This year marks the 750th anniversary of the birth of the great Catholic poet Dante Alighieri. Michelangelo reverenced Dante, as did Longfellow, Dorothy Sayers, and T.S. Eliot. In fact, it was Eliot who commented, “Dante and Shakespeare divide the world between them. There is no third.”
One of Bob Dylan’s finest songs, “Tangled Up in Blue,” contains a reference to Dante: “She opened up a book of poems, handed it to me/It was written by an Italian poet from the 13th century/And every one of those words rang true and glowed like burning coal/Pouring off of every page like it was written in my soul.”