Writing a Dante's Inferno-Like Satire

Our son recently chose to write a Dante's inferno-like satire for his Omnibus class through Veritas Academy. Here it is:

The Heaven of the Philosophers

by

Krister Eide


At the midpoint of my adolescence, I found myself in a dark cavern. There was a dim red glow. The air was thick, musty, and hot, as in some ancient and poorly air-conditioned library in the middle of summer. I found it difficult to breathe without collapsing.

I saw the faint outline of a man in the distance. From what I could gather, he appeared to be a middle-aged man, and as with many middle-aged men there appeared to be a good deal of him about the middle. He came forward with a reassuring smile on his face and stood beside me, then put his hand on my shoulder.

"My name is Clive. Don't worry. I'm going to guide you. You will see some fascinating things in this place." He gave me a wry smile and gestured at me to follow him.

I followed Clive into a large, dimly-lit room. The walls, the ceiling, and the floor were all made up of dingy, warped mirrors. Throughout the room, I saw men standing on pedestals, all wearing different kinds of clothing, and each facing one of the mirrors. I inched my way through the crowded room towards one of the men who grabbed my fancy by his distinguished appearance. He was a handsome-looking person who wore a powdered wig and a red velvet waistcoat with brass buttons. He was looking around the room, observing his reflection from various angles, then he caught a glimpse of us staring at him in his mirror. He smiled, adjusted his clothing, and turned towards us.

"Come in, come in", the man said. "My name is François-Marie Arouet, but you might know me better by my nom de plume of Voltaire." He turned to look at himself in the mirror again. "You caught me in the middle of one of my finest soliloquies, and I cannot be troubled to begin again. As I was saying, this simpleton Rousseau appears to demand that we walk on all fours like... like common beasts!" The man adjusted his wig. "Man, the most perfect of creatures, the archetype of angels, behaving like savages! But man, it is a noble creature. And mankind at its height--" here he adopted a noble pose and glanced at himself fondly in the mirror from the corner of his eye "--is a paragon of reason."

"What?!" came an astonished and angry cry from across the room. Another man, presumably Rousseau, leapt off his pedestal and walked towards the first man, flailing his arms in anger. "You corrupt devil!" he shouted. "I never stated that men should act like savages! We have not the purity of soul now to resume our native innocence even if we should wish it, so corrupted have we been by the evils of society! I simply stated that men in their current condition should not have everything they want handed to them on a platter! You're putting false words into my mouth. You are a vain and foolish man! You are the very face of corruption itself, dressing like a fop with your finely laced shoes and your powdered wig! You are the perfect demonstration and proof of the truth of my brilliant observations!"

"C'est ridicule! You're just reinforcing my point, now aren't you?" Voltaire's face turned the color of a beet as he clenched his fists. "You want all men to be savages, and you act like a savage! How dare you interrupt me with such nonsense!" Voltaire replied.

Rousseau responded by knocking Voltaire off his pedestal and onto the ground. Voltaire lunged at Rousseau, and the two wrestled on the ground. Demons started to surround the two men, cheering on the fight. Clive whispered into my ear, "Perhaps we'd better move on to the next area."

The two of us walked on down a dark, musty corridor of mirrors. The air grew heavier and heavier, until we finally caught sight of a tiny lantern that dimly illuminated the scenery. When we got closer to it, I saw that it was being carried by an old, bearded man wearing a toga. He looked at us rather skeptically. "I am looking for a human being," he explained, "but all I can find are rascals and scoundrels." He took another look at us, and appeared disappointed by what he saw.

"Have you looked for a carpenter from Nazareth?" Clive replied. "He is the light of the world."

"Bah!" The man scowled and walked past us.

We eventually found ourselves in a somewhat larger room. I saw a dark-haired, bespectacled, mustachioed man wearing a smoking jacket. He was standing on top of a pedestal, similar to those Voltaire and Rousseau had stood upon. Despite his predicament, he seemed rather cheerful. He seemed to observe my surprise at his attitude, and this made him smile all the more. "Ah, you seem to be surprised by how contented I am."

"I must admit--" I began, but the man cut me off.

"That's because you do not understand the greatness of the tragic artistic consciousness. I will my greatness, therefore I am great, even in these surroundings. I create my heaven, therefore heaven surrounds me. I am as happy in this heaven of hells as I was in Germany! Never forget, man is the play-actor of his ideals. Little wonder these fools around me still act as fools. Yet I, I am still the tragic hero."

