Start Your Tour Today

This essay was first published at The Firelight Library.

Russell Kirk once wrote that the purpose of great literature is “to teach us what it is to be fully human.”1 In one sense, to be human means that we are rational creatures singularly capable of contemplating our own deaths. This helps explain why mortality is such a persistent theme in literature, especially in medieval allegory, with its vivid depictions of the Four Last Things: Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell. In this post, I will explore how two works—one medieval and one modern—portray the inevitability of death and the soul’s preparation for its summons: the late medieval morality play Everyman and J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

Everyman is an allegory about dying; it teaches that life is a journey that leaves a soul either well or ill-prepared for judgment. At first glance, it seems to have little in common with the bestselling children’s books of all time, Rowling’s Harry Potter series. However, Goblet of Fire is in many ways a modern retelling of Everyman. In both stories, the hero embarks on an allegorical journey to meet Death, and only good deeds and a pure heart can save him.

While both personify Death to emphasize the urgency of spiritual readiness, the medieval dramatist imagines Death as God’s servant, whereas Rowling presents Voldemort as a figure of spiritual death—a soul given wholly over to sin and the spirit of Antichrist. By dramatizing the cosmic struggle between good and evil, Rowling fashions a modern myth that both parodies and subverts the contemporary cult of materialism.

Share

Everyman

Everyman is a late example of the medieval morality play, a dramatic form intended for spiritual instruction. Written sometime after 1485, it is one of the few complete examples of its kind to survive. The story follows Everyman, an allegorical character summoned unexpectedly by Death to stand before God in judgment. Death, however, is not the Grim Reaper of later imagination; instead, he is portrayed as a messenger of divine mercy. The play begins with God calling His servant:

GOD: Where art thou, Death, thou mighty messenger?

DEATH: Almighty God, I am here at your will,
Your commandment to fulfill.

GOD: Go thou to Everyman,
And show him, in my name,
A pilgrimage he must on him take,
Which he in no wise may escape.2

Death hastens to confront Everyman, and announces:

Everyman, stand still!
...On thee thou must take a long journay:
Therefore thy book of count* with thee thou bring...
For before God thou shalt answer and shew
Thy many bad deeds and good but a few.”3

*accounts

Everyman pleads for a delay, but Death refuses and commands him to make his soul ready that very day. Hoping to journey with a companion, he turns to various friends who quickly abandon him: Fellowship, Kindred, Cousin, and Goods. Only Good Deeds and Knowledge offer him any succor. Knowledge directs him to seek a priest for confession and the sacraments, through which he gains strength to complete his journey. In the end, Everyman firmly commends his soul to God, entering the grave escorted by Good Deeds alone.

To modern readers, the play’s allegory can feel like heavy-handed moralism, but this reaction often reveals more about our diminished symbolic literacy than about the play itself. As Vigen Guroian observes in Tending the Heart of Virtue: How Classic Stories Awaken a Child’s Moral Imagination (2023), young readers today often struggle to grasp metaphor, the native language of a literary and moral imagination. Everyman, through its evocative personifications, teaches two hopeful assumptions: first, that death is God’s merciful intervention to end the soul’s suffering and “wicked tempests”4; and second, that He provides every spiritual and sacramental grace needed to reach our final destination, if only we will accept it.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Harry is a modern Everyman appointed to meet Death (i.e. Voldemort) at the end of a year-long school tournament in which his courage, virtue, and love will be tested. John Granger, in Harry Potter’s Bookshelf (2009), describes the Harry Potter series as an “Everyman drama,” akin to the Canterbury Tales or Pilgrim’s Progress, highlighting its Christian themes of redemption and self-sacrifice.

All men and women, like Harry, are called to make a choice to confront the demons in their basements and to act sacrificially and lovingly for what is true, good, beautiful, and sacred. (p. 178)

Rowling signals her hero’s universality through his very name—Harry Potter—evoking the idiom “every Tom, Dick, and Harry.” Despite the fantasy setting, Harry’s experiences are remarkably ordinary: he struggles through classes, quarrels and reconciles with friends, and endures the usual challenges and humiliations of adolescence. His trials in the Triwizard Tournament also resemble Everyman’s spiritual pilgrimage: Harry is abandoned by friends, falsely accused of cheating, and reviled by most of his peers for a time, echoing Everyman’s betrayal by Fellowship, Cousin and Kindred.

Like Everyman, Harry’s journey is a moral as well as physical ordeal. Each of the three tasks in the Tournament tests and reveals his virtue. He warns his rival Cedric about the dragons; he forfeits first place to save another competitor’s sister; and he comes to Cedric’s aid twice in the labyrinth. Finally, in an act of humility and friendship, he insists they share the victory by grasping the Triwizard Cup together–a decision that seals Cedric’s fate when the Cup turns out to be a Portkey that brings them both to the Little Hangleton graveyard and Voldemort’s “rebirth”.

Voldemort as Antichrist

Whereas Everyman’s Death is God’s servant, Voldemort (whose name means “flight from death”) personifies the spiritual death born of pride. He has lured Harry to this graveyard for a “rebirthing ceremony” that parodies baptism, replacing the invocation of the Holy Trinity with a blasphemous alchemy of bone, flesh, and blood. As he prepares the evil potion, Voldemort’s servant Wormtail recites the incantation:

Bone of the father, unknowingly given, you will renew your son!
Flesh of the servant, willingly given, you will receive your master.
Blood of the enemy, forcibly taken, you will resurrect your foe.5

Rising from the cauldron with a hideous snakelike body, Voldemort dons black robes6 and summons his followers, the Death Eaters. Every detail of this grotesque rite inverts the Gospel and portrays Voldemort as an anti-Christ: he counts twelve “disciples,” including two who have abandoned or betrayed him; he withholds forgiveness and offers pain instead of mercy; and he is obsessed with conquering death—not sacrificially, like Christ, but with lust for self-exaltation. Voldemort’s desire is for his immortality alone; to accomplish it he seeks to destroy souls, not save them.

Against this demonic power, Harry must fight with courage and integrity. His ensuing duel with Voldemort becomes an allegory of non-violence vs. the “will to power”. Harry’s signature move, the disarming spell Expelliarmus, counters Voldemort’s killing curse, Avada Kedavra, and momentarily overpowers him long enough for him to escape. Harry’s flight through the graveyard to retrieve Cedric’s body and the Portkey mirrors the Tournament’s tasks in reverse.7 The story’s chiastic structure thus underscores its moral symmetry: death is routed by love and courage.

Conclusion

As Everyman teaches, the average person’s life is easily consumed by wealth, pleasure, and reputation. In time–often by middle age–our virtues and vices harden into our stable character, after which conversion becomes increasingly difficult. The suffering, loneliness, and deprivation of old age are for many a last invitation to turn from false goods toward eternal ones.

Throughout the series, Rowling juxtaposes Harry and his dark double Voldemort. Despite their surface similarities, the essential distinction remains their opposite attitudes toward death: Voldemort fears death and will commit any atrocity to evade it, while Harry learns that there are fates worse than dying. In the final novel, he will embrace the “death that destroys death” in a Christ-like sacrifice for others. In Goblet of Fire, he takes his first step toward that act by learning to face death with courage and rightly ordered love:

...he was not going to die kneeling at Voldemort’s feet…he was going to die upright like his father, and he was going to die trying to defend himself, even if no defense was possible…8

In an echo of Everyman, Rowling creates a timeless allegory of the soul’s pilgrimage of life through death, reaffirming the biblical message that dying in Christ to sin and self is the only sure path to eternal life.

Leave a comment

Like many websites, The Occidental Tourist uses affiliate links, which allows us to earn a small commission on any qualified purchases, at no additional cost to the buyer.

This space is for readers seeking to fill their souls with more than information—those who intuit that the Great Books of Western civilization are not relics of a dead past but living signs of man’s enduring quest for truth, meaning, and spiritual renewal.

In this series of essays—part reading guide, part intellectual pilgrimage—we’ll follow the poet Dante Alighieri’s threefold “itinerary of conversion” and explore his literary inspirations. It’s a journey that descends into the chaos of human brokenness, climbs the mountain of redemption, and aspires toward the radiance of the Beatific Vision.

📚 What to Expect

Here in Literary Pilgrim, you’ll find:

• Longform reflections on major themes—justice, pride, exile, mercy, resurrection

• Commentary on classical and Christian texts: Homer, Virgil, Scripture, Augustine, and more

• Connections to Dante’s Divine Comedy as a culmination of the Western symbolic imagination

• Personal insights drawn from my own reading, experience, and spiritual tradition

This is reading as pilgrimage—the soul’s emanation and return.

🗺 Notional Milestones on the Journey:

• “I Found Myself in a Dark Wood” — on getting lost and the beginning of conversion

• “The Rage of Achilles” — pride, anger, and the tragic hero in Homer

• “The Poetics of Descent” — Odysseus and the soul’s descent into Hades

• “Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter” — Dante's descent into Hell

• “The Seven-Story Mountain” — Dante in Purgatory and the climb toward healing

• “In My End Is My Beginning” — the eternal return at the journey’s close

Each reflection helps orient us not only within the literary canon but within the moral and spiritual architecture of our own lives.

🧭 Ready to Begin?

Start with the most recent post, or return to the beginning of the series. If you’d like a self-guided reading plan, I’ve created the sample syllabus below. If you need a refresher on Homer’s epics and Greek mythology, I recommend Edith Hamilton’s Mythology.

Literary Pilgrim Reading Syllabus

3.65KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

New dispatches arrive 1-2x a month. To receive them in your inbox—and to support this work of renewal—consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Welcome, pilgrim. The road is long, but we never walk it alone.

Like many websites, The Occidental Tourist uses affiliate links, which allows us to earn a small commission on any qualified purchases, at no additional cost to the buyer.

Start Your Tour Today

In my previous post on Homer, I explored the theme of mênis—Achilles' rage—which dominates The Iliad’s foreground and fuels its tragic action. The Odyssey, in contrast, is the epic of nostos: the hero's return. In this post, I want to reflect on a related motif found in both Homer and Dante, one of the most intriguing and enduring images in the ancient imagination: the nekyia (νέκυια), a journey to the underworld.

Literary critic Northrop Frye notes that the gods of the traditional epics act in a continuous present, influencing events by the immediacy of their will.1 To obtain knowledge of the future, however, the epic hero must typically travel to the kingdom of the dead. This descent to the lower world is never merely geographical; it is a descent into liminality, the domain of memory, prophecy, and otherworldly wisdom. For the questing hero, the underworld reveals mysteries that can only be obtained through a confrontation with death itself.

