Dante's Divine Comedy

Mar 11 2025 143 ep. 26 mins 117
Dante's Divine Comedy Podcast artwork

I invite you to experience the odyssey, by accompanying me as I discuss each canto. My book, Dante’s Divine Comedy: A Guide For The Spiritual Journey, is published by Angelico Press for the 700th anniversary of Dante’s death on 13th September 2021. For more information see - www.markvernon.com

  Religion & Spirituality
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The way down is the way up. Dante on how to live in turbulent times. Lessons from The Divine Comedy

Mar 11 2025 5 mins  
This talk was first given to Idler Drinks. For more on Mark's work on Dante - https://www.markvernon.com/dantes-divine-comedy

Is hell forever? The Inferno. Jason Baxter & Mark Vernon on Dante’s film noir

Oct 04 2024 59 mins  
“Circles of hell" has become commonplace in language. But what was Dante trying to show us when he wrote the inferno? What has been lost in translation, with this first canticle in Dante’s trilogy now part of a secular culture? Jason Baxter talks about his new translation of the Inferno with Mark Vernon. They discuss what Dante could convey in language and why the text never ce

Is hell really boring? Rowan Williams & Jesse Armstrong, Dante & William Blake

Jul 11 2024 32 mins  
Rowan Williams and Jesse Armstrong talked at The Idler festival, partly around the idea, caught in the expression, “boring as hell”. But is that right, they asked, when a drama like Succession so clearly appeals to us? The question is fundamental, for an age inclined to regard hell as appealing or intriguing, is one on the way to being lost. Drawing on Dante and William Blake,

Dante and civilisational decline. A dispatch on disillusionment in politics

Jun 13 2024 14 mins  
Dante lived through a period of almost total social collapse. Civil war and city-state terror, practiced by the church as much as secular powers, drove him into exile for the last 20 years of his life. For a while, he lost everything. But then, through the trauma, he regained a ground and rediscovered the fullness of life. The Divine Comedy is the product of that transformation. Th

What is intelligence? Dante in an age of AI

Nov 25 2023 42 mins  
Dante's imagery, particularly in the Paradiso, offers powerful prompts to developing the sense of what it is to be intelligent. He wrote for modern times, he said. And now, as AI becomes more pervasive, he can help us understand how machine learning and human intuitions are very different capacities. This was part of a talk given at the Scientific and Medical Network - https://scie

Seeing the Unsayable. Dante’s ineffable images

Aug 05 2023 22 mins  
Reason fails before the greatest spiritual truths. That much is not news. But part of the genius of Dante is his conjuring of images that reach beyond the impasses of paradox and seeming contradiction. I consider 8 such moments when Dante sees the unsayable and offers images of the ineffable. - how darkness leads to light - how appearances can be the opposite of the truth - how the

Dante and the Meaning of Easter

Apr 06 2023 27 mins  
What is the meaning of Easter? How might Holy Week be more than an occasion for its retelling? Can death and resurrection live today, as they once did, 2000 years ago? Dante’s journey, in the Divine Comedy, begins on Maundy Thursday, 1300. It continues through the inferno, on Good Friday and Holy Saturday, before he enters purgatory on Easter Sunday morning, at dawn. The climb up

Dante and Eternal Damnation

Mar 06 2023 26 mins  
Dante would seem to be a key candidate for infernalism, the doctrine of endless punishment in hell for sinners who failed to turn to Christ. He’s said to be medieval and isn't that what they believed then? And doesn’t his Divine Comedy clearly, indisputably say as much? But Dante’s whole point is that nothing is as it seems to the unawakened eye. I think what Dante is doing i

Angels, Dreams & Myths. Dante on times of transition

Dec 23 2022 16 mins  
The Divine Comedy is all about guides - finding guides, following guides, conversing with guides. Virgil and Beatrice are the best known, but there are other modes of guidance that Dante seeks and explores. Angels, dreams and myths accompanying Dante, even in the darkest moments. He learns to be present to them and trust that whilst in one encounter they can bring fear or shame, in

How can we transhumanise? And why we need to

Aug 28 2022 34 mins  
Dante coined the word "transhumanise" in the Divine Comedy, 700 years ago. "Trasumanar" is the transformation he will undergo in order to share in the life of paradise. Today, the word has associations that are strikingly related to Dante's; partly quite similar, though changed in subtle but crucial ways. Understanding those differences illuminates the dangers of transhumanism toda