In the Woods Together

We are in a dark wood, and the straight way is lost. We can find it, and we will find it together.

As stated in the opening quotations to this corner of the internet, I speak only as a fool though I hope a few ruminations can serve as kindling for the reader. The Commedia is, in a literary sense, a comedy. It starts out with the characters in a terrible state and it ends on a note of hope, redemption, salvation. Whatever we call it, let us say simply, the characters end up happy.

But for Dante, exiled from his beloved Florence, the way through his comedy is through hell. For him, it’s not a metaphorical one. He really is being guided, in bodily form, by Virgil through the inferno, up Mount Purgatory, and ultimately to Paradise. The people he encounters throughout the poem are shocked that flesh and bones are traipsing through the afterlife. Deeply theological and cosmological, he encounters a whole cast of characters, some well-known to us, some falling more in the character of his own personal burn-book of people he hates in Florence or the other Italian city-states.

There are kernels of a political theology as well, one which would contribute to the Renaissance, find its way to Western Europe and the formulation of constitutions we recognize. The dichotomy between the Pontificate and the state is woven throughout the journey. Caesar and Brutus make cameos. It seems as though one can’t speak of society, or even the divine, without the commenting on the flow of power.

On the subject of power, we must call attention to another Florentine thinker, Machiavelli. Not The Prince, however, but rather The Discourses (On Livy). Whereas Dante seeks intellectual refuge in the providential nature of the Roman Empire, Machiavelli focuses on the institutions which once held the Roman Empire together. One can read The Discourses and see a straight through-line to the U.S. Constitution. The nobles and plebs, the Consuls and the Tribunes. The tension between the two and the ability to, at times, resolve conflict through statecraft resulted in the stability and prosperity of Rome and, eventually, the Roman Empire. Conflict, however, was not merely a feature of Roman politics, it was constitutive. The system was premised on inherent aggression between groups of people. Machiavelli’s understanding was that the genius of the Roman political system was that it recognized this fact.

We may have been naïve to think the United States was an exception to aggression and violent nature embedded in our political system. Those reading this article grew up on such notions as checks and balances and co-equal branches of government. We have been forced to dispense with such beliefs, however. In retrospect, it seems to have been a myth. This reality is dizzying and brings us to strange lands, the woods surrounding the inferno. In short, we have become exiles from the myth that held us together.

There is no way out, no exit, but there is a way through. Similar to the Commedia, it requires walking through our sins. We purchased this reality with two-day shipments, cookie-cutter suburbs that didn’t have “bad areas,” and free roaming. We, all of us, were and are part of the system of aggression Machiavelli believed was endemic to the human political condition. We must think on our sins and the aggression and violence we’ve tacitly supported against others, our environment, and ourselves.

The second way through is to acknowledge that this journey must be motivated by love. Rest assured, I offer no clarion call to love thy neighbor. Nor to condemn them. We have our own burn-books, I certainly have mine. Frankly, I’m shocked that Dante’s entire journey is made possible by someone he loved, Beatrice, who loved him to the point of descending into Limbo to enlist Virgil’s support in Dante’s salvation. I don’t think we have to love our enemy, but we have to love each other and work through that love to motivate change. We may recall a few words from Andreas Capellanus’s De Amore: “Amor nil posset amori denegare.” Love can deny love nothing at all.

This leads to the third way through our comedy. The lowest level of hell is (at the time of the author’s writing) reserved for Satan, Judas, and (interestingly), Brutus and Cassius. This level of hell, however, is not fire. It’s ice. The ultimate torment for both us and the cosmic operators, is stasis.

These may seem mere platitudes to entertain the reader. Perhaps you know all this and are looking for something tangible. In fact, I hope that is the case. The soul runs on ideals, it is desolate without them.

The title of this miscellany is Lacunae. The things that are missing. I’ve studied Akkadian, Syriac, Ancient Greek, Middle Persian, and various languages of the Silk Road. Extant texts and inscriptions are riddled with lacunae, missing letters and words we hoped would just help complete the author’s idea and perhaps give us that crucial insight into something deeply profound. But we are not texts, we are not static inscriptions. We are meant to write and be written. The lacunae are yours to fill. I hope you fill them with something brilliant.