Dante's Self-Help Book: 'The Divine Comedy' charts the path to a new beginning

[Voegelin]

The Wall Street Journal
By HARRIET RUBIN
July 28, 2007; Page P16


. . . Unlike most other world classics, "The Divine Comedy" is a self-help book . . .How did Dante go from mediocrity to misery to greatness in only half a brief lifetime? He stopped seeing himself as a figure of tragedy and saw his life as a comedy . . .

Charles Dickens believed Dante's journey to be true. His Scrooge confronts his criminal past (Inferno), fixes his mistakes (Purgatorio), and invents a future so loving it had to be a miracle (Paradiso). The dreams Sigmund Freud analyzed in his "Interpretation of Dreams" echo the nightmares the souls endure in "Inferno"; Freud backdated the publication of his own 1901 masterpiece to 1900, in homage to Dante, who claimed hell opened its doors to him in the year 1300 . . .

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118556860545880642.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Dante Alighieri, to me, defines conservative Christianity. Anyone else agree? Or differ?

[Brennin]

I adore Dante. He most certainly was a conservative Christian.

[Voegelin]

Another Dante fan! Do you also, Brennin, find it pecular that the writer of this OP, apparently an admirer of Dante, characterizes Freud's work as a "masterpiece"?

[ContentInHim]

Voegelin - one of my goals in 2007 is to read some Dante - particularly The Divine Comedy! Thanks for the reminder!

I have often wondered about Dickens' faith. I love his books which have such interesting characters with such descriptive names.

[Voegelin]

I have often wondered about Dickens' faith. I love his books which have such interesting characters with such descriptive names.

I share your admiration for his wonderful names but I never thought about his religion. Turns out he was a Unitarian:


http://www25.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/charlesdickens.html

T.S. Eliot's family was from that tradition but he left it (or, more accurately, Unitarianism left him...the Unitarianism of 1927 when he converted to Anglicanism was not the Unitarianism of William Ellery Channing)

Dickens was a Unitarian when another Unitarian, Julia Ward Howe, wrote the lyrics to the Battle Hymn of the Republic. Very different from the position of UUs today.

[ContentInHim]

Thanks for the information, Voegelin. :wave: