Life is The Comedy

Posted by Ty Fischer on Jan 13, 2009 8:48:55 AM
January 13, 2009
 

The Poignant Beauty of Canto XXV of
Paradise
  

In the opening lines of Paradise XXV, Dante reveals some of his reason for writing the Comedy. He says . . . . 

If it ever happens that this sacred poem
To which earth and heaven have so set their hands
 That it has left me lean through these long years
  
Conquers the cruelty that keeps me from
The lovely sheepfold where I slept, a lamb,

                An enemy to wolves that raided it,
 

                Now with a different voice, with different fleece,
                I shall return a poet, and be crowned
               At the same font in which I was baptized,

He had been exiled from his native

Florence

by political rivals. He had been lied about and convicted of crimes that he had not committed. He was living life in the houses of friends. He was cut off from family, friends and homeland. He longed to go home. He writes the Comedy hoping that its beauty would cause his enemies to relent and let him come home. He hopes that

Florence

will bring him to the church baptistery and crown him with the laurel wreath of the poets (symbolizing that the Holy Spirit was in his work). He, however, never got to go home. He lived the rest of his life in exile longing for home. In the Comedy, however, we find Dante longing not just for
Florence
, but for that perfection that can only be found in the

Heavenly

City

—in the presence of God. These lines move me like few pieces of literature do.