Canto 1: The Journey
Many have long described The Divine Comedy as the greatest work of Western literature. This acclaim is due, in part, to Dante making his journey from bondage to freedom personal to his readers. His poem reaches out and pulls us into the experience of his spiritual enlightenment.
Dante begins by telling us, “Midway in our life’s journey / I awoke to find myself lost in a dark wood.” The tension created between “our life’s journey” and “I awoke” is a subject of a great deal of speculation. What was the authorial intent? Why didn’t Dante simply write in the middle of my life’s journey, I awoke? We might brush off this conflict as sloppy writing, that Dante had intended no deeper meaning here, but I believe this would be a mistake. While I cannot say with any absolute authority what Dante had intended, I think there is a purpose in his choice of words. And, that purpose is an example of how Dante draws us into the poem from the very start.
The “our” in the first verse is Dante’s acknowledgment that we are all on a journey. We are all trying to find our way in life. It is a view that life is more than simply seeking bestial pleasure. As Aristotle noted in Nicomachean Ethics, pleasure is good, but only to a point. Our lives, if they are to be good ones, cannot be focused merely on pleasure, the simple pursuit of happiness. A good life is one of growth, a journey from what we are to what we can be, to achieve self-actualization. In this way, we are drawn into the poem. We are told at the start that this is not just a story about some Florentine that died 700 years ago. It is our story, a story about a journey we are all making.
When I read this, I see this as something that transcends religious belief. Some may argue that Dante’s journey is not about self-actualization but salvation. Such a view misses what salvation truly is. Salvation is far more than escaping the fires of hell. Salvation is a matter of coming into the fullness of who we are meant to be. As described in the poem, we achieve this by freeing ourselves from the bondage of sin. It no longer holds us back by our sin from experiencing God in a more profound, more complete way.
This is an example of the universality of Dante’s poetry. We need not be a person of faith to understand that a lack of self-discipline will only frustrate us in achieving our end. Aristotle pointed out that we can become slaves to our base desires, whatever those desires might be when we cannot control them. Just as a person of faith looks on sin as holding them back from coming into the fullness of God, so too can our bestial passions prevent us from fulfilling who we are, to hinder us in actualizing our full potential. They are, for lack of a better phrase, secular sins.
Dante’s journey, therefore, is one we are all traveling. We are all trying to free ourselves from those things that hold us back. It is for this reason we refer to the journey of one from bondage to freedom.
Immediately, however, Dante switches the focus from the general, the universal, to the specific. That is a poor way of saying what I intend. Rather than saying he changes the focus, I should say that he zooms in. He drills down from a view of us all to a specific person within that group, himself, Dante the pilgrim. He does not say that we are all lost. He does not even say that many are lost. He speaks for himself, which is all he can do. Although we are all on the same journey, each travels his own path, our own road.
I believe this point to be equally important. Often in life, we compare our lives to others. It is easy when we look at another person’s life to think that they have it so much better. Maybe they are more successful in their career, have more money, or are more popular. Unfortunately, the other extreme is far more common in my experience when people look at others as being less, not as holy or as pure, not as hard work or as moral. We see examples of this in the scripture, specifically Luke 18:9-14. A Pharisee and a tax collector go into the temple to pray. When the Pharisee prays, he is busy comparing himself to others, people who he sees as not as good or moral as he is. Meanwhile, the tax collector looks down, asking God to have mercy on him. The tax collector looks at himself not in relation to others but on his road, on how he is traveling on his path. Whether we compare ourselves more or less favorably to others, we miss the point, as Dante makes clear. We all must progress on our own paths. It is not relevant what another person is or isn’t doing. Each of us stands individually before God. Another person’s sin does not somehow vindicate our own.
Again, this is a message for everyone, not just those who practice some religion. The common wisdom is that you should not compare yourself to others if you want to be happy in life. Max Ehrmann, the American author and poet, said, “If you compare yourself to others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.” We can easily fall into the trap of comparing ourselves to people who will only confirm our preconceived notions of who we are. If we have a poor self-image, we compare ourselves to those who seem better off. If we are full of ourselves, we can easily find those to whom we feel superior. Where another is on their path cannot be compared to where I am on my own.
At the very outset of The Divine Comedy, we see that we are all on a journey from bondage to freedom. We see that its focus is on an individual man’s road to that end. In witnessing Dante’s experience through his poem, we will have a different, more extensive perspective on our own experience.
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