AS the monthlong celebration of Dante’s 750th birth anniversary draws to a close, I want to log one more entry.
Before the forced Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation break, we gathered for a lecture given by Prof. Paul Dumol, the country’s foremost expert on Dante Alighieri, at Fully Booked in High Street inside Bonifacio Global City.
Those who had the privilege to listen to one of his lessons at the University of Asia and the Pacific say that Dumol is able to effectively convey the importance of Dante’s best known work, The Divine Comedy, in such a fashion that the more receptive students become quite passionate about it.
He is able to use modern cultural references to keep the attention going, also telling his students that there is no reason the resist Dante’s message and story spinning if they are hooked on Games of Thrones and The Lord of the Rings.
We had a taste of it at Fully Booked, his passion for Dante’s work coming through and reaching out to listeners as Dumol breaks it down to far more understandable terms, making us more sympathetic to the people who lived in Dante’s time as they become real when they relate their individual stories to the Poet and Virgil, his guide.
We were told that we must remember that this is a work of fiction and should be treated as such. However, there are different levels we should take into account when we read the Divine Comedy: the literary aspect, the philosophical view which was heavily influenced by Saint Thomas Aquinas, as well as the political landscape of Dante’s times.
Dumol also told us that inasmuch as there are several translations available, we should select one that grabs us. No point in choosing a version that will only put us to sleep.
I should say that as a young student back in Rome, I was only interested in the first book, the Inferno, and quite bored with Purgatorio and Paradiso, places that I thought were less exciting.
Thankfully Dumol dispelled the impression I held from those days. He was able to spark my interest and I promised myself that I shall read it once again out of my own volition, definitely not under duress!
He exhorted us all to keep an open mind when we read Dante’s masterpiece and to travel with him in his journey of discovery, from a dark place of personal crisis to a salvation of sorts, as he reaches a place of acceptance of his own faith, which comes into play when he realizes that his intellect will not help him understand the mystery shown to him in the 33rd canto of Paradiso.
We are extremely fortunate to have Dumol in the Philippines to teach the Divine Comedy. We hope that he can continue to inspire Filipino students to pick up a copy and discover this masterpiece that elevated the vernacular, which in those times was considered the language of the common folk as opposed to Latin, the language of the learned. This is how revolutionary Dante’s work was.