The nekyia in Homer’s Odyssey (Book 11) establishes the archetype. Odysseus, after an extended sojourn on Circe's enchanted isle, must travel to the underworld to consult the blind prophet Tiresias, whose counsel he needs to arrive safely in Ithaka and avoid rousing the already irate gods who oppose his nostos. Odysseus and his men depart Circe's island, sailing for the distant shore where Persephone’s black poplars hide the portal to the House of Death. There Odysseus performs a necromantic ritual: digging and filling a trench with libations of honey, milk, wine, and blood to summon the shades of the dead.

When Tiresias appears (whose name can be translated as "the weariness of rowing"),2 he instructs Odysseus on how to reach Ithaka and gives details of the impending showdown with his wife's suitors. But then the blind seer delivers an enigmatic prophecy: Odysseus must make a journey at the end of his life to a remote inland country, where he will plant his oar in the ground to appease Poseidon's wrath, concluding

And at last your own death will steal upon you...
a gentle, painless death, far from the sea it comes
to take you down, borne down with the years in ripe old age
with all your people there in blessed peace around you.3

After consulting with other shades, including his mother and fallen comrades, Achilles and Agamemnon, Odysseus returns to his ship by the same route and resumes his journey home.

Share

Dante’s Descent

Other classical examples of nekyia include that of the Trojan hero Aeneas who goes down to Hades in Virgil's Aeneid. Dante Alighieri’s Inferno imitates Virgil’s thematic descent but transfigures it with history and Christian symbolism. Dante (the lost pilgrim) and his guide Virgil descend into the spiraling circles of Hell, which become successively more narrow as the horror of human dysfunction on display expands. Here, the architecture of Hell itself is a creation of divine justice whose sometimes mystifying penal logic Dante must assimilate before he can ascend again.

Unlike Odysseus, who returns to the upper world by the same route, Dante must pass through the lowest pit of Hell where Satan lies immobilized in ice, and there—by gravitational inversion—begin the long climb out the other side, emerging with Virgil's help at Mt. Purgatory. Dante’s path, then, is a reorientation: he comes out at the opposite end, having passed through the hellish depths of dysfunction. Before he leaves Hell, however, he encounters his famous forerunner, Odysseus, in one of the most memorable interviews of the Inferno (Canto 26).

The Dual Character of Ulysses

Traditions about Odysseus abound in Greek and Roman literature, with as many unflattering depictions as admiring ones. Even in Homer, wily Odysseus is never the purely virtuous hero. His character boasts of metis (cunning intelligence) marked by ambiguity. He succeeds by deception as often as by craft, usually blurring the boundary between them. In Dante’s Inferno, this ambiguity earns him condemnation. The poet places Ulysses (his Latin name) in the eighth circle of Hell among the fraudulent counselors, as punishment for his stratagems in the Trojan Horse affair and the theft of the Palladium, the sacred image of Athena.

The poet does not treat Ulysses simply with disdain, however. He raises him into a kind of tragic figure whose native nobility is undone by the same yearning that animates The Divine Comedy: the intense desire to know. Dante's Ulysses is consumed by an unbounded “lust for knowledge” that imitates our first parents' transgression.

Departing from Homer's storyline, this Ulysses tells Virgil and Dante how, after leaving Circe’s island with his men, he turned the ship’s bow westward toward uncharted seas, "making wings out of our oars in a wild flight"4 from the duties and consolations of home and family.5 Racing towards the other side of the globe, Ulysses spied mystical Mount Purgatory rising from the ocean, but a divine whirlwind caught the ship and sank it before they could approach the shore.

This recasting of the Odyssean myth is not simply poetic license. In Dante’s moral universe, Ulysses’ fate serves as a warning: unmoored from humility and the order of love, even the noblest yearning becomes destructive. This insight is intensified in Purgatorio 19, where the pilgrim is reminded that Ulysses embodied a specifically intellectual form of incontinence—gluttony for knowledge and experience.

Tennyson’s Ulysses: The Romantic Refashioning

Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s dramatic monologue “Ulysses” takes up Dante’s story and embellishes it with Romantic flair, embracing the hero's wanderlust as virtue. Written in 1833 while grieving the death of his friend Arthur Hallam (of “In Memoriam” fame), Tennyson’s poem portrays an aging and restless Ulysses at home, the burdens of kingship and domesticity weighing heavily on him: “I cannot rest from travel: I will drink / Life to the lees.”

This Ulysses feels the pinch of time. Scorning his quiet life in Ithaka and wearing his crown like a yoke, he aches to recover the vitality of youth. “How dull it is to pause, to make an end, / To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!” One's life, like a sword, must be continually tried in contests—not left to tarnish in disuse. And though diminished by age, Ulysses exalts the enduring spirit of man:

Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are…

Rather than seeking wisdom from below or above, Tennyson’s Ulysses looks past the horizon. He dreams of sailing “beyond the sunset and the baths / Of all the western stars,” hoping to meet Achilles in the Happy Isles. Where Dante's Ulysses is punished for transgressing human bounds, Tennyson’s hero transforms that same longing into a defiant, noble hope: "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

His is not the way down, but the way out.

The Ultimate Descent: Christ’s Harrowing of Hell

Tennyson's "Ulysses" has rightly earned its laurels in literature as one of the great tributes to the human spirit, but it belies a modern conceit: that we can somehow leap towards infinite vistas of fulfillment by casting off the familiar ties that embed us in a particular place, family and community.

Between the ages of Homer and Dante, a new nekyia emerged in Western tradition that surpassed every other in heroic measure—its unlikely hero not resisting but yielding to the instrument of death…and paradoxically defeating it. Christians everywhere are observing it liturgically this week in the Paschal Mystery of the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, culminating in the Easter celebration.

The Church traditionally commemorates this nekyia on Holy Saturday. This event is known as the Harrowing of Hell, in which Christ descended to the dead following his crucifixion, to free the souls of the righteous awaiting their redemption. Its historicity is affirmed doctrinally in the Bible, but the imaginative details are elaborated in the Gospel of Nicodemus, an apocryphal text from the 4th or 5th century A.D. In this narrative, Christ breaks down the gates of Hades and liberates a host of saints from the Old Testament, including Adam, Abraham, and David. Dante preserves this story in Inferno 4, when Virgil recalls “a Great Lord” who entered Limbo and carried off many souls “making them blessed”.

Unlike Tennyson’s Ulysses, Christ does not flee from mortality but embraces it in obedience to his Father who ordained his death for the salvation of souls. The Catechism of the Catholic Church declares: “Christ went down into the depths of death so that ‘the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live’” (CCC §635). His descent is not an evasion of suffering but its transfiguration. By descending in obedience and ascending in triumph, Christ unites the “way down” with the “way up.”

Three Modes of Descent, Three Modes of Life

What emerges from this meditation on the nekyia are three archetypal paths of descent, each offering an ethical vision of the way down into finitude as the way up into liberation.

• Odysseus’ descent is the path of gnosis. He enters the shadow world to learn hidden truths, reckon with death, and navigate his return. It is a ritual of memory and grief, undertaken for prophetic guidance.

• Dante’s descent is the path of conversion. He goes down into Hell to confront sin and dysfunction so he can turn away from error and find his way back. He emerges not by his own heroism, but by grace and a guide.

• Christ’s descent is the path of oblation. It is not self-seeking but self-emptying, a journey into the depths of God-forsakenness to offer oneself for the redemption of others.

Tennyson’s Ulysses, by contrast, rejects the nekyia altogether. Rather than adapt to the tragic level of existence—aging, suffering, finitude—he leaps into the unknown. It is a bold gesture against fate—Beethoven shaking his fist at heaven, if you will—but ultimately an ineffective escape from the vicissitudes of time. William F. Lynch, in Christ and Apollo, notes that the Romantic hero, like Tennyson’s Ulysses, “shut[s] himself off in solitude from man and God in order that he may stand brilliantly on his own.” But this leap toward infinity ends not in transcendence, but in a “tenuous, unreal dream that has no roots in the earth.”6

During this Holy Week, especially, it’s a good reminder that true transformation comes not by refusing the downward journey, but by embracing it. The nekyia teaches us that only by facing the reality of death, failure, and finitude with courage and patience, can we hope to rise—not as gods, but as redeemed and reoriented human beings.

Bonus Audio: “The Harrowing of Hell” read by Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick on The Lord of the Spirits podcast.7

Leave a comment

Like many websites, The Occidental Tourist uses affiliate links, which allows us to earn a small commission on any qualified purchases, at no additional cost to the buyer.

Start Your Tour Today

So begins Homer’s invocation to the Muse in his epic battle tale, The Iliad. In these few lines, translated here by Robert Fagles, Homer traces the main action of his story: Achilles’ boundless rage, the mênis (μῆνις) that holds him hostage while the gods make sport of the unfolding tragedy between Trojans and Achaeans1 on the windswept battlefield of Troy.

Achilles’ wrath is first ignited when the Achaean Commander, Agamemnon, is forced by Apollo to surrender the young woman who was his war prize, and compensates his loss by seizing Achilles’ cherished prize, the beautiful Briseis. Enraged, Achilles withdraws from battle to weaken the Achaeans and give satisfaction for his injury following the petty but ruinous logic of “I’ll show them!”

It is not until the Trojan warrior Hector slays Patroclus, Achilles’ closest companion, that his mênis reawakens with god-defying fury and propels him back onto the battlefield. Achilles’ renewed rage reverses the tide of war in the Achaeans’ favor, leaving a wake of destruction and mutilated corpses. Achilles’ killing spree eventually culminates in Hector’s death and desecration but still he finds no satisfaction for his grief. His mênis finally exhausted, Achilles is moved to a surprise act of mercy toward Hector’s bereaved father, Priam, in the poem’s beautiful final scene:

[Priam’s] words stirred within Achilles a deep desire
to grieve for his own father. Taking the old man’s hand
he gently moved him back. And overpowered by memory
both men gave way to grief. Priam wept freely
for man-killing Hector…as Achilles wept himself,
now for his father, now for Patroclus once again,
and their sobbing rose and fell throughout the house.