"It is grand, I admit," I replied, "but don't you think it's a little silly when you could go to the true heaven if you chose?"

"Ah, but you see, it wouldn't be true to me. The truest mark of a great man is his overcoming of the prejudice of truth over the creative fantasy of the individual will. Where would I be if I preferred the true heaven over my heaven? I would be a mere bit-player in God's drama, rather than the star, writer, and director of my own--uh, could you move a bit, you're standing in my light."

I shifted a bit and the man went on with this self-aggrandizing drivel. We heard words like "master" and "slave" and "power" and "will", but all these words began to swirl together in my mind. Clive looked at me and said, "Perhaps its best to move on to where this more light and more air to breathe." I was very grateful indeed!

Reference: Photograph is from Dore's Inferno

William Billings: Early Colonial Composer of Hymns and Fugues

Now shall my inward joy arise,
And burst into a song;
Almighty Love inspires my heart;
and Pleasure tunes my tongue. (Africa - William Billings)

I'm enjoying a wonderful collection of hymns and fugues from Colonial American William Billings (1746-1800). An excerpt from his famous a capella Africa .

Billings was an unconventional character (we confess a soft spot for these...), but his gift of music making is unquestionable. He blends medieval harmonies with complicated fugues, and an personal irascibility that caused no small upheaval among singing believers. From a New England magazine in the 1800's: "He spurned the rules of art, such as there were, and sung out of the abundance of his heart..."

More about the life of William Billings

"He was poor and uneducated -- he supported himself much of the time as a tanner. But he also took up music when he was young and was teaching choral singing by the age of 22.

Biographers call him a gargoyle. He was blind in one eye with a short leg and a withered arm. But that's only the beginning. He practiced what a contemporary called "an uncommon negligence of person," and he was hopelessly addicted to tobacco -- constantly inhaling handfuls of snuff. That may explain why he only lived to the age of 54. He had a stentorian, tobacco-damaged bass voice and he seemed uninterested in any easy beauty of sound."

The Wisdom of St. Augustine

"Since love grows within you, so beauty grows. For love is the beauty of the soul." - St. Augustine

Our son is taking his first class with Veritas Press Academy (Omnibus II), and in order to keep up with readings, we've found I've had to read with him - but it has turned out to be a wonderful blessing for me! We are reading St. Augustine's Confessions now, and it is an extraordinary book.

Many historians see Augustine as the bridge between antiquity and the middle ages. It is remarkable to see how perceptive Augustine was for his times, but also jarring to think that the world would fall into the Dark Ages after Augustine, and think how much of the history, literature, and philosophy of Western Civilization would have been lost if monasteries hadn't sought to preserve the old texts and documents.

Confessions is Augustine's spiritual autobiography. Much of it is running conversation with God, beginning with his earliest recollections, then traveling in some detail through important life experiences that brought him to his faith. Augustine's upbringing will resonate with many young people today - his father valued a secular education (a classical education), but was not a Christian and therefore did not particularly consider spiritual factors in his upbringing.

It is easy to see the boy (and later man) in Confessions because Augustine writes in such a frank and colorful conversational tone - "Even now I cannot fully understand why the Greek language, which I learned as a child, was so distasteful to me...I suppose that Greek boys think the same about Virgil when they are forced to study him as I was forced to study Homer..." But this frankness turns its attention to reckless, painful, and sinful periods in his life - and his eventual turning to God.

There are many good things in Confessions for young adult readers - the subtle-and-not-so-subtle temptations that arise from friends, misguided teachers and cults, and muddy-headed thinking, and it is a surprisingly easy read - perhaps because of Augustine's skills as a rhetorician.

I find it hard to put into words what I've gained most from reading Confessions, but I think the best way I can think to say it is that it's given me a greater vision of the depth that's possible in my walk with God. Augustine has wonderful prayers and praises, true, but what is even more inspiring is how he was able to surrender more and more of his view of the world and life to God, and how as a result his worldview and life became much greater.

"Go forth on your path, as it exists only through your walking."

Biography of St. Augustine | Christian Classics Ethereal Library
Wikipedia: Augustine
Wikiquote: Augustine

Flash from the Past: "He regarded his education as defective..."

