Where does Dante's journey lead us?

Abstract

Italy and its national language owe much to the revolutionary act of a poet who dared to break through the barriers of the known world and enter, first person, into the mysteries of another life, that expected, unknown and feared “al di là”, starting from tradition (Virgilio) to reach the “new life”, where matter becomes light. On his journey, the pilgrim poet passes through Hell, where ancient monstrous and fierce creatures punish the passions and illusions of pride, possession, greed; through Purgatory, the world of the middle that is also a means of liberation from illusions, a realm in which melancholy unites with hope; at the end of it, the poet reaches the earthly Paradise, because his will is “liberao, dritto and sano” and allows him to ascend to Paradise, the realm in which “ben dell'intelletto” and contemplation combine with growing lucidity, where communion with the divine becomes real. At the end of his search, “being with God” makes the human desire to be filled with divinity (il mio disio e il velle, / sì come rota ch’igualmente è mossa / l'Amor che move il sole e l' altre stelle). Upon reaching the "end point", Dante seems to clarify the doubts and fears of the men of his time, finally sealing the doors of the ancient world and its forms of representation, to lead us to the modern world, to Humanism, the time in which the individual he is in contact with nature, with history and the poet in constant dialogue with his work and his reader.