Reading Dante in Beirut…

Now that my students and I have finished reading Plotinus, St. Augustine, al-Ghazali, Ibn Rushd, Maimonides, and St. Thomas Aquinas, we’re moving on to contemplating love in Dante’s Divine Comedy.

And as a pilgrim now refreshed with joy
surveys the temple of his vow, and wonders
how to describe it when he is back home,

so through the living light I let my eyes
go wondering among the ranks of the Blest,
now up, now down, now searching all around.

I found love-dedicated faces there,
adorned in borrowed light and by their smiles
and gestures graced with chastest dignity…

— Dante