I went to a seminar on Dante. I could just post —

• If you get a chance to listen to Dr. William Cook on Dante you probably should. –

Or I could share a bit of what he said. Dr. Cook started by explaining that for Dante Comedy and Tragedy had very specific meanings. In a Tragedy you end up worse off than when you started. In a Comedy you end up better off than when you started. Dr. Cook didn’t say this specifically, but… 

This means, if you are someone who has been driven out of your home, sent into exile, threatened with death, separated from your children, who are also driven into exile as soon as they are old enough (and that would be age 14), forced to beg for your living (even if it’s from rich patrons who treat you reasonably generously), and ultimately sent on a futile diplomatic mission, that causes your death, because the feuding parties won’t let you avoid malarial swamps on your way back, but, you see that you were on the way to hell, and you repent, then your life is still a comedy. 

Dante’s work is about going from the dark wood of error to meeting God face to face. ~Obviously a Comedy.~ (The Divine part was added by Bocaccio, about forty years later.)

I have to say here that the most vexing thing about this wonderful seminar was that Dr. Cook had about 4 hours to go through the whole of Dante, so he moved at warp speed, only touching down here and there.

At the beginning of the poem, a pilgrim (Dante) finds himself lost in a dark wood. 

Its very memory gives a shape to fear

Death could scarce be

More bitter than that 

place! But since it came 

to good, I will recount

All that I found revealed

There by God’s grace.   

(Trans. John Ciardi, ebook from amazon.)

Ciardi’s translation, in the form I had, contains no line numbers, but a cross reference shows that we are reading lines 7 through 9 from the first canto. Right from the beginning Dante cautions his readers not to stop with Hell. The only reason to discuss Hell is because there is something much better beyond it. He found great good in his journey, so he tells the whole thing. I wrote a book about Dante, because I didn’t want people to read just Inferno. I missed a delightful comment from Dorothy Sayers, that Dr. Cook shared. His version of a famous quip — Sayers said that reading only Inferno was like going to Paris and visiting only the sewers. That feels like validation to me!

Then Dr. Cook smiled at us, his audience, and described his visit to the Parisian sewers. He said there are tours and he took one. https://musee-egouts.paris.fr/en/the-sewers-a-space-with-history/history-of-the-sewers-of-paris/  He said it was a fascinating tour, seeing for example, where great buildings were, based upon the size and quantity of their pipes. But it really isn’t all you want to see, he said.

“The sewer is the conscience of the city. Everything there converges and confronts everything else.”  ( Victor Hugo, The Intestine of Leviathan ) 

Quote from the sewage museum webpage

Having teased us, Dr. Cook went on to point out that, at the very beginning when Dante the pilgrim is lost, he calls it “the journey of OUR life”. The poem was always aimed at everyone. He commented on Limbo in the Inferno. It’s a place where you get to talk about great stuff but you have no hope of ever reaching God. It’s actually a funny comment on philosophers, and possibly a warning. 

In Canto 5, Dante the Pilgrim, meets the lovers, Paolo and Francesca. At this point, he is still unable to separate himself from sin. Why have they been punished so severely he wonders, and faints because he is so upset. There’s an allusion to Saint Augustine in Francesca’s comment on the book she and Paolo are reading. “That day we read no further.” Augustine, not yet a saint, wrote in The Confessions that he saw a little boy in a vision, telling him to take and read. He did so, and then converted, and that day he read no more. This is the opposite story. Francesca and Paolo read, and then commit adultery.

Next we had Canto 10 with the heretics. A heretic in Dr. Cook’s reading is someone who has part, but not all, of truth. Farinata the heretic is also a snob. His opening move is to ask Dante about his ancestors and then make snide remarks about them. We moved onto Canto 13 and then Canto 15, with Brunetto Latini.

Latini says, “If thine own star thou follow,

Thou canst not fail to reach a glorious port,

If in the lovely life I judged aright…”—

Dante replies. “… in the world from time to time

You taught me how man makes himself eternal:”                                                             (trans. Courtney Langdon)

This, of course, is not yet correct thinking, on sinfulness, or worldly ambition, or how to write. There are stars at the end of every Canticle, but they don’t belong to anyone. Dante still has a ways to go, understanding his own sinfulness. And there’s a contrasting view in Paradise of whether Dante is event supposed to reach a “glorious port“. 

 To be continued…