Category: Reviews

Simon Polkinghorn’s art exhibition, ‘The Spell’: An Enquiry into Modern Absurdity, inspires deep reflection in a dystopian age Simon Polkinghorn is a professional artist based at Sandy Hill Arts in the picturesque village of Corfe Castle, Dorset. His artwork portfolio is as varied as it is thought-provoking, ranging from nature-inspired compositions capturing local scenery and […]

There are books read in childhood that, over time, are elevated to mythic status, as memory seeks to preserve that embodied sensation of the newly discovered miracle of reading which grants agile, hungry imaginations a licence to fly. One such book is The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett.  I don’t know exactly how old […]

We thought it might be fun (and interesting) to ask our editorial team and contributors what they are or have been reading recently. Do write in and tell us what you have enjoyed and would recommend (or not!): editor@westcountryvoices.co.uk. More to come! Dame Sarah Cowley, our Dorset editor. Someone Else’s Shoes, by JoJo Moyes. Penguin […]

That’s why you should read it, says Simon Chater. Widely revered but little read, Dante’s Divine Comedy turned 700 years old in 2021. I celebrated this anniversary by writing some Tasting Notes to introduce the poem to new readers.   Shakespeare fans say God came to earth twice: the first time as Jesus, to show us […]

Like Virgil, I must now fall silent. Here are Dante’s last written words, leading up to the beatific vision that ends his Comedy:

Beatrice appears more beautiful than ever as she nears the end of her ‘special relationship’ with Dante. Doing her bidding one last time, he bathes his eyes in a river of light to free his vision from the last vestiges of earthly defects. Born a Florentine girl and now among the redeemed in paradise, Beatrice […]

Mystics often describe their relationship with God as a love affair. Dante’s is full of joy, even ecstasy, but he also gets angry with God – a less acceptable emotion that is harder to deal with. In Paradiso 27 we see the poet moving from one extreme to the other, then turning to Beatrice for […]

Dante’s “earthrise” moment is entirely imagined – no astronaut’s photos were available in 1320. Its emotional impact is no less powerful for that. As we leave Saturn, the most remote of the planets, to enter the heaven of the fixed stars, Beatrice addresses him: In the array of the seven planets, each sphere enclosing another […]

In the sphere of Saturn Dante meets a kindred spirit, Peter Damian, who leaves him in no doubt about the limits to human knowledge. Saturn is the outermost of the seven planets, the coldest and most remote from earth. This is the heaven of the mystics – those who, on earth, led a contemplative life […]

In the sphere of Mars, spiritual home of the courageous, Dante meets his great-great grandfather, Cacciaguida degli Elisei, who predicts the poet’s exile from his beloved Florence. A 12th century nobleman who fought in the second crusade and died a martyr in the Holy Land, Cacciaguida speaks of a Florence long vanished, a city “sober […]

Dante and Beatrice emerge from the earth’s shadow into a new clarity and brightness in the heaven of the Sun. This is the light by which the wise know God. The poet invites us to join him in celebrating the order we see in the created world, which gives a direct taste of its Creator: […]

The souls in the heaven of Venus enjoy spiritual telepathy – wordless communication made possible by their participation in each other’s minds through the all-knowing mind of God. Dante invents new verb forms to convey their ecstatic mingling of identities. Venus is the third and last heaven on which the earth casts a shadow. Here […]

The opening cantos of Paradiso contain an extended and complex argument about how we gain new knowledge and how we can trust what we perceive. The challenge, for Dante, is to understand that spiritual reality works differently to the physical world he is leaving behind him. Dante begins Canto 2 with a challenge to his […]

Here’s how Dante begins his Paradiso – not with himself, as in his previous two canticas, but with God: This third and final phase of Dante’s journey begins in the relative world – the world of more or less, of hierarchy, of the many not the One, of the universe as a separate physical entity. […]

A new book and touring exhibition takes visitors on a unique A–Z journey through Cornish places and their richly resonant names, in poetry and photography. Tom Scott writes about his involvement and the project’s objectives. Angarrack, Feock, Halliggye Fogou, Nancekuke, Ponsanooth, Zennor… What secrets of language, history and legend can Cornwall’s place names unlock? I’ve […]

