A walk with Dante
At the mid-point of the path through life, I found
Myself lost in a wood so dark, the way
Ahead was blotted out.
I’ve tried to get through Dante with little luck until I recently came across a translation by Clive James where the words just seemed to roll down the lines of the page. Perhaps it was the translation or maybe just a point in my life where the Comedy became accessible to me for several days.
Upon reading it this time, it struck me as a book about an author who is retelling his journey though what we might now call a mid-life crisis. I don’t know what or if Dante was struggling with anything personal at the time, but at the beginning of the poem he has become lost and sees no way out.
His guide, Virgil, doesn’t take him immediately into the light but instead takes him down deep into the pits of hell, a hell whose topography is first characterized as a rainy, swampy muck before descending into rocky barren wastelands where high ridges provide the only means of passage between the various rings of pain before hitting rock bottom in the icy frozen base of the universe.
Along the way, Dante interacts with many broken people, exchanging stories on who they are, how they got there, and some news from the world of the living.
Experiencing the descent through the Inferno brought to mind the lands of Moria in The Lord of the Rings trilogy as well as Dickenson’s A Christmas Story and other stories of the “hero’s journey.”
While reading it, I found myself in a few difficult situations, an inner city street ravaged with homelessness and drugs, an elementary school classroom where I had to sit uncomfortably and listen to a lesson with other adults, checking email daily waiting for the decision on an important job proposal.
What makes the rings of hell so hellish is that there is no escape. As bad as the scene may get, Dante is able to glide through unscathed making his passage through some of the most horrific torments palpable and transient. On to the next horror.
The muddy dreariness of the Inferno sets the tone of the poem, a life that can be stuck. One phrase I say to myself when experiencing a prolonged difficult situation is, “this too shall pass.” In a previous post I wrote about the liminal, but the liminal is a temporary stage, an in-between. Unfortunately Dante’s circles of hell are permanent.
When Dante ascends from the inferno he is met by the stars of the night sky. On the banks of a shore the stars shine down and are the first glimpse of purgatory, the next stage to prepare one for heaven. There are so many Cantos in the Purgatory that begin with a passage about the positions of the stars in the sky. Its a good reminder to look up at the night sky when things seem stuck.
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I made the painting below while reading the Inferno. It’s dedicated to those times you hit a rocky path but manage to keep going. Sometimes the best thing to do is to just stop for a while and take a look around.
Rocky Ascent, 36 x 36 inches