The Iliad, Book XXIV, lines 592-599

A Simple Story of Suffering

Aristotle calls The Iliad a “simple story of suffering.”2 We should not understand him to mean, however, that Homer’s epic lacks the expansive vision of world-class literature. To the contrary, writes Northrop Frye, epic poetry traditionally spans an “encyclopaedic range” of themes, from Heaven to Hades and everything in between.3 Aristotle's point is structural: the poem’s unity lies in its unrelenting depiction of destructive action—woundings, tortures, deaths in plain view.4

The Iliad abounds in bloodshed, of course, as anyone who has spent even an hour with it knows. But this only partly accounts for its tragic tone. I think what ultimately makes Homer’s poem “a story of suffering” is that it depicts so acutely Achilles’ irreversible trajectory towards self-inflicted isolation and untimely death, the literary definition of tragedy.5

The Odyssey: Suffering as Endurance

In Homeric Moments: Clues to Delight in Reading the Iliad and the Odyssey, Eva Brann contrasts Achilles’ experience of suffering in The Iliad with that of Homer’s other great character, Odysseus, in The Odyssey:

Both men know suffering…though one is temperamental and the other enduring. And both, in their way, are twice-dead: Achilles lives in a virtual Hades, and Odysseus visits the real one. But Achilles really dies and Odysseus returns alive from the abode of the dead, and that is the crux of the antithesis about which the two poems pivot.6

Brann is alluding to Book XXI of The Odyssey where Odysseus journeys to the underworld and spies mournful Achilles, lamenting his brief life which he exchanged for kleos (κλέος)—immortal glory. “No winning words about death to me, shining Odysseus” protests Achilles’ shade to his former comrade-in-arms. “By god, I’d rather slave on earth for another man—some dirt-poor tenant farmer who scrapes to keep alive—than rule down here over all the breathless dead.”7

Odysseus departs from the underworld to find his way back to Ithaka, the long-forsaken home to which he will return more ragged than a “dirt-poor tenant farmer,” determined to achieve not kleos but nostos (νόστος)—a hero’s homecoming.

Homer’s Heroes in Dante’s Hell

Odysseus’ descent to Hades calls to mind Dante’s similar journey through Hell in the first book of the Commedia. This is no surprise, of course, because Il Sommo Poeta is merely following the literary tradition of both Virgil and Homer. This time, it is Dante’s turn to muse on the fates of Achilles and Odysseus (known to Dante by his Latin name, Ulysses).

Given Achilles’ history of temper tantrums, you might expect to find him in the Fifth Circle of Hell, where the wrathful are punished. In fact, Dante assigns him to the Second Circle with the lustful sinners and those who died for love. (We’ve already met one of them, the faithless Francesca da Rimini.) Commentators like Henry Wadsworth Longfellow read this in light of a popular Greek legend about Achilles’ death (of which Homer is silent): “Achilles, being in love with Polyxena, a daughter of Priam, went unarmed to the temple of Apollo, where he was put to death by Paris” with an arrow to his mortal heel.8 Realizing he had been duped, Achilles’ ghost returns later to demand that Polyxena be sacrificed on his tomb. So much for love.

What these stories reveal is that Achilles’s true weakness, his “tragic flaw”—hamartia in Aristotelian terms—is not his exposed heel but his passionate nature. Both Achilles’ martial fury and violent grief find their source in his unbridled thumos (θυμός)—the emotive force comprising one’s heart or spirit—rather than reasoned reflection. In this sense, even though Achilles is a man of relatively mature years (presumably in his mid-thirties), he is emotionally an adolescent, according to Brann:

What is young is his passionate pride, his all-concentrating wrath, the mênis, [which is] that deeply mindful, minding, remembering anger at an insult and an injustice to which his poem is devoted.9

In contrast, cunning Odysseus is Achilles’ elder in both years and emotional maturity. He displays a mastery of mêtis (Μῆτις), the measured, tactical foresight for which he is best known. It is his plan of deception that finally defeats the Trojans and brings the decade-long war to an end. But Odysseus, too, receives a sinner’s reward in Dante’s Inferno, as we’ll explore in the next post.

What should we make, then, of Homeric heroism in Dante’s world? Achilles’ unrestrained thumos terminates in sins of passion. Odysseus’ resourceful mêtis borders on base trickery. Both are eventually undone by the famous qualities that once defined their greatness.

Dante offers a sobering conclusion: glory detached from virtue earns no true laurel. In this world or the next, passion without measure, cunning without conscience, leads not to eternal reward but to ruin.

Leave a comment

Share The Occidental Tourist

As with many websites, The Occidental Tourist uses affiliate links, which allows us to earn a small commission on any qualified purchases, at no additional cost to the buyer.

Start Your Tour Today

It’s the season of Lent, a time for deep reflection, and I’ve been procrastinating on writing this post about Homer’s influence on Dante. I think I know why—how does one begin to write about the first and arguably most influential storyteller in the Western literary canon? I may as well pontificate on the Bible or Shakespeare. Certainly, whatever I have to say on the subject pales in comparison to the works themselves and the genius behind them. The old adage, "fools rush in where angels fear to tread," comes to mind.

That said, I've promised to bring you Homer, and I intend to deliver. As another saying about angels goes, they can fly because they take themselves lightly. Allow me then to proceed in that light-hearted spirit.

Share

Why Read Homer? Why Read Homer for Dante?

Why is it important to read Homer in general, and as preparation for The Divine Comedy specifically? Author Adam Nicolson takes up the first part of this question in Why Homer Matters: A History. As the foundation myths of Greek culture, the Homeric epics have formed the imaginative backdrop of the Western collective consciousness for more than three millennia. The Iliad and The Odyssey—including the oral tradition that predated their transition to written form—help fill what Nicolson calls "a third space" between our own cultural memory and a distant mythic past that predates the historical record. In other words, Homer reveals to us how we became who we are.

Homer was not a direct influence on Dante, who did not know Greek at a time when the ancient poet’s works were unavailable in Latin. It is accurate to say, however, that Dante cherished a deep affection for Homer, having encountered him concomitantly in other writers.1 Certain key figures (foremost of whom are Achilles and Odysseus) appear in the The Divine Comedy, but Dante absorbed them through Roman and medieval sources rather than from Homer’s own words.

Even so, we want to be familiar with Homer as we read Dante because he forms the bedrock of Western literature and, in that sense, was a natural part of Dante's literary formation. Most significantly, Dante’s greatest inspiration, the Roman poet Virgil, consciously assimilated the Homeric legacy in what is perhaps the world’s most acclaimed piece of fan fiction, The Aeneid—thus making Homer an inescapable presence in The Divine Comedy.

But I think both of these considerations fall short of a still larger reason why reading Homer remains a meaningful undertaking today, which is to say, Homer makes us more human.

Homer and the Human Experience

The intellectual disciplines collectively called the Humanities are so named because they humanize us. Blaise Pascal famously wrote that “man is neither angel nor beast."2 I would add that he is not a machine either—though modernity since Descartes (Pascal’s contemporary), has often reached for mechanistic metaphors when describing him. Man is not an angel, though he possesses intellect and reason, and he is not a brute animal, though he possesses bodily needs and instincts. He is a unique, living composite, standing upright between heaven and earth, a microcosm of all reality.

This is what we see in Homer: epic stories that span the full range of human experience, from earthly and mortal struggles to numinous and divine encounters. One of my favorite examples of this is The Shield of Achilles in The Iliad, Book 18. Achilles, grieving the loss of his closest companion, Patroclus, requires new armor to avenge his friend’s death. His shield, forged by the blacksmith god Hephaestus, becomes a microcosm of human society—depicting not just war and conflict, but also peace, celebration, and daily life. Even with its mythic elements, Homer delivers a profound and truthful vision of the human condition.

How to Read Homer

Since I’ve mentioned the gods, let me briefly address how to approach them literarily, without the discomfort that modern retellings often provoke. Yes, Homer deals in myth—that is, his stories belong to the realm of archetypes, the original patterns that have shaped storytelling across the ages. You don’t read a myth the way you read a realistic novel. These stories don’t lose their power because we no longer believe in Homer’s pantheon. Rather, we lose something when we fail to recognize that myths are not naive make-believe but works of exquisite imagination containing truths too dense for mere historical facts.

The best way to read Homer, then, is to let the myths work on you at a deep, subterranean level—by simply enjoying them on their own enchanted terms.

Resources for New Readers

If you’re encountering Homer for the first time, I recommend heading over to the Substack newsletter Beyond the Bookshelf by fellow Navy veteran Matthew Long. His post, An Introduction to the Iliad, is ideal for new readers or those who want to be reacquainted with Homer. If you subscribe now, it’s not too late to follow along in real time with his Iliad reading plan and Deep Reads Book Club discussions.

Beyond the Bookshelf

An Introduction to the Iliad

Exploring Life and Literature…

Read more

a year ago · 149 likes · 74 comments · Matthew Long

Most new readers, of course, will ask which translation to use. The best translation, in my opinion, is the one you already own. However, if Homer is not yet on your bookshelf, I’m partial to Robert Fagles’ translations. Published in the 1990s, these editions have become popular staples in classrooms and reading groups because they balance poetic form with vivid contemporary style. Every translation involves trade-offs, but Fagles’ version is both faithful and accessible.

For first-time readers, my advice is: don’t get bogged down by the vastness of Homer’s epics. I don’t know how many distinct characters each work mentions, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it numbered in the hundreds. Many of these names appear only once, often in reference to their gory deaths on the battlefield. Focus on the main characters and storylines—Achilles, Odysseus, Agamemnon, Hector, Priam, Paris, Helen, Penelope, and Telemachus among others—and let the rest flow around you. It’s okay to approach your first reading mainly as an introduction to the story and Homer’s narrative style. If you are truly committed to crafting a literary life shaped by the imaginative vision of the great masters, you will return again and again to these epics, with each experience deepening your understanding and appreciation.

By the way, if you’re inclined toward audiobooks, I highly recommend them as a first or subsequent read since Homer’s poems were, after all, originally recited aloud. Audible offers an excellent abridged narration of Fagles’ Iliad, with the unabridged version coming out this summer. If my memory serves me correctly, I enjoyed this version during my very first reading of Homer over 10 years ago.

