The Book Club: Divine Comedy by Dante with Catherine Illingworth | The Book Club

[Music] welcome to the book club i'm michael knowles and this month we will be reading the divine comedy by dante alighieri inferno purgatorio paradiso my absolute favorite not just poem not just book my favorite work of art but first before we get into that in our fast-paced world it is tough to make reading a priority at least it used to be but at thinkor.org they summarize the key ideas from new and noteworthy nonfiction giving you access to an entire library of great books in bite-sized form you can read or listen to hundreds of titles in a matter of minutes from old classics like dale carnegie's how to win friends and influence people to recent best sellers like jordan peterson's 12 rules for life if you want to challenge your perceptions if you want to expand your horizons if you want to sound smart at cocktail parties most important at all go to thinker.org that is t-h-i-n-k-r no e no time for that dot org to start a free trial and put your mind in motion it is very fitting i think that as we go through my absolute favorite work of art ever composed we will do that with one of my dearest friends the dante scholar catherine illingworth catherine thank you for joining thank you for having me thrilled to be here so we've only got a little bit to go through today we've only got about what is it 1500 pages or so yes 14 000 lines of poetry okay great in this brief period that we have just before we begin tell us a little bit about what actually happens in not just dante's inferno but the whole poem inferno and then purgatory and then paradise well it is a thick stack of books here but the plot is pretty straightforward you have a guy who has lost everything he is down and about he is in the middle of a dark forest and then a guide shows up and says i'm going to save you by leading you through hell purgatory in heaven and he's journeying to god the whole way it is probably worth pointing out too i think some people might they hear like dante's inferno and you might not realize that the word inferno in italian means hell it's not like just an oven or like a pizza place or something this is the story of this pilgrim he's finds himself in a midlife crisis right in the middle of his life and he then he goes down into hell and he's got this poet guiding him that's right virgil virgil the author of the aeneid okay yes and he and he's guiding him because there's this woman that dante loves it's like the love of dante's life who inspires all his poetry and her name is beatrice which means blessed and she's up in heaven yes and she sends virgil who's in hell on this mission yes so but virgil's in hell so why is virgil leading dante all the way up to heaven because virgil was dante's favorite poet he calls him his master and his author and dante credits virgil with the development of his own skill as a poet he loved the aeneid and virgil's other works so much that it led him to the career he pursued as a poet and this brings up another point the poem includes politics obviously poetry obviously lots of philosophy so what is it is dante uh is he a pilgrim you know someone actually going on this journey to god is he a poet is he a politician is he a philosopher is he who is the historical person dante alighieri that's a great question and the answer is all of the above so he pursued a career as a poet as a young man and was very skilled and met with success that way and then tried his hand at politics and i had some success there as well you did for a little bit then it didn't go so well until his people lost favor which led to his ultimate exile from the city of florence which was the great tragedy that set off this chain of events in his life that led to his ability to write about a man who has nothing left to lose who has to completely rebuild his life so this poem which dante wrote over decades of his life while he was wandering around italy trying to find a new home this is all of his reading we benefit from everything he read and studied and explored while he was in that period of exile which lasted till the end of his life he never made it back into florence you know the first time i read this poem was a dozen years ago so i hadn't really read it properly until we started sort of going back through this and i read it on the course that dante took when he got exiled from florence great tragedy of his life and we kind of went all around and ended up in the city of ravenna which is where he died and i think it is it's worth reminding people it's written in italian so you got to pick a translation we're using the durling martinez translation which is very good yes but just to give you a sense of the poem this used to be my trick at parties when i would try to impress girls to give you a sense of the poem it's written in in what's called tetsurima right so it's these three lines three a very important number it's the trinity right there are three parts to the poem the rhyme scheme just just to give you a sense of the italians thank you beautiful recitation i've exhausted all my attention but it goes like i mean i read that to illustrate it goes like this in this beautiful three-part rhyme scheme for the whole poem right just just that fact alone makes this thing stunning absolutely what i want you to tell me about a little bit is how the poem combines so many different aspects of the intellectual journey to god sure that he's been able to assemble so much into one poem it's remarkable that he's able to his his talent as an artist is so formidable that he's able to draw in all of these other disciplines he's talking about politics and history and folk tradition in his own area he talks about family heritage and philosophy theology that church history all of