Woo! We’re done folks! The Divine Comedy has finally been vanquished after four months of slog. This was a big book, so I stretched it over three sections, starting with Inferno, then Purgatorio and now, finally, Paradisio. I can safely say that is not only the order of the book, but also the order of my enjoyment from most to least!
Plot summary
Dante and Beatrice reached the foothills of heaven at the end of Purgatorio. At the start of Paradisio they start climbing through the nine levels of Heaven. The levels are set on different planets, following the structure of the solar system. God sits in the position of the Sun at the centre of it all. As they ascend, Dante learns more about virtue. He watches Beatrice become more and more beautiful as she reflects the glory of God. Several famous saints appear in the story, including St Francis, St Dominic, St Bernard of Clairvaux, and the apostles St Peter and St John.
It’s hard to absorb divine beauty
“Eye has not seen and ear has not heard” sums up the overpowering glory of heaven. Dante is faced with quite a challenge when trying to render into words such unknown beauty and joy. He does his best, but I think it’s hard to absorb. Plenty of times he notes that he is unable to write about what he sees, and so moves on with the story leaving it to your imagination.
It can be rather dull to hear of nothing but indescribable perfection for 33 cantos. While Inferno and Purgatorio were journeys with a climax and purpose, Paradisio feels oddly purposeless. Heaven is new to Dante, and he does meet new and interesting people on the way. But it feels as if no deeper discoveries are made. No surprising or reflective moments stuck out to me as I worked through this finale. Heaven is the end of the story. It is the goal. So, once you’ve reached it, it’s all sort of the same. Even the lowest order of Heaven is more than enough.
As I wrote earlier, I do think this could be a ‘me’ problem. I don’t want to say that I know everything about this great work of literature. I’m sure my ignorance is leading me to miss a lot of depth here. But honesty requires me to say that I did struggle to be engaged or to find meaning and beauty as the poem went on.
The Divine Comedy begs the question: why read classics?
After pushing through this book, I realised I read it because it was a classic. I finished it because I set myself the challenge. I can’t say I read it out of enjoyment or natural interest. Perhaps it’s a conceit, reading just to say that I’ve read this notable work. Should we read classics only because they are classics? Even if they’re not really that interesting to us, personally?
I did write about this when I reviewed Socrates. There is depth and meaning to a lot of these works, which makes them worthy of study. The Divine Comedy certainly has a depth of theological and poetic skill. Modern readers tend to put our taste higher than is warranted when deciding a book’s worth. I do it all the time! If I don’t enjoy something, that doesn’t actually mean it isn’t a great work!
That said, I do think it’s worth assessing why we read these great books. Is it to say we’ve read it, impressing others? Or is it in an effort to understand what makes these books great? Perhaps I’ve been too much the former with Dante. But I hope some lessons have landed and taken root, all the same.
[…] the end. At the time, that felt so overwhelming, especially since I was still slogging through by Dante and Plato. But here we are at the end of October and there are only one and a half books left! It […]