Two streams from the same source flow through the verdant earthly paradise. Dante must get a dunking in both of them before he is ready to ascend to the stars. After his evisceration at the hands of Beatrice, Matilda brings Dante to Lethe, the stream of forgetfulness, which purges him of all his shameful memories: […]

It’s the moment Dante’s been waiting for! He is to meet Beatrice again, after more than 20 years of separation. We might expect a joyous reunion, but that’s not at all what we get. We left Dante relaxing amidst the grass, flowers and trees of the earthly paradise, beside the stream of Lethe. A woman, […]

Reason can only take you so far. At the summit of purgatory Virgil reaches the limits of his knowledge. His task done, he crowns Dante master of himself, ushers him into the earthly paradise, watches in silence for a while, then turns for home in limbo. The wall of fire that purges the soul of […]

Bird similes abound throughout the Comedy. I find this one, in which Dante compares himself to a fledgling stork, delightful: Ostensibly, Dante is making a play for our sympathy here by presenting himself as young and eager for knowledge yet hesitant to ask a question, doubtless out of reverence for the older and wiser Virgil. […]

Except for the good pagan poets found in limbo, Dante places all the poets in his Comedy among the saved, most of them high on the slopes of purgatory. Poets have a high calling in life and this is reflected in their fate after death. Dante is keenly aware of the poet’s mission as prophet: […]

Virgil’s great exposition on love is centrally placed in the Comedy, occupying Cantos 17 and 18 of Purgatorio. With this, Dante signals that love, and the understanding of love, are at the heart of his poetic matter. Doctrinally, the ideas Dante attributes to Virgil are standard-issue medieval philosophy, derived from the teachings of Aristotle and […]

Life’s not a zero-sum game, say the souls on the terrace of envy, so don’t live it that way. Dante doesn’t ‘get it’ at first, but Virgil explains. We have just met Guido del Duca, scion of one of the leading families of Romagna, the region next-door to Tuscany, where Dante comes from. Like all […]

On a cold, dull and windy day I went to Weston to see the monster. At a distance it looked disappointingly small, dwarfed by miles of empty sand and sea, but as I walked along the beach it grew until its full scale was apparent. So, too, was its oddity. The monster – a repurposed […]

The Divine Comedy is primarily a vision. It is the story of how one man, through grace, becomes pure in heart and hence able to see God. During his first night on the mountain, Dante’s damaged inner sight is cleansed and healed in preparation for the work of penitence that awaits him in purgatory proper. […]

Like the penitent souls, the poets cannot climb once the sun has gone down and so must halt for the night. The twilight hour draws from Dante some of his loveliest lines: These lines are recalled every evening at the tomb of Dante in Ravenna, where the bell of the nearby church chimes 13 times […]

The first canto of Purgatorio celebrates our release from the pain and grief of hell. Virgil washes Dante’s face in the morning dew. Dante begins by announcing the change of mood: Boats and ships feature strongly in the Comedy, as symbols of the soul’s journey towards the divine. Here Dante is at the helm, his […]

We are out of hell, but still close to the centre of the earth and it is still dark. Through the blackness, Dante can hear the trickling of a stream: The hidden passage that connects Inferno and Purgatorio is one of Dante’s masterstrokes, entirely his own invention. It conveys the idea that there is, after […]

In the final canto of the Inferno Dante must confront Satan, where he lies trapped in ice at the centre of the material world and the universe. The deepest part of hell, the ninth circle, is Cocytus, a frozen lake shrouded in thick fog and blasted by icy winds. It is fitting that this place […]

Ulysses is the greatest of the Inferno’s tragic heroes. Dante’s invented story of his last voyage is about leaders who lie.   We are among the false councillors, in the eighth ditch of the Malebolge in Circle 8, the first circle of the fraudulent, close to the lowest depths of hell. These gifted people, often […]

On burning sands, under a soft rain of flames, Dante meets his former mentor, Brunetto Latini. His “sin” is homosexuality, according to the dictates of formal religion. But what does Dante think? We are in the circle of the violent against God, nature and art. The naked souls here, whose baked features are caked with […]