MATTHEW writes from Italy:

Thank you for your wonderful site which I log into daily. I am a male of our species, left a year ago by my wife after 20 years of marriage and an 11-year-old daughter for an all-consuming passionate love affair with our neighbour’s son, who left his own wife and two boys to pursue my wife.

Your site is a breath of fresh air and sanity in a world gone mad! God bless you.

Laura writes:

Thank you. Happy New Year! 

Here are more inspirational words for New Year’s from Dante’s Purgatorio. Arnaut Daniel, the 12th century troubadour doing penance in Purgatory for lust, does not wish for an end to his pain until he is truly good. Suffering prepares for virtue. He speaks:

Ieu sui Arnaut, que plor e vau cantan;
consiros vei la passada folor,
e vei jausen lo joi qu’esper, denan.
Ara vos prec, per aquella valor
que vos guida al som de l’escalina,
sovenha vos a temps de ma dolor»
POI S’ACOSE NEL FOCO CHE GLI AFFINA.
(Purg., XXVI, 140-148)

“I am Arnold, who weeps and goes singing. I see in thought all the past folly. And I see with joy the day for which I hope, before me. And so I pray you, by that Virtue which leads you to the topmost stair – be mindful in due time of my pain.” Then dived he back into that fire which refines them.

[Transl., T.S. Eliot]

Please follow and like us: