Canto 1: Midway On The Journey

Midway upon the journey of our life / I found myself within a forest dark / For the straightforward pathway had been lost. These first three lines to The Divine Comedy are so well known that even many who have never read it know them. However, I have discovered that the deeper meaning of things that are well known often escapes us. Such is the case with these opening lines.   

In one Dante class, the students who were in their late teens and early twenties wrote these lines off as Dante having a midlife crisis without much further consideration. There it was, a tidy little package all wrapped and labeled. Let’s move on to the good stuff of seeing people tortured in hell. I must admit that the first time I read The Divine Comedy, I did the same thing, missing the entire setup to the poem. I did not repeat the error in subsequent readings later in life.  

With rare exceptions, I do not read a book more than once. Those rare exceptions, however, are exceptions because they are so rare. Rare in the beauty of their pros. Rare in the depth of their perspective. Rare in the scope of their ideas.

It is important to reread these works. Some are so complex that to understand them well, they must be read multiple times. You are not going to understand Joyce’s Ulysses in just one reading. In rereading a book, one reading better enables us to understand the next. Ultimately, giving us a deeper appreciation of the work. In the lectures of Ronald Herzman and William Cook, they say that once you have read The Divine Comedy, you are ready to read The Divine Comedy.

In addition, as we grow older, our additional life experience will give us new perspectives on the world, including our interpretation of literature. As I grew older, I began to appreciate the opening lines of The Divine Comedy in a new way. In our youth, time was plentiful, stretching out before us seemingly without limit. We were so sure of ourselves, so confident in the course we had plotted. However, as we pass the midpoint of our life – if we are at all self-aware – we realize that we have fewer days in front of us than we do behind us. The dreams we once had go unrealized. We begin to ask ourselves if we had made the best use of the time allotted us. We compare the expectations of our youth with the reality of our old age. This is what Dante is discussing in these first few lines.

Rather than simply dismissing this as a midlife crisis, let us consider this from the perspective of Dante, the pilgrim, putting ourselves behind his eyes. The dark wood, some say, represents Dante’s sinful state; that he is lost in sin. I disagree with this interpretation. We should remember that Dante was well versed in the writings of Saint Augustine. The second book of Confessions ends with Augustine writing, “I sank away from Thee, and I wandered, my God, too much astray from Thee my stay.” Dante is lost and wandering. As he tells us, the straightforward pathway had been lost. This is the symbol of his sinful state, not the forest dark. This, of course, begs the question of what then does the forest dark represent.

Consider the time in which Dante lived. The world was slowly awakening from the Dark Ages and on the cusp of the Renaissance. The writings of Greeks such as Aristotle, Euclid, Hippocrates, and Ptolemy were making their way to the West, where they were translated into Latin. These were new ideas to many Europeans, or more correctly, forgotten ideas that seemed new. They offered new ways of looking at the world and challenges to accepted wisdom.  The forest dark was the world in which Dante lived.

Think of being lost in a forest. It is dark, there is barely any moon to light the night, and even that is covered by the trees. You follow one path that leads to another that circles back in on itself. The path twists and turns until you have no sense of direction. Struggling through the brush, you quickly tire. Thorns tear your clothes and skin. Dead leaves and twigs fall down the back of your shirt and dirt in your shoes. How fitting a metaphor this is to Dante’s world. You read new philosophies only to find that they ultimately fail. You attempt somehow to integrate a new understanding of how the world works with your faith, with your previous world view, but fail. Eventually, you become lost, so confused that you are unsure of where you are or where the faith you once had has gone.

When you read these lines, put yourself in this position, think of being at the midpoint of your life, looking back at the paths you chose to follow as well as those you did not. Think of the sense of being lost, of not knowing how to find yourself again. When you put yourself into this frame of mind, you will understand those first few lines; then, you will be ready to join Dante on his journey to freedom.

For more on Italian and Italian-American culture, read my book Italianità, The Essence of Being Italian. And don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter.