Snapedom

Mary_j_59 commented recently in one of the threads in 00sevvie’s post to Sailorlum that she saw Dante as one of Snape’s obvious literary precursors. Someone else said s/he had never read Dante and so missed the reference.

One of my first-ever meta pieces was a simple retelling of Dante’s Vita Nuova and Commedia bringing out the points of resemblance (and some differences) between Dante/Beatrice and Snape/Lily. (Don’t you hate it when discussing JKR makes you have to go back and reread great works of literature you hadn’t looked at in fifteen years? Another of Mary_j_59’s posts is making me read Dickens….)

So I thought I’d repost that meta here, for those others who haven’t read Dante and missed the suggestions.

(And if anyone is inspired to go look for the Commedia itself—a recommended procedure—get an edition that has the original and translation on facing pages, and get someone who speaks Italian to read you a bit of the real thing. It’s an incredible illustration of the maxim: poetry is that which is lost in translation.)

What follows is a simple retelling of Dante’s self-described journey through life and the spiritual realm. No Snape references at all.

When he met her, he said, “Here begins my new life.” They were both nine, she a little younger than he. She was said to be beautiful, but that wasn’t what mattered about her—the only physical description he gave us was that she had emerald eyes and was dressed “appropriately” in crimson. He called her Beatrice, the blessed one.

He said later that if he had followed her he would have been led to virtue. But though he loved her from the first, he was weak and followed others. He went wrong. She married another and died in her early twenties.

“Midway through the journey of our life,” he finally realized that he had gone wrong, without truly understanding how he had done so. He found himself in a dark and savage place, harsh; death itself, he said, could hardly be more bitter. It was too terrible to be described; but to speak of the good he found on his journey, he said, he had to speak of the evils he found there.

He tried to find his way out, but he was told that he was so lost that his only way back to the true path was to journey first through Hell. He was given a guide—a man he took as his master, who could guide him with right reason. So the two men descended into Hell and saw the torment of the unforgiven souls. The further they descended, the more unforgivable the crimes. At the top were those whose sins were of passion: lust and greed. Below were the violent. Then the cold-hearted, who had harmed others through their selfishness and lies. Finally, at the deepest level, those who had betrayed. Each of the souls they saw was in torment appropriate to the magnitude of the crimes that darkened their souls.

After the descent, the ascent. The guide and the lost man “made their way over the lonely plain, like one who returns to the road he has lost, and till he finds it, seems to himself to go in vain.” They cleansed themselves and climbed into Purgatory, where other sinning souls toiled to make amends. At the base were the lethargic and negligent, then the proud and wrathful, then those who had loved imperfectly. As they laboriously climbed, the man slowly came to realize that the crimes were no different—the damned had been unforgivable because they had not repented. The higher they climbed, the closer the souls they met were to atoning and being cleansed.

Finally they reached the Earthly Paradise, which was the highest the master, guided by natural reason, could take the lost man. Henceforth, he said, the lost man must be guided by Beatrice, and disappeared.

But when the man found his master gone, the “sweetest father… to whom I gave myself for my salvation”, he could not forebear to weep. Not even the approach of Beatrice, clothed in the color of flame, escorted by a Griffin and marvelous beasts and beings, was consolation for his loss. Indeed, instead of soothing his grief Beatrice said to him, </i> “Weep not yet, for thou must weep for another sword.” </i>

Then she reproved him for his faithlessness, for betraying his early promise and sinking so low that a journey through Hell itself had been required to return him to virtue. Seeing her, hearing this, he said, “The ice that was bound about my heart turned to breath and water and with anguish came forth from my breast by mouth and eyes.” It was necessary, she told him, “that sin and sorrow … be of one measure.” He pled guilty to her accusations, and “such self-conviction bit me at the heart that I fell overcome.” Only then could he be drawn through the river Lethe and cleansed.

Cleansed even of his fear, shame, and self-recrimination, for he could ascend no farther bearing these. For the last book is the journey through Paradise—ascending the spheres of all the heavens, love becoming ever more perfected and present. At the end, even his vision of Beatrice falls away as he witnesses the Love that moves the sun and the other stars.


Direct quotes are from the John D. Sinclair translation.