DANTE & ELIOT À DEUX

The Adult Education Program at All Souls has a distinguished record established by Director of Education and Scholar in Residence, the Rev. David Robb. He adroitly selects a myriad of timely and interesting topics as well as engaging speakers for programs throughout the year.

Among the highlights of a particularly enticing year, were four lectures on Dante’s Divine Comedy proffered by Dr. Robert Proctor, professor of Italian, and a former Provost and Dean of the Faculty of Connecticut College. Rev. Robb, who is also a pastoral counselor and Associate of Kenwood Psychological Services, demonstrated in his lectures on Eliot, given at the conclusion of those on Dante, how both poets embark on similar themes and questions. Both poets try to come to terms with their personal religious beliefs and doubts, the relativity of time, the traveler through time, damnation and salvation, the meaning of life and death, the beauty of nature and love, although separated by seven centuries and living in different cultures: 13th century Florence and 20th century America and Britain. Proctor used the beginning cantos of La Divina Comedia’s first books, the Inferno and the Purgatorio as the basis for his lectures. The third book in the medieval trilogy is the Paradiso. Proctor also mentioned Paul Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress in comparing voyages. Rev. Robb used Eliot’s Four Quartets to illustrate his lectures. Many of the lectures attracted standing-room audiences in spite of inclement weather in January and February.

Dante Aleghieri

T. S. Eliot

Professor Proctor discussed Dante’s repeated references to Virgil as his sublime hero. “Dante knew the Æneid by heart,” said Proctor. “He could not have written The Divine Comedy without his knowledge of the Æneid, as Virgil could not have written about Æneas’ voyage to the afterlife without knowledge of Homer’s œuvres.” In the Inferno, Virgil is Dante’s guide though all the stages of Hell—descent before ascent. Dante’s tribulations—the loss of Beatrice, expulsion from Florence and subsequent poverty—are recorded, with some artistic license. In fact, a girl named Beatrice lived near Alighieri’s home in Florence and Dante idealized her from afar when they were children. So, he introduced her name into his imaginary journey as his heavenly guide in the Paradiso. His enduring fascination with her perfection disguises reality—his wife and children. Proctor tells us that Dante’s journey of the soul is invested with all the fears of the medieval mind. The baptismal requirement to enter heaven was non-existent in Virgil and Cicero’s pre-Christian, Roman era. W.R.B. Lewis’s biography of Dante sheds much light on the characters depicted in The Divine Comedy, many of them drawn from Florentines well known to Dante. Lewis presents a clear discussion of the politics of the time, the religious antagonisms between the Guelphs and Ghibellines and Dante’s expulsion from the city. Proctor likened Dante’s literary pilgrimage to the writings of John Milton, who, he pointed out, said that he wrote what he saw.

David Robb gave an insightful, almost line-by-line reading and interpretation of Eliot’s masterwork.

The parallels are stunning between the themes Dante and Eliot address. Eliot employs a unique poetic device. He writes as if in conversation with the reader. One such passage:

You say I am repeating
Something I have said before…

Eliot and Dante are superb storytellers and relate their philosophical deliberations with incomparable beauty.