How Dante Can Save Your Life by Rod Dreher

The subtitle of this memoirs/self-help book is The Life-Changing Wisdom of History's Greatest Poem (Dante's Divine Comedy).  The author offers an engaging read about his midlife crisis and how Dante's masterpiece helped him through it, along with help from his pastor, his therapist, his down-to-earth wife, and his supportive and accepting friends.

The book is presented as an inspirational text for those who might be tempted to make their own Dante pilgrimage, a journey of self-discovery and self-realization, by way of atonement and renewed motivation to lead a decent life.  To be honest, I felt it could just as effectively have been written as a straight memoirs, and the self-help aspect left for readers to discover on their own if they felt the need.

In the author's words:

This medieval masterpiece, perhaps the greatest poem ever written, reached me when I thought I was unreachable, and lit the way out of a dark wood of depression, confusion, and a stress-related auto-immune disease that, had it persisted, would have dangerously degraded my health.

The memoirs is in four parts:

1. Part I - From the Garden to the Dark Wood
2. Part II - Inferno, or Why you are Broken
3. Part III - Purgatorio, or How to be Healed
4. Part IV - Paradiso, or The Way Things Ought to Be

It is said that all of life is in the Commedia divina, as the Divine Comedy is known in its original Italian.  The epic poem can be read on many levels:  as a fantastical adventure, as a religious tract, as a philosophical treatise, or as the author uses it as a guide to how to live a moral life.  Some have even conjectured that one reason Dante wrote it was to take revenge on his enemies.

What is the poem about?  In the author's words:

Dante's tale is a fantasy about a lost man who finds his way back to life after walking through the pits of hell, climbing up the mountain of purgatory, and ascending to the heights of Heaven.  But it's really a story about real life and the incredible journey of our lives, yours and mine.

The family travails that trigger the author's crisis are not unique, especially if you have watched the TV sitcom Fraser which dealt with the father-son and the sibling dynamics, but that does not lessen the author's suffering, nor should it lessen our compassion for his suffering, and for his family's suffering. 

From his descriptions in the book, one can deduce that he is an erudite intellectual, curious about the world and the world of ideas, and he is fact and reality addicted.  His immediate family are tradition-based, change-averse, narrow-minded fantasists; like many insecure and fearful people, they prefer the world they imagine to exist, to the world that really does exists.

Given those differences, conflict was inevitable. 

If a person like the author is placed, either by birth or by choice, among people like his described family, he will most certainly be harassed and ostracized until he either kills himself, gets killed, or leaves to maintain his sanity and health.  That is the way it has always been and it is probably the way it will always be.

Inexplicably, the author chooses to return to that environment, and to remain in it even when his sanity and health falters.  He puts the well-being of his wife and children at risk in a stubborn (and selfish?) attempt to understand why the poor treatment he receives leaves him disoriented and disappointed. 

As a writer, the author had often advocated a return to small, religion and tradition-based communities.  I suspect much of his disorientation and disappointment was at the poor reception he received when he took his own advice and moved back to just such a community.  He had certainly romanticized the community of his youth, because the reality of it seemed to shock him to the core.    

The author's journey back to physical and mental health came from meditation through prayer, guided self-analysis, and through his own intelligence by using Dante's Divine Comedy as bibliotherapy, which produced joy in him through the intellectual stimulation it provided. 

 

I have my doubts about the author's ability to stay healthy in the narrow-minded community in which he has chosen to live.  His emotional, sensitive, over-intellectualizing, mystical, highly moral, and at times monomaniacal character is not well-suited to the severe, defensive, rural society he calls home.  And I suspect that the publication of this book will not improve his place in the eyes of his extended family and small community.

What carried me through this challenging book was the fluid, engaging writing that linked together extracts from Dante's poem with biographical sections, and with discourses on philosophy and theology.  The author has a talent for explaining thoughts, feelings, conundrums, faith, loss, conflicts and characters concisely, with a seemingly effortless prose style that is a joy to read.       

From the book's description:

The opening lines of The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri launched Rod Dreher on a journey that rescued him from exile and saved his life.  Dreher found that the medieval poem offered him a surprisingly practical way of solving modern problems.

Following the death of his little sister and the publication of his New York Times bestselling memoir The Little Way of Ruthie Leming, Dreher found himself living in the small community of Starhill, Louisiana where he grew up.  But instead of the fellowship he hoped to find, he discovered that fault lines within his family had deepened.  Dreher spiraled into depression and a stress-related autoimmune disease.  Doctors told Dreher that if he didn’t find inner peace, he would destroy his health.  Soon after, he came across The Divine Comedy in a bookstore and was enchanted by its first lines, which seemed to describe his own condition.

In the months that followed Dante helped Dreher understand the mistakes and mistaken beliefs that had torn him down and showed him that he had the power to change his life.  Dreher knows firsthand the solace and strength that can be found in Dante’s great work, and distills its wisdom for those who are lost in the dark wood of depression, struggling with failure (or success), wrestling with a crisis of faith, alienated from their families or communities, or otherwise enduring the sense of exile that is the human condition.

Inspiring, revelatory, and packed with penetrating spiritual, moral, and psychological insights How Dante Can Save Your Life is a book for people, both religious and secular, who find themselves searching for meaning and healing.  Dante told his patron that he wrote his poem to bring readers from misery to happiness.  It worked for Rod Dreher.  Dante saved Rod Dreher’s life—and in this book, Dreher shows you how Dante can save yours.

Here is a direct link to the book at Amazon.com:

I have a page about Dante's masterpiece on my Italian Culture website, Candida Martinelli's Italophile Site, which includes many of the illustrations that the author includes in his book, and which I use on this review page.  I also have links to free editions of Dante's poem in both Italian and English.

Direct link to my Dante page

Please visit the author's Facebook page.

This review is by Candida Martinelli, of Candida Martinelli's Italophile Site, and the author of the cozy-murder-mystery novel AN EXTRA VIRGIN PRESSING MURDER, and the young-adult/adult mystery novel series THE VIOLET STRANGE MYSTERIES the first book of which is VIOLET'S PROBLEM.

Italian Canadians at Table edited by Loretta Gatto-White & Delia De Santis

Italian Canadians at Table: A Narrative Feast in Five Courses is a collection of essays about Italian food and life and the lives of several Canadian writers, many of whom are Italian-Canadian.  I requested a review-copy of this book because I love to read/review books about the hyphenated Italian experience.

Divided into sections corresponding to an Italian menu, the essays are arranged under the headings:  Antipasto, Primo, Secondo, Contorno, Dolce.  The locating of essays in a section did seem, at times, random, such as the "pasta" essay in the "Antipasto" section rather than the "Primo" section; and the "fruit" essay in the "Antipasto" section rather than the "Dolce" section; and the "turkey" essays in the "Primo" section rather than the "Secondo" section.

The Introduction is an amusing summary of the culinary tastes of an immigrant nation.  Canada's immigrants came/come from all over the world, just as in The United States, Britain, Australia and New Zealand.  Descendents of Italian immigrants form a large part of the populations of each of these countries, but it is only recently that the food of their ancestors, predominantly southern Italians, has become chic.

 

 

The editors identify a recent change in eating patterns of those Italian-Canadians and Canadians at large:

We want the rustic produce and products directly out of the farmer's field or the artisan's hand, to gather-up our families' generations on Sunday and share boldly coloured and flavourful food from big steaming majolica platters.  We'll plant heritage tomatoes amongst the genteel delphiniums in our urban courtyards, challenge city hall for our right to raise chickens and wood-roast peppers in midtown backyards, forage in city parks for spring cicoria, and take courses on how to cure and hang our own Berkshire Pork prosciutto in downtown lofts. ... The cucina casalinga and cucina povera are the new haute cuisines.

This change in fashion has had an effect on Italian-Canadians:  they now see their immigrant parents and grandparents in a new light.  Gardens and orchards that produced the foods they were used to, might once have been an embarrassment.  Home-cured meats and homemade breads and wines were things that school friends often eyed warily and caused feelings of shame in the writers.  Now, those things are desired by Italian-Canadians and non-Italian-Canadians alike!

 

 

Central to the recollections is that "in Italian communities, rapport building has long been based on the gentle gesture of breaking bread".  Food memories are some of the most resilient because they touch all of our five senses, so food can bring comfort in the form of the good memories it elicits.  The essays take the form of biography, memoirs, poetry, anecdotes, even songs.

