Dante, awakening, and erotic love

Dante’s journey is all about erotic love, through ugly possessiveness, and powerful passions, to the realisation that love is usually experienced as an ignorance about what we desire, to which he awakens. The Divine Comedy is, therefore, a crucial resource for understanding this energy that surges through us. The poem is rare in the western Christian tradition in embracing eros, not trying to cajole or chasten it. Love leads Dante to the truth that was there all along, and calls to us as we...