felix hominum

lenten series: Dante's Divine Comedy - some links

For those about to descend, here are a few links for information about the Dante, the Comedy, assorted online texts and translations, how to stop the mouth of underworld beasts from classical mythology and that sort of stuff.

Have a miserable Lent!

Why I've taken up Dante for Lent
--By A.N. Wilson - article in the Telegraph from Lent 2007

Welcome to Danteworlds, an "integrated multimedia journey--combining artistic images, textual commentary, and audio recordings--through the three realms of the afterlife (Inferno, Purgatory, Paradise) presented in Dante's Divine Comedy. The site is structured around a visual representation of Dante's worlds: it shows who and what appear where. Click on regions within each realm (circles of Hell, terraces of Purgatory, spheres of Paradise) to open new pages featuring people and creatures whom the character Dante meets during his journey. Click on individual figures in the regions to view larger images in pop-up windows. Available for each region are explanatory notes, a gallery of artistic images, recordings of significant Italian verses, and study questions--all aimed at enriching the experience of reading Dante's poetic vision of a voyage literally out of this world."
--University of Texas

Harvard Classics, Vol. 20 The Divine Comedy:  an English trans. by Henry Cary

DIGITAL DANTE  trans of Henry W. Longfellow, and the Allen Mandelbaum translation
-- Columbia University project

The Princeton Dante Project,  of particular interest is the series of lectures on this page.

The Dartmouth Dante Project (DDP) is "a searchable full-text database containing more than seventy commentaries on Dante's Divine Comedy - the Commedia."

And if you can get your hands on "The Figure of Beatrice" by Charles Williams, you will be close to the Kingdom of Heaven.

In addition, a bit o' reading in Aristotle's Ethics, Virgil's Aeneid, Augustine generally and Boethius should round out all that extra time you will have from doing a TV fast...

Update:  from Mike's recommendation in the comments comes a link to Father Robert Crouse's series on Dante.  This comes via a site I've previously described as "the best little anglican church website in Canada".

lenten series: Dante's Divine Comedy 1

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura
ché la diritta via era smarrita.

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

We will be joining the poet Dante, along with his companion Virgil, for the next 40 days.  During the season of Lent we will descend into the Inferno.  There we will see the end and goal of all unrepented sin.  We will also see in stark contrast the redemption of the souls in the Purgatorio, where repentance and grace address the roots of our sins and their effects.  And finally we will emerge in Easter week to contemplate with Dante and Beatrice the joys of the Paradiso.

But we cannot move directly to that final vision of God just yet.  There is no skirting of Good Friday and Holy Saturday.  Like Dante, we make the journey inward and downward - inward to the place where we see our sins for what they really are, and downward where we see where sins leads.  In the opening canto, Dante awakes out of slumber.  Like lent, advent is also a season of repentance.  And so the old advent hymn "Sleepers Awake!" is a fitting beginning to Dante's journey.

Dante is perhaps surprised to find himself in this state;  not many of us consciously aim (at least in the beginning) for the Inferno.  All too often we are lulled into sin:

How I got into it I cannot say,
Because I was so heavy and full of sleep,
When first I stumbled from the narrow way.

Dante awakes to find himself near the gates of Hell.  While some intentionally enter there (where "all hope is lost"), most of us meander into it.  At this beginning point, just at the entrance to Hell, the soul might say with Dante "How I got into it I cannot say."  Inattentiveness to our spiritual state always leads to the same place:  the entrance to Hell.

I will be adding some notes on the characters and the story as we go along.  But here at the beginning let me say a few things which will help us understand the Comedy's logic.  No one is in Hell who has not made a willed choice to be there.  We tend to think of "hell" as that place or state where God imposes a punishment upon an unwilling subject.  But it is the opposite which is true.  Augustine (Conf) once observed that "every man's inordinate affection becomes his own affliction."  Dante simply gives us, in the story of the Inferno, the true shape and end of the choice to sin:  it is merely sin drawn to its logical conclusion.  The soul is allowed to see more fully and perfectly what its choice is, and yet it chooses still.

Within this first canto we catch a glimpse of the end of the story:

The morn was young, and in his native sign
The Sun climbed with the stars whose glitterings
Attended on him when the Love Divine

First moved those happy, prime created things

At the end of the Paradiso we shall see the "Love which moves the Sun and the other stars" - a line borrowed from Boethius (patron of this blog) Consolation of Philosophy II.vii

O felix hominum genus
Si vestros animos amor
Quo caelum regitur regat.

O happy race of men,
If the love that rules the stars,
May also rule your hearts.

A note on Virgil:  he is the guide and companion of Dante in the first part of his journey.  He is the voice of reason, the arts, and all that the best humanism can offer.  But he can only guide Dante so far - there comes a time when only grace can bring him higher.  I'll be saying more on this as we proceed.

For simplicity sake, I'll use Sayers' translation.  There are other translations available online and in print.  The focus will be on the text:  what does the poet say, and what does it mean?  Primarily, I will look at the Comedy as both a piece of theological instruction, and an allegory for the soul's descent into sin, its redemption and sanctification, and its communion with God.

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