Why I'm Memorizing the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri

“He [Dante] writes not like a man but an angel…” - Sayers

In the introduction of Dorothy Sayers’ translation of Inferno, she stated

“For when one has disposed of Dante the politician, Dante the moralist, Dante the theologian, or even of Dante ‘the most piercing intellect ever granted to the sons of men', there remains Dante the poet, who walks equal with Homer and Aeschylus and Virgil and Shakespeare…”

It is hard for me to express my love for Dante’s poetry, as it is hard to express the grandeur of the Grand Canyon or the brilliance of the Niagara Falls. There is a throbbing beauty that shines forth from his lines — I was struck by the lightning of his verse, and I forever limp. In this post, I would like to share the story of why I am reading and memorizing his poetry.

Re-reading the Divine Comedy

I took a Great Books Course in college. We read the entire Divine Comedy, but we rushed through it, I really didn’t read Dante. But, this would all change a few years after graduation. I was working on an album called, “Immanuel’s Land,” the title borrowed from a poem by Anne R. Cousin, and the concept inspired by authors Michael Morales, and G.K Beale. I wanted to create a ‘biblical theology’ alternative hip-hop album that traced the new creation motif. I asked my friend Michael Phillips, headmaster of a classical Christian school in Orlando, who should I read to inspire my music? He immediately responded, “Dante!”

So, I picked up my copy of Dante, but this time I read it slowly with commentaries and other works. One day I came across Reading Dante from Here to Eternity by Prue Shaw. This book really opened up my eyes to the wonder of this epic poem. I was particularly impressed by Dante’s use of structure, intertextuality, and symbolism. I was inspired. I started to think deeply on how I could incorporate some of his literary techniques into my own work.

Vertical Reading

Below you will find a general outline of the album I planned to release. Notice how it is shaped after a mountain, I wanted to communicate this idea of ‘ascent’. For the album could be interpreted from several layers. As Dante, there are three-parts: the bottom, mid-section, and summit. Just as the Comedy, you could not only listen to the album horizontally, but vertically. So, one could not only listen from track 1 to track 12, but also to track 1 and 12, 2 and 11, 3 and 10, and so on. In Dante studies, this is known as “Vertical Reading.” I was also inspired by chiastic structures in Hebrew poetry, where the climax is not at the end, but the center. ABCDE-XX-EDCBA (see Bruce Waltke).

In Vertical Readings in Dante’s Comedy: Volume 1, George Corbett writes,

“Each of the three opening cantos of the Comedy begins with an attempted journey that ends in failure. In Inferno I, Dante gazes up at the sun’s rays which light up the mountain he then returns to climb; impeded by three beasts, he returns to the wood from when he came, where the sun is silent. In Purgatorio I, the predawn rise of the planet Venus (‘lo bel pianeto’) inspires Dante who, leaving the cruel sea behind him, aims to climb the mountain of Purgatory; interrogated by Cato, Dante is sent back to the seashore where he is washed and girded with a rush by Virgil. In Paradiso I, Dante attempts to fix his eyes on the sun; he has to give up, however, after a short while. On an allegorical reading of the poem, the sun primarily represents God and movement upwards represents movement toward God.”

I encourage you to read his entire chapter, he makes some interesting connections, but the point I would like to make here is that one can not only read Dante horizontally, but vertically. In the same manner, I wanted to structure my tracks in a similar way. One may not catch it on the first listen due to their positional distance, but I wanted listeners to become curious and to ask the question, “Why?” I believe Dante does the same, in a Socratic manner, he causes his readers to think.

Language and Medieval Tradition

I was inspired by Dante’s use of language to convey this idea of movement from darkness to light. As John A. Scott observed, in the Comedy, the closer one gets to Paradise one may notice a gradual increase of accented front vowels in rhyme words in contrast to accented back vowels that appear more dominantly in Inferno. This technique is in accordance with the traditional medieval view that front accented vowels tend to express light and joy whereas back accent vowels express darkness and oppression.

Dante often used the sound of language to convey meaning. For example, in Inferno 5.43, when describing how the wicked spirits whirl in the wind, he says:

“Di qua, di là, di giù, di sù li mena;”

“Here and there, down and up, it drives them.” (trans. Hollander)

The English translation does not quite capture the jolting quality of movement conveyed in Italian. Notice the swiftness of sound as it jerks from one syllable to the next: di qua, di là, di giù, ‘di sù. The very sound itself imitates the whirling of violent winds. The up-and-down dynamic is punctuated even more with the use of accents and patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables.

I wanted to create a similar progression and give the impression to listeners that they are moving from darkness to light, from harshness to beauty and order. So, I began to think about the details of mixing and the musical structures. The beginning of the album has low-audio quality, distortion, and cheap and damaged instruments. The music is fragmented, chaotic, dissonant and disorderly as to represent Inferno. I created “ear torture” and wanted listeners to “skip” tracks and to represent fear as one descends through auditory darkness. The songs were intentionally ‘long’ as to represent the eternality of woe. As Dante, the musical language becomes more structured, elegant, and bright as the album progresses.

