In Search of Dante Alighieri

  

In my postulates about fates and destinies, I have come with naive intentions and by chance to the literary void of Dante Alighieri (1265-1321). The heaven he created seems to be unrealistic, and yet the hell he speaks of, I tend to believe, as if I smile now with a sinister air to warn that, "It exists!"

I recall once; the neighborhood was alarmed with the smell of sulfur and coconut oil. With my mother telling my older siblings, "Azufre!" Leaving my brother (whose favorite movie is "The Exorcist"), shouting in nightmarish glee: "The vapors of hell!. It turns out someone was only heating a concoction of sulfur powder and coconut oil, believed to be a cure to that dreaded skin disease we know as "kurikong."

In some libraries in my teenage years, I followed my seemingly insatiable curiosity about Dante's sulfuric vapors and the realities of his "Inferno." I began to imagine the destinies of people like the hated professors.- the part of hell they are going to, the gossipers in the barrio whose tongue would be stretch, or the perverts that pay 25 centavos to read bomba magazines and comics at the Sari-Sari Store. But lo, the hottest place is reserved for that radio commentator one neighbor used to listen to every day in full blast volume. Was he pro Marcos or anti-Marcos? Never heard of a real neutral idiot like him.

In this country, we grew up with that constant reality and threat of eternal damnation, man being born a sinner. It did not help us that our grandmothers were so superstitious that the "laman lupa" and the "aswang" were the oriental counterparts of the duendes or even Dante's torturer creatures in hell. We were asked not to venture so late so as not to attract evil called curfew. Most of us were made into repressed morons as we saw the lines of people wanting to catch "Scorpio Nights" at Imelda's Film Center. And if we are bad and evil enough, there is that fire in hell fitted to every evilness we specialized in. Social institutions such as family dictated Dante's tune, and so does government as Marcos, Martial law.

The dictates of will and I made it into the doorstep of Dante's place. To think medieval was not bad enough. The search for Dante culminated in a paper where it geared more towards my critique on Philippine society, that written revolt against a culture that doesn't understand itself (with many footnotes on the clergy that thinks they are cute). And Dante Alighieri was saying- all of us are vent on hell, each one has a place reserved, others are just sophisticated enough to avoid it. 

My conclusion? Divina Commedia was, after all, meant for Dante's muse, nothing more. Oh, the heavens of Beatrice or the equivalence of her in all the splendor of those Tuscan lines.

~ Pasig City June 2017

Dante Alighieri (1265-1321)- Portrait by Boticelli