Climbing Insurmountable Classics
LETTER BY BRIAN MORYKON
Mark Twain once quipped that a classic is a book everyone wants to have read but no one wants to read.
Dante’s Divine Comedy fits that bill for me.
I recently purchased it online and was asked after checkout if I’d like to add it to the “currently reading” section of my public profile.
I didn’t even know I had a profile, but yes… yes, please add it. Then people will think I’m the kind of person who reads medieval literature for fun.
Except I’m not. And until today I didn’t even have a desire to. I’ll share how that changed in a minute.
First, an observation about spiritual classics — those books in the Christian tradition recognized to have enduring value for the spiritual life.
From a distance, a spiritual classic can seem like a misty mountain of ice. To climb it is cold labor and grit, and, after a long grind to the summit, you look out to a blanket of clouds blocking what you’ve been told is a breathtaking view.
Even up close, some classics still seem insurmountable. A few pages of Aquinas’s Summa Theologica leaves me wondering if I’ll ever be up for the climb. But others upon approach reveal that — while requiring effort and pace — the trails not only can be traversed but also enjoyed.
It helps to have a guide for these “classic treks” — someone to paint a picture of the summit, to show where to step, and to highlight wildlife and plants along the way.
Back to Divine Comedy…. it was this conversation between Nathan Foster and poet-professor-philosopher Ben Myers that sparked my desire to read it. There is tangible emotion in Myers’s voice as he tells how Dante’s classic continues to shape him as he teaches it year after year. His passion makes the daunting text sound appealing and accessible.
After hearing the conversation, I picked up Divine Comedy and read the famous first line:
Midway in our life’s journey, I went astray
from the straight road and woke to find myself
alone in a dark wood.
I found to my surprise that I kept reading. It was graspable — gripping, even. And I know it’ll form me if I read with a listening heart. It’s a beautiful thing when a book you want to have read becomes one you want to read.
Brian Morykon
Director of Communications
P.S. Our hope for the Renovaré Book Club is to be both a “hiking” guide for deep books and a community of people to hike with. Early bird pricing is still available through September 1. Learn more here.
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LET’S DIVE IN...
CURATED BY GRACE POUCH
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1.
Poet Laureate, professor, and author Ben Myers joins Nate on the Life with God podcast to discuss a book that has been a constant and formative presence in his life: Dante’s The Divine Comedy.
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2.
Read the opening poem from The Divine Comedy, with options to switch between several prominent translations. (The entire Comedy is available here with video lectures, commentary, and art or here without commentary).
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“Sin is tragic because it deforms what God has formed.” Ben Myers explains the horrors of Dante’s Inferno — the first part of the Comedy—in his article “A Disgusting Poem on God’s Goodness.”
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4.
What can we learn from medieval Christians (like Dante)? Grace Hamman, author of Jesus through Medieval Eyes, writes in her opening chapter, “What we find strange or beautiful in these medieval witnesses can reveal our concerns, hidden biases, and even new truths. They also teach us new and profound ways to love Jesus.” (I also love Grace’s Substack Medievalish where she shares meditations on medieval literature, history, beauty, and faith.)
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VISION is a beautiful and inspiring film about the medieval Benedictine nun Hildegard of Bingen — a composer, philosopher, playwright, poet, artist, scientist, and physician (among other things!). You can also listen to modern interpretations of some of Hildegard’s music here.
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Bernard of Clairvaux (who corresponded with Hildegard) had a profound influence on the Church in the 12th century and later on Martin Luther and John Calvin. An excerpt from Bernard’s treatise On the Love of God “calls us to love God in purity of heart, in sincerity of soul, in holiness of life.”
WORTH QUOTING
None of us can fully escape [our] blindness, but we shall certainly increase it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read only modern books.
– C.S. Lewis
On the Incarnation
(source)
TO CONTEMPLATE
Dante viewing Paradise
Gustave Doré 1850s
(source)
The Divine Comedy has captured the imaginations of artists down through the years like Boticelli, Rodin, and Dalí. You can leaf through Gustave Doré’s famous illustrations in the National Gallery’s archives, and scroll to the end of this article to see other beautiful examples from the 700 years of art inspired by the Commedia.
TO PONDER
What voices from the past have enriched or corrected your understanding of God?