You shall leave everything you love most dearly: this is the arrow that the bow of exile shoots first. You will come to know the bitter taste of others’ bread, how salty it is, and know how hard the path is for one who goes descending and ascending others’ stairs. —Paradiso, Canto 16
In Canto 17 of the third section of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, Paradiso, the author imagines an encounter with an ancestor who prophesies his exile from his beloved Florence. You’ll be lonely and lost, he warns, the food will be naff, and you’ll be beholden to your hosts. Dante has already passed through the realms of Hell and Purgatory at this point in an imaginary narrative that seeks to make sense of events historic and psychological that both preceded and succeeded his exile in 1302 after false accusations of political skullduggery.
So, what can Dante’s 700-year-old masterpiece teach us about the experiences of today’s exiles? Reading Dante with Refugees, a project I led at the University of Birmingham and Trinity College Rome Campus, would suggest a great deal. Reading the text has been helping refugees in Italy from countries including Afghanistan, Ukraine, Iran, Iraq, Venezuela and Egypt to come to terms with and express their experiences as well as educating the public in the timeless realities of refugees’ experiences.
In a 15-year career working with refugees around the world, Dante has served as my guide. From refugee camps to detention centres, Dante’s words about the pain of exile have followed me and helped me to humanize the experience of those I came to know and care about. Dante talks with a timeless quality about many experiences faced by people forced to flee: the turmoil of knowing the place you once loved is being corrupted and rendered unfamiliar; the loss of loved ones; the anger and frustration of not knowing if you are moving forwards or backwards.
Each week, our group read some of Dante’s work and we took fieldtrips to Dante’s old stomping grounds of Florence, Rome, Faenza and Ravenna, where he died in exile, to explore his legacy and the themes arising. The refugees’ own personal journeys of reading Dante are brought together in a series of creative outputs published in the new anthology Dante on the Move.
Mohammed, a Kurdish Iraqi refugee, explained: “Reading Dante’s work gave me new language to tell my own terrible story of loss after surviving a shipwreck to get to safety in Europe. In the Divine Comedy, Dante shows how terrified he was too of crossing borders, but he survived to tell the tale, and so did I. In Dante, refugees have an ally and an inspiration.”
The anthology is divided into three sections, Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso, to reflect the three parts of Dante’s Divine Comedy. Inferno grapples with hellish voyages, beginning with Mohammed’s account of a shipwreck, juxtaposed with scenes of Dante crossing the river Styx and Ulysses’ last voyage. Inferno also contains reflections on the trickery and power of language. “You took the pen from my hand because you are afraid of my knowledge,” writes Melila, an Afghan poet and feminist activist. Meanwhile, Sara from Iran reflects on the painful experience of trying to express herself in a foreign tongue, drawing out Dante’s sensitivity to language.
In Purgatorio, Zahra explores the theme of fusing influences from Eastern and Western learning with her depiction of a Persian Purgatorio. Sanaz reflects on the power of art to move us, while Anna reimagines Dante’s realism through music. Alina considers how contested cultural legacies can cause harm with reference to Gogol, who comes from her native Ukrainian town.
In the final section, Paradiso, several contributors imagine meeting, in the style of Dante, people they admire in their own lives: for Sanaz, her late grandmother and, for Anna, the Ukrainian opera singer Solomiya Krushelnytska. Mihal stages an encounter with Simon Bolivar, while Sabera imagines dialoguing with the Buddhas in her native Bamiyan valley before they were destroyed by the Taliban in 2001. The contributors bring other muses into their work, including Cortez, Gandhi, Greta Thunberg and Hafiz.
Sanaz, from Afghanistan, commented: “Contributing to Dante on the Move has been a profound experience that has enabled me to embrace my identity and journey, both as a student of global humanities and as a refugee seeking safety in a new world. Through engaging with Italy’s top poet, I have gained new perspectives, moving metaphorically from my own personal mental health Inferno to Paradiso. As I sat reading the Divine Comedy in the asylum accommodation centre, surrounded by violence and frankly terrified, I found myself in Dante’s words, something I never would have expected as an Afghan woman.”
Alina, from Ukraine, added, “Working with fellow refugees and allies to explore what Dante means to us today was exceptionally enlightening. The solidarity within our group of co-authors fostered a sense of peace and purpose that goes against the all-too-present racist agenda of contemporary politics. Now, inspired by the works of Dante, I have a deep understanding of the true meaning of exile and success and I’m ready to move forwards. Dante heals.”