Finally, unlike great novels, myths do not lose their imaginative power when they are adapted or abridged to make them more approachable. For a charming adaptation of the Greek myths—including Homer’s stories and themes—I recommend Edith Hamilton’s Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes (the 75th Anniversary edition is lovely!) Check out specifically Part Four, The Heroes of the Trojan War. It covers key events from The Judgment of Paris (which, while not included in The Iliad, was part of the broader mythic tradition) to the fall of Troy, the post-war wanderings of Odysseus, and even Aeneas’ Virgilian quest for a new homeland.

I hope this inspires you to read a little Homer this month. In future posts, I’ll explore the key figures of Achilles and Odysseus; the themes of rage and wandering; and the role of Homeric epithets and similes. Post your comments or questions below.

Happy Reading!

Leave a comment

Please note, as an Amazon affiliate, I can earn a small commission on qualified purchases through links in this post, at no additional cost to the buyer.

Start Your Tour Today

I’m currently working on my next series of posts exploring Homer’s role in shaping Dante’s literary vision. As Valentine’s Day approaches, however, I thought it would be fun to look at one of the Inferno’s most memorable characters, the love-struck Francesca da Rimini. She took up an ill-fated affair with her husband’s brother, Paolo, and wound up in Dante’s hell. I’m including the text of a rare translation of Francesca’s famous scene by another Dante you should know, surname of Rossetti: the 19th century English poet and painter (and brother of Christina Rossetti) who helped found the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Enjoy!

Share

Inferno Canto V: The Circle of Lust

Francesca da Rimini appears in Inferno Canto V as one of the damned souls in the circle of the Lustful. In real life, she was the daughter of Guido Vecchio da Polenta, lord of Ravenna. Around 1275, she was married for political reasons to Gianciotto Malatesta, the daring but lame son of Malatesta da Verrucchio, lord of Rimini. After her apparently loveless marriage, she became romantically involved with Gianciotto’s younger brother, Paolo Malatesta—and was murdered by Gianciotto when he discovered the pair in an adulterous embrace.

Dante's portrayal of Francesca is one of the most compelling scenes in the Inferno, an example of high performance art which throws our ethical distinctions and sympathies into a moral tug-of-war. Francesca recounts her downfall with elegance and sorrow, describing how she and Paolo were reading the courtly romance of Lancelot and Guinevere when, mirroring the characters’ passion, they succumbed to their desire for each other. As Lancelot kissed Guinevere, Paolo seized that moment to lock lips with Francesca—at which she remarks pointedly, “Upon that day we read no more.”1

Nursing her self-pity, Francesca laments that "Love has conducted us unto one death,"2 reflecting the medieval courtly tradition that viewed romantic love as an irresistible force. The pilgrim Dante is moved to sympathy for her tragedy. “Thine agonies, Francesca/ Sad and compassionate to weeping make me.”3 Dante the poet, however, artfully reveals the subtle manipulation of Francesca’s narrative: though she speaks poignantly of their fate, she never actually names Paolo as her lover and accomplice, referring to him only impersonally (“he whom nought can sever from me now”), with a wounded tone of resentment.

Transcending the moralistic sentiments of his day, Dante treats the sin of lust (lussuria) with limited attention to its carnality, emphasizing instead its subjugation of reason to stormy desires.4 Francesca’s punishment, therefore, reflects her sin: she and Paolo are eternally condemned to be buffeted about in a dark storm, symbolizing the uncontrolled passion of their counterfeit love. Moved by her story, Dante the pilgrim collapses under a surge of pity at the end of Canto V—the first of his early struggles to reconcile compassion with divine justice. As his journey progresses, however, Dante will learn to recognize sin as the unequivocal perversion of reason and truth, baldly incompatible with the pure vision of God he is pursuing.

Subscribe now

“Francesca da Rimini” - a translation by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Dante Gabriel Rossetti was an English poet and painter who lived from 1828-1882. The son of an Italian Dante scholar and émigré, Rossetti devoted much of his artistic work during the 1850’s to his literary namesake and other medieval themes. He completed a translation of Dante Alighieri's La Vita Nuova in 1861. The following is his translation of the passage we’ve been discussing in Inferno Canto V, from Poems by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (circa 1870).5

Start Your Tour Today

This article is part of the Go Deeper study series, which explores themes of a previous post in greater detail. It’s one of the benefits for paid subscribers who seek deeper literary and theological analysis. Subscribing to your favorite Substack newsletters is a great way to support authors while keeping the platform an ad-free haven for great writing.

In my last post, I wrote about the Book of Genesis as a key source of inspiration for Dante’s Divine Comedy, shaping his cosmology as well as his conception of humanity’s fall from grace and its ongoing struggle with sin. Today, I want to zoom in on two Genesis stories that are especially emblematic of Dante’s themes: the Tree of Knowledge and the Tower of Babel (including its curious connection to GIANTS!)

Having a more nuanced understanding of these familiar stories will make your reading of the Divine Comedy a richer experience. Further self-study resources are included at the end.

Table of Contents

• The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Bad

• Nimrod and the Giants in Genesis and Dante

• Self-Study Resources

  Share

The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Bad

Let’s return now to the Garden of Eden and Adam and Eve’s fateful choice to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (or “Good and Bad”, in the preferred phrasing of some biblical commentators).1 This story has long been a stumbling block for many readers who question why God would:

1. Plant a tree in the middle of the garden but forbid eating from it.

2. Warn Adam and Eve that eating the fruit will cause death, though this did not immediately happen.

3. Expel Adam and Eve from Paradise for a seemingly minor infraction.

As mentioned in my previous post, Dante viewed their transgression as a form of intellectual incontinence—an excessive hunger for knowledge–meaning their sin resulted from their disordered desire to be like God. Permit me to unpack that further, drawing on theological insights to illuminate this interpretation.

The Expulsion from Eden as Divine Mercy

Far from being merely punitive, the exile from Eden was an act of divine mercy. Orthodox priests Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick and Fr. Stephen DeYoung, hosts of the popular Lord of Spirits podcast, have frequently advanced the following points on their show:

1. Expulsion as Protection: After the fall, humanity—now marred by sin—could not withstand God’s all-consuming holiness. Expulsion from the Garden was a protective act that ensured the survival of the human race rather than its immediate destruction.

2. Death as a Process: God’s warning about death in Gen 2:17—"you shall surely die"—is better understood as a spiritual death leading to physical demise. A more accurate rendering is: "dying, you shall die." Death was a process rather than an instantaneous event. This highlights the fact that time itself is a consequence of man’s expulsion from Paradise. Mortality, more than just moral corruption, is the primary repercussion of the fall.

3. Premature Partaking of the Fruit: Eating the “forbidden” fruit exposed Adam and Eve to heavenly knowledge before they had the wisdom and capacity to assimilate it. They were created in innocence but not in a perfected state. By grasping at knowledge prematurely, they forfeited the opportunity to receive it as a gift.

Wisdom and Proper Alignment to the Good

Early Church Fathers such as St. Irenaeus of Lyons and St. Ephrem the Syrian claimed that God would have eventually granted Adam and Eve access to the fruit. As Jonathan Pageau has argued, the knowledge of good and evil requires proper alignment to a higher good—a higher reality. Wisdom is needed to discern God’s purpose and providence in human affairs, especially when it concerns the problem of suffering.

Dante’s journey is built on this very premise. At the beginning of the Inferno, he is virtually drowning in his distress, unable to see the higher purpose behind it. Overcome by dread and anxiety, he lacks the moral and spiritual wisdom to align his suffering with God’s divine plan. This is why he must undertake the journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. A crucial part of his transformation is developing humility, learning to see and accept reality according to God’s judgment rather than his own.

Nimrod and the Giants in Genesis and Dante

Read more

This week, America welcomed its “new” first family back into the White House amidst competing flurries of optimism and angst. This post is not about them, however, but of another “first family”—our primordial parents Adam and Eve—whose original transgression in Paradise inaugurated the long human drama of disobedience, exile, and redemption. The iconic story from Genesis is essential to the spiritual framework of Dante’s Divine Comedy, shaping his conceptions of sin, knowledge, and freedom.

Genesis: Background and Themes

As the first book of the Hebrew Pentateuch, Genesis is traditionally attributed to Moses in the period following the Exodus from Egypt (~1400 BC) and represents the original meta-history of humanity.1

Genesis is a Greek word meaning “beginning,” as in coming into being, and is drawn from the opening verse of the text: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Its major themes include:

• The creation of the cosmos and life on earth

• Human rebellion and punishment

• The history of the earliest generations of men

• God’s plan to restore fallen human nature through the line of Abraham

It is useful to divide Genesis into two main parts. Chapters 1-11 give a cosmological overview of creation, Adam and Eve’s sin and exile, Noah and the flood, and the Tower of Babel. Chapters 12-50 provide an anthropological narrative, detailing Abraham’s faith and covenant with God, the lives of his descendants, and Israel’s eventual sojourn in Egypt (which sets up the later narrative of the Exodus).

The Creation Account: A World Ex Nihilo (Genesis 1-2)

The origin story in the book of Genesis is among the most well-known passages in the Bible; possibly for this reason, its literary power tends to be lost on many. If you haven’t read the story in a while, I encourage you to do so here. Notice that it describes creation using a distinct “narrative couplet”—this means it tells the story twice, with a different literary emphasis each time.

I expect most educated readers are able to distinguish scientific from other types of writing, especially when dealing with ancient texts. Therefore, it should surprise no one that the opening chapters of Genesis ought not to be understood as opposing science, but as presenting religious and philosophical truths outside the material realm of secondary causes (more on that in a future post).

We’ve already seen how the tension between being and becoming has perplexed western philosophers since the Pre-Socratics. I believe that the Genesis creation story offers a tenable solution to this problem whereby mutable, contingent creatures derive their being from the eternal, uncreated God, who is Being Itself.

Adam and Eve: Fall from Paradise (Genesis 2-4)

God forms Adam (Hebrew, man) from the dust of the earth to become, with his wife Eve (Hebrew, living), the first parents of all humanity. This biblical principle of our common parentage provides the foundation for human unity: "And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth" (Acts 17:26 ESV).

The couple’s first home is in Eden, a mysterious, even mythical place somewhere “in the east”, crowned with a paradisiacal garden atop a holy mountain.2 Despite various theories, no scholarly consensus exists as to the location of a historical Eden, though Dante locates his Paradise on top of Mt. Purgatory, at the antipodes of Jerusalem.

