While “Brothers Karamazov” wasn’t supposed to be Dostoevsky’s last novel, it became his final answer to the human predicaments of life.
Spencer Klavan talks to Dante expert Catherine Illingworth about the concept of justice as an object of our love.
This passage from Dante’s Divine Comedy will definitely make you cry.
It's time for a new chapter. Spencer Klavan celebrates Christmas with a little-known Dickens novel, then closes out the show with some reflections on the future and hope in the midst of it all. With gratitude, excitement, and a little melancholy, we look back on the life of the show and forward at what's to come.
For the penultimate episode of the show, Spencer Klavan is joined by friend and Dante expert Catherine Illingworth to approach the Commedia's beatific vision. Tying together threads from the whole series, and the whole podcast, Spencer and Catherine discuss the roles of flesh and spirit in love as the pilgrim makes his final approach to God in paradise.
In this middle portion of his series on Dante, Spencer Klavan outlines the lay of the divine "land" in Dante's Commedia. Traveling from the lust of the damned up to the longings of the saved, Dante the pilgrim meets Beatrice the redeemed soul, seeking a way to purify and channel his fleshly desires.
In this final series of Young Heretics, Spencer Klavan charts a map of Dante's career and the structure of his greatest work, the Commedia. Walking through the politics, metaphysics, and artistic background of the poem, Spencer approaches the beginning of Dante's journey to discover the true nature of love.
I have been out of the country for a few weeks and have been in the process of catching up on podcasts so this comment may be a little behind the times. I listened to Spencer's discussion on the podcast about the Achilles Problem, and it brought to mind several poets and their poetic treatment the choice. Achilles must decide to achieve lasting fame and die or live a rather "Epicurean" but anodyne life and die in bed of old age.
Sir Walter Scott in Patriotism Innominatus writes of the fate of someone who has no love of country above self.
For him no Minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
Despite those titles, power and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonor'd and unsung.
A. E. Housman writes in The Day of Battle about the situation faced by British soldiers in WWI in a similar vein.
Comrade, if to turn and ...
