Our Suffering, Our Solace
Dante's Way of Boundless Love
This year marks the seventh centenary of the death, in 1321, of the poet Dante Alighieri, who completed the final canticle of his Commedia shortly before he died. It has since been a commonplace, in certain Catholic circles, to say that the hereafter is not as Dante imagined it, as if the poet ever meant to give us a photographic tour rather than the greatest epic of love ever written—of love betrayed, love revived and heartened, and love fulfilled. We have much to learn from him, especially, I think, in his treatment of that realm whose very existence many . . .
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Anthony Esolen is a professor at Magdalen College of the Liberal Arts in Warner, New Hampshire, and the author of many books, including Life Under Compulsion (ISI Books), Real Music: A Guide to the Timeless Hymns of the Church (Tan, with a CD), Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture (Regnery), and The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord (Ignatius Press, 2019). He has also translated Dante's Divine Comedy (Random House). He is a senior editor of Touchstone.
more on literature from the online archives
20.6—July/August 2007
The Beowulf Poet Was a Shrewd Christian Apologist by Douglas Wilson
24.1—January/February 2011
Ruminations on the Monstrous Envy of the Soul-Devouring State by Anthony Esolen
30.2—March/April 2017
on Reading Don Quixote in Its Original Christian Context by Luis Cortest
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more from the online archives
32.1—January/February 2019
Divine Love & the Love of Man & Woman Surpass Mere Consent by Anthony Esolen
24.1—January/February 2011
Ruminations on the Monstrous Envy of the Soul-Devouring State by Anthony Esolen
33.1—January/February 2020
on a Saint's Charism That Cures Toxic Perfectionism by Colleen Carroll Campbell