He "regarded his education as defective"(his formal education ended at age 15), but he was determined to improve himself through reading and independent study. He would become the quintessential self-made man, inventor, land surveyor and speculator, businessman, soldier, farmer, writer, politician, and President.

This Flash from the Past lost his father at age 11, but was guided by his older brother to be a land surveyor (he surveyed his brother's turnip garden below - and added, "Survey'd by me").



As a teen, he had trouble with his temper leading a family friend to bemoan, "I wish that I could say that he governs his temper. He is subject to attacks of anger and provocation, sometimes without just cause."

At some point in his late teens, though, he began a campaign of self-improvement, read biographies and histories voraciously, and tried to tutor himself in good manners and a consistent habit of discipline that would train him to hold his temper. He was ambitious, but preferred to "let my designs appear from my works than my expression," and applied himself to doing.

Who was this? This was our first Executive-in-Chief, Founding Father George Washington.

We got hooked on learning more about GW since visiting Mount Vernon for the first time this spring. Washington was a tweaker and a genius at management - whether it was inspiring his ragtag army, orchestrating the cooperation of some very difficult personalities in his government, or running his grand estate. He was inspired by the Stoics, and his later command of his outward character would be important in establishing his new country's credibility. He had a vision for our country, and he would inspire generations to come. He was so valuable in dire times because, as David McCullough put it, he had a genius for seeing things as they were, and not as what he wished them to be.

There are more details than we can list about GW, his excellent but clearly micromanaging of Mount Vernon(experimentation with different fertilizers, crop rotation, farm implements and 16-sided threshing barn), numerous architectural tweaks (including faux stone exterior and wood stain), and of course his management of such talented but complex people as Adams, Hamilton, Jefferson, and Madison.

Last year after we visited Mount Vernon, I got hooked on learning more about Washington, enjoying both McCullough's 1776 and the Novaks' Washington's God. For an online article by the Novaks, check out What Washington Saw in God at USA Today.

Mount Vernon: George Washington
George Washington's Rule Book of Civility
George Washington: Farmer

Ancient Greece and a Classical Christian Education

Classical Christian schools are undergoing a revival in the United States, jumpstarted from Douglas Wilson's Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning in 1991 and Susan Wise Bauer's The Well-Trained Mind in 1999. Of course, more continuous history of classical Christian education can be traced from classical Catholic educators.

The question of how to incorporate ancient Greek history, mythology, and philosophy often arises between different groups as well as different parents and educators. Here are some reflections from a book I'm reading by Gilbert Highet: "We read them not because they are "historic," but because they teach us, they make us think. Nowhere else in the entire literature of the world, in any language or any single period is there such a rich, varied, and deeply thoughtful collection of books as those produced by the Greeks and their successors the Romans...A wise man of our own time was once asked what was the single greatest contribution of Greece to the world's welfare. He replied "The greatest invention of the Greeks was (or "on the one hand") and ("on the other hand"). Without these two balances, we cannot think. The Greeks therefore taught one another, by thinking and talking, and writing."

Highet adds, "One of the chief pleasures of studying aesthetic and intellectual history is to see how their ideas...reappear in distant times...If we open Dante's Comedy...we recognize the moral system of the Greek philsopher Aristotle. If we see Shakespeare's Macbeth, we reflect that form of the tragedy and its basic sense were both created by the poets of Greece. The balance of powers on which the American constitution rests was first formulated by a Greek historical thinker, and Greek teachers first stated that lofty ideal, the brotherhood of man..."

And we all live among ancient Greek thinkers, today. One does not have to look far to find Stoics, Sophists, Skeptics, Aristotelians, Platonists, and Epicureans. Recently, John Mark Reynolds posted a rebuttal to a Heart of Wisdom article that suggested "adoption of classical methods but rejection of classical literature." In the spirit of and , I invite you to read and reason through both.

Certainly there are different ages when it would more appropriate to introduce the people and philosophical debates of ancient Greece, but Highet is right. If we teach ancient Greece as only a collection of historical facts, we have missed important lessons for our next generation.

Resources for Dante's The Divine Comedy

We're just reading excerpts from the Divine Comedy (Inferno) on our current journey through the Middle Ages, but we found some of these sites helpful for visualizing the structure of Dante's Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso.

We found this Flash Dante's Inferno site from Eastern Kentucky helpful:

In addition, the Dante Study Guide has helpful listing of symbols, allusions, and discussion points, and different versions of The Divine Comedy in translation are available at Digital Dante