these pretty much all matters that the intellect can comprehend he is able to put into this stunning poetic verse which is why i'd have to agree with you that it's it's the highest work of art that i believe has ever been created you know one thing he references in here is uh st thomas aquinas who put together the the sum of all theological knowledge right the summa theology and to me it seems like dante's poem here is the sum of all art i don't know the sum of all artistic knowledge it's got all of these elements to it right and he's not shy about telling you that that's exactly what he's trying to do he is trying to write the best poem that's going to talk about absolutely everything so that if you've read his poem you will never need to read anything else but i have to tell you the thing that intimidated me about the poem 10 years ago 12 years ago when i read it and continues to intimidate me about this poem is i just think i don't know enough to read this poem and i and i read italian right so at least i got a little leg up but i i still don't what would you say to a modern reader who is just sort of saying okay i'm going to start with a 100-page novel first then we'll move on you know i mean it just seems overwhelming certainly yes and the the person is rare to begin with who wants to sit down with a 14 000 line poem on a saturday night to think i'm going to read some very dense medieval poetry yeah um but this is when do they say that when skating over thin ice your safety is in your speed just keep going just keep going keep going and find friends there are no trophies to be won by sitting there trying to power through this thing by yourself get a version with fantastic notes that'll walk you through some of the context without getting too mired in the details and find a friend my brother-in-law found a friend of his and they meet in they live in new york get together once a week and go through one canto at a time and it's taking them years and they're sticking with it but this needs to be read either with other sources of scholars who can help you out with the incomprehensible parts or with friends who can sit there and admit that your questions are valid okay there are no trophies to be won by trying to do this super duper fast or do it alone or do it just two people right but there will be a trophy that i will give you at the end if we can get through a substantial part of the poem so let's begin with hell okay what does dante have to tell us about linferno what does he have to tell us about the nature of hell well this is what dante's most famous for of course if anybody has heard of dante they've heard of dante's inferno and so you'd imagine it's some kind that he's taking delight in talking about the suffering of these souls that they're being tormented and tortured and in all manner of the sadistic ideas he has but really this is dante exploring desire gone very very wrong he's famous for talking about lust he talks about the greed for power for gluttony for these things that we want as human beings that are not going to take us to very good places well especially on this point of lust you know love is kind of the central theme of right there there are other central themes but you know love is what what guides you all the way to the very end of the poem right and in one of the most famous parts of inferno it's the story of paulo and francesca these adulterous lovers who are whipped forever on the wind what went wrong with their desire well francesca de rimini is a historical figure who we don't know if she actually cheated on her husband in real life but she is she's caught in the act and then she and her lover richie her husband kills both of them on the spot and then they're both sent to hell but there are shades where of course love for others is the ultimate good so what's wrong with this one um francesca gives an eloquent wonderful speech where she talks about how she has been so wronged and this is all she is the victim she's the she's oppressed by a system that forced her into a marriage she didn't want to be in that she's she's she doesn't see any of her own culpability right so even the way she describes it the love took her the love grabbed her yes she was swept up she's this passive figure who has no responsibility for what she's done and she certainly doesn't exhibit any remorse and so she's kind of stuck together with this guy paulo that she had this affair with and they're whirling around in this whirlwind for all of eternity but it's important to note also that dante places that at the very top of hell which are the sins that matter much much less to him there are far graver things of which one can be guilty that dante is going to really drive home punishments for those people this is a point that i think is important because when people think of the traditional christian understanding of hell and heaven and punishment we we stick on the fleshy sins you know especially and for francesca she said very interesting just the beautiful the beauty of the language again here is she says that love led her away on this and then the famous line in the italian is love led us to death and within the phrase una morte which means death is the word amor which means love right it's totally everything fits perfectly here and you've got all sorts of other people being punished where their desires in life that were disordered actually create the punishments that they're facing but if if sex stuff is kind of on the on the grand scheme of things not so bad right what are the really bad sins the worst sin is betrayal so that you go from sex to gluttony to being a little too fleshy and of course when people think of the medieval church all they're thinking about is trying to govern people's bodily desires which dante