Dante's - Divine Comedy - Post III

Through preparation and experience of working with this epic poem at a conference enabling exploration by colleagues I am inspired to explore it through posts on this Blog from the perspectives of speech and gesture to help relate the verse text of the poem to our everyday lives.

Two posts ago I looked at the very first lines of the whole work - starting with the words "Midway along the journey of our life." In that Post I explored a whole cluster of ways to become prepared to speak these first verse lines in a living imaginative way.

I now add the value of looking closely at the gesture portrayed in the very first Illustration Gustave Dore created from the Divine Comedy entitled "The Forest." This illustration can be found easily upon the Internet by putting in to any search engine the words - Gustave Dore, Divine Comedy, The Forest.

A line of illustrations come up. "The Forest" is the second one in from the left. This is a picture of a man, Dante, as a "Pilgrim," moving towards a forest. His feet are hidden in vegetation and ahead of him is darkness between trees.

To appreciate being, having the feelings of, this pilgrim commencing his journey through Hell, Purgatory and Paradise imitate the gesture you see Dore has created. His looking backward with the light shown radiating around his head whilst facing forward.

How many times do we have this feeling - are this gesture - and why is this?

This particular Illustration can helpfully enable us to have feelings, thoughts and insights very relevant to situations we find ourselves in our everyday lives today.

Please use the comment Box to describe the value and help of this Illustration to you.

I am very happy in future Posts to work through illustrations created by artists in relation to key aspects of the Poem.