The characters of Longfellow and Nicholas Rey seem like bookends of rationality gazing intently into the horrors to discern their meaning. Both are bright, haunted and dedicated to discerning the patterns. Longfellow tunes to the rhythm of Dante’s poetry in order to render it into English for the New World. Rey has his ear pressed to the criminal patterns of murders. The horror of the Civil War was first of all war: men killing other men, forced to endure abject conditions. The premise was purportedly noble, but practically degrading, as the lines between southern Secessionists (“Secesh”) and northern “Yanks” blurred. Sadly, racism survived intact on both sides of the divide, and Nicholas Rey experiences this first hand. This war ripped a gash into the American ideal: a new world for the new man. It confronted Americans with the duality of humanity’s nature, a perfect context for Dante. Words can bleed, whether the American Constitution or a misinterpreted medieval poem.

Historically, the The Divine Comedy was first published in North America in 1867, two years after the end of the Civil War. Both the war and the poem deal with guilt and atonement, suffering and redemption. All the people involved in its translation had been transformed by the imagery and vision of Dante. Although the murders are fictitious, the conditions that birthed them are not; this could have happened. Pearl raises a good question about the role of interpretation in art and everyday life. Emerson says that America will see her first poet who puts flesh and sinews on words. He was referring to the need for literature to be embodied, for words and thoughts to touch our whole lives, not just our minds. And yet Lucifer (the Dante Club’s name for the unknown killer) does just that, with a crucial difference. It isn’t a metaphor to him. The danger of literalism is what truly causes words to bleed. The inability to contextualize literature, to apply it to the unique problems of our time, instead of importing a foreign time directly can have disastrous consequences. The ability to take a detached stance to passionate issues is crucial. Without irony, truth loses its nuances and becomes propaganda.

But the truth we seek is notoriously subjective. Copycat crimes are no fiction (Mark David Brinkley, Columbine). That it took the Dante Club, a group of literary interpreters, to solve the crime is noteworthy. It suggests a clue to help us be transformed by literature instead of being consumed by it. The scholars were not only skilled technically in the text, they were moved by it. The text inspired them, gave them hope to face themselves and their world and in a sense made redemption a tangible process. Holmes and Longfellow both had sons who entered the war. Longfellow lost his wife of 18 years to a tragic fire. Lowell was quasi-suicidal after his first wife and son died. All of them turned to Dante and found healing in the story of the soul’s journey guided by Love. But they didn’t do it alone. Their weekly meeting was a community. They brought their individual talents, argued through different interpretations and tempered it all with reflection on their own lives. In the novel this is brought to another level when they are confronted with political action. Whether or not its plausible that literati would actually have been sleuthing the streets of Boston, this plot development points to the truth that our lives are always confronting us and we have to choose how to respond. There is a great scene in Longfellow’s study where the group’s previous decision to stay uninvolved in order to preserve their literary autonomy is questioned by literature itself. Holmes begins to quote Tennyson’s poem on Ulysses in Hell, which brings together their love of Dante and the call to moral decision, galvanizing them to action. Their detachment helped them understand what was happening and why, which helped them to contextualize their involvement. Literature can help us interpret the events in our lives so we can act with integrity (Read Arthur Patterons’s Meditation on Courage.)

For someone who has never read Dante, this book is a great introduction. The reader is slowly introduced to the structure of The Divine Comedy through its impression on the Dante Club members, through their scholarship as they apply it to the crimes, and by Matthew Pearl’s brilliant juxtaposition of Dante with the Civil War. I’m intrigued by how passionately people are affected by Dante. But it’s indicative of poetry, and literature in general, to pierce through the details of our lives to the meaning, or lack of, that informs it. Some people have said that our postmodern time is naturally drawn to Dante’s Inferno but is more ambiguous about Purgatory and Paradise, that we are drawn to the graphicness but don’t know what to do with the morality. This might be true. But given the problems we face today (global terrorism, mass extinction, poisoning of the biosphere) this poem calls for a way to respond creatively. Neither value-free intellectualism nor frantic activism is an option any longer. The reflected word of poetry, a metaphysic that reflects conflict as well as redemption, seems a call to the imagination. The Dante Club shows us that words can bleed, but inspired hearts can heal.


Pearl, Matthew. The Dante Club. New York: Random House, 2003. 372 pages.