Proper Caution The Paradiso feels like the riskiest book to read, much less write about. To begin with, we have only enough information about Heaven to spark lots of speculation, much of it pretty fanciful. Mark Twain skewered pious visions of Heaven by pointing out that most men he knew don’t act like they’d even…

At the summit of Purgatory: Eden, the Earthly Paradise, the state of original innocence preserved as the field of rest before ascending to the gates of the heavenly Paradise. We’ve already had a climactic trial by fire, where can the story even go from here? A Second Climax? To perhaps the weirdest imaginable place, at least…

Keen for the Fire “Unless you’re bitten by the fire,” the angel at the top of the mountain shouts joyfully, but Dante, understandably, balks at being called to pass through a wall of flame. Dramatically, he says “I was like a corpse put in the grave, / the words I heard so touched my heart…

Let me try to get from Friends to Dante in a more or less plausible manner. You might know that Ross always had a thing for Rachel, but Rachel never took Ross seriously. This was the dynamic for several seasons until they finally got together. In the “emotional,” climactic moment when she at last returns his…

You’ve probably seen the videos for Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty. They usually begin with women describing their appearance  as inadequate or inferior before another woman or a man or an artist do or say something that reveals that, in fact, others see them as quite beautiful. The videos are well-made, sincere, and legitimately powerful…

We’re at the heart of Purgatorio, and the heart of the Commedia, but things get a little weird. There are all these dream visions, and then a lot of philosophy. To be honest, he starts to lose me a little; less seems to be happening than in earlier episodes. But what is all this talk about? Love. Love, remember, created the cosmos all the way down…

We looked at green as the color of hope as well as ephemeral fame. Of course, it is also the color of envy, which in Dante’s fruitful imagination becomes purified through a metaphor of seeing. A Way to Look at Envy The prideful bore a burden that brought them low, and it seemed a difficult but…

A Humble Petition (Canto IX) What better way to enter Purgatory than with an act of humility? This may seem obvious, but we’re prideful people who don’t generally even appreciate how prideful we are. Think about how easy it is to confess to a variety of Christian “struggles,” to go on missions trips or attend Christian…

In what do we place our hope? We Christians know to answer, reflexively, “In Christ!” But in some sense that is not to take the question literally. The Light Between Truth and Reason If I’m honest, when I say, “I put my hope in Christ,” I’m in part treating the question as aspirational or normative,…

The early cantos of Purgatorio feel obsessed with haste and urgency as well as light and shadow, continuing the themes of right desires and purification I identified in the first two cantos. Stepping Partly in the Light The pilgrim often notices the sun and its path, and he and the many souls frequently notice and…

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. —Paul to the Romans (7:15) “What is this negligence, this standing still? On your way to the mountain, running, and peel away the dead skin that keeps you from seeing God.” —Cato…

N.B.: As a reminder, I will be using W.S. Merwin’s translation of Purgatorio. Dante stands now at the foot of Mount Purgatory, about to begin an ascent of purification. As a Protestant standing beside him, there is a part of me that wants to say, “Um, you know you don’t actually have to do this, right?…