Subscribe now

After making Adam and his wife caretakers of the garden, God gives them a paternal mandate that they may eat of any tree except the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil: “for in the day that you eat of it, you shall die” (Gen. 2:17). We all know the rest of the story: a cunning serpent convinces Eve that the fruit is safe to eat and will make her like the jealous God who withheld its goodness from her. She eats the fruit and gives some to her husband, making him complicit in her disobedience. They don’t die, of course, but “their eyes are opened” and upon discovering their nakedness, they sew a covering of fig leaves and hide themselves from God.

Faced with the couple’s transgression, God curses the serpent and pronounces pain, toil, and vexation upon the man and woman’s worldly labors and relationships. Then he casts them out of the garden, barring their re-entry with a flaming sword-bearing cherubim, lest they eat of the Tree of Life and incur immortality in their cursed state. They and their descendents will now live out their mortal lives as exiles in a hostile land.

The Tower of Babel: Pride and Power (Genesis 11:1-9)

The final story of the first part of Genesis tells of Noah’s descendent Nimrod, “a mighty hunter before the Lord,” who founded the future Babylon (Hebrew babel, confusion) where men first sought to “make a name for themselves” by building a great tower to reach the heavens. Babel is often seen as a cautionary tale against humanity’s overweening pride—men trying to be gods—and ends in God scattering the people and confusing their language. (As one of my favorite stories in Genesis, I’m saving the juicier details for a future bonus post!)

Dante’s Engagement with Genesis

The problem of original sin is a narrative thread running through all three cantos of the Divine Comedy. In the chart below, I’ve attempted to capture the significant references to Genesis, with particular emphasis on the Adam and Eve story, though my list may not be exhaustive. (Please let me know in the comments if I’ve missed any others.)

These passages suggest that humanity’s corruption and alienation from God are rooted in our first parents’ premature and disordered desire for knowledge. Dante understands their transgression as intellectual incontinence, a sin related to gluttony. Prof. Teodolinda Barolini (Columbia University) explains:

Dante himself does not treat the violation of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil by Adam and Eve as a fraudulent theft, but as a form of incontinence...Dante insists on the primal violation as a form of transgressive eating…by locating grafts from the tree of Eden on his terrace of gluttony in Purgatory.3

Modern readers may wonder why this seemingly minor violation incurred such catastrophic consequences for Adam and his progeny. Beatrice answers that by refusing to accept limitations on its will, human nature turned away “from its own path, from truth, from its own life” (Paradiso 7.38-39). Adam received his freedom from God and used it to repay Him with ingratitude and distrust, rupturing their original unity.

What Dante Teaches Us About Sin

To understand Dante’s vision in the Divine Comedy on his terms, we have to recover the traditional Christian sense of sin. Since the Enlightenment, modernity has increasingly rejected the idea of original sin as the ontological defect responsible for corruption and suffering in our world. Even in some Christian circles, it is popular nowadays to minimize the seriousness of sin by referring to it as “missing the mark” (Greek, hamartia), as though it were merely a matter of poor aim.

Dante would have found the social re-engineering of conscience preposterous. Yet it still leaves many asking, what is sin?

Thomas Aquinas defines sin as "nothing else than a bad human act” (Summa Theologiae I-II, 71, 6). Every act has an object, and sin is an “inordinate act” because it is not correctly or proportionately ordered toward a good end. Sin has two conditions: 1) it requires the consent of the will, i.e. is voluntary; 2) it violates or subverts some due measure of God’s eternal law and human reason. In The Divine Comedy: Tracing God’s Art, Marguerite Mills Chiarenza is emphatic on this point:

In order to read the Inferno properly, it is necessary to have an unequivocal understanding that sin is an act of the will…committed knowingly and intentionally.4

For Dante, disordered love underlies all our sinful actions. On the fourth terrace of Purgatory, Virgil explains that “love may choose an evil object or err through too much or too little vigor” (Paradiso 7.95-96). As long as it is directed toward the “First Good” (God) or toward secondary goods in their proper measure, love avoids error. “But when it twists toward evil, or attends to good with more or less care than it should,” it results in sin and deserves punishment. (Paradiso 7.100-101) .

Paradise Lost: Enduring Consequences of the Fall

The Fall has left humanity with the universal memory of a lost golden age, a hopeful vision of redemption, and a deep-seated instinct for self-sacrifice and atonement. The great demonic deception—you will become like God—disrupted every aspect of our original parents’ existence, and subsequently ours:

• Relationship with God

• Psychic harmony

• The order of marriage and family life

• Environmental stewardship

• Mastery over our passions and thoughts

• The experience of immortality

A perennial question persists: Will humanity learn to accept its creatureliness, or insist on fashioning itself according to its own designs? Both Genesis and Dante attest to the ancient wisdom that estrangement from God leads to alienation and exile, while trust in divine providence puts us on the right path to restoring our harmony and purpose.

As an Amazon affiliate, I receive a small commission on qualified purchases to support my work at no additional cost to the buyer.

Comments and questions from astute readers on my last post, “Stairway to Heaven”, about the continuing relevance of Dante’s geocentric model of the universe, have prompted me to compile this list of books and videos that helped form my thought over the last few months on these vexing questions.

An underlying message of my previous article (which I only realized when my readers pressed me on it), is that the cosmic worldview we accept as “scientific” is often cultivated and assented to in our collective imagination long before the scientific evidence is ever sought and assimilated. This was true of heliocentrism as it was of evolution, whose seminal propositions predated Copernicus and Darwin by at least a century. C.S. Lewis notes as much in The Discarded Image.

Dante’s geocentric model of the universe may have been ousted the Copernican Revolution beginning in the 16th century, but it is becoming relevant again today as an increasing number of scientists, philosophers, and even historians realize the impossibility and undesirability of separating the human knower from that which is known. From our ordinary perspective and experience, the universe is unquestionably geocentric. This is an epistemological position as much as it is scientific.

I’ve tried to link to free PDFs wherever possible for sources that are in the public domain; for more recent works, please note that I receive a small commission as an Amazon affiliate for qualifying purchases at no additional cost to the buyer.

Share

Read more

Happy New Year! Today, I’m diving deeper into the origins of Dante’s cosmology to help us understand and appreciate the startling, complex universe we’ll encounter in the Divine Comedy. Dante’s richly imagined medieval cosmos differs acutely from the modern, Carl Sagan-inspired conception. The more we grasp Dante’s view of reality, the better we can decipher the symbols and meanings embedded in his work. Those readers seeking to re-enchant their worldview through Dante’s eyes will find his universe an enthralling place.

I suspect that many readers who are new to the Divine Comedy will be tempted to treat Dante’s pervasive astronomical allusions like his other obscure references—by glossing over them. (Or the other option: getting lost in the footnotes!) But this risks missing both the profundity and nuance of Dante’s vision. My hope is that having a basic understanding of this poem’s cosmic architecture will help us elucidate more of its meaning.

Subscribe now

Aristotle: Balancing Being and Becoming

In my last post, I explored how ancient cosmology was shaped by a fundamental debate between the eternal, unchanging nature of metaphysical being and the transient, mutable nature of becoming. By the time Aristotle joined the conversation in the 4th century BC with On the Heavens–a scientific work that deeply informed Dante’s knowledge of astronomy–several cosmic theories were already circulating, with such fanciful elements as the “music of the spheres” (Pythagoras) and a universal soul (Plato).

With customary acuity, Aristotle refined the ideas of Plato and the Pre-Socratics by seeking to balance the demands of empirical observation and deductive logic. His answer to the philosophical debate above was to juxtapose the mutable Earth and atmosphere below the Moon with the immutable heavens beyond it, as if encapsulating a bubble of change within a ball of permanence. This partition of the cosmos into “basement and loft” also supported Aristotle’s conviction that bodies move according to their elemental nature: uniform, circular motion for celestial bodies made of a hypothetical substance he called aether; and rectilinear motion (up, down, sideways) for the four sublunar elements of earth, water, air, and fire.

By assigning eternity and circular motion to the heavens, and linear time, growth, and decay to the sublunar realm, “the Aristotelian model of the universe solved the basic dilemma [of permanence and flux],” writes Arthur Koestler in The Sleepwalkers* (1959).1 This compromise, however, failed to provide an adequate solution to account for actual observations of planetary movements. The task of solving this dilemma would fall to a brilliant 2nd century Alexandrian polymath named Claudius Ptolemy.

Share

Ptolemy’s Refinements

Working in the leading intellectual center of the day, Ptolemy sought to unify and improve the predictive ability of various cosmological theories (including Aristotle’s) in his first and most famous work, The Almagest. This treatise combined speculative philosophy with mathematical precision to become the definitive guide to astronomy for the next 1400 years. It was still admired in Dante’s time, who mentions Ptolemy’s work as noteworthy in the Convivio.

Ptolemy’s geocentric model consisted of a resting Earth surrounded by nine celestial spheres in which he postulated a combination of larger and smaller orbits (deferents and epicycles) to account for the variability of apparent planetary motion, while still maintaining the heavenly principle of uniform, circular movement. The observed variability he sought to explain included the baffling “retrograde” motion of the planets whose annual course across the sky appeared periodically to reverse direction relative to the fixed stars.

Ptolemy’s model retained Aristotle’s metaphysical division of being but significantly enhanced the predictive accuracy of celestial phenomena. His geocentric universe, though rejected scientifically today, was underpinned by intricate mechanisms and calculations that were finely calibrated to explain the apparent irregularities of planetary paths. The result was a highly functional theory of the cosmos that preserved the eternal perfection of the heavens, even as the sublunar world remained mired in impermanence.

Dante’s Cosmic Vision

Moving now into the Middle Ages, I want to show how Dante’s Divine Comedy draws upon earlier philosophical traditions, weaving together ancient and medieval cosmology to create a visionary scheme that surpasses its historical precedents. Where Aristotle merely brokered a metaphysical truce, Dante harmonizes Parmenidean being and Heraclitean becoming through the unification of mind and matter, soul and cosmos, in ways that reflect a deeply theological and humanistic worldview.

In the figure below, notice how Dante’s universe maintains Aristotle and Ptolemy’s geocentric perspective but imbues it with Christian theology and symbolism. He depicts the universe as a series of concentric spheres wrapped around a still Earth, with Hell at its frozen center and Mt. Purgatory rising from the ocean opposite Jerusalem. This sublunar realm looks up into nine ascending heavens, each nested within the next, like Russian dolls, from the Moon to the Primum Mobile. The last sphere contains no celestial bodies itself but initiates the movement of all the others through an impulse of metaphysical desire. Eluding the terminal boundary of the physical world is ultimately the Empyrean: the abode outside space and time where God dwells eternally in majesty surrounded by seraphim and saints.

