fbpx
Politics Foreign Affairs Culture Fellows Program

How Dante Led Me Out Of The Dark Wood

Today TAC publishes online my cover story from the latest issue, How Dante Saved My Life. Excerpt: Dante manifests the medieval conviction that the Creator has ordered His creation, and His intelligence—that is to say, Himself—is everywhere present, fills all things, and can be discerned by those with eyes to see. In this way, Dante […]

Today TAC publishes online my cover story from the latest issue, How Dante Saved My Life. Excerpt:

Dante manifests the medieval conviction that the Creator has ordered His creation, and His intelligence—that is to say, Himself—is everywhere present, fills all things, and can be discerned by those with eyes to see.

In this way, Dante helped me gain the ability to see the world iconographically, as a window into the divine. My Orthodox Christian faith teaches me that this is how things are, as does traditional metaphysics and philosophy. Somehow, I hadn’t grasped that as I should have until I read the Divine Comedy. marapr-issuethumb

That’s not true—I had indeed grasped that before, the first time I beheld an image of profundity that so overwhelmed me, abruptly infused my deracinated 20th-century American cosmos with mystery and enchantment, and put me on the trail of God, resulting in my conversion as a young man. But with the passage of time, and the loss of idealism, I had forgotten what it was like to look upon Chartres Cathedral and really see it as it is.

And then Dante came to me, and he showed me another medieval masterpiece every bit Chartres’s equal, one he built himself. That man, a stranger from a distant time and place, yet a friend who knew what it meant to lose one’s way on the journey of life, met a confused, anxious, and false-stepping pilgrim on the road. Dante Alighieri made my footsteps firm, he led me back to the wonder, and he reminded me to turn my gaze heavenward and see the stars.

Modern people who are lost in the cosmos pick up all kinds of self-help manuals in search of guidance, or, if they are Christian, buy books bubbling over with godly therapeutic psychobabble. Don’t do it. Take up and read Dante, because Dante is deep, and Dante is right.

Read the whole thing.

Advertisement

Comments

Want to join the conversation?

Subscribe for as little as $5/mo to start commenting on Rod’s blog.

Join Now