Merton studies Dante at Cambridge . . .
In these days I seem to remember there was a little sunlight. It fell through the ancient windows of Professor Bullough’s room in Caius. It was a large, pleasant room, lined with books, and with windows opening on the grass of two courts. It was below the level of those lawns and you had to go down a couple of steps to get into his sitting room. In fact I think his sitting room itself was on two levels, and in the corner he had a high medieval lectern. There he stood, a tall, thin, grey, somewhat ascetic scholar, placidly translating Dante to us, while ten or a dozen students, men and women, sat about in the chairs and followed in our Italian texts.
In the winter term we had begun with the Inferno, and had progressed slowly, taking each day part of a Canto. And now Dante and Virgil had come through the icy heart of hell, where the three-headed devil chewed the greatest traitors, and had climbed out to the peaceful sea at the foot of the seven-circled mountain of Purgatory. And now, in the Christian Lent, which I was observing without merit and without reason, for the sake of a sport which I had grown to detest because I was so unsuccessful in it, we were climbing from circle to circle of Purgatory.
I think the one great benefit I got out of Cambridge was this acquaintance with the lucid and powerful genius of the greatest Catholic poet—greatest in stature, though not in perfection or sanctity. Because of his genius, I was ready to accept all that he said about such things as Purgatory and Hell at least provisionally, as long as I had the book under my eyes, in his own terms. That was already much. I suppose it would have been too much to expect some kind of an application of his ideas to myself, in the moral order, just because I happened to have a sort of esthetic sensitiveness to them. No, it seems to me that I was armored and locked in within my own defectible and blinded self by seven layers of imperviousness, the capital sins which only the fires of Purgatory or of Divine Love (they are about the same) can burn away. But now I was free to keep away from the attack of those flames merely by averting my will from them: and it was by now permanently and habitually turned away and immunized. I had done all that I could to make my heart untouchable by charity and had fortified it, as I hoped, impregnably in my own impenetrable selfishness.
At the same time, I could listen, and listen with gladness and a certain intentness, to the slow and majestic progress of the myths and symbols in which Dante was building up a whole poetic synthesis of scholastic philosophy and theology. And although not one of his ideas took firm root in my mind, which was both too coarse and too lazy to absorb anything so clean, nevertheless, there remained in me a kind of armed neutrality in the presence of all these dogmas, which I tended to tolerate in a vague and general way, in bulk, in so far as that was necessary to an understanding of the poem.
This, as I see it, was also a kind of a grace: the greatest grace in the positive order that I got out of Cambridge.
I read Dante for the first time when I was a teenager. Fifteen or 16-years old. I don't know how much of it I actually understood, but I diligently worked my way through
Inferno and
Purgatorio and
Paradiso. Yes, I climbed all the way from hell to heaven with the great poet. I reveled in the phantasms of hell, and purified myself in Purgatory. And, in the end, discovered it's all about climbing to the stars.
It has been a rough week with my son. A week that has tested my patience, tolerance, and understanding. I will admit that I didn't pass all the tests. I lost my temper a few times. Swore. Slammed some doors. My son, who is a lot like me, knows my wiring. He can intuit exactly how to short circuit my brain until it goes into complete reactor meltdown, and then I am reduced to sputtering and saying things my father used to say--"Because I said so!" and "My house, my rules!"
It feels as though I'm stuck in
Purgatorio, somewhere between the third and fourth terraces. That's the territory of Wrath and Sloth. A couple times this week, I simply fumed, all . . . day . . . long. Then, I reached the point of exhaustion, where I couldn't work up the energy to care about anything. In the morning, I didn't want to get out of bed, and, in the evening, I put off everything but the most necessary tasks. I changed my clothes. Showered. Ate. Took my puppy for walks in the backyard. That's about it.
Today, however, was a good day. My son met with his therapist. Went to school. Came home and didn't retreat behind his pink hair and laptop. Small victories, but victories, nonetheless. I want to say that I'm making progress. Climbing toward the Empyrean.
I'm still being purified. I know my son may wake up next Monday morning and refuse to get out of bed, yell at me that school is stupid and a waste of time. My favorite line this week: "When will I use math ever?!" I may have won a battle today, but the war is far from over.
The math of life never ends. There's algebra, then geometry and trigonometry and calculus. Circles and terraces and spheres to surmount, all in order, in the end, to gaze into the face of love. That's what my son wants. It's what I want, too. It's what we all want.
Dante ends
Paradiso with this epic simile:
As the geometer intently seeks
to square the circle, but he cannot reach
through thought on thought, the principle he needs,
so I searched that strange sight: I wished to see
the way in which our human effigy
suited the circle and found place in it--
and my own wings were far too weak for that.
But then my mind was struck by light that flashed
and, with this light, received what it had asked.
Here force failed my high fantasy; but my
desire and will were moved already--like
a wheel revolving uniformly--by
the Love that moves the sun and the other stars.
Saint Marty gives thanks tonight for the miracle of Love that moves all things.