Dante’s cosmos is not merely physical but permeated with consciousness. Each celestial sphere corresponds to a grouping of blessed souls whose special tendency or virtue is communicated to Earth through astral influence, following the medieval belief in the permeability of the material and spiritual worlds. For example, Dante calls the planet Venus “the cause of love here below,” an association steeped in pagan mythology while also evoking divine grace.2 Such astrological associations were not as widely censured by medieval Christians as they are today. C.S. Lewis notes in The Discarded Image* (1964) that a physical planet, its influence, and the pagan divinity “generally acted as a unity upon [the medieval] mind,” which disquieted neither theologian nor scientist.3

The integration of astrological and theological elements is one way that Dante seeks to harmonize pagan mythology with Christian belief, not as a form of syncretism but in an effort to illuminate ineffable realities with enduring symbols and archetypes. Dante’s conception of free will further underscores this synthesis: though celestial influences may sway human tendencies, they do not override the soul’s capacity for moral volition. This nuanced understanding of freedom reflects Dante’s sustained philosophical engagement with the dignity of human agency cooperating with divine will.

Cosmic Hierarchy and Unity

Dante’s hierarchical cosmos reflects a teleological order in which all creatures move across a “vast ocean of being” toward their destined port, their final end which is God.4 Just as the celestial spheres respond with motion to the “the Love that moves the sun and other stars,”5 the universe itself acts as a “stairway to heaven” which a special creature–Man–ascends by degrees in his growing desire for God. It’s this human destiny which finally explains the existence of the universe:

“In this sense, nature seems ordered to the human purpose and is incomplete without it…the cosmos does not exist for itself, nor directly for its Creator, but rather, it exists as part of an order whose completion is found in the mind of the rational creature and his own purposeful end. Logically, this view means not that man ends in the cosmos, but that the cosmos ends in man.” James V. Schall, The Order of Things*

The image of mutable humanity united with the universe towards an eternal purpose that transcends them both thus reconciles the ancient antagonism between flux and permanence. The celestial spheres mirror divine order, while the earthly realm reflects human striving and transformation. By uniting them, Dante’s cosmology offers a vision of the universe where mind and matter, soul and nature, are integrally connected. The heavens not only signify the grandeur and diversity of creation but also stand as an invitation to each person to “reach beyond the stars” in his spiritual striving. The Pilgrim’s journey is an allegory of every soul’s journey toward Being, a microcosm of the eschatological fulfillment of the heavens and the earth.

Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy represents the culmination of ancient and medieval cosmological thought, offering a meaningful model of reality that situates humanity at the center of a divinely ordered cosmos. By building upon Aristotle’s metaphysical distinctions and Ptolemy’s observational precision, Dante crafts a cosmology that integrates the temporal and eternal, substance and spirit. His vision transcends mere scientific description, offering a symbolic framework that reflects the unity of creation and the soul’s journey toward divine fulfillment. In doing so, Dante achieves what Aristotle’s cosmology could not: a true reconciliation of being and becoming within a cosmos that is as much a spiritual as a physical reality. By weaving theological insight with philosophical rigor, Dante invites readers to contemplate the interconnectedness of all existence and the ultimate goal of union with the Divine.

As we prepare to explore Dante’s literary inspirations over the next several weeks, learning to decipher the grammar of his mythology and cosmic vision, I want to briefly review our progress. The guiding theme remains clear: Dante the Homo Viator, the “Everyman” of allegory, undertakes a journey of knowledge through matter (i.e., the cosmos) to a fulfillment of the soul beyond matter, which we call heaven—the realm of ultimate vision, consciousness, beatitude and being.

At the journey’s outset, we confront a universal truth: life’s complexities cause many folks—even Dante—to lose their way and wind up in a “dark wood”, a metaphorical landscape of error, isolation, and existential uncertainty. Such experiences bespeak our occasional alienation from truth, purpose, and authenticity. From this disorientation arises our need for a guide—a Virgil or a Beatrice, if you will—to help illuminate and accompany us on the path toward interior freedom, which is the ability to overcome the vices and obstacles that impede our purpose and happiness.

These are some of the larger themes that permeate Dante’s voyage through hell, purgatory, and heaven. As we accompany him on t his journey, we will learn not only to decipher the layered symbols and signposts of Dante’s poem but also to recognize such markers of meaning in our own lives. Dante’s allegory serves as a mirror, reflecting the universal struggle to reconcile life’s inescapable turbulence with the serene presence of mystery and goodness inherent in the world.

Subscribe now

From Homer to Dante: Establishing the Cosmos

I’ve titled this series "From Homer to Dante" to emphasize the literary giants who frame the historical arc of the works we’ll examine. Before delving into Homer, though, I think it will be fruitful to try to reconstruct the broad outlines of Dante’s intellectual universe. (This, by the way, is an ongoing quest of my own intellectual life: to transcend the constraints of the modern imaginative vision by encountering bygone authors and their works within the context of their actual lived experiences and social milieu.) By understanding the philosophical, religious, and literary foundations of Dante’s world, we can better appreciate the characters, concepts, and themes he draws upon.

In this article , I will focus on the metaphysical question underpinning much of ancient Western cosmology: the conundrum of being and becoming. More to the point, how to reconcile eternal and unchanging reality with that which is transient and mutable? I admit that this sounds like a highly abstract problem of no practical value. The first time I encountered questions of being and becoming in Plato’s dialogues, I gathered vaguely that it was an ontological issue about eternal and passing things, but I didn’t understand why this distinction mattered. If you’re unsure, too, read on.

Being vs. Becoming: Ancient Perspectives

For the modern reader, the premise of anything as “unchanging” might seem dubious amidst the flux of daily life. Yet the ancients perceived enduring universal principles operating everywhere behind the veil of appearances. Obvious examples include unvarying mathematical truths, the stability of natural laws, and the predictable patterns of celestial movements. To ancient Greek thinkers, the heavens, especially, revealed a tableau of permanence beneath which our ephemeral human existence transpired.

Around the turn of the 5th century BC, the evident tension between permanence and mutability found articulation in the writings of two seminal Pre-Socratic philosophers: Parmenides and Heraclitus. Their opposing views ignited an important philosophical debate that echoes still through history.

Parmenides, belonging to the Eleatic School in Magna Graecia (southern Italy), upheld the primacy of being, necessity, and finitude. He defined reality as the unity of all existence, “that which transcends everything and is the highest of all beings”.1 For Parmenides, being stood outside of time, eternal and incorruptible. Sensory experiences of change were mere illusions; existence itself was a “finite ball of being,” ungenerated, indestructible, and complete.2

Heraclitus, conversely, championed the principle of becoming—the flux of existence. He is best known for his famous quote above about the impossibility of wading into the same river twice. Heraclitus saw unstable fire as the elemental substance, coinciding with the principles of transformation and strife. To Heraclitus, life’s essence lay in the perpetual cycle of creation and destruction, the interplay of opposites, a duality tending toward a polarized view of the universe.

Literary critic Hélène Tuzet encapsulated these worldviews as psychological archetypes in her 1965 study, Le Cosmos et l’Imagination.3 The Parmenidean thinker is an idealist drawn to the pathos of Unity. He desires simplicity in his assumptions and rigor in his doctrine. The Heraclitean type is a materialist embracing the pathos of Variety. She seeks liberation, dynamism, and polarity. Thus, the Parmenidean acknowledges a circumscribed existence while the Heraclitean demands absolute freedom. Such archetypes persist in contemporary cultural debates—tradition versus progress, unity versus diversity—illustrating the enduring conceptual categories we’ve inherited from these opposing philosophies.

Implications for Dante and Beyond

What relevance do these ancient debates hold for our study of Dante? I believe they reveal part of the metaphysical scaffolding that supports his imaginative vision. Dante seems always to be toying with the temporal and eternal, the finite and unlimited, whether it concerns themes of sin and penance, the nature of the soul, the great sea of being, or the source of authority behind papal and imperial power.

On a basic symbolic level, Dante invites us to explore our underlying assumptions about reality too. Charles Taylor calls this the social or “cosmic imaginary”;4 I’ve been using the term, imaginative vision.5 This holistic way of looking at the world derives from the largely unnoticed set of beliefs we absorb through the dominant cultural atmosphere. In itself, this kind of meta-narrative about our world is not a bad thing and is, in fact, a necessary part of meaning-making. To remain unaware of it, however, is to leave a large part of our intellectual formation unexamined.

In the next essay, we’ll explore Aristotle’s On the Heavens, and how he attempted to bridge the being-becoming divide through the duality of his cosmology, assigning permanence to the heavens and change to the earthly realm. This Aristotelian framework—expanded later by Ptolemy to become the orderly geocentric model of the cosmos that prevailed throughout the Middle Ages—would profoundly shape Dante’s cosmology scientifically, philosophically, and artistically.

Continuing our world-building, we’ll turn our attention after that to Ovid’s Metamorphoses to understand how its themes of creation and transformation influenced Dante’s depiction of the soul’s journey through the cosmos. Ultimately, these explorations probe a central question: Does meaning exist solely within the mind, or does it permeate matter and relationality? This line of inquiry will gradually take on form as we traverse the intricate exchange of mind and matter throughout Dante’s text—a dance of soul and body that has become increasingly challenging for modern thinkers since Descartes.

Thanks for joining me on this journey. Before I sign off, I’d like to leave you with this short video clip on Parmenides and Heraclitus from Philosophize This! Enjoy!

Share

I’m working on a mini-series about the sources of Dante’s cosmology and worldview for my next few releases. In the meantime, I thought I’d share this essay I wrote for a graduate course comparing Dante’s view on destiny with that of his fellow Florentine, Niccolò Machiavelli.

What I find interesting in this juxtaposition is that it reveals the break between the medieval and modern worldviews (or what was then just becoming modernity). Some may disagree with me but I see the two views as discontinuous, inasmuch as the medieval perspective maintained a divine, transcendent order at work in the world in contrast to the modern view, which, while not immediately rejecting divine reality, chose to see human affairs in a largely immanent causal frame. Let me know what you think!

