lor, ma guarda e passa». let us not reason about them, but look and move on.”

E io, che riguardai, vidi una ’nsegna

And I, that looking again, saw an insignia che girando correva tanto ratta, that turning, was hurrying so rapidly, che d’ogne posa mi parea indegna; that of all repose to me it seemed ashamed;

e dietro le venìa sì lunga tratta and behind to it was coming so long a train

di gente, ch’i’ non averei creduto of people, that I not could have believed che morte tanta n’avesse disfatta. that death so many of them had defeated.

Poscia ch’io v’ebbi alcun riconosciuto,

After that I there some had recognized,

vidi e conobbi l’ombra di colui

I saw and knew the shade of him

che fece per viltade il gran rifiuto. who made through cowardice the great refusal.

Incontanente intesi e certo fui Immediately I understood and certain was che questa era la setta d’i cattivi, that this was the sect of the base ones,

a Dio spiacenti e a’ nemici sui. to God displeasing and to enemies his.

Questi sciaurati, che mai non fur vivi, These wretches, that ever not were alive,

erano ignudi e stimolati molto were naked and inflamed much da mosconi e da vespe ch’eran ivi. by blowflies and by wasps that were there.

Elle rigavan lor di sangue il volto, These lined of them with blood the face

che, mischiato di lagrime, a’ lor piedi which, mixed with tears, at their feet

da fastidiosi vermi era ricolto. by irksome worms was gathered.

E poi ch’a riguardar oltre mi diedi, And after that to look again beyond to myself I gave

vidi genti a la riva d’un gran fiume; I saw people on the shore of a great river; per ch’io dissi: «Maestro, or mi concedi on account of which I said: “Master, now to me grant

ch’i’ sappia quali sono, e qual costume that I may know which they are, and what custom

le fa di trapassar parer sì pronte, them makes to cross over to appear so ready com’ i’ discerno per lo fioco lume». as I discern on account of this faint light?”

Ed elli a me: «Le cose ti fier conte And he to me: “The things to you will be known

quando noi fermerem li nostri passi when we will stay our steps

su la trista riviera d’Acheronte». on the wretched shore of Acheron.”

Allor con li occhi vergognosi e bassi, Then with the eyes shameful and low, temendo no ’l mio dir li fosse grave, fearing lest my speaking to him was arduous, infino al fiume del parlar mi trassi. until the river of speaking myself I withdrew.

Ed ecco verso noi venir per nave

And behold, toward to us to come across by boat

un vecchio, bianco per antico pelo, an old man, white through ancient hair, gridando: «Guai a voi, anime prave! crying out: “Woe to you, souls depraved!

Non isperate mai veder lo cielo:

Do not hope ever to see the heaven;

i’ vegno per menarvi a l’altra riva I come to deliver you to the other shore

ne le tenebre etterne, in caldo e ’n gelo. into the darkness eternal, into heat and into bitter cold.

E tu che se’ costì, anima viva, And you that are there, soul living,

pàrtiti da cotesti che son morti». leave those there that are dead.”

Ma poi che vide ch’io non mi partiva, But after that he saw that I not myself was separating,

disse: «Per altra via, per altri porti he said: “By another way, by other ports

verrai a piaggia, non qui, per passare: you will come to shore, not here, to pass over; più lieve legno convien che ti porti». a more light bark it is necessary that you carries.”

E ’l duca lui: «Caron, non ti crucciare: And the leader to him: “Charon, do not yourself worry:

vuolsi così colà dove si puote it is willed thus there where what can be

ciò che si vuole, e più non dimandare». this that is willed, and more not ask.”

Quinci fuor quete le lanose gote That made quiet the woolly cheeks al nocchier de la livida palude, of the pilot of the livid bog, che ’ntorno a li occhi avea di fiamme rote. that around the eyes had of flame wheels.

Ma quell’ anime, ch’eran lasse e nude, But those souls, that were miserable and naked, cangiar colore e dibattero i denti, changed color and chattered the teeth ratto che ’nteser le parole crude. as soon as they understood the words cruel.

Bestemmiavano Dio e lor parenti, They blasphemed God and their relatives,

l’umana spezie e ’l loco e ’l tempo e ’l seme the human species and the place and the time and the seed

di lor semenza e di lor nascimenti. of their begetting and of their birth.

