The Divine Comedy and The Waste Land

Dante and the Divine Comedy

Bob Dylan was once asked about his influences. He said that if you have eyes and ears you are influenced. At other times he would tell tall stories of having, in his teens, travelled with a circus for six years. Hog-wash, but it made a good story at the time. But we are all influenced for good or ill. And most have eyes and ears.

Where Dylan spent none of his life

I often think that during the first twenty or so years of our lives we are "under the influence" ( so to speak ) then, in response, throughout the rest of our lives, those influences play themselves out. Born into another culture, another time, and our "heart felt" beliefs, those some are prepared to die for, kill for, even force upon others, would have been different. A disturbing thought. What price the "examined life"? 

"Socrates looking in a mirror" The examined life?

Well, enough of that. I'm trying to recover the point of this blog and what led to it. I believe it was once again thinking of the line from the "Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest", Dylan's nothing is revealed. It made me think of a phrase of the zen master Dogen, one I have also loved, that in the whole of the universe nothing is hidden. On the face of it (!) the two are in conflict; and yet perhaps not. Not in a Cosmos where love has no why. 

There is no "why" to be identified with, made our own, yet all is manifest in each and every moment. And the Tao "can be shared but not divided." 

Shared but not divided

For me the only true freedom is to be at one with Reality-as-is; infinite compassion, infinite wisdom, infinite potential. 

In the Divine Comedy Dante begins by finding himself lost in a deep forest, having strayed from the true path. I say "true path", yet here we have the heart of the matter. Exactly what path is "true" and how do we know it to be true?

Here are  various translations:-  

for the straightforward pathway had been lost (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)

the right way blurred and lost (Robin Kirkpatrick)

I went astray from the straight road (John Ciardi)

the way ahead was blotted out (Clive James)

gone from the path direct (Henry Francis Cary)

Take your pick, but I think most would capture the main intent and significance. Dante then proceeds to relate just how he recovers the "true" path and arrives safely where "that perfect pardon which is perfect peace" is found. I sought for other versions of this last line but became lost amid the cantos and verses and renderings, unable to identify exactly which expressions corresponded. 

But did find this:-

Thus she began:- "You dull your own  perceptions 

with false imaginings and do not  grasp

what would be clear but for your preconceptions

Which is from the John Ciardi translation and appears relevant, at least to me.

Preconceptions. Good or bad?

Moving on to the Waste Land by T S Eliot, this is generally recognised in literary circles as the greatest ever work of Modernist literature. Not really my cup of tea and I much prefer Dylan's Mr Tamborine Man, who dances "beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free" also "forgetting about today until tomorrow." But each to their own. 

But Eliot had obviously found himself in a place where the way ahead had been blotted out, or blurred, or lost, and needed to try to find his bearings. And he does finish with the word "shantih", repeated three times, which is the way many Hindu Upanishads end, a mantra "conveying the peace within its inner sound" and thus "revises the whole poem from a statement of modern malaise into a sacred and prophetic discourse". Or so I am told.

T S Eliot relaxes in the Waste Land. "I was not even bothering to understand what I was saying" he is reported to have said. At least Dylan said he was at the circus.

Analysis and expounding on the "meaning" of any poem, story, painting or song appears to be a thankless task and obviously can never be definitive. When seeking images to illustrate my Dylan Lyrics Blook I often turned to various attempts by others to give the "meaning" of a song, to provide a hook to  follow. I found more often than not that each song had multiple "meanings" and you begin to wonder if any such meaning tells us more about the expounder than anything else. Which is good, or at least I think so. 

Multiple meanings. Well, two.

Related Quotes:-

Form is emptiness and emptiness is form

 ( The Heart Sutra, Mahayana Buddhist text)

They do Him wrong who take  God in just one particular way; they have the way rather than God

 (Meister Eckhart)

I will show you fear in a handful of dust

(T S Eliot, line from  The Waste Land)

One must be so careful these days 

(another line from The Waste Land)

Those who live with their senses guarded and conquered and is established in the Dharma, delights in uprightness and gentleness; who has gone beyond attachments and has overcome all sorrows; that wise person does not cling to what is seen and heard.

(Sutta-Nipata II, 2:12)

Be careful, not fearful