Dante guides us through hell, and today's politics

Unlike you, I've watched a movie with Roger Ebert. And not just any movie, Fellini's "La Dolce Vita," my colleague pausing the film to comment on the composition, the symbolism, to explain a cinematic reference.

You might remember the movie: black and white, 1960, Marcello Mastroianni playing a louche Italian journalist, with Anita Ekberg capering in the Trevi Fountain at midnight. When I finally got to Rome and hurried to the Trevi Fountain, well, it was nice. Very ornate. But it was also missing something, or, rather, someone.

Just as, years later, when I had the chance to watch the movie, solo, I found it long. And kinda dull. The experience, too, was missing something vital — Roger Ebert's narration.

Dense art like "La Dolce Vita" — the movie is three hours long — benefits from smart explanation. I'm a word guy, but needed someone more knowledgeable than myself to point out that our term for predatory press photographers, "paparazzi," comes from a character in the film, a pushy photographer, Paparazzo, a name Fellini said he chose because of its buzzing quality, like a pesky mosquito. I'd have missed that otherwise.

Ditto for Dante Alighieri. I've been reading books by, and about, Dante for decades. It's what I do for fun, which should give you an idea of how fun my life is. So of course I ran out and got Prue Shaw's "The Essential Commedia." Because that's what I do.

For those completely unfamiliar, the Commedia, sometimes called "The Divine Comedy," was written by the Italian poet in the early 1300s. It is divided into three books — Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso, and tells the tale of Dante, both author and character, lost in a dark wood, guided by the Roman writer Virgil through fiery hell, then up purgatory's steep mountain, and finally to a glittering, complex heaven.

Why bother with such arcane stuff? "Dante makes you see things," as T.S. Eliot once said.

Such as? The book offers fresh insights with each new reading. In hell, Dante runs into Capaneus, pelted with burning embers yet still howling blasphemies.

"His enraged defiance embodies a crucial notion: it is the sinners' states of mind which is their true punishment, rather than the physical torments to which they are subjected," Shaw observes. "Persistence in the obdurate state of mind which caused them to sin is the punishment. There is no possibility of repentance or a change of heart."

Lot of that going around today.

Dante was Catholic, and the Commedia revolves around sin and repentance, evil and punishment. A number of popes are met in hell, jammed headfirst in a hole in the third level, for simony — the buying and selling religious offices. "For your greed is a blight on the world," Dante reprimands one. "Trampling on the good and raising up the wicked."

A criticism handy yet today.

Hell gets most of the attention, with winged demons and lakes of fire. Though Purgatory is fun too. Halfway up Purgatory's mountain, Dante finds himself lectured by Marco, a fellow Florentine.

"The laws are there, but who enforces them?" Marco asks. "No one."

Testify, brother.

"You can clearly see that bad leadership
is the cause that has made the world wicked,
and not nature that has become corrupt..."

This is both very old and quite contemporary. Looking at social media, retribution still drives our entertainment. Think of how many videos you've seen of porch pirates getting instant karma. I watched dozens of these pre-packaged morality vignettes before certain consistencies — the perfection of those faces full of paint, the punished pirates tending to be really obese — made me realize: these are AI-generated.

All those vast server farms and computing capacity, scratching our itch to punish someone for the sin of swiping an Amazon package. Dante did it far better with a quill pen in a borrowed room in Ravenna.

If you've ever been tempted to dive into the Commedia — you probably haven't, but let's pretend — Prue Shaw offers a delicious opportunity to make the journey. The book is structured so she presents key passages, then discusses them, like the best teacher ever. Not only does she comment, but she also pares away two-thirds of the often deeply obscure text. Dante's greatest hits without using that fraught term "abridged."

Frankly, I realized something just reading The New Yorker review of Shaw's book.

"Dante — the character called Dante — moves through its nine ever-worsening circles like a reporter," writes Claudia Roth Pierpont, "drawing tales out of miserable souls by promising to preserve their names and stories back on earth."

Of course! Dante is a reporter, taking mental notes, relating both hellscape and celestial wonder, populated by a cast of deeply human, as well as inhuman, characters. No wonder I like him.