Episode 146: In the Woods, with Dante

Dante Alighieri wrote the Divine Comedy Divina Commedia over many years and completed the work late in his life. He died a few years later in Ravenna, Italy. I contemplate his exile from Florence and his journey as a writer while musing over my own sense of being “in the woods” in recent years and having to forge a new path. It seems his profound words were written for the generations and the centuries that would follow. Yes, there are words that transport and there are things already written in the stars.

“In the middle of the journey of our life I came to myself in a dark wood where the straight way was lost” - Dante Alighieri

Dante’s resting place in Ravenna Italy

A while back I visited Ravenna Italy to see the mosaics, at the time it was a nice surprise to learn more about the poet and philosopher Dante Alighieri and the story of his life…

Shownotes:

Conversation with Poet David Whyte: Everything is an Invitation on Podcast - ‘Insights at the Edge’

The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri - Divina Commedia, completed in 1319

From a visual diary I made after my 2022 trip to Italy…

You will leave behind you all you hold most dear.

And this will be the grievous arrow barb

that exile, first of all, will shoot your way.

And you will taste the saltiness of bread

when offered by another hand - as, too

how it is to climb a strangers stair.

Yet what will weigh upon your shoulders worst

is the foul, ill-minded company

that you, in that dark vale, will fall to keep.

For the ungrateful crazy, vicious crew

will turn as one against you. Yet it’s them

whose brows before too long will blush with shame.

Their deeds will prove what animals they are.

And so much so, the finer course for you

would be to form a party on your own….

Canto XVII, Dante Alighieri

Divina Commedia