Poi si ritrasser tutte quante insieme, Afterwards, themselves they withdrew all there together,

forte piangendo, a la riva malvagia loudly weeping, to the shore contemptible ch’attende ciascun uom che Dio non teme. that awaits each man that God not fears.

Caron dimonio, con occhi di bragia

Charon demon, with eyes of embers

loro accennando, tutte le raccoglie; them beckoning, all them harvests; batte col remo qualunque s’adagia. he beats with oar whoever himself eases.

Come d’autunno si levan le foglie

As in autumn themselves they take away the leaves

l’una appresso de l’altra, fin che ’l ramo one after another, until that the branch

vede a la terra tutte le sue spoglie, sees on the ground all its spoils,

similemente il mal seme d’Adamo similarly the wicked seed of Adam gittansi di quel lito ad una ad una, throw themselves from that shore by one by one, per cenni come augel per suo richiamo. at the signal as the bird at its call.

Così sen vanno su per l’onda bruna, So they go over across the wave dark,

e avanti che sien di là discese, and before that they have from there climbed down, anche di qua nuova schiera s’auna. also of here new crowd itself gathers.

«Figliuol mio», disse ’l maestro cortese, “Son my,” said the master courteous,

«quelli che muoion ne l’ira di Dio “those that die in the wrath of God

tutti convegnon qui d’ogne paese; all come together here from every nation;

e pronti sono a trapassar lo rio, and eager they are to pass over the river,

ché la divina giustizia li sprona, because the divine justice them spurs

sì che la tema si volve in disio. so that the fear itself turns into desire.

Quinci non passa mai anima buona; Thus not pass over ever soul good;

e però, se Caron di te si lagna, and therefore, if Charon about you grumbles,

ben puoi sapere omai che ’l suo dir suona». well you are able to understand now what his speaking sounds.”

Finito questo, la buia campagna Finished this, the dark country

tremò sì forte, che de lo spavento trembled so powerfully, that of the terror

la mente di sudore ancor mi bagna. the memory with sweat still me wets.

La terra lagrimosa diede vento, The earth tearful gave wind

che balenò una luce vermiglia that flashed a light vermilion

la qual mi vinse ciascun sentimento; which to me conquered every feeling;

e caddi come l’uom cui sonno piglia. and I fell like the man whom sleep takes.

ESSAYS BY JOE CARLSON

Three Reasons Every High School Student Should Study Dante

Iwant to make the case that every high school student should read and study Dante’s Comedy . More specifically, I want to argue that every protestant, reformed, and evangelical high school student should read and study Dante. Everyone should read Dante, so why do I get so specific? Because Dante was born before Luther and Calvin, and predates the Protestant Reformation. Because of this, he is often unjustly condemned to the wrinkled brows of skepticism and wariness. Dante published the Comedy almost 200 years before Luther posted his ninety-five theses, and 230 years before the first edition of Calvin’s Institutes were published. This means he belongs to the shared heritage of both Catholics and Protestants, like Augustine and Anselm. Evangelicals should look on Dante as the crazy but brilliant uncle still invited to all the family get-togethers, despite some disagreements. We spend time with that uncle because he is family, and we love him. And wouldn’t you know it, but the better we get to know him, we find that we actually agree more often than we disagree. Besides, he really is brilliant, and we love hearing him talk.

That is Dante. We might disagree about the reality of Purgatory as a physical intermediate state or the veneration of Mary, but there is far more to the Comedy than these doctrines. For those Christians who take the time to read and study what I believe to be the greatest epic poem of all time, Christian

or otherwise, they will find much to be blessed by. He really is a brilliant poet, but also the crazy uncle we need in these crazy times.

Getting down to brass tacks, here are three reasons why our high school students especially should get to know the Comedy .