Share

Dante Alighieri and Niccolò Machiavelli were Florentine intellectuals living during periods of tremendous political and social upheaval. Born two centuries apart, they each achieved political success early in their careers, after which both fell spectacularly from public favor—experiences which arguably shaped their views of history and fate. In the aftermath of their political disgrace, each man penned his most famous work: the epic religious poem, The Divine Comedy, for Dante, and the infamous treatise on statecraft, The Prince, for Machiavelli.

At the heart of these reflections is the perennial question of human freedom versus “Fortune.” How does Fortune influence human affairs, and to what extent can individuals shape their destiny amidst forces beyond their control? While both writers acknowledge the influence of chance and agency in history, their perspectives diverge on at least one significant point: the teleology of their historical subject. This distinction becomes clearer when considered through the lens of Augustine’s metaphor of the “two cities” from City of God.

Dante, whose poem reveals man’s ultimate purpose as seeking admission to the “heavenly city” interprets Fortune as an instrument of divine Providence, a benevolent agent in God’s design for man’s salvation. Machiavelli by contrast, writing within a purely immanent frame, casts Fortune as a force to be outwitted: an irrational and capricious adversary that must be subdued for man to achieve his ambitions in the “earthly city”. This difference reveals the contrasting teleological horizons that shape Dante and Machiavelli’s interpretations of history, fate, and freedom.

The study of historical causation raises essential questions about the balance of free will versus determinism in shaping historical events. It grapples with the degree to which historical events unfold in time due to human choices or forces beyond human control. As discernible patterns appearing in the remembered past, historical causes are thought to enable historians to predict the behavior of future events.

Broadly understood, history vacillates between the poles of fate and freedom, or necessity and contingency, reflecting a tension between human agency and the influence of material or spiritual factors, such as geography, politics, divine will, or astrological influence.1 In Dante’s world, divine providence governs history, guiding Fortune to accomplish divine will. Machiavelli takes a more skeptical stance, favoring human initiative against Fortune’s caprices.

Dante Alighieri: Fortune as Divine Minister

Read more

Canto 1 of the Inferno plunges the reader immediately into a gloomy and mysterious world, a liminal place of shadows lurking between the discontentment of our mundane lives and the borderlands of the supernatural. In order to make sense of this world, we will need to keep three layers of human experience in the forefront of our minds:

1. The particularity of political and social life

2. The universality of the redemption story

3. The singularity of the soul’s personal journey towards God1

As a master poet, Dante weaves each of these layers seamlessly into his work, occasionally as distinct elements, but more often employing all of them at once in a particular image or scene. This is because Dante makes use of the multiple senses of meaning as he writes. In other words, the text of the Divine Comedy is polysemous—it operates at multiple levels of meaning simultaneously: literal, allegorical, moral, and anagogical. These meanings would have been familiar to any medieval scholar or reader of Dante’s time but require some explanation in our own. Dr. Phillip Mitchell of Dallas Baptist University describes the four levels in Dante’s poem:

• The literal represents the most obvious reading.

• The allegorical tends to understand the literal set of actions as being symbolic of certain other principles.

• The moral draws ethical principles from the literal action.

• The anagogical applies the principle to the final state of the believer[‘s soul].

I’ll use the famous scene in Canto 1 of the three beasts to demonstrate this point.

Three Beasts of Vice

When we left Dante the character in my last post, he had just awakened from a dull slumber, having lost his way and stumbled into a dark wood of error in the middle of his life. Not knowing the way out, Dante wanders through the night until finally emerging from the valley forest at the foot of a hill, which Dante hopes will leads him back to the true path2:

The sun (“that planet’s beam”) rising over the ridge rouses Dante’s courage and he swiftly makes to ascend the slope. As he nears the summit, however, his passage is blocked by three menacing beasts, beginning with a spotted leopard (or a “speckled panther” here in Cary’s translation)3:

After taking a moment to regain himself, Dante tries again to proceed but is routed by a lion, followed swiftly by a ravenous she-wolf. “She with such fear/ O'erwhelmed me, at the sight of her appall'd,/ That of the height all hope I lost.”4 Dante is forced to retreat in “heart-gripping anguish,” realizing he is powerless to overcome these beasts blocking his way to freedom.

How to Interpret Dante’s Symbolism

On the literal level, Dante is setting up the plot whereby his eponymous character will need to embark on a journey through the underworld with the assistance of a guide. We can continue to enjoy the unfolding story on this level, but most astute readers will want to fathom what Dante calls the “truth hidden beneath a beautiful fiction,” namely, the allegorical or symbolic meaning of the scene.5 By understanding what the beasts represent, we gain a threefold insight into the political machinations and social dysfunction of Dante’s world; the metaphysical conditions caused by sin universally; and Dante’s personal struggle with concupiscence.

Commentators widely agree that the symbol of the three beasts originates in the biblical verse from Jeremiah quoted above. Beyond that, though, scholars dispute the best interpretation. Nearly everyone understands the beasts as representing sin or vice—those which plagued Florentine society at large, and Dante to an extent—but they sometimes differ in their exegesis. The more traditional view (proposed by Dante’s son, Jacopo, who wrote the first commentary of the Commedia) reads the leopard, lion, and wolf as lust, pride, and avarice (greed), respectively. Later commentators will modify the list to incontinence, violence, and fraud, after the three main divisions of sin in Dante’s hell. But a problem with this interpretation, some scholars object, is its suggestion that Dante’s dominant sin is avarice or fraud, since it is the wolf that ultimately prevents his progress. An alternative reading given by C.H. Grandgent, reverses the order:

Inasmuch as the sins of Hell fall under the three heads, Incontinence, Violence, and Fraud, it is natural that the beasts should stand for corresponding practices: the ravening wolf is Incontinence of any kind, the raging lion is Violence, the swift and stealthy leopard is Fraud…We may understand, then, from the episode, that Dante could perhaps have overcome the graver sins of Fraud and Violence, but was unable, without heavenly aid to rid himself of some of the habits of Incontinence.6

Professor Marguerite Mills Chiarenza, author of The Divine Comedy: Tracing God’s Art, agrees with this interpretation: “We are not tempted, at least not usually, to do extremely corrupt things; we are tempted to do relatively innocent ones. This, I think, is why it is the wolf, the beast standing for the sins of weakness, who causes the failure of the pilgrim’s progress up the hill.”7

Aristotelian Morality

This interpretation, however, raises the question of why scholars classify the sin of incontinence as less grievous than fraud. Let me say a few words about the classical sense of morality. Beginning with Aristotle, incontinence (also called luxuria, lust) has been viewed as a disordered appetite or passion which causes a person’s will to give in to “the desire for a lesser good to the sacrifice of a greater one.”8 Essentially, the incontinent person fails to subordinate his appetites to reason, thereby inverting the proper governance of his soul. Aristotle considered incontinence more of a weakness than a moral failing. Likewise, the poet Dante assigns it to the upper level of hell, the least grievous station of the three aforementioned categories of sin.

The other two categories—violence (sometimes called wrath) and fraud (also called malice)—reflect an increasingly disordered and malicious will; but whereas violence still contains an element of involuntary passion, fraud is cold and calculating, originating entirely in the disordered use of reason. Thus it involves the complete corruption of a man’s rational nature, which Dante considers to be the worst crime. With this in mind, how should we reconcile the opposing interpretations of the vicious beasts?

Share

As I’ve already alluded, the Divine Comedy is best read as an allegorical poem. But it is not a simple allegory as, for example, John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, where there is a one-to-one correspondence between the symbol and the thing signified. Rather, “Dante insists that his allegories are not simple substitution codes…Instead, each of the four ‘senses’ of the text inheres in and evokes the other three simultaneously.”9 When confronted with conflicting or ambiguous interpretations, then, we should seek to clarify them through the four senses of meaning.

What is literally happening on the hill? Dante’s progress is blocked by three beasts of increasing levels of ferocity and hunger. The spotted leopard is described almost as innocent and playful, while the she-wolf is “…gaunt with the famished craving/ lodged ever in her horrible lean flank/ the ancient cause of many men’s enslaving.”10 What is it that most enslaves us? Recall that Dante brought us into his story when he began, “Midway along the journey of our life…” I think it is natural for each reader to incline to an understanding of Dante’s allegory that most closely corresponds to his own struggles on the moral plane. Are the “temptations of the flesh” just a passing youthful fancy? Perhaps the leopard embodies them for this reader. Or do they consume one’s soul with a ravenous and insatiable hunger? In this case, the she-wolf may be a more apt symbol, as I think was likely the case for the historical Dante.

Of course, my brief discussion here barely touches the surface of Dante’s symbology. I hope to develop it as a theme as we go long. At this stage of our journey with Dante, we sense that we are made for happiness even as we find that our progress is frequently blocked—occasionally by others but too often by circumstances of our own making. If we are honest, we may recognize the disordered priorities that occasionally (or habitually) govern our lives and rule our emotions and choices. But this is only the beginning of the story and remember, it’s a “comedy” after all. Better times are ahead…but not quite yet.

Having now established the theme of the first part of this journey, we will commence our exploration of Dante’s literary influences with the biblical and mythical stories of creation in my next post. Happy reading!

Reading Resources:

• Dante’s Inferno Canto 1 - translation by Rev. H.F. Cary, free online resource by Owl Eyes.11

• Jacopo Alighieri’s Commentary - the first commentary on the Divine Comedy by Dante’s son.

• Jessica Hooten-Wilson, Reading for the Love of God - on reading with the 4 senses of meaning.

“Dante’s ascending journey through the concentric spherical bodies of the universe…
is a journey of knowledge.”
Alison Cornish, A Worldview Requires a Center

“We only make sense of facts as part of a narrative.”
Alison Cornish, Believing in Dante

Dear Travelers,

In appreciation for your support, I thought a short “behind the scenes” glimpse at what I’m up to conceptually in this series would be fitting. More specifically, I’m keen to share with you a sense of what inspired this series, to give you some insight into the inner workings of the project as it unfolds.

Is it possible to pinpoint the genesis of anything? I don’t know, but the germ of inspiration for From Homer to Dante probably began last winter in conversation with my dear friend Walter who writes at The Dove and Rose. We were chatting about the striking thematic congruences between Dante’s spiritual journey and his own. I realized then that the older I get, the more convinced I become that the metaphor of “life as a journey” is an inescapable one, though it may strike us first as only a cliché. Whatever way we conceive of the 70, 80, or 90 years of our life (should we tarry that long), the fact of a clear beginning and end inherently implies movement along a trajectory—one completed only through our daily choices and actions. Hence, it is a journey (from Old French, jornee: ‘day, a day's travel, a day's work’). It is for this reason that the medievals were fond of describing our race as Homo Viator, man the traveler.

