![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/162\/2014\/05\/Dante0134.jpg\" "\\"Dante0134\\"")
<\/a>Many years ago, my husband took a job in Rochester, New York, four hundred miles from our Boston home. Neither of us had ever been to Rochester, and we were apprehensive about the move. Our ten-year-old son was more than apprehensive: he was devastated. When we told him about the move, he burst into tears\u2014because Rochester didn\u2019t have a major league baseball team.<\/p>\nThe move was scheduled for the end of the summer. Sometime mid-summer, I decided I needed to start reading something long and engaging, as a stable grounding during the uprooting of the move.<\/p>\n
Though a firm agnostic at the time, I chose Dante\u2019s Divine Comedy<\/em>. Despite my doctorate in English Literature, I\u2019d never read it. (Well, maybe because<\/em> my doctorate was in English<\/em> Literature, the academy was pretty parochial in those days.)<\/p>\n Somehow we had John Ciardi\u2019s three-volume verse translation on our shelves. So I started \u201cMidway in our life\u2019s journey\u201d and continued from there, down into the Inferno. I was beginning my ascent through Purgatory when we loaded the U-Haul truck and drove west.<\/p>\n During the weeks of settling into our new home\u2014arranging furniture, buying fabric to make curtains, finding a good grocery store, helping our son adjust to his new school\u2014I reached the top of Purgatory and entered the dazzling light of Paradise. I stayed in Paradise while raking fall leaves\u2014all the way to the final \u201cLove that moves the Sun and the other stars.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Divine Comedy<\/em> did just what I\u2019d hoped and more. Not only did it give me something coherent to hold onto during the dislocating move; it gave me a fully envisioned cosmic worldview to move into and live within. I felt securely enfolded within the Divine Comedy<\/em>, despite not believing at all in its Christian assumptions.<\/p>\n I was reminded of this episode in my life when I read Professor Carol Zaleski\u2019s column \u201cRhymes and Reasons\u201d in the February 19 issue of Christian Century<\/em>. Zaleski traces the history of interpretations and translations of the Divine Comedy<\/em>, coming to focus on the extraordinary number of translations in the past century.<\/p>\n This past century is known as the Age of Secularism, and most of Dante\u2019s English translators during this era have not been \u201cbelievers.\u201d Zaleski asks: \u201cWhat is Dante saying to readers who love the poem but reject the message? What is their devotion to Dante saying to us?\u201d<\/p>\n Her tentative answer is that Dante\u2019s continued popularity is \u201ca sign that God is longed for and subliminally known.\u201d A translator or reader cannot, she goes on, surrender to this poem and remain unchanged by it. \u201cIt seems unlikely that imagination and sympathy can be so deeply engaged without leaving traces in memory and planting seeds in reason.\u201d<\/p>\n Was this my experience during that summer of moving to a new city? I remained a convinced agnostic for another few years. But I suspect that my immersion in the Divine Comedy<\/em> did indeed \u201cplant seeds\u201d within me.<\/p>\n So did other works of art. I recall listening to Bach\u2019s B Minor Mass<\/em> with a subtle longing. The Kyrie<\/em>, especially, sounded to me like a sustained ache for something I did not have.<\/p>\n One day I was driving to the mall and Vivaldi\u2019s Gloria<\/em> came on the radio. I pulled over into a parking lot, enthralled, hearing a joy that I longed to share.<\/p>\n Visiting the art museum in our new city, I stood in front of the medieval paintings of the Holy Family and let myself be drawn into them. I wasn\u2019t just noticing the color techniques and the play with perspective that I\u2019d been taught in my college Art 101 class. I was seeing a vision of love.<\/p>\n More than planting seeds was going on by then. Green shoots were sprouting in my soul. In fact, I began to use the word \u201csoul,\u201d which until then had been banished from my vocabulary.<\/p>\n By the time I started reading C.S. Lewis (whom I chose as my teacher about Christianity because he was an English professor like me, so I felt we shared at least that<\/em> vocabulary), those green shoots were nearly in bud.<\/p>\n \u201cThe precise relationship between art and belief is a mystery and must remain so until we are imparadised with Dante,\u201d Zaleski concludes.<\/p>\n Amen, I say. All I know is that exactly five years after my summer with Dante, I was walking the half-mile to our neighborhood Catholic church to begin preparation for baptism. The following spring, at the Easter Vigil, I was baptized.<\/p>\n Peggy Rosenthal<\/strong><\/a> is director of Poetry Retreats<\/a>\u00a0and writes widely on poetry as a spiritual resource. Her books include\u00a0Praying through Poetry: Hope for Violent Times<\/em> (Franciscan Media), and The Poets\u2019 Jesus <\/em>(Oxford). See Amazon<\/a>\u00a0for full list. She also teaches an online course<\/a>, \u201cPoetry as a Spiritual Practice,\u201d through Image<\/em>\u2019s Glen Online program.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Many years ago, my husband took a job in Rochester, New York, four hundred miles from our Boston home. Neither of us had ever been to Rochester, and we were apprehensive about the move. Our ten-year-old son was more than apprehensive: he was devastated. When we told him about the move, he burst into tears\u2014because […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1050,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,15],"tags":[943,183,942,944,496],"class_list":["post-5959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith-topical-categories","category-peggy-rosenthal","tag-art-and-belief","tag-dante","tag-divine-comedy","tag-longing-for-god","tag-transition"],"yoast_head":"\n