"The Divine Comedy", or Dante's recipe for a happy life
“The Table” publishes an abbreviated version of the lecture
by the Ukrainian philosopher and theologian, associate professor of the Department of Theory of Culture and Philosophy of Science, Faculty of Philosophy, Kharkov National University.
V. N. Karazin Alexandra Filonenko. When Dante was a young man, an amazing event happened to him. (Although this is what happened to each of us.) As a nine-year-old boy, he went to church, as usual. As usual, he was a little bored, but there he experienced what all children experience at a certain age: he fell in love with a girl. She was also nine years old, and her name was Biche. (He came up with the name Beatrice later.)
Nine years have passed. Dante is already an outstanding Italian poet, he is known in various circles of his contemporary society (and this is the Renaissance, Florence, the 13th century, he was a contemporary of Giotto and not only...). And so he walks down the street in the evening in the company of friends, and a flock of girls meets them. He still sees “his own” from afar. And suddenly a stunning event happens: while he is looking out for her, she turns, sees him and holds her gaze a little longer than expected. She just saw him. Just a look and a smile. They never saw each other again.
Dante came home and began writing poetry, which was later included in the book “Vita Nova” (“New Life”). This is poetry and meditation, a mixed genre - for the first time in literature. A kind of “documentation” of the Meeting. But Dante's genius lies not in what poems he wrote, but in his reaction to this seemingly ordinary event. He is shocked by what happened to him. He worked on himself for so many years: he studied philosophy, theology, poetry. He did all this to become alive. It was not an easy job. And suddenly some girl looks at him, and he feels that the greatest problems of humanity have been solved for you. The whole world is becoming amazingly new. Until this second, he was not interested in flowers at all, but now he knows how much hyacinths cost, where it is better to buy them - across the road or across the street. The whole world is being renewed. And all because she just looked at him. What he expected to achieve through years of hard work happened in a second.
Painting "Dante and Beatrice", artist Henry Holiday, 1882 - 1884. Photo: wikimedia.org
There was a second experience that struck him after this meeting. Dante, like all people, had a problem with forgiveness. There are always things you would like to forgive, but cannot. Even when you decide for yourself that you have forgiven, suddenly you see this person and realize that you have not forgiven. This is one of the serious problems of our life - to truly forgive. But suddenly this girl looks at him, and he understands at that very second that he has forgiven everyone everything.
After this, Dante and Beatrice did not, as often happens, meet at night and ask each other “how are you doing without me?” After some time she died. Dante is shocked. He cannot understand: if Beatrice is a gift from God who brought him a taste of happiness, then what does it mean? Is God kidding me? How can he live now? It is impossible to forget, because nothing more serious happened to him. He understands that he cannot live as if this did not happen. As a result, Dante ends his “New Life” with a promise to God that he will not write anything else until he finds the words that no one has ever said about a woman in the history of mankind. He is about 25 years old at this time.
Men don’t promise that either. What is surprising is not the promise itself, but the fact that he kept it. After the death of Beatrice, Dante became involved in politics, became one of the rulers of Florence, was expelled, sentenced to death if he returned, became one of the greatest diplomats of his time, spent most of his life traveling, writing philosophical treatises. It seemed that he had forgotten about poetry. It’s as if he was a poet before Beatrice’s death, and then he grew up and another period in his life began: he began to engage in serious matters - solving the problems of Europe. And in the midst of such a life, he suddenly began to say those words that no one had ever spoken about a woman in the history of mankind. First it says “Hell”, then “Purgatory”, then “Heaven”. In “Paradise” he did not finish 10 songs and died. His children are shocked. But then his son sees in a dream how his silent dad comes to him, invites him somewhere and shows him the place. Waking up, the son goes to this place, opens it and sees the missing parts of the Divine Comedy. The first handwritten book of The Divine Comedy is published 50 years after Dante's death.
In a letter to the ruler of Verona, Can Grande, one of the most cruel and intelligent Renaissance politicians, Dante explains why he writes such beauty. He writes that his poem is intended for direct action: it should lead a person out of a disastrous state of unhappiness and lead him to a state of happiness. In other words, if a person treats this text correctly, he is doomed to be happy. We don’t treat books that way now. But I am sure that we will, because the anthropology of literature is changing, the medieval culture of reading is being restored: you perceive a book not as the author’s fantasy, not as a certain piece of knowledge, but as evidence of experience. The author invites you to follow him. So Dante acts as a guide who leads you to happiness.
Painting "Dante in Verona", artist Antonio Cotti, 1879. Photo: wikimedia.org
In Florence, representatives of the workshops wrote a letter to the mayor of the city (it has been preserved) with approximately the following content: “Dear mayor, we also have the right to read Dante. But we are illiterate, so we collected a sum and are giving it to you so that you can establish the Chair of Dante. You must hire a professor who will explain Dante to us at a set time, and we will pay him.” Simple guys, builders, ask to have Dante explained to them. The mayor complied with this request. The main temple of Florence, the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, was crossed right through by the street, and the townspeople went right through it - under the dome, past the altar - to work at the market with geese and cows. They stopped in the cathedral, prayed and moved on, also back. And there in this temple there was a pulpit where the professor read and explained Dante to everyone. Usually there was a crowd standing there and listening. The first person hired for this work was Boccaccio, who coined the expression “The Divine Comedy.”
Everyone remembers how the poem begins:
Having completed half my earthly life,
I found myself in a dark forest.
At 35 years old, Dante experiences a state when everything is fine and he understands that he is living a wonderful life, but not his own. The action of the poem takes place during Easter week in the year 1300. Dante is a very precise author: in the poem everything is calculated down to an hour - the entire flight with Beatrice, where in the sky they were, etc. Using the Divine Comedy, you can reconstruct what the sky was like that day!
So, he suddenly finds himself in a dark, dark forest. It is not explained how he ended up there, he is already there. He's scared. Suddenly he sees a hill, and behind it - the setting sun and begins to run towards it. On his way, he encounters three animals in turn - a lynx, a lion and a thin, hungry she-wolf - which symbolize lust, pride and greed. He tries to get around the first two, but the she-wolf sees him, and he understands that she is about to devour him, he can’t reach the hill, he has to go back. This happens in life too: when faced with obstacles, a person stops in despair and tells himself that, of course, there is genuine life, there is happiness somewhere in the universe, but I don’t have it, I have circumstances: it didn’t work out with the lynx, with the lion , no money... And the man turns around and returns to the forest, because he understands that he does not have the strength to run, he will not take this hill. It would seem that there is no way out. At this point Dante begins. Before this, there was a statement of the problem. He seems to ask the reader: is this familiar to you, has this happened to you? Were you afraid in the forest? Have you tried to find something positive in life? Did you run to him? But nothing came of it because “such circumstances”, “such a country” and so on.
Let's return to Dante. Forest, night, he stands and doesn’t know what to do. Suddenly a man appears in the darkness, and Dante begins to shout to him. The first word that Dante utters in this poem is “Have mercy!” “I don’t know who you are - dead or alive - but have mercy on me!” - he says and asks the stranger to take him out of there. It turns out that this is, firstly, a dead man, and secondly, Virgil.
This is Dante's stroke of genius. If a modern person is asked who God will send to help someone who shouts “have mercy!”, he will most likely answer that he is a saint or an angel. It's logical. Dante is an absolutely medieval man, he shouts: “Have mercy!” - and God sends the pagan Virgil to him. What does Virgil have to do with it? If you were, for example, a football player and found yourself in the forest, God would send Pele to save you. For God, it’s not status that’s important, it’s important for Him to send someone you will follow. And you will go because you definitely love something in this life. If you grow flowers, God will send you your favorite florist, and you will follow him, because you have something to talk about, you trust him. Since Dante writes poetry and idolizes Virgil, Virgil is on you! We follow wonder, what moves our hearts.
Virgil explains to Dante that you need to follow him - and everything will be fine, he is his guide. We will now go underground, to hell, he continues, then we will go through Purgatory (this is such a mountain), there you will meet your beloved and you will fly a little, fly to the Lord himself, and there you will see something that will make you no longer be sad. Don't worry, everything will be fine. This ends the first song.
If this were bad literature, it would be so, but in The Divine Comedy there is song number two. If you read its ending, you can see that it repeats the ending of the first almost word for word:
Go, we are overcome by one desire:
You are my teacher, leader and master!
So I said; and the counselor moved,
And I follow him among the deaf rapids.
The first song also ends with Dante moving after Virgil. What on earth were they doing in the second song? This is the greatest song, a manual for psychotherapists. What is happening there? Dante, of course, was delighted when a guide appeared, ready to take him to happiness. But when he finds out what he needs to go through for this - hell, purgatory, “You will meet Beatrice”, “you will fly” - at that moment, despite all his agreement, he begins to get nervous and refuses. He sees that it is already evening, some peasant men are returning home, their wives are already heating up dinner, some children are running around, it’s so cozy. And you go to the outcast villages, fly to heaven, to hell, now you will see Lucifer. And you, in principle, don’t mind, but you think: maybe later? There is the famous prayer of St. Augustine: “Lord, come! But not today". The main Christian prayer is the prayer of procrastination: how to give up your own happiness. Dante begins to present serious arguments to Virgil: who was in hell before him? You can count them on your fingers – and all of them are great people. And he, they say, is Dante, a simple boy from Florence. There is the most vile argument that men come up with to refuse love: I don’t deserve you! Dante also uses it. He says he is not worthy, he is worthless. A woman should have shot him for this, but Virgil is here, and he is trying to motivate him. This song is a scandal of motivation: how can a person who is about to go watch TV because “dinner has already been heated” be convinced that he needs to go to heaven through Lucifer? Virgil did it. The second song is dedicated to this.
Painting "Dante's Boat", artist Eugene Delacroix, 1822. Photo: wikimedia.org
What argument did he find? He didn't convince Dante that he was worthy. He says something like this. Okay, if you don't need it, then I'll go. But first I want to tell you one story. Do you understand what I'm doing in this forest? I'm actually a dead man, living in hell, in a very good place. We have a city there where all the philosophers live: Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, we feel good there (follows a wonderful description of pseudo-paradise). Usually I don’t leave there, Virgil says, but one day we were sitting, and suddenly an unrealistically beautiful girl appeared - I couldn’t take my eyes off it. She's crying. Of course, I said that such a beautiful girl should not cry! Stop it immediately! What can I do for you? And this girl says that she is sitting in the Divine Rose in heaven, and Saint Lucia (in Italy this is a particularly revered saint) comes running to her and says that her Dante is in serious trouble on earth and that he will die today. Lucia did not find out about this herself - the saints do not feel what is happening on earth - the Mother of God herself told her about this. Beatrice can still save him, says the saint. The problem is, she explains, that Beatrice cannot return to earth, she can only go to hell.
And so Beatrice reached hell and cried, saying that her lover was dying. That is, the Mother of God warned Lucia, Lucia ran to Beatrice - only she can save him, because she truly loves him, - Beatrice did everything she could - she went down to hell and asked Virgil for help, Virgil ran to earth for Dante, and Dante doesn’t want to go because, to exaggerate, his dinner is warmed up and the news starts on TV. Here, of course, Dante has no choice but to agree.
Virgil leads Dante underground. It turns out that there is a cone-shaped shaft underground. Below the mine, in the center of the world, Lucifer is stuck, he is disgusting: he has fur, mucus, three heads, he chomps, chewing traitors. Where did the cone-shaped shaft come from? When Lucifer flew from the sky, the earth recoiled in disgust and seemed to retract: on one side it retracted, and on the other it protruded. This is how the cone turned out. This is Dante's whole cosmology, he invented it himself. The cone shaft is hell. By the way, there is no fire there - there is ice, because the worst, hellish state is when all your desires are frozen, when you don’t want anything else.