says yeah not great but let's move on to stuff that matters a lot more which is going to be at any time a person in authority is leading someone astray like the bad popes the popes he doesn't like he's pretty tough on that he's very tough on them um but he is absolutely toughest on those who betray especially their benefactors most famously judas judas so you you you kind of they're descending all the way down into hell it's a little politically incorrect you see some mosques on the way down yeah he's going to get cancelled if this episode goes out and they say it's not totally politically correct but he does have some muslims in purgatory he does that's right he's very that's just for all the people who are going to cancel dante please take a moment there are bad and good christians they're bad and good yes please don't cancel him he goes down further and then in the final the pit of hell there's no more fire it's not that it's defined by fire it's defined by a lake of ice right and in that lake of ice is satan who is portrayed as this three-headed beast and he's gnawing on not he's going on at the center judas but other people too yes we have cassius and brutus these are the people who killed julius caesar people who killed julius caesar aren't they heroes isn't that i thought we consider those guys heroes well if this is a challenge about this poem because this is a symbol that first of all betrayal is never okay no matter who you are betraying there are other ways to achieve any end you should be seeking um but also the state matters a great deal to dante he cares about politics because he believes that a virtuous leader and a virtuous government can create a holy society i like this about him in particular and it's the it's the point that i think people hate about dante when they try to approach him is oh it's so particular he's i mean he's talking about some of his friends go to hell and all these various florentine political figures and they say i don't know anything about this i don't want to know anything about this right why why can't dante write more generally but for dante the particular really matters and for our own salvation yes the particular soul really matters and and here is where politics matters as well you think of today so many christians will say don't worry about the politics just care about the culture right we shouldn't participate but you know we'll hear politics is downstream of culture and that kind of which is true and as far as it's true right but for dante politics matters a lot as well right on the macro and the micro scale i think that politics were so localized of course in his day and age that you couldn't look at some leader all the way across the country that didn't affect your daily life these were families that his family had known for generations these were people he'd grown up with these were real human persons which is of course how we should all look at politicians as real human persons and it it matters for the state of one's character to have virtuous and correct opinions about big issues but what matters so much more is how you're actually treating the people that you live and work with on a day-to-day basis and among these families that they all knew and they're kind of fighting with each other but maybe they allied with each other there's this family the donati family and there was this marriage that was arranged when dante was about 12 i think right to this woman gemma donati but one thing i notice when i when i read the biography of dante and his wife the woman that he married is not the woman who inspires him to write all of his poetry uncomfortable truth so what am i supposed you've got his wife gemma right but then you've got his love the absolute love of his life beatrice yes that doesn't sound very kosher it certainly is because it's simple doesn't it what's uh who's beatrice well what we know about her is that she was a real human woman that dante met in person when he was nine years old and fell in love with her on the spot and they grew up in the same neighborhood so he would encounter her occasionally in the marketplace occasionally around town but they never were close and they certainly were never lovers as far as we know and dante is in this state of deep deep longing for her her goodness and her beauty is responsible for his salvation in his mind what that means to me is beatrice is a real person yes all of these people are real to varying degrees are real people yes but she also has a metaphorical aspect he's not merely talking about this girl that he saw when he was nine right he's certainly he's it's an incredible poetic innovation where he's able to talk about here's this woman that i really care about and really want to have sex with this is an erotic attachment he has to this woman and instead of saying well lust is a sin so i should turn the other way he takes this head on and just goes through that feeling of lust towards what is here what is it about the desire that i have for her that could teach me something about desire that would explain this most complicated of human emotions and it is in fact his desire for beatrice that teaches him how to long for and how to seek what is truly good so it's not just i i like this girl but i should i know i shouldn't like this girl so i'm gonna suppress that right it's rather i should use this love that i have for this girl yes to turn me to the highest good who is god so moving out of hell they get down there their their their virgil his guide and dante yes are climbing down they're descending down the body of satan who's this furry gross creature which it's worth noting that it's important to distinguish dante's satan from say milton satan milton satan is elegant and attractive and you he's he's tempting and you