Date/Time
Date(s) - 13th May, 2022
17:30 - 19:00
Location
Watkins Bookshop
Categories
Dante’s Divine Comedy changes lives. The genius of the transformative path that he charts through hell, purgatory and paradise was recognised as soon as his wonderful poem was published, 700 years ago. The darkness took on fresh meaning. The divine light became steadily brilliant. And he wrote for the future too – for those who are modern, as he put it. So what can the Divine Comedy offer us today? How can a way be found into its labyrinth?
Psychotherapist and writer, Mark Vernon, talks about his new book and how Dante not only helps us discern life’s sufferings, but opens the heart and mind to the glorious vision that awaits us all: the realisation that our life and God’s life is one life.
He argues that Dante is needed more than ever because, nowadays, we live in a time in which all can be mystics and many yearn to live by with that awareness. The Inferno is widely celebrated in our culture. The Purgatorio often makes therapeutic sense. But it is only when you follow him through the Paradiso, Dante insisted, that desire finds its goal and the mind locates its rest. This talk will aim to show how Dante can be a guide now.