Dante and Virgil travel through hell and down Lucifer's fur, past his slurping mouth, to the base of the mountain. This mountain is Purgatory, only the dead go there (with the exception of Dante). At the top of the mountain is Earthly Paradise. No one lives there except the girl Matilda. (They still don’t understand who it is - this is a whole topic in the comments to Dante). Here Dante is already without Virgil (Virgil cannot enter there), he meets Beatrice. And they fly away. They cross the sky of fixed stars and the Divine Rose appears at the top. There are millions of people sitting there, like in an amphitheater, looking somewhere. It turns out that it's God. Dante also dares to look. He peers. At first he sees only a blinding light, but then he notices multi-colored geometric shapes. And then he sees the most amazing thing: he sees a human face in God. At this moment he realizes that his mind is completely exhausted, and the poem ends.
Dante came up with one of the most developed topological metaphors for overcoming all kinds of violence through encounter. For this overcoming to happen, we need a guide and guide. The guide is in the area of my desire: this desire takes me to heaven, to God. Each of the three parts (“Hell”, “Purgatory” and “Paradise”) ends with the same word - “stars”. It is important to understand that in the word desiderio - “desire” - the root (sidero) is “star”. The main thesis is that we can only be saved by getting into motion. We cannot move on our own. We always come into motion in a meeting. If I have any desire - no matter how small it may be - and I handle it correctly, that desire will lead to heaven. This is Dante's main idea: find in your life what moves you, makes you wake up. If something forces you to get out of bed, you are Dante’s friend, with the right leader you will reach the sky. Because all desires lead to the stars, to God's world.
The opening page of the first printed edition of The Divine Comedy, 1472. Photo: wikimedia.org
For Dante, the path to happiness is always a vertical path. But we don’t know the vertical in ourselves until we meet the Other. The vertical is born in the Meeting. This gives a person depth and height. Height is when I encounter beauty before which I am speechless, and depth opens at the moment when I see something in myself that I did not know before this meeting. For example, I meet a person who looks at me much more seriously than I look at myself. What does he see in me? When they tell me: Christ was crucified, died and rose again because of you, I think: who am I? Why should God do this because of me?
When Dante saw God, he returned to earth and began to write. Never before in the history of Christianity has any author described hell properly. And so Dante produces 33 songs. How can he look at evil? We cannot even look at evil, let alone overcome it. Dante describes it in great detail, in detail. What gives him the strength to watch? Either he didn’t really see it and is making it up (but then it would be uninteresting, and everyone would forget this book), or he has the strength to look at evil without taking his eyes off, and tell others how to overcome this evil. These powers are his experience of heaven. Having seen such love and such paradise, he can already look directly at evil, he can even describe it. If “Hell” is re-read after “Paradise”, it will be perceived completely differently - it will be a story of overcoming violence.
About 15 years ago, McDonald's sold these toys - caps. These are plastic chips with rather primitive stamping, which children nevertheless collected because there were episodes dedicated to their favorite films, for example, “Pirates of the Caribbean”. These trinkets outraged me at the time: how can you charge 10 hryvnia for this? But all my indignation went away when I suddenly brought this cap to the light and looked through it at the sun. The image quality was amazing, achieved by varying the thickness of the plastic on the print.
It’s the same with life: if you hold it up to the light, it ceases to be a piece of plastic, and an image quality appears in it that you did not expect at all. You understand that you have never seen your life in this quality.
What happens? We can study the meaning of life by reading many volumes of books and looking at the details of bad printing. But we can raise it to the light (just first understand where this light is coming from) - and the same life will be transformed. This is the most primitive model of transformation.
In general, transformation is not when transformations happen to us, like in a horror movie. This is when we managed to bring our lives into the light. This light is an experience of beauty. In other words, there are two ways to figure out the meaning of your life. The first is to read all the books and carry out the interpretation procedure. (But most likely you will not succeed, because it is very difficult.) The second is to raise this life into the light, and then you will have nothing left but admiration and gratitude for the fact that you managed to live such a beautiful life.