We begin life in media res, in the middle of a play that has already begun (to borrow from Chesterton), and we hope to get somewhere by the end. Along the way we make friends, have adventures, sing, love, cry, get lost, take detours, pray, rage, reconcile, feast in plenty, and fast in want—but we’re always on the move. The question is, “where are we going?”

Read more

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”—Dickens, Tale of Two Cities

“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”—
Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“I am a sick man… I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I think my liver is
diseased.”—Dostoyevsky, Notes From Underground

But for my all-time favorite first lines, it’s a tie between Homer’s Iliad (“Sing, Goddess, sing of the rage of Achilles…”) and Dante’s Inferno:

Thus begins Dante’s tale2 of his journey to the underworld, a journey whose ultimate destination is heaven, not hell. Like many a classic story it begins in media res—in the middle of things. Out of a dull slumber, Dante suddenly comes to himself in a wild and unfamiliar place. Where had he been going and how did he happen upon this dark forest? We aren’t told. Indeed, it seems as if he doesn’t know either: “How I entered there I cannot truly say, I had become so sleepy at the moment when I first strayed, leaving the path of truth.”3 We do know, however, that Dante has stumbled into this predicament during midlife. The year is 1300 and Dante is precisely thirty five years old.

If we imagine a typical life in the Middle Ages spanning a 70 year arc, then Dante’s tale begins at its apex, the center and (what should have been) highest point of his earthly pilgrimage. In fact, the historical Dante had by this time attained the zenith of his political career, namely, election to the office of Prior, the highest government position in his prosperous city-state of Florence.4 This achievement, however, occurred amidst the escalating violence and intrigue that plagued Italian politics throughout the calamitous fourteenth century. What should have been the crowning of his career was soon followed by his greatest trial—political exile that would last the rest of his life.

Subscribe now

Stuck in the Middle

So as this poem commences, we find Dante floundering in what we would call today a “midlife crisis.” Nor should we overlook the subtle suggestion that he’s addressing us, too, in this predicament when he says, “midway along the journey of our life...” Who doesn’t sympathize with Dante’s bewilderment upon finding that, far from solidifying his happiness, his momentary success has merely triggered an impending downturn of fortune?  Likewise, who hasn’t looked back on his or her own life with the passing of time and discovered that they don’t recognize it anymore? I’m reminded of another poet, Billy Collins, who writes in his poem “Aristotle”:

This is the middle.
Things have had time to get complicated,
messy, really. Nothing is simple anymore.
Cities have sprouted up along the rivers
teeming with people at cross-purposes—
a million schemes, a million wild looks.5

Let us call this messy, complicated, unfamiliar terrain the Dark Wood of Error, conceiving error as all that promises—but can’t finally deliver—happiness. No one pursues an idea, goal, or philosophy with the intent of being deceived. Yet how many times have we been disappointed by our efforts to obtain some good we expected to secure our happiness—be it any of the multifarious forms of honor, wealth, power, or pleasure? Dante had at various times staked his happiness in courtly love, the pursuit of art and knowledge, and political life. But all values falsely elevated to an absolute goal lead to this Dark Wood in the end, where what awaits us is not happiness but anxiety, fear, and isolation.

Which brings us to ask: what does it really mean to be lost?

There are generally two ways of being lost (or disoriented) in a geographical sense: 1) knowing where you are, but not where you’re going; or 2) knowing where you’re trying to go, but not where you are.6 These ways of being physically lost provide a useful metaphor for reflecting on what it means to be existentially lost. Knowing where I am but not where I’m going is a problem of purpose, or what the ancient Greeks called telos, the end towards which all our actions point. On the other hand, knowing where I want to go but not recognizing where I am is a problem of authenticity, of “authoring” a life intended to reflect the goals and values I’ve set for myself. How do I know if I am currently stranded in one of these predicaments? Here are a few questions for self-reflection:

Questions of Purpose:

• Do I have a clear, compelling, and particular vision for my life?

• Do I feel that my life is advancing in the direction of my goals?

• Do I struggle to say “no” to commitments that I’m not really invested in?

• Do I experience anxiety about the future?

Questions of Authenticity:

• Does my life ever feel “unreal” or disconnected from my purpose?

• Am I living in imitation or envy of other people’s lives or achievements?

• Are my dearest values and commitments manifested in my daily actions and behaviors?

• Do my thoughts dwell on past regrets?

What shall we say of our friend Dante at the outset of this journey? Do you think he is struggling with purpose or authenticity? Leave your comments below. Next week, we’ll discover what happens when Dante decides to flee from the dark forest and make his way to higher ground.

Reading:

• Inferno, Canto 1 (Read free online, courtesy of Owleyes.org.)

Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy (also known as the Commedia) is a classic work that has inspired and beguiled readers in every generation since the 14th century and continues to do so today. It is a magnificent piece of literature drawing together countless historical, philosophical, theological, and mythological sources. In the Divine Comedy, Dante’s encyclopedic mastery of medieval learning is on full display. For this reason, many prospective readers approach him with some trepidation. Others may be deterred from reading him at all. The purpose of this new series, “From Homer to Dante,” is to invite such readers to accompany me on a journey of literary and self-discovery as we explore Dante’s inspirations, so that we can read the Comedy confidently and profitably—whether it’s our first or fiftieth time.

As you probably know, the Divine Comedy actually comprises 3 books: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. Each book treats a specific phase of Dante’s journey through the cosmos, which can be understood symbolically as his soul’s progress from fragmentation to wholeness. Read allegorically, Dante’s journey follows the Biblical pattern of pilgrimage: the soul begins in a state of slavery or exile; is tested and transformed during a period of desert wandering; and finally attains freedom and blessedness in the promised land. In short, Dante progresses from a condition of internal darkness and alienation to one of enlightenment and homecoming. On the physical level, it’s a voyage from the center of the earth to the farthest circumference of the universe; on the spiritual level, it’s a journey of gnosis in the opposite direction—from the periphery of human knowledge to the center of the all-knowing Mind of the universe.

Given its sober subject matter, some readers may wonder why Dante called his work a comedy? Simply put, the comic theme is a fictional mode whereby (in Christian literature, at least) the trajectory of the plot aims towards salvation.1 Its hero typically begins as a social outcast, endures many labors and plot twists, and is finally integrated into his desired society by the end of the story. For Dante, that society is nothing less than the community of saints and angels enjoying the vision of God in heaven, or the Empyrean. (Side note: Dante’s cosmology of the heavens is a fascinating subject in its own right. I’ve just completed a graduate paper on this topic and will be sharing excerpts in future posts to help orient you to his medieval astronomy.)

Our reading experience will cover the three books of the Divine Comedy and its literary antecedents in order, which I describe briefly below. This is only a sketch of the readings I have planned. I’ll post assignments and links as we go along. Of course, the richest experience will be derived from doing your own reading and reflection. But anyone who is interested in this project is welcome to listen in and learn, if they don’t have time for outside reading.

Subscribe now

Exile

Dante’s first book in the Comedy is the Inferno, whose themes are sin, rebellion, and man’s alienation from God. The readings I’ve planned capture the disorientation and moral dysfunction that Dante dramatizes in Inferno. Starting with the theme of "being lost in a dark wood" (Inferno, Canto I), our meditations will explore lost purposes, moral failure, and estrangement from divine grace. Related readings from Genesis and Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Creation and the Fall) highlight the biblical and mythological roots of human exile. Further selections in The Iliad and Greek tragedy will illustrate the effects of pride, wrath, and hubris, aligning with Dante’s descent into Inferno, where he encounters unrepentant souls corrupted by these same flaws. Of course we’ll also spend some time with Virgil’s Aeneid which provides Dante with his basic scheme of the Underworld.

Desert Wandering

Midway in our literary tour, we’ll consider themes of purification and spiritual striving, corresponding to the penitential journey of Purgatorio. Readings in Exodus will explore desert wandering as a metaphor for the soul's struggle toward redemption, paralleled by Odysseus' wanderings in Homer’s Odyssey. Excerpts from the Psalms and Isaiah introduce penitential prayer and lamentation, reflecting the spiritual dynamics of Purgatory, where the soul seeks reconciliation and the beatific ascent. We’ll also return to the Aeneid and Metamorphoses to consider myths of transformation. Dante is much indebted to the writings of Augustine of Hippo, especially his famous Confessions that lend the Divine Comedy its autobiographical tone, and we’ll read some passages along the theme of repentance and conversion.

Promised Land

Finally, we’ll meditate on heaven as the ultimate Promised Land and goal of Dante’s spiritual journey, bringing divine union and eternal happiness. In this final book of the Comedy, Dante will attain to what is called the “beatific vision” - the unveiled vision of God which is our final gladness. In preparation for reading this book, we’ll reflect on some of Dante’s favorite sources. In addition to many of the works with which we’ll already have become familiar, we’ll explore the Pauline epistles, Boethius and St. Bernard of Clairvaux, St. Thomas Aquinas, and even the scientific writings of Ptolemy, Aristotle, and the Arab polymath, Ibn al-Haytham, 965–1040 (also known as Alhazen) as we reflect on Dante’s use of celestial imagery and theological themes to illustrate the joy and fulfillment of Paradise.

As we make this spiritual and literary journey, I will be providing resources and reading guides to assist you. One of the benefits of reading the Great Books is that they are all in the public domain (although certain translations are still protected by copyright laws). Although I may recommend certain books from time to time, I will endeavor to provide links to all of the readings so you can obtain a complete education in this course for free! Whatever your current level of education or reading experience, have confidence that all of these works have something to offer any reader who is willing to take the time for thoughtful reading. I will also offer reflections and tips on how to become a better reader for yourself. Many of these will be inspired by the work of Mortimer J. Adler, specifically How to Read a Book. See my previous posts on a related subject here, here, and here.

Ultimately, however, the purpose of this journey is not to become a better reader per se —although you will, if you stick with me—but to become a more wholly integrated person. As Dante’s allegory teaches us, on some level we are all being invited to a journey from dysfunction to human flourishing by purging our faults and learning to harmonize our souls with the cosmos. I hope that reading Dante and his literary inspirations will give us plenty to reflect on as we make our own way in life. Please come along with me and share your experiences and insights in the comments.

Share The Occidental Tourist