Il Convivio

“having set the sail of my reason to the breeze of my desire, I enter upon the open sea with the hope of a smooth voyage and a safe and praiseworthy port at the end of my feast.”– Dante Alighieri (1265-1321)

Pull up a chair at the banquet slab

The course waft arouses the four senses

Of interpretation

The literal, a fable, which penetrates no further

than the surface…

The allegorical, that truth which hides

beneath the fabulous cloak…

As Orpheus can tame the wilds with his lyre,

So the wise can bend the dull strings of the world to their tune…

The moral, wherein the teacher leads their pupil,

As Christ ascends the transfiguring summit,

With few but the very truest in tow…

And the anagogical, that which lies beyond the senses,

When the soul departs from sin it is made whole and free…

Still, the text is polysemous,

Its multitudes contained in a single pregnant act

And the inside has an outside has

The inside and an outside and an

Inside and an outside

Has an inside and

An outside and an inside and an

Outside and on and on and on…