. . . 

And one of them, who seemed to take offense,

perhaps at being named so squalidly,

struck with his fist at Adam’s rigid belly.

It sounded as if it had been a drum;

and Master Adam struck him in the face,

using his arm, which did not seem less hard,

saying to him: “Although I cannot move

my limbs because they are too heavy, I

still have an arm that’s free to serve that need.”

And he replied: “But when you went to burning,

your arm was not as quick as it was now;

though when you coined, it was as quick and more.”

To which the dropsied one: “Here you speak true;

but you were not so true a witness there,

when you were asked to tell the truth at Troy.”

“If I spoke false, you falsified the coin,”

said Sinon; “I am here for just one crime—

but you’ve committed more than any demon.”

“Do not forget the horse, you perjurer,”

replied the one who had the bloated belly,

“may you be plagued because the whole world knows it.”

The Greek: “And you be plagued by thirst that cracks

your tongue, and putrid water that has made

your belly such a hedge before your eyes.”

And then the coiner: “So, as usual,

your mouth, because of racking fever, gapes;

for if I thirst and if my humor bloats me,

you have both dryness and a head that aches;

few words would be sufficient invitation

to have you lick the mirror of Narcissus.”

I was intent on listening to them

when this was what my master said: “If you

insist on looking more, I’ll quarrel with you!”

And when I heard him speak so angrily,

I turned around to him with shame so great

that it still stirs within my memory.

Even as one who dreams that he is harmed

and, dreaming, wishes he were dreaming, thus

desiring that which is, as if it were not,

so I became within my speechlessness:

I wanted to excuse myself and did

excuse myself, although I knew it not.

Dante's Inferno, Canto XXX (Mendelbaum's translation)

In You Are Not Your Own: Belonging to God in an Inhuman World, Alan Noble has an insightful passage in which he discusses differences between the sense of crisis produced by the modern sense of identity, and the spiritual crises of people of the past, who were not enslaved to a need to produce their own sense of identity. Dante's Divine Comedy shows us this contrast with the modern sense of identity.

Adults in the West have the relatively common experience of waking up one day and concluding the roles, relationships, obligations, and lifestyles that once defined their identity are no longer fulfilling. And in that moment, a modern person can come to feel that it would be immoral not to follow this new, truer identity---even if it hurts many people around them. Of course, if we really are responsible for discovering and expressing our identity, the moral pressure to be true to yourself regardless of how it affects others makes perfect sense.

People haven't always experienced identity crises as normal. In fact, where modern people suffer from identity crises, earlier societies suffered spiritual crises. The best example of this is Dante's The Divine Comedy, which famously begins: "Midway on our life's journey, I found myself / In dark woods, the right road lost." One reason these lines have resonated with readers for centuries is that the poet is describing a common human experience: waking up halfway into life only to discover you are lost. Perhaps you wake up one morning questioning whether your life is worth living. Or you might wake up wondering who you are. Regardless, the image of suddenly discovering that you are off the "right road" and lost in the "dark woods" is a resonate one. But the "right road" meant something different to Dante than it does to us today. Dante has not lost his identity; he is not confused about who he is. He has lost his spiritual vision.

Soon after he finds himself in the dark woods, Dante sees the sun rise over a mountain. He desperately tries to climb the mountain and get closer to the sun (which represents the Son of God and divine illumination), but he is stopped by three animals representing his sins. At this point the poet Virgil appears and leads Dante through Hell and Purgatory and up to Paradise. For Dante in the fourteenth century, the question was not "Who am I?" but "Who is God?" and "How can I grow in Christlikeness?" The Divine Comedy describes one man's efforts to know God, but it is also the poet's way of describing the spiritual journey that everyone must take. In the process of knowing God, Dante learns more and more about himself, about his sins, and the ways God has blessed him. But self-knowledge is a byproduct of knowing God; it is not the goal. The goal is to know God and become like him. 

If The Divine Comedy were written today, I think it would be the story of one man's efforts to know and express himself--that's the life journey that every modern person must take. The "right road" would not represent the way of Christ, but a process of self-revelation and actualization. The "dark woods" would represent an identity crisis, and the beasts blocking the way to self-actualization would be cultural expectations and self-doubt instead of sins. A modern Divine Comedy might still include religion or God, but only insofar as they help the protagonist discover their real, true self--a complete reversal of the Italian poet's original vision. From Dante's spiritual crisis to our modern identity crisis, the search moves from external to internal sources. One way to understand that shift is to recognize that unlike the fourteenth-century poet, contemporary people tend to believe that they are their own and belong to themselves, and as a result, their identities are in question. We can lose our "self" in ways that wouldn't have made much sense to Dante.

For medieval people, everything was a sign pregnant with meaning. "Dante's universe did not simply exist; it meant, and it meant intensely," writes Louis Markos. "The universe was less a thing to be studied than a poem to be loved and enjoyed." For the medievals, the whole world was an icon of the divine, a manifestation of God. That is, God wasn't a distant, absentee figure but as close as the sun in the sky, the wind in the trees, the cry of a baby, and the sigh of a lover.

Rod Dreher, How Dante Can Save Your Life, p. 45

The pilgrim Dante's journey teaches him that the source of all the chaos and misery is disorded desire. If everyone, including himself, loved as they should love, they would love God more than they loved themselves and their passions. To harmonize with the will of God requires us to overcome our passions and our ego, to make room for the transforming love of God. Out of the ashes of his destruction, Dante the poet erected a monument to redemption--his own and everyone else's; he could not have done it any other way. To clear the pathway to paradise, Dante had to heave his own considerable ego out of the way. 

The poet's personal story does not have a conventional happy ending. Dante died in exile, never returning to his hometown. But as we will discover on the road ahead, Dante's story ends not with happiness in the ordinary sense but with something much better: joy. 

Rod Dreher, How Dante Can Save Your Life, pp. 39-40

Dante taught me that all sin comes from disordered love: loving the wrong things, or loving the right things too little or too much. Family is good. Place is good. Tradition is good. But these things are only good insofar as they reveal and guide one to God. To place anything above God is to make it an idol — and our idols inevitably tyrannize us.

Rod Dreher, "A Tale of Two Photos"