The authors often relate how they felt as children, compared to how they feel today about their relatives' generosity when it came to food and the house-guest.  Shame has been replaced by understanding, amusement, and even pride.  There is a recognition that the attempt to keep up childhood-learned food rituals are actually a way to remember who one is, and where one came from.

 

 

Before reading this book, I had only ever read essays on food by well-known writers in The New Yorker magazine.  I knew from those essays that I enjoy the ones that tell a story from the writer's past, or the past of their relatives.  I enjoy less the essays that try to interpret and comment upon societal changes.  This was true with this book's essays, too.  I especially enjoyed the essays by Joseph Ranallo, Angela Long, Darlene Madott, and Glenn Carley.

Mr. Carley married a first-generation Italian-Canadian, and found himself welcomed into her family with open arms.  He says of Italian-Canadians:

I have worked along-side your men and you women and I love them, the way they loved me, not so much with the words but through the eyes into my eyes, through the gifts of paradise, through your ministry of presence.  ...  I have been grafted by large hands and I took and I took and I grew.

I also found interesting the essay that stated that innovation in Italian cuisine comes not from within Italy, which as become food-stagnant, but from Italophiles around the world.

 

 

Because there is no plot-line to join the essays together, I found my interest was sustained best when I savored the essays in small batches, like dishes served at a long Italian wedding dinner. 

But why do we enjoy reading about other people's memories and lives?  I suspect it is because they may spark our own long lost memories, and bring joy.  They may help explain a friend or relative who grew up in a culture similar to the essayists'.  They may point out the common human experiences that bind all of us together, no matter what our background.  These essays do just that!

 

 

From the book's description:

The persistence of misconceptions about Italian-Canadian food culture raises many questions for us.  Are we gluttonous, inebriate and too loud?  Do we force-feed guests?  Are we in fact food-obsessed?  How many grains of truth can a stereotype hold?  We had to know, so we asked articulate and thoughtful Italian-Canadian writers and simpatico friends from British Columbia to Newfoundland.

The responses were surprising, thoughtful, entertaining and often touching, making my co-editor, Delia De Santis, and I very glad we asked, as every piece which streamed over the internet's ether was a gift and a joy to read.  And the result is Italian Canadians at Table, a passionate literary feast of poetry and prose.

Italian Canadians at Table is published by Guernica, in a very attractive paperback and e-book edition.  

Direct link to the book's page at the Guernica website

Here is a direct link to the book at Amazon.com:

Never been to Canada?  Here's a two minute video postcard of the country:

This review is by Candida Martinelli, of Candida Martinelli's Italophile Site, and the author of the cozy-murder-mystery novel AN EXTRA VIRGIN PRESSING MURDER, and the young-adult/adult mystery novel series THE VIOLET STRANGE MYSTERIES the first book of which is VIOLET'S PROBLEM.

The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri

Dante Alighieri (b.1265 - d.1321), Florence, Italy's most famous son, lived during turbulent times.  Europe was in the process, sometimes the violent process, of deciding how much influence the church should have in running matters of state. 

Today's Europe is secular, meaning that church and state are separate, and rarely interfere with each other, and refrain from dictating to each other.  Secular states allow for greater religious diversity and greater personal liberty than religious states.  But that was anything but the case during Dante's time.

Dante believed in God, and in secularism.  He was persecuted for his secular beliefs by banishment from his beloved nation-state of Florence.  So Dante, in exile, sought solace in his religious beliefs:  he wrote The Divine Comedy.

Imagine you had been slighted by many of your friends, defeated by your enemies, and was made victim to the machinations of corrupt leaders and civil servants.  Now imagine, what your revenge might be.

Dante was not a violent man, so his revenge was not bloody.  Dante was a writer, so his revenge took the form of a book, The Divine Comedy, in verse that would both entertain and educate readers, and malign those responsible for his situation.

If Dante's book were solely rants against his enemies, it would never have stood the test of time.  In fact, the parts of The Divine Comedy in which he mentions by name the leaders and rich of his day, wallowing in Hell or Purgatory, are least accessible to us today.  We don't know who these people are, so we miss the joke.  (However, what a wonderful revenge, to make these people, for eternity, examples of Hell's and Purgatory's torments!)

