Into the Dark With Dante

Midway along the journey of our life

I woke to find myself in a dark wood,

for I had wandered off from the straight path.

With these words Dante opens his immortal epic the Divine Comedy, in which the poet-pilgrim’s journey through hell, purgatory, and paradise represents every soul’s quest for salvation. In an age that has largely discarded the myth of the three-story afterlife, why does the Commedia—Divina was added by a later publisher—retain its universal standing and appeal? I believe that the clue is in the opening tercet, for its images speak to the uncertainties of every generation, to those who have awakened, as from a dream, to discover that their lives and grand aspirations are half spent and that they are lost in an impenetrable darkness from which they cannot extricate themselves.