Our Journey to the Empyrean - An Introduction of Lisa Statler
Introducing Lisa from Genius & Ink 🖋️
Hello everyone at Genius & Ink,
My name is Lisa, and I’m excited to join Vashik’s read-along of Dante’s Divine Comedy in 2025 as a contributor. You might have noticed my name before under some of the posts. I have been working behind the scenes at Genius & Ink, but now I will be embarking on the journey through Dante’s Divine Comedy with all of you in 2025.
There are many reasons why I am joining Vashik and all of you on this journey. First and foremost, I believe that literature and philosophy can change our lives if we read with dedicated contemplative attention. There is a deep connection, call it intersection, between literature and philosophy - and the Divine Comedy beautifully exemplifies this harmony.
In line with this viewpoint, I am currently in an MA program in Classics and Latin in order to widen my understanding, and by embarking on this year-long journey to understand Dante’s epic poem more deeply, I am excited to make the connections between the Classical world and Dante’s reception and expression of it.
In our read-along, I help Vashik guide you through this great poem. I will be writing summaries of each Canto with key events to help you relive the breathtaking scenes before you dive deeper into characters, allegories, and symbolisms that hide behind each line of Dante’s masterpiece.
I have to share one secret with you (but don’t tell anyone): it took me a few years of attempting Dante’s Divine Comedy - always only making it, in stops and starts, to the end of the Inferno - before I dove in and finished all three books straight through. Having a supportive guide who could help me appreciate the poem more fully would have made that process easier, I believe. That is one reason I feel so strongly about this project.
The idea of ordo amoris - or, rightly ordered love - is an approach I am planning to take when I enter the Inferno and continue on to Purgatorio and Paradiso with you. It’s an idea from Augustine of Hippo that speaks to the concept of the ordering of our affections toward the many elements of our lives:
What did you love and how did you love it that brought you here? For we all act to do the things we love to do. Did you love the right thing, but inordinately? Did you love the thing that steeped you in disorder?
Taking this concept of ordo amoris as the basis for action sets a stage for becoming the philosophical sage. It is a slow recognition of all the minuscule ways in which we are out of balance with the ordered cosmos, and placing them back in order, one by one, step by step, ascending towards harmony. This is exactly the process that Dante brings us through.
This brings me to the second reason why I am embarking on this exciting journey - I am forever exploring these questions that were so poignantly posed by Augustine. If there is one author who could bring me closer to the answers to these questions it would be Dante and his Divine Comedy. It is an honour to work through it with all of you.
It is lovely to meet you all and if you would like to reach out to me, feel free to follow me on Substack and send me a message!
~ Lisa Statler
I too have been stuck on the Inferno each time I tried to read - planning to make it through this time!