“Beauty is truth, truth beauty – that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” I first read these final words of John Keats’ poem “Ode on a Grecian Urn” in middle school. At the time I was keeping a journal of inspiring quotations, and I promptly added these lines to its pages. It’s the only quote from that journal I still remember today.
This past year, I’ve been working my way through a reading of Dante Alighieri’s epic poem “The Divine Comedy,” in which the poet narrator travels first through the circles of hell, then climbs the mountain of purgatory, and ultimately reaches the paradise of heaven. As we enter into the month of November, a time the Church has designated especially for praying for the souls of the dead, it is particularly fitting that I am about halfway through my reading of purgatory.