But by making The Divine Comedy a detailed description of Hell, Purgatory and Paradise, and detailing the sins and qualities that land us in each of these zones of the netherworld, Dante ensured that his tale would appeal to readers forever.

It's immensely fun, and delightfully satisfying, to read an imaginative account of where your own enemies might end up, and how they'll suffer eternal damnation for what they've done to you during your lifetime.  In fact, the most entertaining section of The Divine Comedy is Hell!

Dante encourages us to behave better in life, just in case his imaginings are anywhere near the truth of what becomes of us after death.  Just like religions themselves, Dante, by illustrating the Christian view of afterlife, gives us hope of rewards after death for self-restraint during life.  Justice comes to all, even if a bit late, and it lasts for eternity.

To top all that off, Dante accomplished another goal of his, one that he had cherished for a long time.  He strongly believed that beautiful literature could be written in the daily language of Florentines.  So he wrote The Divine Comedy in ordinary Italian, rather than in the preferred Latin.  The book's success did wonders for raising the respect level of the Italian language.

Amazingly, Dante's Italian is very readable to student's of today's Italian.  It is not like the middle-English literature written in the 1300s, or even like Shakespearean English from the 1600s.  Dante's Italian is accessible, especially when accompanied, side-by-side, by an English translation.

But remember, there are scholars who study The Divine Comedy all their scholarly lives.  There are books published yearly interpreting everything from Dante's use of numbers, names, places, stars, words, smells, sounds, light, dark, literary figures--oh, you get the picture.

But that doesn't mean the average reader cannot enjoy The Divine Comedy.  Take my advice:  kick anyone who tries to tell you The Divine Comedy is too complex, or that you need an accompanying explanatory book ten times the length of the poem.  If you enjoy your first read of Dante's entertaining story, you can always consult those books later.

Here are the famous first lines in Italian and English:

Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura
che' la diritta via era smarrita.

My advice would be to start with the parts that interest you the most.  For most people, that would be Hell.  Those wonderful levels of Hell Dante describes with various sinners and their punishments that fit their crimes, are full of juicy, gory details.

For the entire text, on-line, English next to Italian, visit my Dante page at Italophiles.com (Candida Martinelli's Italophile Site), my Italian culture site.  I also include many amazing illustrations by Dore, and links to several on-line resources about Dante.

You can download a free e-book of The Divine Comedy from Project Gutenberg, the grand-daddy of free e-book websites.

Direct link to The Divine Comedy free e-books

Direct link to free e-books of Dante's Vision of Hell with 65 illustrations by Gustave Dore'

Here is a sampling of paperback books of The Divine Comedy available at Amazon.com, including two dual-language editions.

This review is by Candida Martinelli, of Candida Martinelli's Italophile Site, and the author of the cozy-murder-mystery novel AN EXTRA VIRGIN PRESSING MURDER, and the young-adult/adult mystery novel series THE VIOLET STRANGE MYSTERIES the first book of which is VIOLET'S PROBLEM.

The Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The poet Robert Browning married the invalid poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning in 1846 and they lived for most of their married life together in Florence in an apartment opposite the Pitti Palace in a building called Palazzo Guidi.  Elizabeth christened their apartment Casa Guidi.

Robert’s love affair with Italy was longer than his wife’s.  His first journey to Italy was in 1838.  and he was inspired by Italy’s history and artists in his poetry.  It was actually Elizabeth’s doctor who first suggested she be taken to Pisa during the English winter to enjoy the milder climate.  But it took their elopement to make that happen, because Elizabeth’s over-protective father did not give his permission for her to travel for her health, and to avoid his forbidding it, Elizabeth never asked his permission for her marriage to Robert.

Pisa lead to Florence, where they both fell in love with the town, and found many friends in the expatriate community for which Florence was, and still is, famous, and among the Florentines.  Her first visit to Florence prompted Elizabeth to write home on August 20, 1847:  “This Florence is unspeakably beautiful…”.  Their love a Florence persisted, and even if they did travel around much of central and northern Italy, and to England and France, they always returned to Florence. 