1: The Comedy as CPR for our Impoverished Imaginations

Our modern secular world has thoroughly impoverished our imaginations. We have been trained to look at the world like a butterfly collector looks at his collection, pinned on a board behind glass with little tags underneath. We do not see the world as a living thing, alive with the truth, beauty, and goodness of God. Dante writes his poem with the governing assumption that the whole cosmos is the majesty and light of God’s glory made alive. The world itself is Christ-shaped, the living words of the Living Word, formed through Him, by Him, and for Him. Jesus is not just the Savior and Redeemer of His people. He is not just the King of kings and Lord of lords. He is the living breath of the universe. Every particle and every galaxy exists because of Him, and declares His preeminence. This is a vision of creation that our students today sorely need, inundated as they are on every side by the soul-sucking, meaningless myth of evolution. But Christians who roundly reject that theory in favor of what Genesis says, still fall prey to the modern mindset that raises a thick brick wall between physical and spiritual things. Our lives often betray the fact that we think God is only relevant to our inner person, and not our physical endeavors. Sunday is for spiritual

things, Monday through Saturday for earthly things, and never the twain shall meet. Dante’s Comedy , by contrast, pictures a Sunday through Saturday creation, reverberating deeply at every moment with spiritual meaning and spiritual reality. He presents us with a world at home in both the transcendence and immanence of God. In his paradigm-shaking poem, Dante will build up in our students a rightly ordered imagination, that faculty that sees creation and processes those images, equipping them with the power to look through the material world and see the Personality behind it.

2: The Comedy as Wisdom for Social Media Knuckleheads

Social media has thoroughly destroyed our sense of community. We count ourselves blessed to have hundreds if not thousands of friends, 99% of whom we have never looked in the eye, or shared a piece of the sky with, or actually heard laugh. The internet age in which we live has trained the new generation, who has never lived in a time when google was not a couple taps away, to think of themselves as their own arbiters of information and knowledge, giving them a false sense of wisdom. We think that because we can look something up for ourselves, or have an AI powered chatbot report back to us about a certain subject, we have actually gained knowledge. But that is not what knowledge is. True knowledge is more than data and facts. True knowledge, leading to true wisdom, can only be found within a community of real, flesh-andblood people, with whom we share meals and birthdays and moments of profound grief. Knowledge is more than bytes; it is the offspring of real-world experiences of community,

picked up by witnessing the lives of those who are a few steps ahead of us on this path. Dante’s Comedy reveals, in gripping detail, how sin destroys this community, turning individuals into small pebbles that shun other pebbles, distrusting their very presence. But more than that, it shows how sanctification and holiness are only possible in the context of other people sharing the same physical space as us, and it gives us a taste of what a glorified communion of saints might look like. It is a picture that will make students hunger for real people, real connections, real community, and real wisdom.

3: The Comedy as Sanity in an Insane World

Expressive individualism has thoroughly defined, and destroyed, our culture today. Students are being taught everywhere, from advertisements to TV shows and movies to all the twists and perversions of clown world, to believe that who they are depends entirely on who they want to be. Their own vision of their own identity is held up as an inalienable right and an undeniable law. However they wish to identify, whether as a girl or a boy or as a fish or a houseplant, their proclaimed identity must be honored and celebrated. That is the culture they are growing up in. Not only does Dante show the consequences of this rebellion against nature, he also offers a bracing counter-narrative to its insanity. Inferno shows in graphic images what “expressive individualism” actually looks like, and what it does to the human soul. That worldview is literally a Hell-hole, and students of the Comedy will come face to face with where it leads. But more than a spot-on diagnostic, the Comedy also presents an alternative way of living, one that moves with the grain of creational realities. We were

created to love the good, to pursue the good, and to rest in the good. And that only happens when we see the good as originating not in our own wills, but in the person of Christ. We were made for Him, and not for ourselves, to worship Him, and not our own notions of self. Our identity is in Him, no matter what we may say to the contrary, for He made us in His image. The journey of the pilgrim, and the journey of the student with him, is the journey from the dark wood of ignorance, rebellion, and fear to the very face of Jesus, in Whom we are made whole and complete, in Whose will is our peace. The student of the Comedy will walk with the pilgrim as his mind, will and appetites are made whole and free through repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, and through the persistent love of the Father, Who orders all things for the pilgrim’s good.

Further Reasons to Read Dante

There are many other reasons to read Dante: the supreme beauty of his poetry, his epic vision of the cosmos, the exciting structure of the medieval universe, his encyclopedic knowledge of mythology and history, his extensive and masterful use of Scripture, his poignant and profound commentary on the social issues of his time (which, funny enough, turn out to be the same things we are dealing with today). But the three reasons I have listed here are some of the more important reasons for us in these crazy times. We need imaginations that are sensitive to the allusive power of creation, enabling us to see the beauty and glory of Christ wherever we look. We need a restoration of true community in which we experience life together with a cadre of real people, from different genera-

tions with whom we can break bread and laugh and work. We need to look outside of ourselves for our own meaning and identity, and be given tangible truths with which we can fight back against the insanity of our broken world. Our young men and women especially need this vision, by which their loyalties and affections can be properly given to Jesus. They need a vision of beauty and truth and goodness that will sink down into their bones, and shape their understanding of the world, a vision only poetry can give. And when it comes to the world of great literature, there is no better place to start than with Dante. He is the crazy uncle we need in these crazy times.

Just Inferno ?

Of the many, many people I have talked to over the years about Dante, the vast majority of those who have actually read something of the Comedy have only read Inferno . Usually it’s because that’s all they read in high school. And when talking with teachers who only assign Inferno , more often than not the reasoning is something like, we simply do not have time to get through the whole poem. And I get it. It’s a long poem, and the further you get the more obscure and difficult it becomes. What is more, unlike the other two parts, Inferno is full of gritty and powerful images that are easily imagined, especially by high school students. This makes it the easiest part to understand and teach. And with a book list to get through, and spring break around the corner, and papers piling up, it just doesn’t make sense to do the whole poem. I get it. It’s a big ask.

The Tragedy of the Partial Read

That said, and at the risk of sounding petulant, I could almost wish schools would skip the Comedy altogether rather than only assign the Inferno . Even though it is broken into three different parts, or canticles, they are not separate poems any more than J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring is a stand-

alone story. Imagine walking away from The Lord of the Rings with the disbanding of the fellowship, and Frodo and Sam heading towards Mordor alone! Just as The Lord of the Rings needs The Return of the King so too Dante’s Comedy needs Paradiso , a return to the King of kings. The Comedy is one continuous story chronicling an everyman as he is brought through Hell and Purgatory to Paradise, primarily in order to stand before the face of Jesus, the One in Whom the whole journey finds its meaning and purpose. In other words, Inferno doesn’t really make sense apart from the experience of the rest of the poem, and especially the end. Reading Inferno only leaves the student with a false impression of Dante’s central purpose, which is the glorification of Christ and our union with Him by grace through faith.

To give a few more examples, imagine the impression students would receive of Crime and Punishment if they only read until Raskolnikov murders the pawnbroker and her sister. What would their takeaway be? How could they understand what Dostoevsky is doing without reading all the way through the epilogue? Or take Shakespeare. Would we ever read just the first act of King Lear ? How would such a radical abridgment shape our students’ moral imaginations? Would stopping after the first half of Pride and Prejudice ever be tolerated? Reading only Inferno is no different than reading only the first part of any other masterpiece of literature. At best it leaves the student with a truncated understanding of a great work; at worst, it deceives the student into believing he or she has read the most important part, and therefore does not need to read the rest. The act of abridgment is itself a pedagogical tool that shapes the student’s affections and understanding. It can be done well, but it can also do great damage.

A Better Compromise

I understand that time is fleeting, and a school year might not allow reading all one hundred cantos of the Comedy . While I personally might restructure the reading list to read fewer books at a deeper level, not everyone agrees with that approach. To help educators confined by the school’s curricular choices into only reading thirty-four cantos out of one hundred, here is my suggested compromise. The following are the cantos from each canticle that would better serve your students than simply neglecting all together the second two parts of the poem. Reading these thirty-four cantos will introduce your students to the entire scope of Dante’s project, and give them a deeper appreciation of what the poem is about, not to mention a much better understanding of the work. Especially if they read these cantos in conjunction with a good Reader’s Guide:

• From Inferno, read cantos 1–5, 11, 13–15, 26, 33–34

• From Purgatorio, read cantos 1–2, 9–11, 13–14, 17–19, 30–31

• From Paradiso, read cantos 1, 3, 7, 9–10, 13, 28–30, 33

If you can, take the time to read the whole poem slowly with your students. But if external constraints mean you cannot do that glorious task, this compromise would at least introduce the student to the whole work. More importantly, it would give the student a proper understanding of what Dante is doing, and why.

The Iliad and The Odyssey of Homer, a new prose rendering by

Wesley Callihan

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