want to be with him and it's to talk about how alluring evil can sometimes be dante satan is not speaking he is he is dumb he's grotesque he has three heads he's chewing on these bloody stumps of these three traitors and he's flapping these bat-like wings incessantly which actually create this icy wind that freezes this lake of ice that all of these worst sinners are locked into so there's nothing to like about nothing he's disgusting and language here has even failed there's no language that dante can use to describe satan because he is so unreasonable and so backwards and so evil that it would be an indignity to language itself to use language to describe him so they're they're climbing down and then at a certain point virgil the guide says dante's always getting so afraid and he's getting so confused and he he but he realizes that they kind of turn around yes so he turns toward the legs it's not clear if he's trying toward virgil's legs or turning toward you know satan's legs whatever but they get turned around and they keep climbing so dante thinks they're going back up into hell yes but then they're not they come out somewhere and dante and virgil see see satan's little legs sticking out of the ground where how does that happen all right this is complicated to figure out where we are geographically but the pit of hell is purportedly made by the dirt that was displaced when satan lucifer was cast down from heaven and so the body of lucifer satan is down embedded right in the center of the earth so his body and the landscape of hell are one and the same they're melded together and as so climbing out of hell requires climbing off of the body of satan himself and then all of a sudden because the earth is round once you pass the point where his body is then all of a sudden you're right side up on the other side and at the foot of mount purgatory how is purgatory different than hell oh in every way because we are also suffering in purgatory but we are suffering for a reason people in hell are in stasis forever they are never getting out of there nothing is ever going to change about their circumstance but in purgatory you are in an arduous climb to go up the terraces of the mountain correspond to sins of which one might be guilty but you can work off your guilt while you're there and you can ascend and get closer and closer and the souls who are there know why they're there and they know where they're going so this there's a lot of suffering in mount purgatory still but it resounds with hope and with light and with communities of people the isolation of hell is replaced by the chorus of purgatory where the group is all working together because when dante enters hell for the first time with virgil there's a big sign over hell and it's very beautiful we won't go through the whole thing but the last line is very famous and it's yes abandon all hope ye who enter yes there's no hope there at all but you get to purgatory and there's a lot of burning and a lot of fire and a lot of punishment right but there's hope there's absolutely hope so how does dante ascend through purgatory because if there's hope that means purgatory is not the end right you first get to a group full of people who have salvation kind of by a de facto matter maybe they were baptized or had a praying mom or a last-minute prayer but they don't understand why they're there and so he mills around with them for a while until all of the sudden he sees one person who's willing to start this arduous climb he's leaving this valley where everyone's lingering waiting to climb and it's this soul who finally after being there for however many years turns at the sun and says i care for only this and he is letting go of all of his earthly concerns even worried about politics worried about his own reputation all the things that are keeping people down on the surface of the earth when he lets it go and looks at the light then he's ready to start climbing because he's focused on something outside of himself above himself better than himself and that is what lures him upward to start climbing toward god so we've got this image of purgatory as a mountain yes and you're you you've got to climb up it you're climbing all the way up and they finally get in and so where's the fire i've been told there will be fire i've been told there will be punishment the fire is in the very last level the very last terrace which is the terrace of lust and that is the one punishment in his as he climbs he observes the punishments that others are suffering but dante himself has to pass through this flame of lust before he can leave mount purgatory which leads us to believe he might have felt some guilt in that area well i noticed because this is a recurring theme you know in that in the canto we talked about in hell with paolo and francesca and the lust the way francesca describes how she and her lover started to get a little fresh was they were sitting there reading a book yes they were reading this book about lancelot an affair about lancelot right and dante seems particularly struck by this and prior to writing the divine comedy dante wrote a lot of love poetry yeah um a lot of which was pretty fresh to use your word um so he might feel concerned perhaps that some of his prior writing might have led some of his readers astray or put some some kind of impure thought in their mind but he's also determined to make good on what he means by lust what is there to explore that is beyond the lustful feeling in this deep erotic love you can have for another person so we are burning off the sin of lust but all that does is give him the freedom to experience this erotic love and longing that he has for beatrice in a pure way so you're not getting rid of the erotica no you're redeeming it you're cleansing it