Guiding Love
In their masterpiece of a song, “Eighteen,” the pop icons of One Direction sing, "to be loved and to be in love," to point out one of the fundamental desires of humanity. Love is such a central, unifying entity in life, and love is a multifaceted thing. All humans experience numerous forms of love: parental, romantic, love for self, and love for God. Dante is no different. In the first two installments of the Divine Comedy, Dante journeys through the depths of Hell to Earthly Paradise with help from his primary guide and mentor, Virgil, and his love, Beatrice. Within these texts, Dante poignantly depicts the differences between the love of a mentor, a parent, and a romantic interest and how each one aids him on his journey.
As Inferno begins, Dante struggles to find his way in the dark wilderness, where he comes across three beasts, and his mentor, Virgil, quickly enters to rescue him. Just as promptly as Virgil appears, it becomes evident that he is of great importance to Dante. Dante heaps praise onto Virgil, declaring his love for him by saying that love made him "search the volume of [Virgil's] work," as well as referring to Virgil as "my teacher, my authority" (Inf. 1.83-85). By referring to Virgil in this way, Dante already establishes a mentor-type bond between them. Dante reveals that he loves Virgil and is pleased to have him appear, so when Virgil tells him about the journey and says," I judge it would be best for you/ to follow me, and I will be your guide," the connection is all the more poignant and meaningful to Dante (Inf. 1.112-113). By saying this, Virgil shows, to some degree, that he also has love and care for Dante.
Next, Dante reveals how parental love plays a role in his trip. Along the journey, Dante and Virgil continue to grow in their relationship. The dynamic between the two develops as they go further in their journey, progressing from mentorship to an almost familial bond. As they slide down into the next level of Hell, trying to escape from the Evilclaws, Virgil protects Dante and "having more care for him than for herself" (Inf. 23.42). Because of his selfless love and protection for Dante, writer Dante describes Virgil as being motherly. In examining the love between them, it becomes evident that love is, in fact, a guiding force in Dante's journey. Without the love for Virgil that Dante has, his travels could look very different in that he would have no cause to follow and trust Virgil, but he does let his love guide.
The last form of love seen in the Divine Comedy is that of romance, and specifically a tragic one. Not only is Dante guided by his love for Virgil but by his lost love, Beatrice. At the beginning of the journey, Virgil tells Dante that he will be replaced as his guide when the time comes for Dante to enter Paradise. Virgil says, "another soul will come, worthier than I/ with her I'll leave you when I go my way," speaking of Beatrice, the loving guide who will bring Dante into Heaven (Inf. 1.122-123). Dante harbors a deep and unending love for Beatrice; this motivates him early on in his journey. Dante finding motivation in Beatrice is a clear example of the way humans are naturally lead by their love and will "move toward anything that pleases it" (Purg. 18.21). He even says that his “sole delight/ was to kneel by the feet of her commands"(Purg. 32.106-107).
While his love for Virgil and Beatrice is very different, both are necessary
This essay is a beautiful portrayal of the love that propels Dante on his treacherous journey. As Dante travels through Inferno, it is, as you have shown, the love of his mentor, Virgil and his love for Beatrice that compels him to face every horror and continue on to Paradise. It is, however, ultimately God’s love that guides him on this journey. Through God’s grace and providence, Dante is given insight into the underworld and undergoes a journey of spiritual refining and discipline. We as Christians can learn from Dante’s journey. The love of mentors who guide us through our life - our parents, teachers, and older christians - can offer us encouragement and guidance as we mature in our faith. Likewise, the hope of once again seeing our loved ones who have gone on before can motivate us to live godly and just lives so that we may one day meet them in Heaven. In the same way God’s love refines Dante’s faith and offers him salvation through repentance, God has offered us the same opportunity. God allows us to fall into various trials, as he did Dante, in order to mold us into the Christians He wants us to be. If we continue, as Dante did, to walk in the pathway of godly love, we will one day reach the New City. As Boethius beautifully states in Consolation of Philosophy, “how happy is mankind / if the love that orders the stars above / rules, too, in your hearts” (Boethius 58).
ReplyDeleteOlivia, great essay. I love how you draw this theme of love and how it’s different forms play out in Dante’s journey. Here is how I imagine Edmund Burke might respond to your paper: “Olivia, this is a wonderful paper. I especially appreciate how much you focus on the effects of love on Dante’s journey. As you so masterfully put it, “Without his love pushing, guiding, and protecting him in the journey, Dante would have had nothing to drive him through the lessons and splendor of his travels”. Love, as you say, is what compels Dante to endure the trials and tribulations of hell in order to dwell with his beloved Beatrice in Paradise. My personal favorite aspect that you so adequately point out is “human beings are naturally led by their love and will ‘move toward anything that pleases it’ (Purg. 18.21)”. In order to reemphasize your claim, I would like to bring to mind my own observations on the subject of human attraction and the causes of love. As I say in my Philosophical Enquiry Into the Sublime and Beautiful, what separates human attraction from the baseness of animal attraction is the “social quality” of “beauty, for where women and men...give us a sense of joy and pleasure in beholding them, they inspire us with sentiments of tenderness and affection towards their persons; we like to have them near us, and we enter willingly into a kind of relation with them” (Burke, 36-37). This emotional attraction is what draws us into loving another human being. It is this emotional attraction that pushes Dante to endure hell with Virgil and be led into Paradise with Beatrice.
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