A Canto a Day

For her spiritual and intellectual edification, Lindsay Schlegel is making her way through Dante’s Divine Comedy one canto at a time.  

My college transcript would have you believe I am at least versed, if not well versed in portions of the Divina Commedia, or Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri. I’m sure I looked at the pages when they were assigned, and I know I didn’t miss a discussion, but really, I had no idea what was going on.   

I can see now that I didn’t have enough context for what I was reading, but that’s another post for another day. All I hung on to from those class hours was that the phrase, “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here,” from the Inferno is part of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride in Disney World. Not much spiritual edification there.  

A brief explainer 

The Divine Comedy is a poem in three parts, or canticles — the Inferno, the Purgatorio, and the Paradiso — written in the early 1300s by a poet from Florence. Each canticle is comprised of 33 cantos, though the Inferno also includes an introductory canto, which makes it 34 (and makes the total number of cantos a hundred).   

Dante himself is the protagonist, at times as poet, at times as pilgrim, traveling into the depths of hell, through purgatory, and ultimately to the heights of Heaven. He is led first by the poet Virgil and later by the beautiful Beatrice, conversing with a number of other souls in between. His journey is meant to show him what could become of him if he doesn’t “wake up,” as it were; it is the journey of every man, thus its appeal for more than 700 years. It’s a masterpiece of Western literature, and it’s deeply rooted in the Catholic faith. 

My journey through Dante’s journey 

Last year, I read Dante’s Indiana by Randy Boyagoda in preparation for an in-person portion of the Master of Fine Arts degree program at the University of St. Thomas, Houston. I thoroughly enjoyed the book, which leans heavily on the Purgatorio. On the last page, Boyagoda recommends the practice of reading a canto a day. I was intrigued. Another student told me she’d been doing this for some time, and so I decided to give it a try.  

I quickly saw the fruit of setting aside ten or fifteen minutes to read a canto and my translation’s accompanying notes each day. As a writer, I was experiencing one of the cornerstones of literature in digestible portions. As a human being and a child of God, I was exploring sin, free will, theology, the nature of God, the nature of man, salvation history, and more in the context of a story, but one that invited me to reflect on my life and the state of my own soul on a regular basis. It floored me.   

I didn’t understand all of what I was reading, but I read through the Inferno and part of the Purgatorio before school started again and my morning quiet time was truncated. Last spring, I read through a different translation of the complete work in another class, and this summer I picked up where I left off last September. Some days I comprehend more than others, but there is always something to appreciate: a powerful metaphor, the voice of a particular figure, a bit of history, an insight into God’s love and mercy.  

What I’ve learned 

This is a text I could read—a text I want to read—for the rest of my life. Different translations invite different interpretations, emphases on different elements of the poem. There is no shortage of commentary, related artwork, references in other art forms (for example, The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis, as well as the ride at Disney). The poem was written in a style of language that invited the general public to engage with it, and that’s the way I hope I can encourage more people to approach it today.   

This is not a work that you need a college course to get through, although in retrospect I wish I’d taken more advantage of that opportunity when I had it. If you need help getting into the work, find a podcast to introduce it, view a lecture series on YouTube as a guide, or invite a friend to read alongside you.   

Yes, the sections reaching into the circles of hell are intense, but we need to face sin head-on in order to not be deceived by the things of this world. You’ll understand why you needed to experience those pages when you reach the final cantos of the Paradiso. There, you’ll find verses that honor Our Lady in such beautiful language that it reads like a prayer. Perhaps, like me, you’ll have sticky notes sticking out every which way, marking the sections you intend to go back to before the next full read.   

A canto a day, a hundred days. And then, again. 

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Copyright 2024 Lindsay Schlegel
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