purifying it speaking of cleansing and purifying we get to the top of purgatory yes and then we end up before we get into heaven itself we end up in the garden of eden right right we end up in the earthly paradise where our first ancestors adam and eve were before they ate that damned apple and gave us this world that we're all living in now yes what does the garden of eden tell us how does that lead us up to heaven it tells us that there was a plan for a fantastic world that there was a place designed for humans created by god that is perfect it is verdant and it's cool it's beautiful there's a plant life it's everything on earth working perfectly and this harmonious coexistence among all the people who live there which are it's and dante takes this opportunity to describe how the narrative of the gospel itself how the scripture is just pouring forth out of this place it's coming out like a fountain overflowing as the landscape and these representations of people who live there want to explain the beauty of the god who created this beautiful place and it's important that dante takes a minute to do that while we're still on the surface of the earth because we haven't left earth yet because we're on mount purgatory that this is not about leaving earth to get to heaven because earth is so bad you know and it's not a sort of there's a temptation to read it in a bit of a platonic lens where you want to there's the the heavy the physical is weighing down the spirit like physical bad spiritual good right and i i completely oppose that reading of dante because he wants to say that physical is so good it's ultimately good and especially if all of this is designed by a god who has a physical body through the incarnate christ then the physical has to actually be great and perfect and so dante takes this opportunity in the garden of eden to show us this physical worldly earthly perfection that we were meant to enjoy and should work to restore and so he's there he's in the garden and there's a nice little stream that's coming through nice lots of water so he drinks this water and the water erases his memory of sin right and it reminds him in a another way right of all the good works right that he could that he could remember so it's it's cleansing in right very literal way it's cleansing his mind right right and he's not the inventor of the passing through a river that makes you forget your sins that's not original to dante what is is the second river it's called the aono that reminds you of all of the good things about your life so the first one is laugh and that's get rid of it gets rid of your sins yeah sounds like the beginning of the lion king that's the one that reminds you of all the good things right exactly yeah and then he encounters beatrice herself yes he's still my beating heart the one that his the hope of seeing beatrice someday is what has gotten him through the arduous journey of inferno in these first few steps through and purgatory too yeah right yes i don't want to go on i don't want to keep doing this and as virgil is guiding him he says i can almost see her face on the other side she's there buddy these flames i know they're burning but there's there's something you're really going to be excited about on the other side and then he sees her yes and she's a huge jerk to him she is she's not you're waiting the whole time you're like oh this is going to be they're going to kiss you know they're going to embrace no no way she's a huge jerk to him yes why is that dante describes her as a stern admiral yes she has this sort of military power it's because her goodness and virtue which was true on earth but now in her beatified state we should note she's she died at this point she died when she was very young before he started writing so she's been in heaven for a while dante be holding beatrice in her beatified state she is immensely intimidating to him and terrifying and she has a lot to rebuke him for and so he as he imagines being this kind of gallant lover you know we've talked about lance a lot that's how dante wants to be greeting his beatrice but he casts his eyes down like a little boy who's been yelled at by his mom you see beginning around here and going all the way up through heaven this image of dante like a little boy yes coming back why why is that why why does this grown man become a little boy i have to think that it has to do with the scripture you know be like these little children to come unto me that there's something about the humility of getting rid of all of your power your authority your education your learning casting all of your virtues aside to humbly approach the good to approach god is kind of the only way i think we're probably all destined for that return to childhood as we seek to improve ourselves so we're almost at this perfect image where dante is going to behold the face of god yes but there's one last really sad moment here and it's this probably the saddest moment of the whole poem i cry every time virgil dante's beloved guide has to leave him he does why does he have to leave he's not a christian he does not have salvation so he cannot advance to the realm of the saved because virgil is a he was a pagan he was a pagan yes and he lives in you know the beginning of inferno we actually get to see where virgil lives and it's with all of the other virtuous pagans the heroes from antiquity some fictional some historical you know who have an okay life it's a little dreary but there's a castle and a nice field and they all get to hang out together and when dante walks through there he's very tempted to actually just stay there forever because all of the people he likes reading the most all of his intellectual heroes are all assembled in one place and yeah i'd love to sit down and chat with aristotle