#609: Hope and Our "Good Name"

A meditation on Dante's Divine Comedy.

At the opening of Dante’s Divine Comedy, Dante (famously) says he “came to” himself in a “dark wood,” for the straight way “was lost and gone” (smaritta). Dante is incapable of saying how he arrived in such a condition: he was “so full of sleep,” he says, at the “point” (punto) where he abandoned the true way. Though he does not have a path, he rises up…