All of Italy fascinated Elizabeth.  In her poem “The North and the South” she explains the differences she saw between Northern Europe and Southern Europe, namely Italy.

Excerpt from The North and the South
(from May, 1861, written in Rome)

‘Now give us lands where the olives grow,‘
Cried the North to the South,
‘Where the sun with a golden mouth can blow
Blue bubbles of grapes down a vineyard-row!’
Cried the North to the South.

‘Now give us men from the sunless plain,’
Cried the South to the North,
‘By need of work in the snow and the rain,
Made strong, and brave by familiar pain!’
Cried the South to the North.... 

Elizabeth wrote a poem set in the Cascine, a large park in Florence, called “The Dance”.  It is about the Florentines expressing their gratitude to French soldiers who offered a reprieve from the repressive control of the Austrians.

Excerpt from The Dance

You remember down at Florence our Cascine,

Where the people on the feast-days walk and drive,

And, through the trees, long-drawn in many a green way,

O’er-roofing hum and murmur like a hive,

The river and the mountains look alive?...

Her 1851 poem “Casa Guidi Windows” describes in two parts Italy’s growing Risorgimento, unification movement, and it’s intensifying struggle for nationhood against the foreign powers who administered her fate and kept her looking like a jigsaw puzzle on the maps.

The poem made her an instant hero in Italy, but it was poorly received abroad, where commentators felt female poets should stick to love sonnets and eschew politics.  Only later, and mainly by female writers, was the poem’s beauty and passion appreciated.

In the poem, Elizabeth makes many references to Florence, and to Italy’s illustrious cultural and historical icons.  But it is often the first paragraph that catches people’s eye, ear and heart. The great political issue is introduced by a recounting of something she’s heard through the windows of Casa Guidi.  Later she recounts what she’s seen through the same windows, hence the title of the poem.

Excerpt from Casa Guidi Windows (from 1851)

I heard last night a little child go singing

‘Neath Casa Guidi windows, by the church,

O bella libertà, O bella! Stringing

The same words still on notes he went in search

So high for, you concluded the upspringing

Of such a nimble bird to sky from perch

Must leave the whole bush in a tremble green,

And that the heart of Italy must beat,

While such a voice had leave to rise serene

‘Twixt church and palace of a Florence street!

A little child, too, who not long had been

By mothers’s finger steadied on his feet,

And still O bella libertà he sang.... 

Elizabeth’s poor health worsened when she learned of Cavour’s death.  Cavour was the diplomat to Garibaldi’s soldier, and together they paved the way for Italian unification.  Elizabeth passed away in Florence, and while Robert left, heartbroken, with their son for England, never to return to Florence again, he did not lose his love of Italy.

Robert wrote after his wife’s death, when he was settled in England, “…How I yearn, yearn for Italy at the close of my life!…”  He was in the process of purchasing land in Venice when he passed away.  He died in Venice’s famous Ca’ Rezzonico, a palace on the grand canal, the home of his son and daughter-in-law.

A plaque was placed on the building:

A Roberto Browning, morto in questo palazzo, il 12 dicembre 1889, Venezia, pose.” 

(To Robert Browning, who died in this building, December 12, 1889, Venice, may he rest in peace.”  Two lines from one of his poems follows the dedication.)  

Open my heart and you will see, Graved inside of it, `Italy'.

 

To read these poems in full online, and to learn more about the Brownings and their son, visit my Brownings page at Italophiles.com (Candida Martinelli's Italophile Site), my Italian culture website.

Or you can download the free e-book in various e-book format from the Internet Archive, a rich source of scanned books.

Direct link to Complete Works of E. B. Browning free e-books

Here are three collections of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's complete works available via Amazon.com:

This review is by Candida Martinelli, of Candida Martinelli's Italophile Site, and the author of the cozy-murder-mystery novel AN EXTRA VIRGIN PRESSING MURDER, and the young-adult/adult mystery novel series THE VIOLET STRANGE MYSTERIES the first book of which is VIOLET'S PROBLEM.

Sonnets to Laura by Petrarch

Sonnets to Laura, also called Il Canzoniere, were written by Francesco Petrarca (b.1304–d.1374), Italian poet and humanist, one of the great figures of Italian literature.  In English we call him simply Petrarch (pron. Pe-trark).  His love poems defined true emotions and described a real woman.  He perfected the sonnet form and is considered by many to be the first modern poet.