Intertextuality and the Spiraling Motif

The Divine Comedy is considered encyclopedic and cosmic, filled with allusions to other texts. As Jason M. Baxter noted,

“In fact, there are nearly 1,500 proper names throughout the Comedy: names of rivers in obscure parts of Italy, names of geographical regions (woods, mountains, cities, neighborhoods) from history and mythology; classical heroes; mythological beasts, and a host of medieval Florentines (Guido Cavalcanti, Brunetto Latini, Pier della Vigna, Guido da Montefeltro, Cacciaguida, and on and on). Dante intentionally employs a huge cast of characters, drawn from every era of history, right back to Adam and the biblical patriarchs and up to Dante’s contemporary Italy.”

I wanted to imitate Dante and intentionally allude to a huge cast of artists, a type of musical intertextuality. I had this idea of including a spiral motif. As one studies the Divine Comedy, one may notice that as Dante the Pilgrim descends, he spirals down into darkness. He makes an effort to out point that this movement is always in the left direction. So, I alluded to songs that included the word “spiral” in its title. For example, throughout the album, I repeatedly used a similar guitar line to “The Downward Spiral” by Nine Inch Nails (0:29-0:43) and to the “Downward Spiral” by Danny Brown (0:52-1:14).

“Appresso mosse a man sinistra il piedi:”

“Then he turned his footsteps to the left.” (Inferno 10.133)

In post-production, I mixed these allusions to only be heard in the left ear as to represent the direction of one’s descent. I wanted to the listener to say, “Hmm, this sounds familiar, I heard this from somewhere,” and then come to discover that all of them are alluding to songs titled “Spiral” or “Downward Spiral.”

Dante’s Use of Numbers and Symbolism

The Divine Comedy has often been compared to a gothic cathedral due to its grandeur, structural complexity, harmony, and graceful order. One thing that particularly impacted me was his use of numbers for structuring the poem. You will notice his frequent use of threes which alludes to the Trinity and the presence of the Divine. Notice how there are three sections: Inferno (34 cantos), Purgatorio (33 cantos), and Paradiso (33 cantos). The first canto from Inferno acting as a prologue to the entire Comedy which creates a total of one hundred cantos. Then each canto is comprised of tercets (terzina) which consists of three lines, and each line has 11 syllables: 11 + 11 + 11 = 33.

Furthermore, when he meets the three beasts in canto 1, in the original text all three beasts start with the letter L: lonza (leopard), leone, and lupa (she-wolf). This subtlety alludes to Lucifer, an ‘unholy trinity’ who is found in the deepest part of Inferno with three heads, always eating but never filled.

I thought about how I could symbolically use numbers in time-signatures, track lengths, rhyme schemes, and the overall structure. For track 10, Water-Judgment (Golgotha), I intentionally made the song exactly three minutes long to allude to the Exodus and the Passover Lamb. In the Gospels it mentions that when Jesus was crucified there was darkness for three hours. “It was now about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour” (Luke 23:44). This alluded to the ninth plague of Egypt before the death of the firstborns when there was darkness over all the land for three days (Exodus 10:22).

If one listens closely, one can hear scriptural echoes: darkness over all the land” for three hours on the cross and darkness over all the land for three days in Egypt. Jesus took the plagues upon himself, was cursed, consumed in the fire of God’s wrath, that we may walk on dry land and ascend to God holy mountain. Through this salvific act, just as the ‘burning bush’, God’s people would be able to dwell in the presence of consuming fire without being consumed.

My Quest to Read and Memorize Dante’s Poetry

When I read Dante, it was like peering through a telescope to behold a host of dazzling planets — a literary universe to be explored. I was so overwhelmed by its beauty that I decided to stop making music in order to focus on learning Italian to read the poem in its original language. For anyone that knew me during that time knew how much I loved music, so this was saying a lot.

As I read commentaries, I noticed a pattern. They all seemed to have this sense of awe for Dante’s use of language and emphasized just how beautiful it was in Italian. Here is what Dorothy Sayers had to say,

“The most that one can do with passages like the one about Benaco (Inf. xx.61-78), or the Last Voyage of Ulysses (Inf. xxvi. 85-142), or the heart-breaking little vision of the brooks of the Casentino (Inf. xxx. 64-7), and a fortiori with the first 8 cantos of the Purgatorio or the ecstatic glories of the Paradiso, is to erect, as best one can, a kind of sign-post to indicate: “Here is beauty; make haste to learn Italian, so that you may read it for yourselves.”

So, I was determined to learn Italian. For me, it was never enough to simply read Dante or to study his cantos. I had a desire to “eat” the fruit of his poetry, that is, to memorize it and to delight in its recitation. This will be a long and slow process, but rewarding. As I mentioned in a previous post, I argued that Dante intended to make his poem memorable and designed the Comedy after ancient memory techniques. There more I read it, the more I see his thoughtful use of the memory arts.

Is there a poem that strikes you? A quote that grips you? A chapter that moves you? Try committing it to memory and delighting in it. Memorizing is sometimes viewed as something dreadful, a task only given by strict teachers — but with this newsletter, my hope is to convey that there is joy in memorizing, and that it is a work that enriches the soul. Thanks for reading!

UPDATES

• I memorized Inferno 1.1-50 and almost finished with Canto 1.

• I had my first Dante Reading Group today, we plan on reading and discussing 1 Canto every two weeks.