and homer but the problem there is it might be pleasant enough right but there's no hope exactly and dante turns to talk to virgil mm-hmm he's gone and so he starts crying and beatrice as her character would suggest yes she doesn't you know come over and hug him she says hey dante stop crying yeah stop crying she says it to him twice yes the work has only just begun for him he thinks he's been through so much which he has but there is a lot left to go you know and we really do need to convey the importance of virgil as a mentor and a leader you know he's brought him through hell he's brought him through purgatory which purgatory is something that virgil really knows nothing about because he doesn't have salvation he didn't know anything about purgatory when he was alive but he's there as a loving companion and encourager of dante the entire way and there's a beautiful scene another place where i always cry where as they're on the shore of mount purgatory virgil looks over at dante and dante's face is covered in the soot and the grime of hell and his face is all blackened and so virgil rubs his fingers on the grass and the dew from the grass he uses to gently wipe his face clean so he can be presentable for his climb to purgatory you know in virgil having no understanding of what that means it's incredibly tender there's times where virgil picks him up like a baby and carries him across dangerous thresholds it's this man has really been there for dante but he can't go on he cannot go past the garden of eden it's very sweet but i've got to be the beatrice here yeah virgil's gone he's blessed we gotta go up to heaven yeah so he goes up they go up to heaven right and she is leading him now on this way and before he gets to see the face of god he encounters some ancestors of his two ancestors in particular yes who are they well the one i like best is cacha guida who is his great grandfather who was a crusader and the fact that this grandfather of dante's fought in the crusades had afforded his own family some degree of nobility in dante's lifetime so i'm sure there are many of us who have an ancestor in our lineage who's inspired us maybe we carry their names maybe we have a portrait of them on the wall it's about family legacy and this character who dante never met but had heard so much about in his lifetime had given so much dignity and sense of self to dante during his life and so he's standing there in the heaven of mars each of the levels of heaven are named after the planets and the sort of mythological attachments that they have he's standing there and then sees like a shooting star that goes streaking across the sky this light that then comes right to him and greets him oh my blood he's so proud that dante has come to heaven to see him and the conversation that ensues about them is is deeply touching because dante's admires this kacha guida so much for his his valiant warfare as sort of a night of his day but then kacha guida turns and says would you know what the true warfare is poetry there is a real battle to be fought and it's it's not against any foreign enemy it is against the darkness and the evil that is in embedded in daily life and those who are willing to combat it with all of the resources they have which in dante's case is his talent as a poet is he moves forth from this this encounter with his great-grandfather feeling emboldened to be the author of truth and to convey everything that he's seen because his grandfather has given him that charge he's got that charge to to to write this poem to write the poem that we're talking about yes before he does that though he's got to meet another ancestor of his actually the first ancestor of his who's adam himself the first ancestor yes indeed adam you know we think of him as kind of a dunce because he ate the apple adam has a lot of wisdom to convey he certainly does yes he's a magnificent character in dante and dante has this one burning question that he can't wait to ask him and we all know that dante as a poet really loves language and finds it very valuable so he goes up to adam and says you have to tell me what was the language that you spoke in the garden of eden the language he used to discourse with eve that he used to name the animals that he used to speak to god and adam says who cares it's language he says i'm sure before my generation was dead they were speaking a brand new one language is always fluid and always changing and dante is a little bit crestfallen but he's starting to understand that the the language that we use is you know maybe not the the perfect tool to convey the truth that he wants to communicate which is about right before that or right after that encounter with adam is right as he's getting seriously starting to approach god himself and dante then starts to get really nervous about how he's going to describe that because all he has is his version of some human language that is is not eternal it's worth noting too dante writes this poem very very uncommon revolutionary at the time right he writes it in the vernacular he writes it in italian yes actually or much of our italian language comes from dante indeed yes instead of latin which is what everybody was writing in and while he's talking to adam he actually kind of has adam disagree with some of what dante used to say about language you know and you see this evolution of dante where dante in the past had written and said that adam spoke hebrew in the garden right and now adam says now he no i spoke whatever who cares it's already lost right the same thing with dante's political evolution dante was a partisan he had a political party he was a he was a white guelph was the name of the political party he was in but later on as actually kachuguida says to him it's better to become a