Loving and Losing: Beyond One’s Suffering. Literature & Language Essay

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Loving and Losing: Beyond One’s Suffering
Everyone in this world has an innate craving for love and satisfaction. At birth, the baby longs for the affection of the mother, and giving him the very first warm embrace makes all the difference in the world. Science has even proved that the essence of these actions upon birth is that, love can provide the child epigenetic factors that may benefit him in his growth and development.
In fact, it is beyond most people’s imagination of not having to belong to anything in a lifetime. Even the world’s most hated people want salvation. Some people resort to abuse just to keep a place where they belong. All of these sacrifices are for the longing for love and validation and these idealistic matters can bring a person to the brink of suffering and sometimes, they drown with them until no one can hear even their loudest shouts for vengeance and mercy. Because of these, people realize that with love comes suffering.
Oftentimes, with love comes losing too and it may be for the better, worse, or both. These losses can also take different forms and consequences. For instance, the Bible states that the Lord sacrificed His only beloved Son, Jesus Christ, for His love for his deviant creations. Another example is when parents decide to create a family where they must sacrifice and lose their youth to give these to their youngsters.
Because of the versatility of the idealism of love, friendship, and suffering, these concepts have been portrayed in the literature with people of different philosophies for centuries. Thus, making these abstract notions enthralling.
One of the most enticing novels in the literature that has a spellbinding depiction of these three ideas is Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, the “Inferno,” written in the fourteenth century. This is an intriguing story about Dante’s adventure through the circles of death and the love, friendship, and deception he made in his travels (Modesto).
The story started when Dante vanished in the dark woods, adrift from the dirrita via or right path. From here, he comes across a leopard, a lion, and a she-wolf that denied him of his passage to heaven. This led him to Virgil, the Roman poet, who then becomes Dante’s guide through his journey in hell, purgatory, and heaven. Their relationship gradually progressed as evidenced by Dante’s statement that, humans are more than just gregarious creatures but they are highly relational creatures with deep sentiments and longing for love and a sense of belongingness, and that trust is habitual with others (Alighieri).
Dante and Virgil are distant in the beginning and the relationship is formal—a guide and a person who needs guidance. They are comparable to the relationship of an attorney and a defendant wherein one only asks the question and the other only answers or a master and a slave where the one commands while the other follows (Modesto). Eventually, they grew fond of each other and started to break the wall that separates them. From here, a story of true friendship and trust has flourished where Dante and Virgil depend on each other’s shoulders (Alighieri).
Eventually, Virgil grew protective of Dante. At the beginning of this journey, Virgil has spiritual enlightenment that Dante does not possess. As they go through circles of hell, Dante becomes as spiritual (or even more) as Virgil.
Having the dominant personality, Virgil, though patient, enlightens Dante about the details of Hell and its functions. He is very anxious concerning Dante’s welfare since he knows that Dante is reliant on him. In fact, Virgil even prioritizes Dante’s welfare over him when they encounter shades that defy them. He always asks Dante to stay behind him so that he could protect Dante (Alighieri).
There are even times where Dante gives the souls in the Purgatory his sympathy but as protective as Virgil goes, he rebukes these feelings of Dante, asking him of becoming reminiscent of the soul purpose of the journey and to remember that the souls in the purgatory are punished with the will of God (Alighieri).
An anti-climactic event transpires when Dante was saved by Virgil from Medusa. This act of courage intensifies Dante’s trust in Virgil. However, the latter does not trust the former yet. Bur, further in the story, their relationship progressed similar to that of a father and a son (Alighieri).
Within the sixth to the ninth circles of Hell, Dante and Virgil’s’ relationship was best tested. These circles are bursting with the denial of truth, disloyalty, and apathy. Dante and Virgil proved the opposite when Virgil teaches Dante the truth and when they helped each other to succeed in the challenges in hell (Alighieri).
In time, they attested that bliss can be shared through the raptures of the body and the soul which is why the damages of the body can be inflicted on the soul. The unity between Dante and Virgil is jumbled by all portions of their humanity—body, soul, and spirit (Alighieri).
In the final parts of Inferno, Virgil offered Dante solace and fortitude for Dante is suffering from extreme terror. Hell became outraged by these acts for this is the first and only time that absolution, pardon, and remorse are seen within the walls full of fire (Alighieri).
Dante and Virgil did not only share the readers their story of friendship but they also portrayed love in a personified form. At first, love was not an evident theme in Dante’s story. However, love can transform into all sorts of shapes. Love begets love and God is love. Thus, this story will soon meet its final end which is still loved. However, love branches to suffering, making love an essential form that does linger without eternal pain (Kent).
The author personified love in many forms. Beatrice, Dante’s fiancé, who sent Virgil to guide him through his journey, acted through the will of love for it is a powerful demon that drives Beatrice to toss away everything for Dante (Iannucci).
Francesca, who is Paolo’s secret love affair, treats love as her mind that can control all her movements, emotions, and decisions. Francesca insists that love is an evil though that wants her to commit adultery over and over again. Her salvation lies in the deviant nature of love. However, this salvation is the very contradiction of the true essence of natural love because infidelity does not only hurt and betray the people around them but it also deceives the bond between two people (Freccero).
In the eighth circle of Hell, Dante discovered the consequences of fraud and its magical tricks. The secret to fraud is love. It is love that manipulates fraud and fraud manipulates love in return. Dante describes fraud as something that feeds on trust and conscience which are the main components of love. Fraud deceives people by forgetting the nature of love and using this obliviousness as a weapon against love itself. In this case, love saves a person when he forgets about it (Ahern).
Moreover, Alighieri speaks about an evolving kind of love, with suffering and betrayals as some of the factors for its evolution. This is very evident with the story of Dante and his lovers. He is originally married to Gemma Donati over an arranged marriage. However, his everlasting for Beatrice does not waver just because of a legal marriage. Beatrice is a Florentine woman that Dante chanced to come across at a young age. He venerated Beatrice from afar and acted with chivalry around her at all times. His love for Beatrice has influenced him throughout the story where his affection transformed him from an ordinary being to a spiritual one triggered by the death of Beatrice (Potter).
In the beginning, Dante portrays three main ideas in 1 Corinthians 13 which are faith, hope, and love. He hoped for the consummation of unrequited love. However, maturity made him recognize the rejection of his affection for Beatrice. Because of this, Dante realized that the statement “where there is hope, there is love” is not true and applicable at all times.
The definition of love in Inferno has evolved depending on the location of Dante, whether he is in Hell, Purgatory, or Paradise. Initially, Dante testifies to the love of the greatest Creator by his words, “…when the Divine Love first moved those things of beauty.” He is signifying that all things in the world today are created purely out of God’s love and devotion.
While traveling in Hell, Dante realized that this omniscient and omnipotent love made ...