However, Petrarch considered his medieval Italian poetry to be less important than his Latin works, which brought Ancient Roman manuscripts back to life, fueling The Renaissance that was to come.  But his poetry, delicate, melodious, and dignified, became the model for not just Italian poetry, but English poetry.

 

He spent his youth in Tuscany and Avignon and at Bologna.  He returned to Avignon in 1326, when the Papacy was there instead of in Rome.  He may have taken lesser ecclesiastic orders, and entered the service of Cardinal Colonna, traveling widely but finding time to write numerous lyrics, sonnets, and canzoni (songs).

At Avignon in 1327 Petrarch first saw Laura, who was to inspire his great love sonnets in Italian.  His verse won fame during his lifetime, and in 1341 he was crowned laureate at Rome.  In 1348 both Laura and Colonna, his employer, died of the plague.  Petrarch then devoted himself to the cause of Italian unification, pleaded for the return of the papacy to Rome, and served the Visconti of Milan.

In his last years Petrarch enjoyed great fame, and after his death his influence continued to spread, not just as a scholar and poet, but as a humanist, that dangerous creature that gave birth to the Renaissance, the first Enlightenment.

There are 366 sonnets that some say were written for a year of love poetry for his Laura.  But in reality, the poems were written over a period of at least 20 years, if not much of Petrarch's life, and many were written long after Laura had passed away.  During that time Petrarch passed through many phases in his love for Laura and in his own life, each expressed in his sonnets. 

 

 

 

 

• He sees Laura for the first time and falls in love through his eyes, (as it’s been said men tend to;  women tend to fall in love through their ears, the saying goes).
• He praises her virtues but refrains from naming her until later, sometimes putting her name in code in the poem
• He suffers when she discovers his passion and does not return it, and withdraws from his company to protect her honor.
• There comes his agony at losing her to another while he wavered with timidity.  (This is an oddity, because I've read elsewhere that Laura was already married when he first saw her, but it doesn't sound like that here.)
• There is his burning with unrequited love, suffering anger, hate, envy, self-pity, remorse.
• Then he adulates her, sets her on a pedestal, and fantasizes about her everywhere it is beautiful; he glories her and creates of her a fiction to hold in his heart all his life long.
• When she dies of the plague he grieves, suffers.
• Then he tries to soften his pain by imagining her in heaven.  He wants to join her there.
• But when he doesn’t die from his grief, he begins to imagine he is with her because in heaven she can see into his heart and know his undying love for her, finally, and they can be together in this way; this thought comforts him.
• Then, in his old age, he becomes life-weary, ready for his own death, in the end begging for death from the Virgin Mary herself.

Here is one of Petrarch's sonnets I especially enjoyed.  It is number 3 of the 366. 

3. 'Era il giorno ch'al sol si scoloraro'

 

It was on that day when the sun's ray

was darkened in pity for its Maker,

that I was captured, and did not defend myself,

because your lovely eyes had bound me, Lady.

 

It did not seem to me to be a time to guard myself

against Love's blows: so I went on

confident, unsuspecting; from that, my troubles

started, amongst the public sorrows.

 

Love discovered me all weaponless,

and opened the way to the heart through the eyes,

which are made the passageways and doors of tears:

 

so that it seems to me it does him little honour

to wound me with his arrow, in that state,

he not showing his bow at all to you who are armed.

The sonnets are in the public domain, as are many of the quality translations to English of the sonnets.  For free e-book versions, I link here to Project Gutenberg, the grand-daddy of free e-book sites on the web.

Direct link to the free e-books of Sonnets

If you wish to read the sonnets on-line at a Petrarch website, I suggest this wonderful site:

Direct link to the main page of the website

If you wish to own a printed version of the sonnets, here some selections from Amazon.com, including one with the Italian sonnets next to the English translations.

This review is by Candida Martinelli, of Candida Martinelli's Italophile Site, and the author of the cozy-murder-mystery novel AN EXTRA VIRGIN PRESSING MURDER, and the young-adult/adult mystery novel series THE VIOLET STRANGE MYSTERIES the first book of which is VIOLET'S PROBLEM.