political party unto yourself right he moves beyond partisan politics right he even moves beyond the need for this one language right that adam spoke in the garden right because that they at this point in the poem we're getting a very strong sense that there's one thing that matters and that is god himself and moving always in that direction you know regardless of what language you're speaking or city you're born in or party you belong to that there is a right thing to believe and a right thing to do and it is entirely directed towards the divine himself so in our remaining moments would you please if you will um summarize uh dante's vision of god if you could possibly just i know that language will utterly fail to uh to comprehend the ineffable uh image of god but if you wouldn't mind what's he saying it's worth noting also that paradiso is just as long as the previous two he's not skipping through parody so quickly he's had just as many conversations so this feels like a big there's a long crescendo that is leading to this moment and dante is really nervous about it so he prays that he would find the words to articulate what he's about to behold but he knows it's not going to work and he's passed off from beatrice who's been his guide through heaven off to saint bernard who had a particular devotion to the virgin mary during his lifetime so then he kind of goes to mary and then all of a sudden and the mayor and the mary cantos are magnificent i mean these are you know you're already you think you're reading dante's description of mary and you're thinking oh my god how could i possibly you know you're on the verge of t really you're on the verge of tears as you're reading that right and then you get to god himself right and so he sees he describes this these three circles that are also one circle but they bear different colors and so there's distinction between the three but unity between the three because he's trying to describe what the trinity looks like but it's very active and it's all moving and it's just radiating light and he sits there and as he beholds the godhead he wonders wow i'm i'm just like a geometer trying to square the circle which is in in his day kind of an impossible math problem he's sitting there like a logician who's trying to logically understand what's happening and he's showed us what he does know about how circles and squares and geometry works throughout the previous lines of the poem but now his skill in geometry isn't going to help him because all he can do is stand there and behold and be beheld and there are dante scholars who who say that this final moment of beholding the beatific vision is kind of an anti-climax because there's no jesus he doesn't sit there and have a conversation with jesus and have jesus he sees the face he does he's he's the one of the circles of the trinity bears the the the effigy he called the image of the human so how do you do that i mean how could you you know this is something he struggles with right now he said i can't even describe how right the the human nature is within this divine nature it's there right but yeah they don't have they don't sit and have a cup of coffee right yes he's trying to explain how a physical being is somehow one with an entirely non-physical being but that difference between physical and non-physical is it falls apart that distinguished distinction doesn't have any meaning here but so dante's trying to sit there and puzzle over how to describe this and to share it with his readers all he can really say is then i was transformed as the will and the vele which is a kind of a latin theological term that also means will so he has these two modes of willing that are both uniquely transformed and are in this sudden harmony with this immense source of love that is so powerful that the love itself is what is giving motion to the entire universe yes the love that moves the sun and the other stars and that's the last thing you're left with i finished reading this a couple hours before i got here and i i ki i sat at my desk and cried at the end of it i'm they're gonna make fun of me in the youtube comments for this but i did you it is it's you can't help yourself right i know well if anyone makes fun of you ask them what makes them cry that's right yeah at least for me it's the love that moves the sun and the others exactly yes a love so powerful that it's it's truly it is the engine behind the planets moving around each other between the water being gathered to one place the land existing the intense love that dante feels for beatrice the remorse over his sins the this whole world the way the plants grow the way the mountains rise all of these things are ordered by this love that emanates from this singular source that that takes into account dante's life and his person where he's going what he deeply wants and to be one with that source in this final moment is i don't know who's not going to cry at that all right at that we have to go off camera so they don't see me cry on camera catherine thank you so much for being here i think i think we covered the whole thing didn't we yeah we got all of it we got all of it maybe we'll have to have you back for hundreds of more hours i hope to go through all of this and i hope in the meantime everyone else enjoys reading it and follows that pilgrim's journey all the way through and all the way up to the love that moves the sun and the other stars i'm michael knowles this is the book club see you next time thank you so much for watching this episode of the book club on prageru prageru is a 501c3 non-profit organization so we rely on donations from viewers like you to keep this content on the air please consider making a tax deductible contribution today to help keep this content coming thank you very much you