I've spent an enjoyable few months running with Dante. He and The Divine Comedy kept me company while jogging in four countries and three seasons.
Dante's novel-in-rhyme features himself, the poet Virgil, and a woman named Beatrice, modeled upon a girl whom Dante Alighieri, the author, fixated as a young man. Today he would probably be called a stalker. Beatrice died young, poor thing, of unknown causes. (It is also unknown whether Dante had an alibi.)
For me it all started when I bought a recent novel called Dante's Indiana (which I enjoyed, and reviewed for Amazon if anyone is interested) written by a University of Toronto English prof, Randy Boyagoda, an acquaintance of my husband. The three of us happened to meet at an outdoor literary festival cutely called 'Word on the Street' last May. I asked him whether I should read his book first or Dante's. "Well, Dante's, of course," he said, generously. He told us that he himself reads a canto a day. I learned that cantos are the segments into which The Divine Comedy is divided. There are 34 for Inferno (hell) and 33 each for Purgatorio and Paradiso. (It's all very numerological, Dante's masterpiece.) Inferno gets an extra canto for an introduction, in which the author, Dante, finds himself confronting wild beasts on a mountainside and is rescued by the poet Virgil, an excellent example of the pen being mightier than the sword.
I checked out the audio version of The Divine Comedy from the Toronto Public Library, plugged in my bluetooth earphones, pressed "play," and started running. It is a long story, and I do not run long distances, so it took some time to get through it. I began in late spring and finished early in autumn. I ran through Inferno in Toronto and on a visit to Los Angeles. I ran through Purgatory and some of Paradiso in Cambridge. I ran through more Paradiso in Copenhagen, where husband and I spent a happy long weekend. I ran past dogs and pheasants and rabbits and herons. I learned that I have the stamina to run approximately 4 or 5 cantos. I learned that poetic prose is a perfect accompaniment to running, combining as it does narrative and rhythm.
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| Running in Toronto's laneways |
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| Running in Woodland Hills, CA |
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| Running near Clare Hall, Cambridge |
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| Running on Amagerstrand, Copenhagen |
Back in Cambridge a bout of covid caught me just as I was in the farthest reaches of Paradise, so as I recovered I demoted myself to walking (cautiously isolated, alone, across fields) for those last few cantos.
I learned that while Hell--Inferno--was horrifying, Heaven--Paradise--was rather dull, even though the characters were zipping through outer space; too full of saintliness (and saints) and goodness. Give me Purgatory any day. The people there told tales of struggle and yet seemed to enjoy themselves. In fact, Purgatory was a lot like life.
And like running.
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| Husband on the run |
