Dialogues with Dante: Review of Dear Dante

Angela Alaimo O’Donnell
Paraclete Press, 2024; 96pp.; $21 (paperback)

Angela Alaimo O'Donnell's Dear Dante: A Contemporary Response to the Divine Comedy

In Dear Dante, Angela Alaimo O'Donnell follows a venerable line of poets who have responded to Dante’s Divine Comedy in their own work. Like the Commedia itself, O'Donnell's collection is structured in three parts—a descent into hell, a climb up Mount Purgatory, and an ascent into Paradise. A prologue and epilogue frame the thirty-nine poems, divided into three parts of thirteen, written “in the poetic forms that Dante favored: the sonnet and, of course, terza rima” (10).

The Pilgrimage Begins: A Poet's Encounter with Dante

During the solitary summer of 2020, anticipating the seven-hundredth anniversary of Dante’s death, Angela “found [herself] entering into the poem as a participant rather than a passive observer,” and, by responding poetically, found herself “talking back to Dante,” at times “admiring [his] beauty, power, and wisdom,” and at times “tak[ing] issue with some aspects of his worldview” (8). As she notes, modern ways of looking at certain aspects of human experience—sexuality, suicide, religious pluralism—“[have] changed since 1321” (9). Nevertheless, “Dante captured what is universal in the human experience” (9), as he aimed to do in the first line of his Commedia when he spoke of his pilgrimage as ours as well: “In the middle of the journey of our life” (Inf. 1.1).

The Inferno: Dante’s Exploration of Sin and Its Consequences

O'Donnell’s response to Dante’s Inferno begins with an epigraph from each canto, using Allen Mandelbaum’s translation, which provides vital context and accentuates the sense of fellow pilgrims in conversation. The thirteen Inferno poems deepen Dante’s insight into sin and suggest new ways of understanding his pilgrim’s progress.

For example, we see Dante in Limbo standing among Virgil and other great classical poets, “chuffed / to be embraced by them... loving his moment in the sun” (22–23). The pagan poets dwell in a green world absent of hope; here, Virgil can only recall a “Great Lord” (Inf. 4.53) who visited when Christ descended on Holy Saturday to release the Hebrew patriarchs and matriarchs.

Like many readers of Inferno, Angela asks, “What would Christ have thought of Dante [the Poet’s] Hell?... Hard to believe the Savior would approve / of punishment eternal” (24). When Dante the Pilgrim meets the adulterous lovers Paolo and Francesca, she approves of his response: “Instead of judgment he brings love. As reason fails, mercy wins” (26). Further below, Dante encounters Pier della Vigna, whose obsession with his career has led him to suicide. Hearing his voice issuing from dead wood, Dante “learn[s] that life is race / that none of us can win. ... Perfection is a dream the heartless chase” (31).

Purgatorio: The Strenuous Journey Toward Purification

In Purgatorio, O'Donnell invites readers to join Dante and his pilgrim companions in their ascent toward redemption. Like Angela, I encourage my students to send a “Postcard from Purgatory” (42), capturing the image of a mountain where “souls en route to God know how to sing” and pray (43). Yet, as Angela’s postcard to her mother notes, “it’s no spring picnic” (42): repentant souls purge the stains left by the seven deadly sins through painful penitential practice.

For example, the envious lean against each other with their eyes sewn shut: “Out of sight, out of mind. You won’t obsess. / The soul with his eyes sewn shut is blest” (52). Further up, the wrathful meditate on the martyrdom of St. Stephen and hear the murderous shouts of those who stone him. Their meditation propels their purgative cleansing:

“... That they might learn
to turn their bloodlust into blessing,
his fondest wish that they might burn
with love, even their sins incandescing.” (54)

However, as Angela reaches later terraces, she recoils from the severity of the pain she beholds. In response to the penance of avaricious Pope Adrian V, who must clutch the earth facedown, she asks, “Are centuries of punishment / going to make him better?” (56). This raises a question: hasn’t God already forgiven Pope Adrian? Is this punishment not also a voluntary act of contrition, as the penitents willingly embrace their penance? Dante’s Purgatorio suggests a transformation in which souls enact their desire to “get in shape” for heaven.

Paradiso: The Joy of Ascent and the Mystery of Divine Love

In Paradiso, the final part of her collection, Angela ascends with Dante toward divine beatitude. Along the way, Dante encounters souls who long for resurrection and unity with God. At the peak of this ascent, Dante sees the “Love that moves the sun and other stars” (Par. 33.145) and feels that Love moving within him.

Throughout her pilgrimage, Angela grapples with the limits of human understanding. She challenges Dante’s early warning to “turn back” (Par. 2.4), saying “Forget it. We’re not leaving you alone” (69). She ascends with Dante and encounters Piccarda Donati, who has found perfect peace in conformity to God’s will. As Dante asks if Piccarda desires a higher place to see more of God’s glory, Angela observes, “No lust for preferment, no bitter need / for what one cannot have... / Where desire is defeated, love comes first” (71). One is reminded of Evagrius’s insight that from rightly tuned apatheia springs genuine love.

The Limits of Language and the Glory of God

At the end of his pilgrimage, Dante sees “the Love that moves the sun and other stars” and feels it move within him. In this paradoxical finale, Dante the Pilgrim matures, writing his great poem even as he admits to writing “words more weak than those / of one whose infant tongue still bathes at the breast” (Par. 33.37–38). Just as Dante accepts the limits of language, so too does Angela. In a moment of profound insight, she reflects:

“Lost to himself, he became otherwise,
Was rendered young and dumb again.
This is what happens in paradise.
When the soul encounters the Holy One
There is no longer need for a poem.
All you have written becomes mere straw.
An eternity looms of language-less awe.” (87)

Dante's Invitation: A Path to Redemption and a New Way of Seeing the World

In honor of the seven-hundredth anniversary of Dante’s passing, Pope Francis wrote Candor lucis aeternae, “Splendor of Light Eternal.” He observed that Dante “invites us to become his companions on the journey. Today, too, he wants to show us the route to happiness, the right path to live a fully human life, emerging from the dark forest in which we lose our bearings and the sense of our true worth.”

In her elegantly wrought collection, Angela Alaimo O'Donnell carries on Dante's invitation, offering a contemporary voice to a timeless pilgrimage. Through her poetic response, readers are encouraged to accept Dante’s call, finding themselves addressing him much as Angela does near the end of her own work: “The story you’ve told you have made ours. / We’ve read and reread it. It never gets old” (86).