Dante's Divine Comedy

Rowan Williams and Jesse Armstrong talked at The Idler festival, partly around the idea, caught in the expression, “boring as hell”. But is that right, they asked, when a drama like Succession so clearly appeals to us?

The question is fundamental, for an age inclined to regard hell as appealing or intriguing, is one on the way to being lost. 

Drawing on Dante and William Blake, two great diagnostic writers about different states of mind, this talk explores how the passions of the soul, to use Williams’s expression, can hinder and help us on our way. 

I then think about how various facets of life change when known from within hellish, purgatorial and paradisal perspectives - movement, words, love, time, memory, possessing, faces, wonder.

Hell is boring, not from its own perspective, which knows nothing else, but from that of purgatory and paradise. A time that thinks hell is the most interesting place to be is in hell; one that can still say “boring as hell” has at least a flicker of hope.

See Dante's Divine Comedy: A Guide for the Spiritual Journey - https://www.markvernon.com/books/dantes-divine-comedy-book

Dante lived through a period of almost total social collapse. Civil war and city-state terror, practiced by the church as much as secular powers, drove him into exile for the last 20 years of his life. For a while, he lost everything. But then, through the trauma, he regained a ground and rediscovered the fullness of life.

The Divine Comedy is the product of that transformation. The journeys through hell, purgatory and paradise hold nothing back, be that terrible tortures of extraordinary delights. He wrote for himself, for his readers including us, but also as a warning to his time and future times, such as our ours.

So what has Dante got to say to now? What does his analysis illuminate? Much, I think, as I explore in this thought.

For more on Dante and my own book see - https://www.markvernon.com/books/dantes-divine-comedy-book

My earlier thoughts on Plato, Aristotle and Jesus are at my podcast, Talks and Thoughts.

Dante's imagery, particularly in the Paradiso, offers powerful prompts to developing the sense of what it is to be intelligent. He wrote for modern times, he said. And now, as AI becomes more pervasive, he can help us understand how machine learning and human intuitions are very different capacities.

This was part of a talk given at the Scientific and Medical Network - https://scientificandmedical.net/webinars/

For more on Mark's work, particularly on Dante, see www.markvernon.com

Reason fails before the greatest spiritual truths. That much is not news. But part of the genius of Dante is his conjuring of images that reach beyond the impasses of paradox and seeming contradiction.

I consider 8 such moments when Dante sees the unsayable and offers images of the ineffable.
- how darkness leads to light
- how appearances can be the opposite of the truth
- how the immediate eclipses wider perspectives
- how all faces are the divine face
- how “I” and “we” coincide
- how divine and creature are one
- how consciousness expands
- how relationship is unity, many is one, movement is the unchangable.

For more on my book Dante’s Divine Comedy: A Guide for the Spiritual Journey see http://www.markvernon.com/dantes-divine-comedy

What is the meaning of Easter? How might Holy Week be more than an occasion for its retelling? Can death and resurrection live today, as they once did, 2000 years ago?

Dante’s journey, in the Divine Comedy, begins on Maundy Thursday, 1300. It continues through the inferno, on Good Friday and Holy Saturday, before he enters purgatory on Easter Sunday morning, at dawn. 

The climb up Mount Purgatory, then, takes until Easter Wednesday when, finally, Dante reaches paradise. Though that is really another beginning, as he becomes more capable of knowing the light of Christ in him, and so knowing that light in all that surrounds him.

In other words, the Divine Comedy invites us to consider the story of Easter not as an historical event but as a pattern and path which makes sense of our lives, if we dare to live them deeply.

Augustine once remarked that the joy of being Christian is being a Christ. Easter, then, is not primarily a remembrance of things that happened, but a recollection of who we are called to be. That is the meaning of Easter, needed if Christianity is to live in people’s lives now.

Dante would seem to be a key candidate for infernalism, the doctrine of endless punishment in hell for sinners who failed to turn to Christ.

He’s said to be medieval and isn't that what they believed then? And doesn’t his Divine Comedy clearly, indisputably say as much?

But Dante’s whole point is that nothing is as it seems to the unawakened eye.

I think what Dante is doing is taking evil completely seriously and showing why eternal damnation not only isn't, but can’t be the final result. And yet, this can only be seen when the darkness itself is fearlessly, fully seen.

The Divine Comedy is all about guides - finding guides, following guides, conversing with guides. Virgil and Beatrice are the best known, but there are other modes of guidance that Dante seeks and explores.

Angels, dreams and myths accompanying Dante, even in the darkest moments. He learns to be present to them and trust that whilst in one encounter they can bring fear or shame, in another they inspire wrestling and struggle, and then in another again bring divine light and insight.

For more on Mark's book, Dante's Divine Comedy: A Guide for the Spiritual Journey see - https://www.markvernon.com/dantes-divine-comedy

For more on Mark see - https://www.markvernon.com

Peter Owen Jones is a writer, broadcaster and priest. His new book is Conversations With Nature.

We discuss falling in love with the natural world once again, what difference this might make to the climate crisis, how Christianity has failed to respond in any significant way to environmental collapse, though also has an answer, if we are prepared to give no thought for the morrow, value the falling sparrow, and follow the way.

William Blake's sense of participation, imagination and divine return are also in the mix.

For more on Peter's book, Conversations With Nature, see https://www.clairviewbooks.com/viewbook.php?isbn_in=9781912992416

For more on Mark Vernon, see www.markvernon.com

Spiritual Intelligence in Seven Steps online course - full details here: https://www.markvernon.com/events/spiritual-intelligence-in-seven-steps

Dante's Divine Comedy online course - full details here: https://www.markvernon.com/events/dantes-divine-comedy-an-introduction-to-the-spiritual-journey

For more about Mark Vernon - www.markvernon.com

Dante coined the word "transhumanise" in the Divine Comedy, 700 years ago. "Trasumanar" is the transformation he will undergo in order to share in the life of paradise.

Today, the word has associations that are strikingly related to Dante's; partly quite similar, though changed in subtle but crucial ways. Understanding those differences illuminates the dangers of transhumanism today and how it might limit, not expand, our humanity.

I consider this constriction across half a dozen areas on the transhumanism agenda: telepathy, happiness, intelligence, stellar living, the superman, and death.

Transhumanising is a religious promise. It becomes a modern threat when that transcendent perspective is eclipsed and lost.