I celebrated the day dedicated to Dante Alighieri, Dan Tuesday, March 25 (probable starting date of his journey to the afterlife and, not surprisingly, the feast of the Annunciation to Mary, nine months before Christmas, and symbolic date of the beginning of the divine associated with spring Creation), which concludes the story of the comedy in the theater for three evenings entitled “Of Our Lives: Hell, Purgatory, Paradise”.
I believe that these are not places we will go, but where we are (they were and layers of existence) every day, through more or less conscious choice. Great literature does not shield life, but testifies to its experience “in clear words”, that is, with precision of words. When the poet narrates the journey into the afterlife, he wanders about as an exile in the afterlife: he has lost everything, he will never be able to return to Florence due to an unjust sentence. His life is “locked up”, and yet he finds his way to heaven not by going up, but by digging beyond the abyss: Dante touches the frozen bottom of Hell and discovers that it is an opening, and how a descent seemed it was an ascent instead. Arrived at the center of the earth, Virgil helps Dante descend along the body of Satan (a body with evil) stuck there, to then help him turn it upside down and introduce him to the other hemisphere where he wants to climb the mountain of purgatory and then fly in the sky.
Dante gave me the words to define an experience that happens to everyone sooner or later: to touch the sky you first have to touch the ground and even cross it. The deaths and death we encounter are passages (the approaching Passover means “Passover” in Hebrew). Are they just metaphors or is it reality?
If we trace the direction of Dante’s journey, we discover that in hell he always goes to the left, in purgatory to the right, in paradise vertically: the map «of our lives» is a spiral (Point your index finger down and turn to the left, slowly rotate your hand upwards without stopping rotating your finger: the rotating motion from left is now to right). Dante’s journey, then, consists of two spirals (hell is a funnel-shaped abyss, purgatory the corresponding mountain), a single ascent to a midpoint node, and in a single direction: advancing in self-realization through encounter with others (it is working with most characters in world literature) and with the other and consequently with oneself, for it is only in relationship that we define the truth of who we are.
So Dante always goes in one direction, upwards, in progressive liberation from the “burden” of life: “sin”. By ‘sin’ we translate an ancient word meaning ‘off the mark, off center’, that which does not go well, like when a precious vase breaks or an athlete suffers a serious accident, and we say: ‘Too bad! » . The exclamation does not refer to the breaking of rules, but to the failure of something whose purpose was obvious: those who “sin” themselves.
Each of us is called to make ourselves a masterpiece, to fulfill our ‘form’, sin ‘deforms’ the masterpiece like a vandal. I sin, I miss the mark, every time I betray myself, that is, I deceive myself that I am not who I am and therefore I betray my desire, which is the call that life calls to me and aimed only at me: a principle of animation that gives me a unique place in the world. On his long spiraling ascent, Dante learns not to betray himself (hell), to free himself from what drives him to betray himself (purgatory), to fly straight towards his own fulfillment (paradise).
In short, comedy’s upward spiral is the geometric figure that best represents each person’s journey to the center of themselves: to be and do what only I can be and do, living the authentic life I’m moving away from or to whom I am moving away, to whom I am trying, even painfully, to climb up to myself. The mirages of existence, the deceptive desires of existence and love decenter us, leading us to live a life that is not ours: “a real shame!”. In order to concentrate, gather energies and direct them towards the goal for which we are thirsty, arrow, it is necessary to advance climbing, that is, to recognize in daily experience what leads to betray or ” to be “centered”: despair, sadness and joy are infallible signs.
Our life is hell when we are off center (despair); a purgatory when we get lost somewhere else after finding it (sadness); a paradise when each of our gestures comes from our uniqueness (joy).
Pavese has already written it in his creed: «Why did you direct everything to one center without knowing it? Internal logic, providence, vital instinct?». Whatever answer we give, the center (originality and inspiration: what I come into the world for and increasingly come into the world for) works in us: when we are on track we are in heaven, when we are off track we are in purgatory when we give up hell. Life, then, is necessarily a journey of understanding what makes us thrive or rot, a continual fine-tuning of desire: the opposite of ‘sinning’ is ‘achieving’.
But how can we understand if we are (con-)focused? We bear fruit (“concentrate” is said of a true juice) in the way of being that makes us primordial, ie emerging: an apple is the end of the seed, but at the same time the origin of new seeds. This also happens to Dante. At the end of the journey, face to face with God, he does not dissolve but is fulfilled, that is, he becomes the Dante that only Dante can be, and in fact he “returns” to earth renewed, that is, to himself, back : He is always in exile and centered with nothing but totally, returned to his authentic self, child of God, Creator and Love whom he met face to face. Now the energies that make him human, to create and to love are free: we realize ourselves by giving to the world what was always destined for the world in us, at any cost.
To ask oneself whether I am in hell, purgatory or heaven today is basically to ask oneself whether life in and around me is decreasing, stagnating or increasing today, ie whether I have not betrayed myself.
When, 15 years after his exile, the poet is summoned to return to Florence on condition that he publicly confess to a crime he never committed, Dante, in his famous letter to a Florentine friend, replies: “This is not the way back to home, but if there is another way that doesn’t damage Dante’s honesty, I don’t accept the slow step, but if you don’t enter Florence like this, I will never enter Florence again. So? Shouldn’t I see the light of the sun and the stars everywhere? Will I not be able to meditate on the sweetest truths anywhere under heaven? I’m sure I won’t be missing a piece of bread.”
Exiled but true to himself, Dante has (and has) built a home where he is free wherever he is. To get to heaven, the shortest way is to hit rock bottom (pain is life that wants to heal and be born) and break through the layer of “sin” (lies and lack of love) that prevents us from to inhabit the heaven that we already have within us and that only we can “open” on earth. Overall.