Faith in Troubling Times: Dantes Divine Comedy

Faith in Troubling Times: Dantes Divine ComedyKevin L. HughesFebruary 6, 2013Villanova University

Thanks to Dr. Barbara Wall & Office of Mission & Ministry, & thanks to my colleagues in the department of Humanities (& THL & RST) for good conversations, and to my students over the years who have been my own companions in reading Dante and learning from him.Year of Faith. Nice opportunity to think about Dante in a slightly different light Great Poet. Names and Dates, politics, etc. Guelphs & Ghibellines. Ugh.But to think about Dante and the year of faith: Dante as theologian, Dante as master teacher of the spiritual life.

12012-13 , the Year of FaithThe door of faith (Acts 14:27) is always open for us, ushering us into the life of communion with God and offering entry into his Church. It is possible to cross that threshold when the word of God is proclaimed and the heart allows itself to be shaped by transforming grace. To enter through that door is to set out on a journey that lasts a lifetime. (Pope Benedict XVI, Porta fidei 1.)A journey that lasts a lifetimeSo what happens when we stumble off the road in the journey of faith? How do we find that transforming grace?

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vitami ritrovai per una selva oscura,che la diritta via era smarrita

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

The Dante I met in high school

The Dante I met in high school

Dante

If you imagineothers are there,you are there yourself.

--Wendell BerryComes from a focus on Inferno which may say as much about us, what were fascinated with, as it does say anything about Dante Why are we fascinated by hell but clueless about purgatory and bored by heaven? But maybe more on that later. 5Another look

Dante b. 1265 in FlorencePart of the Guelph (Papal) party, vs. the Ghibelline (Imperial) partyGuelphs gain upper hand in 1280s. Dante enters politics, serves on the Council of 100, then elected Consul in 1300. Serves his term, then back on the Council of 100. 1302, ambassador to Rome An exile

Dante responds virulent letters condemning papal influence. Exile then includes death sentence, by burning in the city square.I bent forward over my outstretched hands and stared into the fire, my mind fixed on the image of human bodies I once saw being burned. (Purg XXVII.16-18) Dante is on the move for the rest of his life. When a pardon is issued, one which would demand public penance in the baptistery in Florence, he refuses. Dies in exile, 1321.

7Dante begins the Comedy in 1306 (?)

Why write a poem about the whole universe when your life has fallen apart?

Maybe the answer is obvious to cope, to get your mind on something else to put things in proper perspective. All true. BUT this is not just a birds eye view its a transformative journey, and Dante goes out of his way to make it not just about him but about us, about humans as such. A poet is often reluctant to answer the question, Why, but Dante, as he brings the whole comedy to a close, to Can Grande: to move those living in this life from a state of misery to a state of happiness. That is, he intends this great work to move you, not just emotionally, but transformativelyDante has written not just the greatest poem in Western civilization, but a spiritual itinerary from the brokenness of our condition into union with God.8In a dark woodMidway in the journey of our lifeI came to myself in a dark wood, For the straight way was lost.

Ah, how hard it is to tellThe nature of that wood, savage, dense, and harshThe very thought of it renews my fear.

It is so bitter death is hardly more so.But to set forth the good I foundI will recount the other things I saw

How I came there I cannot really tell,I was so full of sleep When I forsook the one true way.

Dante is 35, mid-life. But this is far more than a mid-life crisis in the midst of our life, we find ourselves asleep, and then, pop, wake up and wonder how it is that we got there. We find ourselves deep into crisis, into a narrow, savage, dense, harsh wood where we cant see the road, and were stuck. We cant get ourselves out of it. So what do you do? Notice, this talk of the straight path and one true way has struck some readers over the centuries as remarkably similar to a part of the Quran, Surah al-Fatiha: Guide us to the straight path, not the way of those with anger upon them9Dante & the Gothic Imagination

Late 12th, ArezzoLate 13th, StrasbourgDante & the Gothic Imagination

An interesting point in art history, and, I think, in literature and poetry, too. Humanist attention to 11Dantes Story is Everyones Story

Dantes story is everyones story, but its everyones story precisely in the attention to detail in his own story, in the development of his character and the figures of Virgil and BeatriceA lot of ink over the years has been spilt trying to figure out if we should read Virgil, say, as an allegory for Philosophy or as a character in his own right. But hes BOTH he represents something BECAUSE the details of his character matter Gothic humanism, that attends to particular human forms but places them, sees them, in a wider, deeper story, AS a wider, deeper story. Dante stands in this unique moment, between the strict formalism of early middle ages and Renaissance humanism that focuses on the human form to the exclusion of its relation to a transcendant ordered whole.12Gothic Humanism & the Order of Love

But for Dante, this is the point, not only artistically, but theologically and spiritually to be lost in a dark wood is to forget ones place in the interconnected web of ordered loves, where all created things are good, but good precisely as rightly ordered to their source and end. All created being dazzles with its beauty, precisely as it finds its place in relation to the source of light, like a stained glass window. The Gothic insight is all about a way to display the goodness of particular and distinct goods PRECISELY in relation to the order of Good. And sin is nothing other than disordered love of created goods. Sin is not loving something bad or evil, but loving something good in a disordered or distorted way.13Telling a bigger (and a smaller) story

Seeing the Shape of Disordered Love The Inferno--the drain --the Asylum

Learning the Habits of Loving Rightly The Purgatorio-- the ladder --the hospital

Participating in the Symphony of all Creation --The Paradiso--the Rose Window--the CathedralThis is essential to seeing whats going on in the Divine Comedy, that, as we begin this journey, we come to understand that its an itinerary all about love, about learning to recognize the shape of disordered love (The Inferno), then unlearning the habits of disordered love and learning how to love rightly (Purgatorio), so that you are prepared to take part in the great symphony of all creation in praise of its creator and redeemer (Paradiso)14The Shape of the Whole

The Shape of Hell

Facing the beasts: leopard, lion, she-wolf

Debate about the nature of the beasts: Do they stand for the kinds of sin will chronicle in the Inferno? (fraud, violence, incontinence)? Do they stand for Florence, the Emperor, and the Pope? Maybe all of these but maybe most directly, they might stand for self-deception, pride, and ambition When one is lost in the dark, the answer, says Dante, is not to conquer yourself and your flaws, not to be their ADVERSARY but their WITNESS. To see sin for what it is, not to wrestle with it so much as to see it clearly, is to conquer it. Sin is like chinese handcuffs, or the monkey trap.17The Journey down

Crater of impact impact of what, tho? What kind of meteoric impact could create such a crater? Satans fall.Each sin has its place, even sin has an orderBut we might see more if we recognize that what we see in each layer is not so much >>punishment for