Introduction to Inferno: Una Selva Oscura
Ink on paper. 2016
22 x 15”
In the opening canto of L’ Inferno, Dante finds himself in a dark wood (una selva oscura) having lost his way in life, both morally and intellectually. Thus begins the journey to Hell, Purgatory and Paradise, before returning to life a saved man.
* * *
For a couple of years, I taught a class with a
brilliant RISD colleague—Mark Sherman, a medievalist in the Literary Arts and
Studies Department. I learned a great deal from our experience, and
particularly from Mark, who was not only a knowledgeable scholar but also a
perfectly competent critic of visual communication. The class,
"Illustrating Dante's Comedy," encouraged deeper reflection on the
poem in its entirety, with the challenging premise of total immersion in both
scholarly and studio investigation. We met for eight hours each week and
talked constantly about the poem, its metaphorical and historical richness
and how best to visualize it. I do think it was important for most of the
students, as their apprehension of the content—written 700 years ago—was made
more meaningful by their attempts at illustrating it, while their literary
interpretation deepened their relationship to the content as artists. This
was the goal, realized with exactitude through a huge investment of sweat
and brain work.
It affected me too, and I remain grateful to Mark
for resurrecting the poem for me. I don't think that any other teaching
experience—at RISD or elsewhere—has more strongly influenced my own creative
trajectory. I began by sketching in class as we discussed the poem and these
little drawings eventually took shape as a project that's been consuming my
attention for the past several months. Most of us read L'Inferno in
high school or freshman lit classes in college, and its pulpy, phantasmal
imagery appeals universally to youthful sensibilities. I last encountered L'Inferno
(sans the rest of the poem) at age 19, my mind mired in newfound pleasures of
freely available sex and beer and (finally, after 12 years of public school in
which art class was shoved to the periphery) full-time dedication to art making. But
in middle age I suspect the poem resonates more profoundly as it mirrors the
preoccupations of people (like myself) whose paths in life are pondered with
affection, regret, lost love, resentment and a desire to clarify, once and for
all, the rest of the journey. Pick up Dante at age 50 and it will be a
different literary experience. Spend many hours translating and drawing its
tercets of terza rima and you'll realize how much you have in
common with a 14th century poet, despite the hundreds of years and linguistic
traditions that separate you.
I'm on sabbatical from teaching Illustration at
RISD. My proposal, which was submitted in earnest many months ago, boldly (and
with naive, puppy-dog enthusiasm, I will admit it) involved completion of 100
drawings based on La Commedia, an ambitious undertaking, to say the
least. I've knocked a dent in it but I have a long way to go, of course. I
still have time, and—as I near the ninth circle of hell in my efforts to
illustrate this huge masterpiece—I'm probably about as intimidated as our
hero was just before he encountered Lucifer, embedded in ice and chomping away
on three sinners.
Recently (and I'm surprised that I never bothered
to research this before) I took a look at relevant dates for the poem's
creation. It took Dante, politically and socially exiled from Florence and
couch surfing in other Italian cities, twelve years to complete the poem—from
1308-1320. He was, during its creation, between the ages of 43-and 55 years
old. Coincidentally (or perhaps not) at age 43 I came out to my
kids, friends and colleagues after almost 20 years of marriage to a beautiful,
wise and forgiving woman and found myself in a dark wood: una
selva oscura. Desperate for jarring change and a fresh
start, I moved to Rome to teach for RISD and enjoyed the departure from routine
for two transformative years. This was certainly a momentous turning point in
life and the beginning of a period of introspection and self-awareness that has
culminated in innumerable life changes. During the past eleven years I have
experienced a protracted awakening. I stopped drinking. I enjoyed a seven-year
relationship with a man I met in Rome. I became vegetarian. I tried to steer my
kids from harm as they teetered on the cusp of adulthood. I lost my mother, a
beautiful force of nature, who passed away a month ago at age 96. I looked back
on the countless mistakes and losses I experienced along the way. I became a
more courageous man.
I'm not presumptuous enough to liken my own
artistic pursuits to those of Dante, but I've been awed by the richness of
experience this project has afforded me. I have undertaken it analogously,
approaching each canto, from beginning to end, in the proper sequence. Like
Dante, I begin in the dark wood, wondering how the hell I got here, grateful
for so much but cursing myself for squandering some unusual gifts. The project
has been deliberately structured as time-consuming (and occasionally maddening,
especially when my own lack of resourcefulness or other obstacles slow me
down). And, more than any other aspect of learning it has afforded me, I have
been allowed to study my own processes—intellectual, formal and technical—and
this is precisely what the gift of sabbatical is about.
I'm including below the opening lines to L'Inferno,
no doubt mirroring the experience of many of my brothers and sisters in
mid-life, along with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1867 translation:
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,
ché la diritta via era smarrita.
—
Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.